Application | Recollé
PLAYER
YOUR NAME: Dal
18+?: Yes!
CONTACT: Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
InstantEternity | Discord: Dal#6219
CHARACTERS IN GAME:
Albert Wesker | Resident Evil |![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
manufactured
Alexander von Cumore | Tales of Vesperia |drydrown
RESERVED?: Yes! Here.
YOUR NAME: Dal
18+?: Yes!
CONTACT: Plurk:
CHARACTERS IN GAME:
Albert Wesker | Resident Evil |
manufacturedAlexander von Cumore | Tales of Vesperia |
drydrownRESERVED?: Yes! Here.
CHARACTER: CANON SECTION
NAME: Artorius Collbrande
AGE: 32
CANON: Tales of Berseria
NAME: Artorius Collbrande
AGE: 32
CANON: Tales of Berseria
CANON HISTORY: Here. It's very long, but there are literally no accurate summaries or explanations of anything this man does on the wikis.
CANON PERSONALITY:
Artorius Collbrande is the savior of the world.
He may not be the first thing that one pictures when told that sort of thing, simply because there's almost no warmth to him; he's distant and almost dismissive of most people, seemingly both content and determined to hold them all at arm's length. He's blunted in speech and stoic in demeanor; however little he exposes himself emotionally is mirrored in his facial expression, which is usually completely devoid of any indication of what he's thinking or feeling at any given moment. That isn't to say that he's disinterested in the affairs of people, however, because that's far from the case; even if he isn't the most personable man alive, as the Shepherd he's taken it upon himself to protect and serve the people on a larger scale, acting in their best interests to the best of his ability and trying to ensure that the world doesn't slip headlong back into the dark ages that they're currently struggling to leave behind them.
If anything, Artorius is a large part of the reason they're able to make steps forward; three years before the events of Berseria, he made a stand against the daemons that were plaguing the world - he seemed to come out of nowhere with several supernatural entities known as malakhim at his side, arriving in a major city and effectively purifying it, driving out the daemons and recruiting several people to his cause. Along with the malakhim and his new followers, he swept across the continent, destroying the daemon threat and imprisoning those that were too difficult to kill, as well as providing humanitarian aid to those who were still recovering from the daemons ravaging their cities. He quickly became a symbol of hope for the people, one that they were willing to follow - after all that he had accomplished and all he had done for them, they felt they had reason to be reverent. He began to spread his teachings, both personally and through a new religious organization known as the Abbey; his message was one of reason and logic, of thinking of the masses before oneself, adhering to the rules and laws of the land, living modestly, and treating each other as well as possible. He also taught that salvation was possible for everyone, so long as one repented for their wrongdoings and prayed to the god Innominat for forgiveness.
However, his power came at a price. The night before he and his host of malakhim began their quest to save the world, he did something objectively unforgivable: he murdered his brother-in-law, stripped his sister-in-law of her humanity, and left the village he had been living in for the past ten years - arguably the only proper home he'd ever had - to die.
Unforgivable though those acts may have been, however, he can't allow himself to regret them; as far as he's concerned, they were necessary for the world's salvation. His siblings served as sacrifices (albeit in different ways) to Innominat, to ensure that the god would be able to revive itself and eventually save all of humanity; he left the village to die in favor of the nearby city because saving the city was simply more useful and strategically prudent with regards to his ultimate plans. It's that sort of cold pragmatism that colors everything he does; it does pain him to have to make difficult decisions, but he never hesitates in doing so - as far as he's concerned, the good of the many always comes before the desires of the individual, and this extends to him as well. If he doesn't like the potential outcome of a decision but he believes it's ultimately for the best, he doesn't give his feelings any say in the matter, he just makes the call.
Needless to say, that sort of mindset isn't precisely healthy; to others, he gives off the impression of a cold but strong leader, one that always has the best interests of the people in mind - but internally, it's hurting him far more than anyone realizes. He prays and meditates constantly to keep his emotions in check, and even when he's in the middle of something else he's perpetually keeping his true thoughts and feelings locked away as much as he can manage. The amount of repression and emotional damage he's done to himself is at least mildly appalling; the result is an outwardly emotionless presentation, covering up someone who's barely holding it together and refusing to acknowledge or even fully comprehend the extent to which he's suffering.
He wasn't always like that, however; for a time he was honest about his feelings and open with people - when he was first taken in by the village where he spent ten years of his life, it was after he had been found in the nearby woods, refusing to eat and effectively waiting to die. He was found by a woman that would later become his wife, someone he came to love and trust more than anyone else in the world, someone who actually made him genuinely happy; genuine happiness wasn't something that he had experienced often in his life, if at all, and as such his time with Celica was almost overwhelming for him. He never did tell her his actual name, having told her it was "Arthur" in an attempt to leave at least some of his past behind, but he was honest with her regarding everything else - he told her about the beauty he saw in the world and its people, and about how he wasn't sure how to like himself, and about his worries and his concerns but his joys as well. Although again, this was a time when joy and happiness came seldomly to him; before meeting Celica and her family, the conditions he were raised in were difficult, to say the least.
