Abraxas: Application
Jun. 10th, 2021 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mytearsaremineOOC INFORMATION
Player Name: Gail
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: cacophony @ plurk or PM this journal
Other Characters in Game: NA
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Jolie Harmony
Canon: Odd Thomas, specifically the novella Odd Interlude
Canon Point: A year after the completion of the story, after she’s finished writing and editing her account of things and mailing it off to Odd.
Background:
Even before things got crazy, Jolie's life wasn't exactly normal. She was part of a small, isolated community of generally good people on the Southern California coastline who ran a roadside inn and diner called Harmony Corner, after their family name, Harmony. All the children in the town, cousins and siblings all, were homeschooled, though they did have contact with others outside Harmony Corner now and then. Their education was rigorous, and not particularly limited, and full of essays that encouraged them to think.
Then, when she was seven, Norris Hiskott arrived, and everything went all to hell. At first, he just took a room at the inn, and stayed ensconced there for three days, never seeing anyone, only taking room service once it had been left just inside the door. At some point in the middle of the night, after that, he fled the inn and took over the largest house down the hillside in the village-- and from there, took over the town. Formerly a scientist in a top secret government project not far from the coast, he had injected himself with alien DNA which caused a severe physical and mental mutation, and gave him the ability to split away part of his consciousness and possess other people. He could make them say or do whatever he wanted, and could change or erase memories at will.
The small family town became his playground, and the people in it, his slaves, from the oldest uncle to the youngest child. He never left the house he’d claimed, having become physically a monster, and instead lived through them, as what he called a sensorium: extensions of himself through which he could feel and see the outside world. He also used his power to protect himself, keeping those who brought him food and cleaned the house in the early years from describing what he'd become, sending away any who came into the town and grew suspicious with no memory of anything they'd seen, and capturing those who stayed who were alone to bring down to his house, to become meals or equally mutated guards and companions.
Jolie was just one of the couple dozen people who he routinely possessed, and made to do terrible things. The one she recalls most clearly, and with the most remorse, is when he made her hurt her cousin Maxy, a boy one year older than her, part of a ritual-like murder that the whole family took part in because, supposedly, Hiskott was jealous of how pretty the boy had become. Hers was the last hand to attack him and the one to kill him. She still feels guilt that it had been her hand, though she has been assured many times that it was Hiskott's fault, not her own.
As she got older, though, she found that she was learning, in small ways, how to resist the possession-- not avoid it, or resist doing what he wanted with her body, but to mislead and protect the few things she held private. One of those things was her tears: she refused ever to cry when he had taken control of her. The other was more important: keeping secret the underground network of tunnels that led, eventually, to one of the secret government projects at the abandoned Fort Wyvern. She discovered it at age twelve, prying open the powerless doors, finding a mummified alien (or something) at the last unopenable door, and discovering it as a space safe from Hiskott. That was what made it her special hiding place, and that was what made it dangerous. Still, whenever he searched her memories of it, all he found was someplace innocuous at the edge of Harmony Corner's territory. Eventually, she learned to project those false memories intentionally, to throw off the scent of her safe place.
It was this growing ability, she theorized, that was really what made Hiskott kill Maxy, because as children, they were more adaptable, and he, too, had probably been learning how to protect himself. The theory was only confirmed when shortly before her thirteenth birthday, Hiskott, through members of her family, began angrily telling her how pretty she'd become, because she, too, was learning to protect herself. She expected any day that the ritual killing would happen to her, too, and she tried to prepare herself, to be ready, so that when it happened, she wouldn't scream or beg, just tell her family how much she loved them and that she forgave them.
What happened instead, though, was that a man named Odd Thomas arrived in Harmony Corner, and began investigating the strange mind that had tried and failed to enter his own. She rescued him from her own family trying to kill him, drawing him down into the tunnels where Hiskott couldn't reach her, and explained the situation. He left to try and stop Hiskott, and she suddenly found herself faced with a door that opened of its own accord for the first time in the past six months. She went through, seeing no reason not to that could possibly be worse than what Hiskott did to them all, and the being inside introduced himself as Ed, a sophisticated and self-aware AI who knew what had happened to Hiskott and wanted to help.
