Application for aionmods

[fightforthejoyofit]

PLAYER

NAME: CogGirl
CONTACT: PM / Discord @ CogGirl#2029
OVER 18? Yes (34 at time of writing)
CURRENT CHARACTER: N/A

WARNINGS

Spoiler warning for everything FFXIV, up to and including Endwalker (6.0) along with supplemental fiction (most notably Chronicles of Light: The Hunt Begins and Tales from the Storm: In Darkness Blooms the Lily)

Content Warnings
Zenos is categorically Not A Nice Person; themes likely to come up include depression / anhedonia, self-mutilation, self-unaliving and related ideation, various other flavours of explicit violence including patricide, genocide and themes of colonialism / occupation, apocalypse-scale events, use of violent terminology to describe seemingly-unrelated positive experiences, brainwashing / forced conversion, obsessive / stalking behaviour, extreme possessiveness, medical experimentation (some coercive / non-consensual), and body horror / metamorphosis / monstrous anatomy

CHARACTER

NAME: Zenos yae viator Galvus
CANON: FFXIV
CANON POINT: End of Endwalker MSQ, moments before death
AGE: 26
SPECIES: Pureblood Garlean
INFORMATION: Wiki here

CHARACTER PITCH:
A lonely prince discovers that overcoming challenges is the sole bright spark in an otherwise tedious existence, and proceeds to make his extreme anhedonia everyone's problem. Seeking worthy adversaries, the heir-apparent to the Garlean Empire sets about trying to inspire as much hatred as possible, casting himself as Legendary Hunter and the rest of the world (but especially its Champion, the Warrior of Light (hereafter referred to as the Wol)) as Prey and ultimately ushering in the Apocalypse and destroying said Empire. #SorryNotSorry. Surprise plot-twist, however: at the 11th hour he arrives, transformed into a dragon, to help the Warrior of Light... purely so they can fight again on an even grander stage afterwards.

In a world of Machiavellian schemers and grey morals he's an entirely unrepentant villain clearly relishing the role who just wants one really good fight, and also a semi-tragic figure who doesn't really understand how people relate to each other, and I love him very much.

POWERS:
Starting with the canonical powers he will not have access to:

anything connected to his contracted Voidsent (not present in Horos) though I may draw on the enshrouded aesthetic for body-horror / physical alteration stuff

anything connected to Anima (neither it nor Varis' corpse is present here)

transformation into the primal Shinryu (requires a truly phenomenal amount of aether) though again, very good aesthetic which I'll likely draw on

anything connected to specific blades (i.e. Arts of the Swell, Storm and Sword) unless he recovers them

the ability to jump between bodies upon death (presumably, his soul considers the Shard his 'body' now, and will retreat to that instead of going anywhere)

the ability to jump between bodies more generally (there is no mindjacker tech equivalent here to create a suitably vacant living host body, and since Aion bodies dissipate no dead hosts either – I'm happy to handwave a little here and say a dead non-Aion wouldn't work for metaphysical wibblywoo reasons since the setting-specific powers differentiate between them and Aions)


Powers/skills he should still be able to access given sufficient time:

Increased resistance (basically immunity) to alcohol (innate)

Improved spatial perception (Garlean 3rd eye)

.Martial prowess, particularly with swords and scythes – FFXIV-mechanics-wise, he's a bit of a Samurai / Reaper hybrid with some additional tricks I've expanded on below (training, Garlean 3rd eye, Resonant)

The Unyielding Blade – a Corvosan technique whereby a swordmaster imbues their blade with aether, allowing them to unleash waves of energy for both attack and defence (initially mastered through sheer stubbornness despite the fact Garleans can't manipulate aether, made stronger by Resonant)