It isn't to say that he was miserable all the time back then - before he was found by Celica, he had a mentor that was good to him, albeit odd in his teachings. Over his time with his mentor, Artorius was taught about the true nature of the world - about the fact that daemons were really humans that had been corrupted by their own negativity and internal contradictions, that there was no saving those who had been turned, and that their only hope for salvation was to awaken the god Innominat and wipe the emotional slate clean. For better or for worse, however, Artorius also understood this to mean that emotional repression was key to survival until such a time that Innominat was revived; he started locking his feelings away from a young age, not allowing himself to feel anything in full - including the immense amount of fear and survivor's guilt that threatened to overwhelm him when his mentor died saving his life. This is the point at which Celica found him - refusing to do anything to sustain his life anymore and obviously wanting to die, but not letting himself feel anything deeply enough to turn him into a daemon himself, instead just telling her that he was "tired" and leaving it at that.
So the time he spent with Celica was important to him - he felt loved, and perhaps more importantly, he allowed himself to love her and her family. He was finally able to be a more or less functioning person, allowing himself to feel things properly and revel in the freedom that brought him; while he never did manage to let go of the guilt that came with his mentor's death, it was manageable now, and he found that he had a lot to live for.
However, he was eventually led to believe that his happiness and freedom also came at a price - one that was rather steep, and one that he wasn't willing to pay, but in the end he had no choice in the matter. Brigands attacked the village under the blood moon of the Scarlet Night; the attack ended in Celica's death, and with her Artorius' unborn son died as well. Immediately, all the guilt and grief and despair Artorius had been trying to cast off came back in full force and then some; he blamed himself for his pregnant wife's death, seeing as he had followed her wishes and saved her younger siblings before trying to save her. The appearance of his former mentor's friend - someone who also blamed Artorius for the death of his mentor - decidedly didn't help, given that he used this opportunity to prey on Artorius' guilt and convince him that the tragedy had been his own fault. The guilt and despair more or less broke him entirely; bluntly put, he lost almost everything in one go. His wife and his son, his freedom and security, his happiness, and not least importantly his physical well-being and independence - the attack also resulted in the complete loss of function in his right arm, the nerves having been severed at the shoulder. He could no longer feel or move it, and from then on he kept it strapped against his chest and covered with mantles and the like to hide the fact that the paralysis rendered it twisted and atrophied; because his right hand had been his dominant hand, he had to teach himself how to do pretty much everything all over again.
Unsurprisingly, he wasn't the same after the incident, going so far as to tell his sister-in-law late in the game that the person she knew back then died that day.
And that assessment seems to be the general consensus, really - while it isn't as though he became another person entirely or had any sort of split happen, everyone that knew Artorius on a personal level before he became the world's savior refers to him differently, depending on what stage of his life they're talking about. The kind, caring person they knew back then, Celica's husband, the man who took it on himself to raise her siblings himself after her death, the exorcist who defended their village in the middle of nowhere without expecting recompense or gratitude, is referred to exclusively as "Arthur"; the person who would go on to save the world, the one who murdered his brother and tortured his sister, the cold, calculating Shepherd, is "Artorius." While that's admittedly a fair assumption to make, it isn't entirely accurate, either; Artorius is just as affected by his past as anyone else. He seems to show no regard for anyone, especially not Celica's siblings, but there are implications that he does still care about his family, both living and dead. After her death, he recovered the pendant he gave Celica on the day she told him that she was pregnant, and he keeps it with him at all times, attached to the pommel of his sword; under Melchior's urging and supervision, he makes an oath with Seres, the reincarnation of his wife in malak form, that will eventually end in her death as well. During the rite, Melchior pauses what they're doing and asks if Artorius is all right; Artorius says that he is, but proceeds to go through a series of affirmations with Seres to emphasize that malaks are tools to be used by exorcists and nothing more - it's done in a way that heavily implies that he's trying to convince himself rather than anything else, everything about the scene is highly uncomfortable, and the fact that Melchior had to ask in the first place says a good amount.
Outside of Celica, Innominat is raised using her brother Laphicet's body as a vessel, and from the start Artorius doesn't treat him as one would expect - rather, he seems to take on more of a caretaker role, chiding him gently and correcting his behavior when necessary, providing for him, and supporting him when he's upset. It's Artorius that Innominat looks to for guidance when things are going poorly, not the other way around - which may seem odd given that Innominat is literally a god, but perhaps less so when it's made clear that Innominat has residual memories from Laphicet, who likewise thought of Artorius as his caretaker and guardian. Noticeably, Artorius never discourages him from acting that way or tries to tell him to act in a way that's more befitting.
