App for Exsilium

[scentofpink]

≫ PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Kaja
Current AGE: 32
Player TIME ZONE: Eastern Standard Time
Personal JOURNAL: kajarainbow
IM & SERVICE: AIM: kajarainbow
Player PLURK: kajarainbow
Current CHARACTERS: None

≫ CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Rosy Maze of Climbing Mists
Character PULL-POINT: Seven years into her travels across worlds
Character AGE: 36 (she looks about 20)
Character ABILITIES:
As a entity of desire, she's deeply attuned to desires. What this means is that she can detect others' desires, taste them in a sense. Essentially if someone's currently desiring something, she'll sense it immediately. Anything else'll require more digging. She can then, in additional to the ordinary methods of granting desires (like just baking that cake they wanted), take on the form of that desire where it might be a person or trait (like red hair) or give them dreams where their desires are granted. She can also induce desires where there would be a payoff in satisfying them (like making someone want to go off and have a nice cup of coffee). It's through making others happy that she maintains her own existence, much like feeding.

As a spiritual rather than physical being, she is naturally immaterial but can for a constant exertion of energy manifest a physical body. One of the things this means is that she's very difficult to truly kill by physical methods--damage tends to only break up her physical body or disrupt her spiritual form to the point where she has to take the time to reform it (which can take quite a while--it's not a matter of mere seconds or minutes). Often she'll reform somewhere else--it's entirely possible that the Initiative might be able to anchor her so that she reforms within the Infimary or another place of their choice. She's also generally aware of spiritual impressions including souls. On the downside, as a spiritual or 'conceptual' being, it's easier to ward against her than a physical entity.

Like other 'conceptual' beings, she can communicate through concepts rather than language, essentially sort of like a telepathic communication. This helps her bypass language barriers in-person (and is largely responsible for her adopted people not using names as their primary identifiers of others).

As a mage, she's fairly well-schooled in the magical sciences and assorted related sciences which she's kept up in even after leaving her existence as a human. Rather than giving quick effects by casting spells, it instead operates by time-consuming attunements to concepts. Those attunements can empower a person or object with abilities or make them more or less like something. While rarely permanent (that takes a lot of work), it can have somewhat longlasting effects. However, a person or item can only be empowered with so many attunements. Methods of summoning conceptual beings and travelling into other worlds also exist but are likely not usable in the game.

In terms of mundane skills, she's fairly well-read, though she tends to favor non-fiction--her sister's the one who was really into fiction. As a result she has some degree of miscellaneous knowledge. And she's also took an interest in music composing due to how it's both mathematical and aesthetically pleasing, which appeals to her Blisser nature.

Character WORLD:
Long ago, or so the story goes, the inhabitants of the Bright World looked upon the Gray World, the home of humans and saw a world in sore need of their guidance. A world filled with corruption, strife, unnecessary suffering, and more. And so they rallied their armies and their diplomats and their spies to conquer the Gray World. Those nations that did not give themselves over to the radiantly pure beings promising a better life under them, they sought to subvert from within. Those that they could not quietly fill with leaders loyal to them, they sent in the armies of light to conquer. And there were none that stood before the terrible radiance of their armies.

Ever since, the malcontents say, the world has been under the heel of an overbearing parental authority that refuses to allow humanity to grow up and make their own mistakes. Ever since, the loyalists say, the world has been much the better for the Gray World Bureau's incorruptible rule, its sensible rules, its genuinely fair justice. The majority of the population might grumble now and then about things like only being allowed a token voice in their own rule, having to follow certain strict rules, and the like but overall are too comfortable in their lives to challenge it.

The current Gray World is full of modern technology as we know it, as well as magical practitioners--both of those carefully regulated with the more harmful items allowed only in the hands of the authorized. Magic in general tends to take the form of attunement to concepts, such as attuning oneself to the concept of truth to know the truth in all things or fire to shoot out flames. Such attunements could be used to give a person or an object a suite of abilities, or to make them more or less like a concept. As well, there are creatures and entities already possessing natural attunements themselves.

The Bright and Gray World aren't the only worlds out there. They include: the horrific Red World where predation and the rule of the strong are the rules of the day, the Blissful World where desires rule paramount, the abstract Mathematical World, and more. The outlooks of each world are often alien to those of other worlds. A Red Worlder or Gray Worlder will have trouble understanding a Bright Worlder, and so on. This is something that can be overcome with education and familiarity but it requires some work and getting over ones assumptions.

The Blissful World is especially relevant to Rosy's history. Its entities know not want, experiencing even hunger only as a craving for some particular delicious food. Lacking the regular survival impetus, their main impetus is pleasure of assorted kinds, especially others' which leaves them energized and satisfied. Overall, they're infamously hedonistic and have some of the same reputation as succubi/incubi do, frequently being summoned by mortals for carnal purposes although that isn't the only pleasure they enjoy. It doesn't help that it isn't uncommon for them to enthrall a mortal in pleasant dreams until they die of dehydration or starvation. This isn't done out of malice but rather a lack of understanding about mortals' needs.