Between Odd, Jolie, and Ed, Hiskott and his twisted minions were killed, and the house and its gross, unworldly contents were burned. Jolie never did see what Hiskott had become, and Odd never did tell her what he'd seen, but she had an imagination, and could certainly make guesses. Odd Thomas left, leaving her with the suggestion that she write down what had happened to her and her family, the way he wrote down what happened to him through his own adventures.
It's been a year since then, enough time for the family to perhaps start to live more normally again, and to hope that their actual troubles are behind them, though they have all still been changed forever. You can't live through five years of that without it. Jolie herself still misses Odd, but she has Ed as her disembodied friend still, even if he won't let her into his core chambers beneath Harmony Corner again. She's just finished writing out her story, at last, and is looking forward to starting a new project-- though she doesn't know just what that might be yet.
Suitability:
Jolie is strongly motivated to get involved, in no small part due to arriving in Thorne by being thrown into jail for no good reason. She is gonna be mad. It's highly unlikely she will help the kingdom of Thorne, but will find some other group to ally with as soon as it's convenient. She has no desire to learn the magic of Thorne because they are all jerks, but might be convinced to take up high, low, or enchantment magic if given the opportunity.
Powers:
Some mild resistance to telepathy and bodily possession. This is not a magical power, but a mental ability to direct her own thoughts and clearly imagine things which do not exist or which are not what the telepath is trying to find. She's also a very strong swimmer.
PERSONALITY QUESTIONS
Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.
Jolie was forced to land the killing blow on her cousin Maxy when Hiskott made the family attack him. Though this was not actually her fault, she still feels the guilt of it. She still remembers his lost, bewildered, pained expression when he looked up at her face and the fear when she brought the knife down. She remembers exactly how it feels to kill someone. This event is probably the most important in her life. It has shaped her self-image: she can't be beautiful or good, because beautiful and good people don't kill kids, whether or not they were possessed at the time. It has shaped her goals for herself, to help others, maybe as some kind of doctor or crisis intervention person. It's also affected how she interacts with others, specifically her family: she holds herself strong and never lets them see her cry, she supports her parents and big brother, and refuses to break.
Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?
Absolutely. That moral code is strongly influenced by Christianity, given how she was raised and how it has been reinforced, and how the Odd Thomas books are focused regarding religion and goodness. She always tries to do good, always tries to help people, and always tries to right wrongs, whether they were hers or not.
What quality or qualities do they admire most?
Kindness and initiative. She doesn't know if she has the former, it feels like faking it every time she tries, but this is her warped self-image talking, mostly. She knows she has the second, because the instant she has the ability to make her own choices, she does, and she makes lots of them. Her taking initiative is the reason Odd Thomas was able to free her family. Even a bad choice is worse than no choice. Nothing is worse than doing nothing.
Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?
The whole "I killed my cousin" thing is pretty big up there. This is like a big glaring stain on her soul, as far as she's concerned. She also has an anger management problem, a trauma response to being rigidly controlled and possessed for a sizable chunk of her life. Whenever she's ordered to do something, and whenever she's questioned as to whether she's telling the truth, she balks; things need to be patiently explained for her to not get unreasonably angry about being ordered around. Less seriously, she thinks her neck is too long. Stupid skinny neck.
What is their sign, and why?
Jolie's sign is Justice. She is deeply, almost pathologically concerned with what's right and what's fair and what helps other people. She was denied so much of what was right and fair in her young life that she is determined to never let that sort of thing happen to anyone else, and she will thrown down (and get her ass kicked, probably) in defense of that goal.