As for his sister-in-law, Velvet, he seems to find his treatment of her to be completely necessary since she was a sacrifice of sorts to aid in saving the world. He also openly accepts that she's going to keep trying to kill him until one of them dies; as such, he believes that killing her is also necessary, and he only cracks a little on this stance at the end of the game. He tells her that everything needs to be suppressed, making a point of including "love" specifically as something that needs to go, even if it's obvious from his tone and his phrasing that he doesn't like that idea at all; after he fuses with Innominat, he practically begs her to stop struggling against him - he tells her that what he's doing is to remove the world's sadness, because he feels that he has to. It comes back to the pragmatism and twisted sense of utilitarianism that governs his entire life - if a decision hurts him or those he cares about but is ultimately for the good of the many, then he's required to make the call. It doesn't matter if he suffers, or if the people he loves suffer; when made to choose between them, or himself, and the world, there's only one thing he can justify doing.
Admittedly, his decisions regarding "the good of the world" aren't always the most sound; the entire purpose of Innominat is to suppress the will of the people, sealing away their emotions and leaving them to act only according to that same sense of utilitarianism. In his ideal world, people would act first in the interest of the greater good, adhering to order and reason rather than emotion; this would essentially leave people as complete automatons, highly susceptible to suggestion and control - which is ultimately better than leaving them to their own devices to make rash choices and possibly hurt themselves in the process. In the end, Artorius wants a world of stagnation - but ultimately speaking, it would be one free of pain. No more war or harm or tears, and no more risk of people becoming daemons; a world of peace, free of malevolence but also devoid of love and happiness.
While it can certainly be said that he's doing this for the well-being and safety of the people, it's pointed out multiple times that this is Artorius' ideal world, even before anyone finds out what's really going on in his head - and in the end, they're correct. He always refers to what he's doing with the Suppression as "changing" the world, not "saving" it; it isn't purely about the people so much as it is about Artorius himself. He's had enough of the guilt and the fear and the despair, of having everything that he's ever cared about ripped away from him again and again, of wanting to die. This way he can have control over his situation and no reason to worry about losing anything else; he can finally cut ties and not despair anymore. Apathy is not only sought out but desired, in his case; this will give him the means to actually protect people and not risk being hurt by it again. For once in his life, he can save everyone.
Basically put, Artorius is a deeply disturbed person - one who's ultimately kind in his desire to spare people from pain, and yet deeply selfish in his determination to spare himself; heroic enough to save the world, and yet cruel enough to sacrifice his family in order to do so. He's driven by guilt and grief, and so brimming with despair that it's constantly on the verge of literally killing him; he's also so repressed and emotionally damaged that no one would assume he's anything but cold inside. Toward the end he does accept himself a little more - he admits that he loved Velvet and Laphicet just as much as he loved Celica and their unborn son, and he releases some of his despair in the interest of assisting Innominat - but as he told Celica years before, he doesn't know how to like himself, much less love himself. He loves the world and the potential of the people in it, but when he looks at it he sees decay - a future overrun and destroyed by malevolence, and so much of his perception is tainted by his own despair that he can't see the beauty that still exists within that world that he loves so much. And so Artorius Collbrande became the savior of the world - and in the end, even that wasn't good enough.
Perhaps nothing ever would have been.
SKILLS/ABILITIES:
CANON PERSONALITY:
Artorius Collbrande is the savior of the world.
He may not be the first thing that one pictures when told that sort of thing, simply because there's almost no warmth to him; he's distant and almost dismissive of most people, seemingly both content and determined to hold them all at arm's length. He's blunted in speech and stoic in demeanor; however little he exposes himself emotionally is mirrored in his facial expression, which is usually completely devoid of any indication of what he's thinking or feeling at any given moment. That isn't to say that he's disinterested in the affairs of people, however, because that's far from the case; even if he isn't the most personable man alive, as the Shepherd he's taken it upon himself to protect and serve the people on a larger scale, acting in their best interests to the best of his ability and trying to ensure that the world doesn't slip headlong back into the dark ages that they're currently struggling to leave behind them.
If anything, Artorius is a large part of the reason they're able to make steps forward; three years before the events of Berseria, he made a stand against the daemons that were plaguing the world - he seemed to come out of nowhere with several supernatural entities known as malakhim at his side, arriving in a major city and effectively purifying it, driving out the daemons and recruiting several people to his cause. Along with the malakhim and his new followers, he swept across the continent, destroying the daemon threat and imprisoning those that were too difficult to kill, as well as providing humanitarian aid to those who were still recovering from the daemons ravaging their cities. He quickly became a symbol of hope for the people, one that they were willing to follow - after all that he had accomplished and all he had done for them, they felt they had reason to be reverent. He began to spread his teachings, both personally and through a new religious organization known as the Abbey; his message was one of reason and logic, of thinking of the masses before oneself, adhering to the rules and laws of the land, living modestly, and treating each other as well as possible. He also taught that salvation was possible for everyone, so long as one repented for their wrongdoings and prayed to the god Innominat for forgiveness.
However, his power came at a price. The night before he and his host of malakhim began their quest to save the world, he did something objectively unforgivable: he murdered his brother-in-law, stripped his sister-in-law of her humanity, and left the village he had been living in for the past ten years - arguably the only proper home he'd ever had - to die.