Character HISTORY:
Once there were two children, born without names, without a parent to acknowledge them, without a future beyond being used. Their biological parent, the master of the house, had replicated them from herself for some scheme to create potent successors. They were nursed and fed by creatures bred to feed children, clothed and educated by creatures bred to instill civilization into children, and raised to be tools. Everyday they were forced into grueling amounts of reading and learning, as well as experimentation to develop their magical capabilities.

And then, at the age of thirteen, completely forgotten about as the master of the house adopted a heir for political reasons and moved on to other projects. They were abandoned deep within the labyrinthine secret libraries of the sorceror's mansion, where they had been deposited for a study session. Forced to fend for themselves, they ended up reading books after books searching for a way out. But the master's secret library had so many protections that even simple teleportation wouldn't suffice and, its looping nature prevented finding an exit.

Unable to defeat the wards placed by a master far more experienced than them, they turned to escape of another form. While passage from outside or inside were tightly restricted, summoning things to within the library weren't. So they survived for a little over two years on summoned food, losing themselves in freely reading whatever they wanted and generally just doing what they wanted. It was at this point that the two sisters managed to differ between themselves, with one taking more of an interest in fictional works and recreating those works, while the other focused more on non-fiction and studying fields outside the ones they had been forced to cram, gathering a more well-rounded education. It was the latter who would later come to be known as Rosy.

And then they stumbled across the books on the Blissful World. It proved fatal as they drifted off in dreams far more pleasant than their lives had been. But that wasn't the end for them. Enchanted by the lifestyle described to them by the Blissers they summoned, they had already set about making themselves more like them. And with their enhanced magical affinities, they attuned easily enough. Dismayed by the two teenagers' accounts of their childhoods, the Blissers had for all intents and purposes adopted them. So as their souls were released from their failing bodies, the Blissers around them caught them and brought them to those of their own skilled in the spiritual arts. The spiritworkers remade their souls into new Blissers with the memories of the sisters.

Life in the Blissful World was the dream they had hoped it to be and they spent a good number of years in it. But the more scholarly sister felt a restlessness growing in herself. She decided she wanted to explore the other worlds. And she started with the Gray World that she felt had abandoned her, to see what it was like outside the mansion. As she saw people and especially children living their lives freely, a bitterness grew in her, and she nearly headed down a dark road of revenge. It was only a timely meeting with a therapist empath who sensed her malicious intentions and severely admonished her.

He took her under his wings and taught her many things, methods of letting go of her attachment to the past and the suffering she had suffered--and then teaching her more about how to deal with the world and its social mores which differed greatly from those of the Blissful World. Social mores that her biological parent had never seen fit to teach her. Eventually overcoming the culture shock, she set out once again to experience the different worlds.

Finding that non-conceptual beings tended to find her people's ever-changing flowery descriptive names troublesome, she settled upon a name more non sequitor than descriptive. And so Rosy Maze of Climbing Mists finally had a stable name, though she allowed others to shorten it.

Character PERSONALITY:
Hedonism is a stereotype of her people, and it's not one she fails to live up to. But their tastes for indiscriminate pleasures're exaggerated, and in her case she's more interested in new aesthetic experiences than sex, though she does enjoy that and isn't particularly shy. As much as she enjoys bringing others pleasure (and not always of the carnal kind), she also enjoys teasing them. She actually has a high taste for intellectual pleasures due to her heavy reading.

Speaking of intellectual interests, the freedom to learn what she wills has given her a burning sense of curiosity. She enjoys puzzling out how things work and experimenting with new magical approaches or unfamiliar techniques and skills. There're few things more delightful to her than a new puzzle. She's given over to thinking a lot about things, which often leads to philosophizing.

While she's spent enough time in other worlds to be considerably more judicious about imposing desires upon others, she doesn't see much wrong in changing to suit their already existing desires or otherwise acting upon them. Even when others might object, sometimes--she can be a little opportunistic. As long as she didn't make them something want they didn't already want.

She treasures her own freedom, and tends to react poorly to heavy attempts to restrict her own or others' freedom. This includes parents excessively imposing themselves upon their children--this is particularly likely to set off her anger. In particular, while she tries to be at least a little mindful, she often does what she feels like.

A certain part of her still suffers from abandonment issues, and so she can get clingy if she thinks someone's going to leave her. She's aware of the problem and is handling it somewhat, but it's still a problem sometimes.

Really, she finds abandoning others who needs help unforgivable. She'll often give them the help she wishes she and her sister'd gotten, particularly if it looks like they have no one to turn to. If they don't truly need it, she's less likely to bother.

Ultimately, she just wants to get the war over with so she can resume her travels. Violence she finds heavily distasteful due to the waste of lives and dreams and she despises the way war consumes the desires of all those caught up in it, turning people to wanting each other's deaths or even just survival. There's less room in war for things that aren't war.

≫ EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON:
Her set of magical tools. They would likely evolve to facilitate quicker and/or better attunements, as well as providing better analysis with less effort.
Character INVENTORY:
She possesses conceptual/spiritual forms of several items (what this means is that they naturally exist as she do and require energy to manifest physically):
A tablet with several useful programs loaded on it, such as an e-reader with a decent library, music software which she uses for composing, and some science software (some of it truly weird and exotic to people from other worlds).
A set of magical tools useful for facilitating attunement and also general magical analysis (this is her chosen weapon).
A notebook and pens.
A shoulder bag she keeps those items in.