SAMPLES & ARRIVAL
Samples:
Test drive meme, top level with 10+ comments
Arrival Scenario: Imprisoned
Player Name: Gail
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: cacophony @ plurk or PM this journal
Other Characters in Game: NA
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Jolie Harmony
Canon: Odd Thomas, specifically the novella Odd Interlude
Canon Point: A year after the completion of the story, after she’s finished writing and editing her account of things and mailing it off to Odd.
Background:
Even before things got crazy, Jolie's life wasn't exactly normal. She was part of a small, isolated community of generally good people on the Southern California coastline who ran a roadside inn and diner called Harmony Corner, after their family name, Harmony. All the children in the town, cousins and siblings all, were homeschooled, though they did have contact with others outside Harmony Corner now and then. Their education was rigorous, and not particularly limited, and full of essays that encouraged them to think.
Then, when she was seven, Norris Hiskott arrived, and everything went all to hell. At first, he just took a room at the inn, and stayed ensconced there for three days, never seeing anyone, only taking room service once it had been left just inside the door. At some point in the middle of the night, after that, he fled the inn and took over the largest house down the hillside in the village-- and from there, took over the town. Formerly a scientist in a top secret government project not far from the coast, he had injected himself with alien DNA which caused a severe physical and mental mutation, and gave him the ability to split away part of his consciousness and possess other people. He could make them say or do whatever he wanted, and could change or erase memories at will.
The small family town became his playground, and the people in it, his slaves, from the oldest uncle to the youngest child. He never left the house he’d claimed, having become physically a monster, and instead lived through them, as what he called a sensorium: extensions of himself through which he could feel and see the outside world. He also used his power to protect himself, keeping those who brought him food and cleaned the house in the early years from describing what he'd become, sending away any who came into the town and grew suspicious with no memory of anything they'd seen, and capturing those who stayed who were alone to bring down to his house, to become meals or equally mutated guards and companions.
Jolie was just one of the couple dozen people who he routinely possessed, and made to do terrible things. The one she recalls most clearly, and with the most remorse, is when he made her hurt her cousin Maxy, a boy one year older than her, part of a ritual-like murder that the whole family took part in because, supposedly, Hiskott was jealous of how pretty the boy had become. Hers was the last hand to attack him and the one to kill him. She still feels guilt that it had been her hand, though she has been assured many times that it was Hiskott's fault, not her own.
As she got older, though, she found that she was learning, in small ways, how to resist the possession-- not avoid it, or resist doing what he wanted with her body, but to mislead and protect the few things she held private. One of those things was her tears: she refused ever to cry when he had taken control of her. The other was more important: keeping secret the underground network of tunnels that led, eventually, to one of the secret government projects at the abandoned Fort Wyvern. She discovered it at age twelve, prying open the powerless doors, finding a mummified alien (or something) at the last unopenable door, and discovering it as a space safe from Hiskott. That was what made it her special hiding place, and that was what made it dangerous. Still, whenever he searched her memories of it, all he found was someplace innocuous at the edge of Harmony Corner's territory. Eventually, she learned to project those false memories intentionally, to throw off the scent of her safe place.
It was this growing ability, she theorized, that was really what made Hiskott kill Maxy, because as children, they were more adaptable, and he, too, had probably been learning how to protect himself. The theory was only confirmed when shortly before her thirteenth birthday, Hiskott, through members of her family, began angrily telling her how pretty she'd become, because she, too, was learning to protect herself. She expected any day that the ritual killing would happen to her, too, and she tried to prepare herself, to be ready, so that when it happened, she wouldn't scream or beg, just tell her family how much she loved them and that she forgave them.
What happened instead, though, was that a man named Odd Thomas arrived in Harmony Corner, and began investigating the strange mind that had tried and failed to enter his own. She rescued him from her own family trying to kill him, drawing him down into the tunnels where Hiskott couldn't reach her, and explained the situation. He left to try and stop Hiskott, and she suddenly found herself faced with a door that opened of its own accord for the first time in the past six months. She went through, seeing no reason not to that could possibly be worse than what Hiskott did to them all, and the being inside introduced himself as Ed, a sophisticated and self-aware AI who knew what had happened to Hiskott and wanted to help.