Unforgivable though those acts may have been, however, he can't allow himself to regret them; as far as he's concerned, they were necessary for the world's salvation. His siblings served as sacrifices (albeit in different ways) to Innominat, to ensure that the god would be able to revive itself and eventually save all of humanity; he left the village to die in favor of the nearby city because saving the city was simply more useful and strategically prudent with regards to his ultimate plans. It's that sort of cold pragmatism that colors everything he does; it does pain him to have to make difficult decisions, but he never hesitates in doing so - as far as he's concerned, the good of the many always comes before the desires of the individual, and this extends to him as well. If he doesn't like the potential outcome of a decision but he believes it's ultimately for the best, he doesn't give his feelings any say in the matter, he just makes the call.
Needless to say, that sort of mindset isn't precisely healthy; to others, he gives off the impression of a cold but strong leader, one that always has the best interests of the people in mind - but internally, it's hurting him far more than anyone realizes. He prays and meditates constantly to keep his emotions in check, and even when he's in the middle of something else he's perpetually keeping his true thoughts and feelings locked away as much as he can manage. The amount of repression and emotional damage he's done to himself is at least mildly appalling; the result is an outwardly emotionless presentation, covering up someone who's barely holding it together and refusing to acknowledge or even fully comprehend the extent to which he's suffering.
He wasn't always like that, however; for a time he was honest about his feelings and open with people - when he was first taken in by the village where he spent ten years of his life, it was after he had been found in the nearby woods, refusing to eat and effectively waiting to die. He was found by a woman that would later become his wife, someone he came to love and trust more than anyone else in the world, someone who actually made him genuinely happy; genuine happiness wasn't something that he had experienced often in his life, if at all, and as such his time with Celica was almost overwhelming for him. He never did tell her his actual name, having told her it was "Arthur" in an attempt to leave at least some of his past behind, but he was honest with her regarding everything else - he told her about the beauty he saw in the world and its people, and about how he wasn't sure how to like himself, and about his worries and his concerns but his joys as well. Although again, this was a time when joy and happiness came seldomly to him; before meeting Celica and her family, the conditions he were raised in were difficult, to say the least.
It isn't to say that he was miserable all the time back then - before he was found by Celica, he had a mentor that was good to him, albeit odd in his teachings. Over his time with his mentor, Artorius was taught about the true nature of the world - about the fact that daemons were really humans that had been corrupted by their own negativity and internal contradictions, that there was no saving those who had been turned, and that their only hope for salvation was to awaken the god Innominat and wipe the emotional slate clean. For better or for worse, however, Artorius also understood this to mean that emotional repression was key to survival until such a time that Innominat was revived; he started locking his feelings away from a young age, not allowing himself to feel anything in full - including the immense amount of fear and survivor's guilt that threatened to overwhelm him when his mentor died saving his life. This is the point at which Celica found him - refusing to do anything to sustain his life anymore and obviously wanting to die, but not letting himself feel anything deeply enough to turn him into a daemon himself, instead just telling her that he was "tired" and leaving it at that.
So the time he spent with Celica was important to him - he felt loved, and perhaps more importantly, he allowed himself to love her and her family. He was finally able to be a more or less functioning person, allowing himself to feel things properly and revel in the freedom that brought him; while he never did manage to let go of the guilt that came with his mentor's death, it was manageable now, and he found that he had a lot to live for.
However, he was eventually led to believe that his happiness and freedom also came at a price - one that was rather steep, and one that he wasn't willing to pay, but in the end he had no choice in the matter. Brigands attacked the village under the blood moon of the Scarlet Night; the attack ended in Celica's death, and with her Artorius' unborn son died as well. Immediately, all the guilt and grief and despair Artorius had been trying to cast off came back in full force and then some; he blamed himself for his pregnant wife's death, seeing as he had followed her wishes and saved her younger siblings before trying to save her. The appearance of his former mentor's friend - someone who also blamed Artorius for the death of his mentor - decidedly didn't help, given that he used this opportunity to prey on Artorius' guilt and convince him that the tragedy had been his own fault. The guilt and despair more or less broke him entirely; bluntly put, he lost almost everything in one go. His wife and his son, his freedom and security, his happiness, and not least importantly his physical well-being and independence - the attack also resulted in the complete loss of function in his right arm, the nerves having been severed at the shoulder. He could no longer feel or move it, and from then on he kept it strapped against his chest and covered with mantles and the like to hide the fact that the paralysis rendered it twisted and atrophied; because his right hand had been his dominant hand, he had to teach himself how to do pretty much everything all over again.
Unsurprisingly, he wasn't the same after the incident, going so far as to tell his sister-in-law late in the game that the person she knew back then died that day.
