26 July 2017 @ 02:53 am
application for [community profile] empatheias  


⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉

Player: chesca
Contact: [plurk.com profile] oglops @ plurk, chocographs @ skype, JUNK #8483 @ discord
Age: Over 13
Current Characters: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉

Character: Firion
Age: 18
Canon: Final Fantasy II
Canon Point: Toward the end of Jade/entering Pandemonium.

Background: Everyone says he yearns at heart for Shangri-La - Firion's story @ FFwiki
An age of peace has come to an end - Final Fantasy II's plot @ FFwiki

Personality: More than anything else, Firion is driven. He pushes forward, even when he’s not entirely certain which direction ‘forward’ is. He doesn’t always have a plan, but he has an ideal - that nobody ought to be made to suffer at the hands of another, and that it is the duty of those who can prevent that to protect those who cannot - and he puts everything he has into working towards it. The vagueness and childishness of it does trouble him when he finds himself without guidance (this doesn’t happen in his own canon, but does happen in his appearance in Dissidia) but even then he’s not one to let not knowing what he’s supposed to be doing stop him from doing something, and his ideals are enough to keep him on the right track and allow him to do good.

He’s easily influenced by others if he believes their intentions are good, especially if they happen to be pretty. Accept a free ride on a pirate ship? Certainly, the captain is a lovely lady (Result: pirates.)! Being seduced by a princess despite knowing said princess is in mourning for her dead fiance and also that she certainly has had a dramatic change of personality recently and did you know someone saw her eat a whole live rat? Sounds reasonable enough (result: princess actually a snake.). He doesn’t like doubting people, and so often simply chooses not to do it. It causes problems.

At his best, Firion is responsible and careful. He takes care of his siblings (and party members, in dissidia) as best he can. When a character sacrifices themselves for the party, he’s the first to accept this and turn and run, and he’s the one to drag his siblings with him to make sure their death isn’t for nothing. At the same time, the fact that he does try to take responsibility for everything leads to him not understanding and becoming angered when others fail to do the same. Later, upon meeting the character whose poor choices, fueled by trauma, led to the sacrifice mentioned above, Firion is incapable of speaking to them. In the only instance of another party member being the default speaker in the game outside of them being addressed specifically, his sister Maria is forced to talk with him instead. Firion only manages to bring himself to speak to this character much later in the game, after they’ve managed to change. In addition, despite usually being responsible and careful, he’s capable of losing himself and doing some very foolish things.

Because the problem is that he isn’t a soldier. He’s not been trained, and even throughout the game the Rebellion has tried to keep him and his siblings from the front lines until they had no other choice. In desperate situations his discipline fails him and he can very easily become overwhelmed by emotion, leading to him taking ill-thought-out and dangerous actions (or simply, as is the case in the example above, losing his temper with and refusing to cooperate with someone even when their cooperation is absolutely needed). He’s also in the difficult position of needing to become powerful, quickly, or people will be hurt but also having been taught time and time again that power is only won through sacrifice - of oneself, of others, of one’s beliefs and morals. There is an optional sidequest (one which I don’t consider canon, but the possibility that it’s something he could have done certainly is) in which he can murder an innocent man to gain power.

He is responsible and he is at heart good and virtuous, but there’s danger in his unwillingness to relent. There’s danger in how ill-prepared he is to wield the kind of power that he has been given, the kind he believes that he still needs. There’s danger in the fact that he’s learned that he can only make things right if he’s willing to give up everything. There’s a reason that the three words that the game chooses to associate with him are not only ‘Hope’ and ‘Guardian, but also the far darker ‘Destruction’.

Abilities: Okay, so Final Fantasy II is, strictly speaking, one of those ‘everyone can learn and equip everything’ games. I’m going to go with what his appearance in Dissidia, the stats boosted by his character-specific weapon and two cutscenes that show him fighting make canon and say he really didn’t learn anything else (because frankly that’s already kind of a lot)

He is able to use a shield and fight with swords, knives, axes, lances, a bow, a staff and unarmed at levels going from ‘barely passable’ (staff, lance, shield) to ‘actually pretty awesome’ (bow, sword, axe). He has the strength to carry these all around at once.

His character-specific weapon in Final Fantasy II boosts the spirit stat, which implies that he’s supposed to know some healing magic. In the interests of streamlining I’m going to say that this to consists of a high-level Cure spell (which heals physical injuries fairly well, but its high level would mean the amount of times he can use it is limited to once or twice in a given encounter - higher level magic in his canon takes more out of the caster) and a mid-level Esuna (which heals status ailments. I’ve gone with mid-level because that means its reliability is questionable, meaning that if someone doesn’t particularly want their poisoned character healed for a while it can easily fail). His dissidia moveset makes it canon that he knows elemental spells but I’m going to ignore that, again because I want to streamline ‘he can do pretty much everything’ somewhat.

Technically he knows the ultimate magic, Ultima, which is a big plot-related spell that isn’t actually that great in gameplay but which is a very big deal (and very powerful) plot-wise. This is likely to need to be weakened or removed. If possible I’d like to at least leave him under the impression that he still has this and wait until he’s been in game a little while to talk to a mod about it - he is unlikely to use it except in a very, very desperate situation and the emotional consequences of him realising that it’s either been removed or nerfed (a friend sacrificed their life for him to learn it, he’d be Somewhat Upset) are something I’d want to be able to explore after he’s already settled rather than at the same time as ‘new world, what’.

Skills-wise, his greatest skill is his tenacity. If he’s still breathing, he’s going to continue to fight.

Non-tl;dr Version!
- He is a walking armoury!
- And can use all of the weapons he carries around (and his fists) with varying levels of competence!
- He can use the Cure and Esuna spells to heal injuries and cure poisons/being a frog/turning to stone/what have you (if slightly unreliably)
- Has (or is at the very least under the impression that he has) the ability to use a Very Powerful Forbidden Spell.
- What is this ‘giving up’ thing he does not even know.

Alignment: Peromei - Chosen because Hope/Destruction are two of his key terms in FFII’s arcane labyrinth.

Other: I’ve tried to keep Dissidia references at a minimum in this, as he’s not actually from Dissidia canon-wise but there’s a couple that illustrate aspects of his personality that don’t come up much in FFII (what he’s like when left to his own devices, and how he treats party members who aren’t family). If you want me to scrub dissidia references completely, I can do that!


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉

Remember that we ask for samples that show 1) core character portrayal and 2) some use of emotions, such as environmental effect. You can also use the same sample source for both, just make sure to directly link or quote the emotion portion. We highly encourage using the Test Drive, and you can use prompts from the Test Drives, Intro Logs, and the Task board if you need them. Refer to the main application page for links and more suggestions.

General Sample: Firion on the TDM

Emotion Sample: In which Firion is really bad at getting rid of flowers.


Questions: I mentioned this in the abilities section but Firion has a spell that will probably need to be nerfed due to its power and significance in FF2's plot. Would it be possible for him to remain unaware of this, at least early on? I'd rather not have him deal with losing something that a friend died for at the same time as 'new place what', especially in a game where emotions are such a massive deal.
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