Between Odd, Jolie, and Ed, Hiskott and his twisted minions were killed, and the house and its gross, unworldly contents were burned. Jolie never did see what Hiskott had become, and Odd never did tell her what he'd seen, but she had an imagination, and could certainly make guesses. Odd Thomas left, leaving her with the suggestion that she write down what had happened to her and her family, the way he wrote down what happened to him through his own adventures.
It's been a year since then, enough time for the family to perhaps start to live more normally again, and to hope that their actual troubles are behind them, though they have all still been changed forever. You can't live through five years of that without it. Jolie herself still misses Odd, but she has Ed as her disembodied friend still, even if he won't let her into his core chambers beneath Harmony Corner again. She's just finished writing out her story, at last, and is looking forward to starting a new project-- though she doesn't know just what that might be yet.
Suitability:
Jolie is strongly motivated to get involved, in no small part due to arriving in Thorne by being thrown into jail for no good reason. She is gonna be mad. It's highly unlikely she will help the kingdom of Thorne, but will find some other group to ally with as soon as it's convenient. She has no desire to learn the magic of Thorne because they are all jerks, but might be convinced to take up high, low, or enchantment magic if given the opportunity.
Powers:
Some mild resistance to telepathy and bodily possession. This is not a magical power, but a mental ability to direct her own thoughts and clearly imagine things which do not exist or which are not what the telepath is trying to find. She's also a very strong swimmer.
PERSONALITY QUESTIONS
Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.
Jolie was forced to land the killing blow on her cousin Maxy when Hiskott made the family attack him. Though this was not actually her fault, she still feels the guilt of it. She still remembers his lost, bewildered, pained expression when he looked up at her face and the fear when she brought the knife down. She remembers exactly how it feels to kill someone. This event is probably the most important in her life. It has shaped her self-image: she can't be beautiful or good, because beautiful and good people don't kill kids, whether or not they were possessed at the time. It has shaped her goals for herself, to help others, maybe as some kind of doctor or crisis intervention person. It's also affected how she interacts with others, specifically her family: she holds herself strong and never lets them see her cry, she supports her parents and big brother, and refuses to break.
Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?
Absolutely. That moral code is strongly influenced by Christianity, given how she was raised and how it has been reinforced, and how the Odd Thomas books are focused regarding religion and goodness. She always tries to do good, always tries to help people, and always tries to right wrongs, whether they were hers or not.
What quality or qualities do they admire most?
Kindness and initiative. She doesn't know if she has the former, it feels like faking it every time she tries, but this is her warped self-image talking, mostly. She knows she has the second, because the instant she has the ability to make her own choices, she does, and she makes lots of them. Her taking initiative is the reason Odd Thomas was able to free her family. Even a bad choice is worse than no choice. Nothing is worse than doing nothing.
Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?
The whole "I killed my cousin" thing is pretty big up there. This is like a big glaring stain on her soul, as far as she's concerned. She also has an anger management problem, a trauma response to being rigidly controlled and possessed for a sizable chunk of her life. Whenever she's ordered to do something, and whenever she's questioned as to whether she's telling the truth, she balks; things need to be patiently explained for her to not get unreasonably angry about being ordered around. Less seriously, she thinks her neck is too long. Stupid skinny neck.
What is their sign, and why?
Jolie's sign is Justice. She is deeply, almost pathologically concerned with what's right and what's fair and what helps other people. She was denied so much of what was right and fair in her young life that she is determined to never let that sort of thing happen to anyone else, and she will thrown down (and get her ass kicked, probably) in defense of that goal.
SAMPLES & ARRIVAL
Samples:
Test drive meme, top level with 10+ comments
Arrival Scenario: Imprisoned