And that assessment seems to be the general consensus, really - while it isn't as though he became another person entirely or had any sort of split happen, everyone that knew Artorius on a personal level before he became the world's savior refers to him differently, depending on what stage of his life they're talking about. The kind, caring person they knew back then, Celica's husband, the man who took it on himself to raise her siblings himself after her death, the exorcist who defended their village in the middle of nowhere without expecting recompense or gratitude, is referred to exclusively as "Arthur"; the person who would go on to save the world, the one who murdered his brother and tortured his sister, the cold, calculating Shepherd, is "Artorius." While that's admittedly a fair assumption to make, it isn't entirely accurate, either; Artorius is just as affected by his past as anyone else. He seems to show no regard for anyone, especially not Celica's siblings, but there are implications that he does still care about his family, both living and dead. After her death, he recovered the pendant he gave Celica on the day she told him that she was pregnant, and he keeps it with him at all times, attached to the pommel of his sword; under Melchior's urging and supervision, he makes an oath with Seres, the reincarnation of his wife in malak form, that will eventually end in her death as well. During the rite, Melchior pauses what they're doing and asks if Artorius is all right; Artorius says that he is, but proceeds to go through a series of affirmations with Seres to emphasize that malaks are tools to be used by exorcists and nothing more - it's done in a way that heavily implies that he's trying to convince himself rather than anything else, everything about the scene is highly uncomfortable, and the fact that Melchior had to ask in the first place says a good amount.
Outside of Celica, Innominat is raised using her brother Laphicet's body as a vessel, and from the start Artorius doesn't treat him as one would expect - rather, he seems to take on more of a caretaker role, chiding him gently and correcting his behavior when necessary, providing for him, and supporting him when he's upset. It's Artorius that Innominat looks to for guidance when things are going poorly, not the other way around - which may seem odd given that Innominat is literally a god, but perhaps less so when it's made clear that Innominat has residual memories from Laphicet, who likewise thought of Artorius as his caretaker and guardian. Noticeably, Artorius never discourages him from acting that way or tries to tell him to act in a way that's more befitting.
As for his sister-in-law, Velvet, he seems to find his treatment of her to be completely necessary since she was a sacrifice of sorts to aid in saving the world. He also openly accepts that she's going to keep trying to kill him until one of them dies; as such, he believes that killing her is also necessary, and he only cracks a little on this stance at the end of the game. He tells her that everything needs to be suppressed, making a point of including "love" specifically as something that needs to go, even if it's obvious from his tone and his phrasing that he doesn't like that idea at all; after he fuses with Innominat, he practically begs her to stop struggling against him - he tells her that what he's doing is to remove the world's sadness, because he feels that he has to. It comes back to the pragmatism and twisted sense of utilitarianism that governs his entire life - if a decision hurts him or those he cares about but is ultimately for the good of the many, then he's required to make the call. It doesn't matter if he suffers, or if the people he loves suffer; when made to choose between them, or himself, and the world, there's only one thing he can justify doing.
Admittedly, his decisions regarding "the good of the world" aren't always the most sound; the entire purpose of Innominat is to suppress the will of the people, sealing away their emotions and leaving them to act only according to that same sense of utilitarianism. In his ideal world, people would act first in the interest of the greater good, adhering to order and reason rather than emotion; this would essentially leave people as complete automatons, highly susceptible to suggestion and control - which is ultimately better than leaving them to their own devices to make rash choices and possibly hurt themselves in the process. In the end, Artorius wants a world of stagnation - but ultimately speaking, it would be one free of pain. No more war or harm or tears, and no more risk of people becoming daemons; a world of peace, free of malevolence but also devoid of love and happiness.
While it can certainly be said that he's doing this for the well-being and safety of the people, it's pointed out multiple times that this is Artorius' ideal world, even before anyone finds out what's really going on in his head - and in the end, they're correct. He always refers to what he's doing with the Suppression as "changing" the world, not "saving" it; it isn't purely about the people so much as it is about Artorius himself. He's had enough of the guilt and the fear and the despair, of having everything that he's ever cared about ripped away from him again and again, of wanting to die. This way he can have control over his situation and no reason to worry about losing anything else; he can finally cut ties and not despair anymore. Apathy is not only sought out but desired, in his case; this will give him the means to actually protect people and not risk being hurt by it again. For once in his life, he can save everyone.
Basically put, Artorius is a deeply disturbed person - one who's ultimately kind in his desire to spare people from pain, and yet deeply selfish in his determination to spare himself; heroic enough to save the world, and yet cruel enough to sacrifice his family in order to do so. He's driven by guilt and grief, and so brimming with despair that it's constantly on the verge of literally killing him; he's also so repressed and emotionally damaged that no one would assume he's anything but cold inside. Toward the end he does accept himself a little more - he admits that he loved Velvet and Laphicet just as much as he loved Celica and their unborn son, and he releases some of his despair in the interest of assisting Innominat - but as he told Celica years before, he doesn't know how to like himself, much less love himself. He loves the world and the potential of the people in it, but when he looks at it he sees decay - a future overrun and destroyed by malevolence, and so much of his perception is tainted by his own despair that he can't see the beauty that still exists within that world that he loves so much. And so Artorius Collbrande became the savior of the world - and in the end, even that wasn't good enough.
Perhaps nothing ever would have been.