≫ PREVIOUS GAME INFORMATION ( IF APPLICABLE )
N/A

≫ SAMPLES
First PERSON:
[Text posted under the psuedonym 'Spicy Kiss']
I wonder. What does it mean to live and to die? Sure, there's the simplicity of most deaths experienced by people. They're born, they live their lives, and then their bodies cease working and their souls pass on. There're many ways you can philosophize about that, but ultimately it's one of the most clear-cut and definitive cases we have to work with.

But not all cases're like that. Let's talk about an artificial being. Like a thinking automation. An AI. They break, and then you repair them. They can even be broken for a far longer time, years. That'd be definitely death for a biological being, you'd have to pull off some crazy resurrection stunts to bring them back after that. But you can bring back an AI just by fixing it. Was it dead? Is something dead as long as you can bring it back? AIs've been known to accumulate souls. It builds up through a process that isn't understood, and believe me, I've read all the literature on this. The top researchers in the soul sciences don't know the answer to those issues I'm discussing here. Now, that soul seems to disappear if an AI gets broken to the point it isn't functioning. And then it comes back if they're fixed. This is what every known reliable soul detection method verifies.

Now here's the crazy thing. That soul departs if they're turned off and returns when they're turned back on! It seems like anytime their brain stops working, it counts as a death or sorts. People've tried asking AIs what the other side's like, but they don't really have an answer, just like anyone who undergoes a near death experience or even the few biological beings who get resurrected successfully. This has led me to hypothesize that perhaps the processes we know as death and life don't really exist. They're imperfect and flawed understandings built through our limited perspectives of reality. The truth's more complex than that, but what it boils down to most people is that some people're gone, their souls aren't here, but it's reversible. And some people don't come back. So what matters is not the process known as life and death, but whether people're here or not. In other words, absence or presence. I think if we look at it that way we can come closer to a true understanding of life and death.

Let's look at a far more complicated and weird case. Let's say that someone's body dies. But their soul's trapped. No, I'm not talking about the known methods of soul transfer. Though that does bring up its own interesting issues, like the apparent redundancy of memory mechanisms between the body and the soul. But that's a digression. The soul's trapped, and then it's for all intents and purposes destroyed. Yes, I know, there's no known true method of soul destruction. At best, you can alter it. But for all intents and purposes, the soul ceases to be a soul. It's reshaped into a new body, one of spiritual materials rather than physical materials. All known methods of soul detection fails to recognize it as one. So the body's no more, let's say we cremated it to get rid of the ambiguity there. The soul's apparently gone utterly. And yet, there's something there, with the same memories as the original person. If you try to kill that something, it doesn't disappear from this world like souls does. It just reforms, often somewhere else. In short, any damage's only a temporary disruption to its form.

Now here're the questions. Can it be said to be the same person? Some would argue against it even being a person. Those're the ones that argue that whole categories of people don't actually count as people because they don't have proper souls. Yes, we're talking about the conceptual beings made out of spiritual matter. Can it be said to be alive? Or dead? Just what is it? Is it meaningful that soul detection fails in this case? Or is that just a case of category error like we've noted with life and death? After all, soul detection detects a specific shape of spiritual matter that we recognize as a soul. It doesn't detect spiritual matter used as a body. But with the appropriate senses you can feel something there. So, is the definition of souls ultimately meaningless? Or are the methods of soul detection I know of flawed? Just what defines a person?

I guess I'll leave you with those questions to ruminate on, Exsilium. This's Spicy Kiss signing out. Peace out, hugs and kisses to all of you!

Third PERSON:
Carefully, she extracted herself from bed, disturbing the peacefully slumbering inhabitant as little as she could. That was something she'd much needed. Not the sex so much, enjoyable as that was, but the close contact. Blissers were so touchy-feely that it was a little odd dealing with other people who didn't appreciate physical contact as much. And here, where she didn't know anyone, it'd taken her a while to find someone to fill in that void. A little too long.

Gathering up her bag, she slipped out the door to watch the stars. It was always amazing how every world had its own unique beauty, such as their skies. She didn't think she could ever get tired of seeing those differences between worlds. She would've enjoyed coming to this world on her own terms.

Speaking of, that war she'd been dragged here for was quite troublesome. It was something she had never wanted to fight in, and something she still didn't entirely understand. She could understand the desire to punish others, she'd experienced that all too vividly. But ambitions like those possessed by the enemy were foreign to her. The Blissers'd never been ones for such ambitions, and she and her sister hadn't been allowed much time to think about things beyond their assigned studies.

Her guts were twisting up too much at the thoughts of the war. Time for a distraction. She pulled out her tablet and considered what to do on it. Music. Something peaceful and soothing. She set to work on the new composition.

≫ ADDITIONAL NOTES
It's possible that a character with a spiritual rather than physical body as described in her ability section might not fit within the game as you envision it. If so, I'm fine with giving her a physical body. She would still have the spiritual senses but not the other stuff mentioned in that paragraph.