Aethyric/Dynamic manipulation in addition to the above: teleportation, projection of barriers, scorching the ground around him or raising it in spikes around an enemy, summoning mirror-images of himself with a very limited duration (usually a single attack) (Resonant) – more than happy to specify that teleportation is only to places he's seen well enough to visualise clearly and has an interruptible cast time represented by the coalescing purple-black shimmer in game visuals. I'm also happy to assume that - since aether is presumably less abundant here than it is on Etheirys and, as Meteion's established, there is no Dynamis - he's got a substantially more limited effective 'mana pool' than at home

Limited precognition, specifically swifter reactions due to pre-empting attacks against him (Resonant)

Some limited ability to review the memories of others, as per the true Echo (Resonant) – we only really see him do this once, requiring concerted effort unlike what the WoL does, and it's somewhat trumped by the Kenoma-induced psychic empathy thing; either way, I'm not going to throw it around without talking to people first

QUESTIONNAIRE

What is the worst or most malicious thing your character has ever done? How do they feel about it now? Was this sort of action typical of them?
I'm somewhat spoiled for choice, but almost certainly the point at which he helped turn his dead father (murdered by his hand, no less) into an Eikon (aka, the exact kind of entity the Empire they rule was supposedly formed to destroy) using the love and faith of the Garlean people, let said people believe their beloved dead Emperor was speaking to them through the radio, and then used the Eikon's deathrattle (amplified through towers literally built out of still-living prisoners) to temper anyone listening. All of which was done in a bid to get the WoL's attention so they could have another glorious fight to the death, and all of which he ultimately declared a wasted effort because said WoL had the audacity to care about the impending apocalypse more than their grudge match. Helping trigger said apocalypse comes in second if only because of the sheer spitefulness of the former gesture towards both his father and the populace at large.

Zenos is, to put it mildly, obsessed with being hated – because if someone hates him enough then their subsequent battle might stir something in him besides tedium – and so this sort of action is typical of his approach to life in general.

What is the most altruistic or selfless thing your character has ever done? How do they feel about it now? Was this sort of action typical of them?
Zenos does nothing selflessly. Everything is in service of his ultimate goal: to relieve the dreadful tedium of his existence, usually by trying to goad someone worth fighting into hating him.

The least selfish (which is not quite the same thing as most selfless, but it's as close as he's likely to get) moment in a wretched and selfish life is not the one where he helps the Scions in their fight against the Endsinger (because that's really only a step towards his longed-for final confrontation with the WoL) or when he bids the WoL to survive rather than claiming a coup de grace (because that's so they can give him a better fight later) but probably and somewhat ironically the point where he explains to the Scions and Jullus that he (and, according to his world view, everyone else) only does things for selfish reasons, since he doesn't have much to gain from the admission (though even that could and probably should be seen as an attempt to stoke their hatred of him, he's already secured it at that point thanks to all the stuff I talked about under Most Selfish). Unlike his predecessor Emet-Selch or even his father Varis Zenos is not much given to artifice or clever speechcraft, doesn't really care about polite sensibilities, and tends to be almost too honest about his motivations, so this is not atypical behaviour on his part.

What do they desire above all else? How far would they go to accomplish their goals or fulfill those desires? Do they have lines they wouldn't cross?
Zenos believes what he wants most is a Legendary Nemesis and a glorious final confrontation with them; what Zenos actually wants is purpose, challenge, and to feel something other than bored. Unfortunately for pretty much everyone he was born into a perfect storm of extreme privilege and intense loneliness, so not only did these longings get to fester but he soon found himself with the political clout, military power and personal prowess to make them everyone's problem and none of the attachments that might make him think twice about doing so. Or, to put it another way, the dude has exactly zero chill.

Zenos tends to refer to the pursuit of these desires as The Hunt, and woe betide whoever he casts as the Prey to his Predator; this is a man who considered starting The Literal Apocalypse an appropriate way to gain said Prey's attention, and who was so terrified of returning to banality after their first fight he slit his own throat rather than allow the Transcendent Joy to slip away. Generally the only lines he respects are related to who- or whatever he is fixated upon at the time, and even then it is mostly Other People crossing them, and thereby robbing him of his prize, that concerns him, though he also has limited patience for liars, cowards, or people who try to shift the blame for their action (or inaction) onto someone else. He basically never lies about anything, so there's that?