SKILLS/ABILITIES:
- Resonance: To describe it simply and without getting into too much jargon, resonance is the ability to see and interact with supernatural beings that most humans are incapable of sensing in any way. This includes being able to see entities like the malakhim, who are normally invisible and inaudible to those without resonance, as well as being able to see daemons in their true forms. In the latter case, he sees daemons as literal monsters, as opposed to perceiving them as humans who have simply gone insane, which is how most people would register them.
- Swordsmanship: He's noted as being the second most powerful swordsman in the world, surpassed only by Shigure Rangetsu, who trained his entire life to earn his own title. He's still considered such after the incident that claimed his right arm; notably, he wasn't originally left-handed, so he had to retrain himself to use his sword in his non-dominant hand.
- Combat Skills: On top of his general swordsmanship abilities, Artorius is capable of imbuing his attacks with limited magic, giving them an elemental affinity or boosting his effectiveness to deal more damage to his opponents. While he generally avoids too much close unarmed combat due to the fact that he's at a great physical disadvantage, he's at least capable of defending himself if it can't be avoided; outside of possessing great speed and reflexes, he tends to keep his opponents trained on his right side, seeing as he can't feel or be slowed down by any injuries to his right arm, and he's very fond of kicking people in the chest or the head if needs be.
- Leadership Abilities: Artorius was the head of an organization called the Abbey; over the course of his time as head exorcist there, he eventually managed to take over the entire continent, with no open rebellion or successful attempts at pushing back against him for three years. It's canonical that the majority of the people loved him and trusted in his word and his judgment; furthermore, he managed to keep things running smoothly on an internal level despite his high-ranking exorcists that served him being some of the most incompatible people possible in terms of personality.
- Emotional Suppression: Toward the end of the game, Artorius is revealed to have been harboring so much despair that it would have consumed and killed a normal person; he was able to keep it in check by way of prayer, willpower, and meditation, to the extent of suppressing all of his emotions and keeping himself in a state of generally being unable to properly feel anything, positive or negative. It's something he does to himself, outside of anything supernaturally-aided, and it doesn't get rid of his malevolence altogether; it just keeps it in check, and it's something he needs to maintain constantly in order to keep himself human.
- Carpentry/Craftsmanship: He's noted to be skilled with woodworking and carpentry, ranging from things like mending fences and constructing simple but functional structures to carving pieces of jewelry. It's nothing actually important, but it is noted to be something he's good at and enjoys doing, and...apparently he still manages to do it for a while after losing the use of his right arm? Somehow. We don't really question how.
- Armatization: This power is more or less a moot point because it requires another character that would be theoretically appable to work. However, in the interest of full disclosure, Artorius has managed to perfect a method by which he can fuse with a god and increase his power both physically and magically in the process – it heals all his wounds, allows him usage of a far larger weapon and grants him incredibly powerful artes. It also involves transforming into an eight-foot-tall angel with eight wings, three halos and a functional right arm that is probably less of a worry than the fifteen-foot sword he's suddenly swinging around with it. Because apparently this game decided we needed to fight the archangel Michael for some reason.
CHARACTER: AU SECTION
AU NAME: Arthur Crowe
AU AGE: 32
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES:
While his hair is still long and usually worn pulled back and away from his face, it's a dark auburn color as opposed to the silver that it is in canon. He also isn't as physically strong as he was then, because he's had no need to be; while he isn't completely sedentary or anything, he's spent most of his life engrossed in academia. The most pressing physical change, however, involves his right arm - while it was paralyzed in canon and severely atrophied after years of disuse, he still has full use of it in the AU.
AU NAME: Arthur Crowe
AU AGE: 32
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES:
While his hair is still long and usually worn pulled back and away from his face, it's a dark auburn color as opposed to the silver that it is in canon. He also isn't as physically strong as he was then, because he's had no need to be; while he isn't completely sedentary or anything, he's spent most of his life engrossed in academia. The most pressing physical change, however, involves his right arm - while it was paralyzed in canon and severely atrophied after years of disuse, he still has full use of it in the AU.
AU HISTORY:
All mentions of other characters have been cleared with the players!
AU PERSONALITY:
A lot of what defines Artorius in canon is the depths of his despair: he's fueled by grief, guilt, self-loathing, and general agony at being unable to save anyone that he considers important to him. In the AU, however, Arthur's life is mostly stable; by comparison, not much has happened to him, and that's gone a long way toward informing who he is. He hasn't lost anyone truly important to him, he had a good upbringing with a supportive family, and while circumstances haven't been perfect all the time, he's been well-off on a generalized level and as such a lot of his canonical emotional problems have had no reason to surface. He doesn't particularly like himself, but he doesn't hate himself the way he did in canon. He isn't bearing tremendous amounts of survivor's guilt, or the despair that comes with being unable to protect the people he loves most. He also wasn't raised in an environment that pushed emotional repression as the only path to salvation; he still tends to have a difficult time when it comes to expressing himself, but he can do so a little more easily in Recollé if for no better reason than he hasn't had "and if you are too emotional you will literally die" drilled into his head from a young age.
As a result of being less emotionally damaged, some of his more positive traits have been able to come through more strongly - at his core, he's a kind person who wants to help people, simply for the sake of having helped them. He doesn't like the idea of people being hurt or suffering, even if it's someone he doesn't particularly like or has no real reason to trust, and he's willing to assist others even at personal cost to himself. He's still very brisk about it, and he tends to keep what he does to a one-on-one level; he doesn't think that he can personally dry all the tears of the world and the streets aren't exactly running red as a result of his profusely bleeding heart, but if he can do something to make someone's life a bit less terrible for the moment, he'll do it without question.
That said, he still has a difficult relationship with his own feelings. Negative emotions don't serve much of a purpose, as far as he's concerned; he isn't bent on eradicating them like he was in canon, but he does still definitely have traces in him of the person who lectured his sister in the woods for letting her emotions run too hot - he doesn't see a point in panicking because it clouds one's thoughts, he avoids getting angry because he dislikes acting rashly, and indulging in sadness has never actually fixed anyone's problems, now, has it. Bluntly put, the depressive episode he had when he was younger scares him, and he doesn't want to feel like that ever again; he finds it better to convince himself he's fine and keep pushing forward rather than wallow in it and risk another crash. The result is an active shutting-out of any and all negativity he might happen to feel; while he doesn't have to block those feelings out the way he did in canon, the fact of the matter is that he does anyway because he doesn't want anything to do with them - he doesn't like how they make him feel, and he doesn't like how they disrupt his grasp on what he considers to be rational.
Despite professionally specializing in the theoretical, Arthur overall does consider himself a rational person, one who adheres more to reason and logic than wild bursts of impulse and emotion. This actually informs and is reflected in his kindness, as opposed to standing in opposition to it - he's pragmatic about it, believing that if something can be done to lessen the amount of suffering in the world then one has a moral and ethical obligation to do it; that said, he draws the line at harming people to help the majority. It's something that he theoretically understands the purpose of, but it's a line he's been so far hesitant to cross himself.
He still tends to push himself too hard and hold unreasonable expectations of himself, but here it's far more geared toward his studies and personal projects and pursuits as opposed to trying to change the world in some way; he doesn't hate himself, but he does tend to be quietly self-deprecating about a lot of things. He doesn't tend to understand why anyone would find him special or remarkable in any way, and he's quick to point out his flaws and the notion that he's really not suited for much outside of what it is he's currently doing. He harbors the general sentiment that he hasn't earned any sort of praise or recognition for anything, and in fact believes he deserves the opposite; it's just nowhere near the extent of wanting to die because he doesn't believe he deserves to live.
Generally speaking, Arthur is a more well-adjusted person than Artorius was - he still suppresses his feelings more than is probably healthy and tends to be hard on himself, but he's also a much less destructive person whose capacity for kindness and desire to ease suffering isn't tainted with severe emotional damage and enough guilt to power a small sun.
All mentions of other characters have been cleared with the players!
- Arthur was born and raised in Recollé; his family was very middle-class, definitely not rich but not poor, either. His upbringing was comfortable, and he never really asked for much in terms of physical possessions; he was an avid reader, fond of the theoretical from a young age, and he also had an interest in languages, though that was more a hobby than anything.
- He's an only child, and as such never really wanted for attention; his parents were supportive of him and any endeavors that he might want to pursue. He was also extremely introverted, however, something that developed into social awkwardness as he got older; it was enough to be noticeable, and it took a toll on his interactions with other people his age - he wasn't completely outcast or anything, but he was noticeably weird and as such had a lot of difficulty knowing how to properly make friends. As such, he spent a lot of his free time alone.
- The result of being socially isolated in a sense did take a toll on him, aggravating what were likely genetic predispositions toward mental health issues; while he didn't mind his own company, he also found himself with a tendency to be sad and lethargic for long periods of time for no discernible reason, with nothing he did (or, well, tried to do) alleviating it and eventually giving way to an odd sort of existential despair. He completely crashed into a major depressive episode as a teenager, lost literally all will to live, and was eventually diagnosed with clinical depression. He's currently medicated for it, and while recovery took a while, he's been doing well enough on the mood stability front; once in a while he plateaus out or medication otherwise needs to be changed, but as long as he's consistent he's more or less okay.
- He attended public school, where he did very well for himself in terms of testing and grades once he was properly medicated; he attended the same high school as Shigure Rangetsu (morgrim), though they were more acquaintances than friends. Not for a lack of trying on Shigure's part, there were befriending attempts made, but ultimately they lost touch with one another after Arthur graduated.
- After high school, he began attending university immediately, majoring in religious studies/theology and minoring in philosophy; he managed to push through his Ph.D, though once again at the expense of having anything resembling a social life.
- He's currently employed at Recollé University, teaching religious studies and occasionally lecturing on ethics on the side. He knows Jamie Doh (floret) as a former student, and he also knows Eren Jaeger (usurpers) by way of the university as well.
- His parents are still alive, though they no longer live in the city; he's still in contact with them, though not frequently - enough to verify that he's still alive once in a while, pretty much. He's distantly related to Derek Matthews (blondferret) through his father's side, though to his knowledge he doesn't have any other relations.
- As an adult, he still prefers the company of books and studies to people, though he does enjoy his job overall; he finds teaching to be rewarding, though he doesn't have much rapport with the other staff members because he isn't really the sort to hang out after hours. Though that isn't to say that he doesn't have any friends whatsoever; he sometimes talks ethics and the like with Ahmi Okelani (brushy), who doesn't seem to mind the fact that he's awkward.
- And he is rather socially awkward; he has difficulty interacting with people without dissolving into asking them obtuse questions or trying to engage them in something he knows a lot about as opposed to doing anything naturally. He also tends to come off as stiff or overly-serious about things, though these issues can be mitigated somewhat by someone else leading the conversation - he's not incapable of picking up on social cues, he's just kind of weird when left to his own devices.
- Unlike canon, he's never been married or had children; he lives alone and he hasn't dated much, if at all, and he has no intention of changing that. He's still sort of trying to navigate friendship, the idea of anything more than that isn't something he's interested in pursuing.
AU PERSONALITY:
A lot of what defines Artorius in canon is the depths of his despair: he's fueled by grief, guilt, self-loathing, and general agony at being unable to save anyone that he considers important to him. In the AU, however, Arthur's life is mostly stable; by comparison, not much has happened to him, and that's gone a long way toward informing who he is. He hasn't lost anyone truly important to him, he had a good upbringing with a supportive family, and while circumstances haven't been perfect all the time, he's been well-off on a generalized level and as such a lot of his canonical emotional problems have had no reason to surface. He doesn't particularly like himself, but he doesn't hate himself the way he did in canon. He isn't bearing tremendous amounts of survivor's guilt, or the despair that comes with being unable to protect the people he loves most. He also wasn't raised in an environment that pushed emotional repression as the only path to salvation; he still tends to have a difficult time when it comes to expressing himself, but he can do so a little more easily in Recollé if for no better reason than he hasn't had "and if you are too emotional you will literally die" drilled into his head from a young age.
As a result of being less emotionally damaged, some of his more positive traits have been able to come through more strongly - at his core, he's a kind person who wants to help people, simply for the sake of having helped them. He doesn't like the idea of people being hurt or suffering, even if it's someone he doesn't particularly like or has no real reason to trust, and he's willing to assist others even at personal cost to himself. He's still very brisk about it, and he tends to keep what he does to a one-on-one level; he doesn't think that he can personally dry all the tears of the world and the streets aren't exactly running red as a result of his profusely bleeding heart, but if he can do something to make someone's life a bit less terrible for the moment, he'll do it without question.
That said, he still has a difficult relationship with his own feelings. Negative emotions don't serve much of a purpose, as far as he's concerned; he isn't bent on eradicating them like he was in canon, but he does still definitely have traces in him of the person who lectured his sister in the woods for letting her emotions run too hot - he doesn't see a point in panicking because it clouds one's thoughts, he avoids getting angry because he dislikes acting rashly, and indulging in sadness has never actually fixed anyone's problems, now, has it. Bluntly put, the depressive episode he had when he was younger scares him, and he doesn't want to feel like that ever again; he finds it better to convince himself he's fine and keep pushing forward rather than wallow in it and risk another crash. The result is an active shutting-out of any and all negativity he might happen to feel; while he doesn't have to block those feelings out the way he did in canon, the fact of the matter is that he does anyway because he doesn't want anything to do with them - he doesn't like how they make him feel, and he doesn't like how they disrupt his grasp on what he considers to be rational.
Despite professionally specializing in the theoretical, Arthur overall does consider himself a rational person, one who adheres more to reason and logic than wild bursts of impulse and emotion. This actually informs and is reflected in his kindness, as opposed to standing in opposition to it - he's pragmatic about it, believing that if something can be done to lessen the amount of suffering in the world then one has a moral and ethical obligation to do it; that said, he draws the line at harming people to help the majority. It's something that he theoretically understands the purpose of, but it's a line he's been so far hesitant to cross himself.
He still tends to push himself too hard and hold unreasonable expectations of himself, but here it's far more geared toward his studies and personal projects and pursuits as opposed to trying to change the world in some way; he doesn't hate himself, but he does tend to be quietly self-deprecating about a lot of things. He doesn't tend to understand why anyone would find him special or remarkable in any way, and he's quick to point out his flaws and the notion that he's really not suited for much outside of what it is he's currently doing. He harbors the general sentiment that he hasn't earned any sort of praise or recognition for anything, and in fact believes he deserves the opposite; it's just nowhere near the extent of wanting to die because he doesn't believe he deserves to live.
Generally speaking, Arthur is a more well-adjusted person than Artorius was - he still suppresses his feelings more than is probably healthy and tends to be hard on himself, but he's also a much less destructive person whose capacity for kindness and desire to ease suffering isn't tainted with severe emotional damage and enough guilt to power a small sun.