GAME DETAILS

LEGACY:
I found myself torn between Visionary and Celebrant, as so much of Zenos' motivation throughout FFXIV comes down to chasing a single moment of transcendent joy, but ultimately chose to focus on the 'transcendent' part of that, as it aligns with both what Zenos believes he wants and the actual underlying desires that's a symptom of. What information we have about the younger Zenos stresses his intelligence and curiosity along with the risks he is prepared to face in order to Be Better/Stronger/More Worthy of Attention, and we see that continue into adulthood with his experiments with the Resonant, his pact with a voidsent, and his ultimate transformation into Shinryu. It's not enough simply to fight, it has to be a clash of titans played out on a cosmic stage, and to echo in eternity afterwards.

Also, it pleases me to bring in a Visionary who's about Destruction more than Invention; that sort of contradiction, and the dark mirror it potentially holds up to other people in the same Legacy, feels very in keeping with the character's narrative role within his own canon.

INTRODUCTORY SECT:
Kenoma, largely thanks to this Little Bird

SUITABILITY:
Put bluntly, there are very few games which can accommodate a character like Zenos - destroying entire civilisations just to get someone's attention doesn't really fit into a pleasant slice of life, for example! - and I've been itching for the chance to explore him since before Endwalker landed, and to more generally dip my toe into Dreamwidth rp (a format I've lurked at, but not yet tried; my background is in forums (back in the halcyon days of proboards) and LJ/IJ, as well as tabletop, LARP and, obviously, MMORPGs). I feed on my characters' suffering, and the quandary of throwing him into a setting which offers everything he thinks he wants (glorious conflict! Ready-made nemeses! Godlike power maybe eventually!) at a point where, canonically, he's already gotten it and been left with his literal last breath wondering if it was worth it is just too delicious to pass up. He's also a character defined by Loneliness, so I'm fascinated to see where he ends up when given Companions as well as Rivals, and what it's like for him to not be Uniquely Monstrous And Mighty. Bonus points for the existing body-horror elements, those are very much my crack.

Sect-wise, the 'easy' answer is to throw him into Kenoma - “the WoL is on the other side” is in theory a solid enough motivation on its own (hell, it's the one I kept coming back to in his TDM), and this is a character who canonically wants everyone to hate him and is prepared to trigger the Apocalypse in order to feel something other than bored. But you could also make a pretty compelling argument that growth uncontrolled, perseverance without compromise, and chasing fulfillment are just as integral to his character as hate and despair (I've done so myself, in many ways, in making him a Visionary!), and I'm very interested in potentially challenging “Kenoma bad, Pleroma good” (or at least sparking the conversation as to whether Pleroma can, should, or wants to accommodate someone like him) as well as interrogating the Regent's notion of a world without suffering (because without it there as contrast, how much less pleasant would Bliss actually be, and what place is there for someone like him in that sort of world?). And hey, it's not like there isn't precedent for self-serving third act volte faces with this guy, right? So assuming other people are on board (more thoughts on this in the next paragraph) an eventual faction-switch could be very fun to explore. Or, if not, then “these are the consequences of your earlier choices, live with them” is also a rich vein to dig into, given that in canon he dodges a lot of that by dying.

I'm keenly aware that Zenos is... somewhat divisive as a character, so I want to work with the other writers and not force dynamics anyone is OOCly uncomfortable with (IC discomfort, on the other hand....). Ultimately I'm prepared to see how things develop, both Organically and in line with other people's OOC plans and wishes; I'm playing a very uncompromising character, but I'm a collaborative writer at heart (something my partner-in-crime lovingly refers to as NPC-brain; I like facilitating other people's arcs whenever I can) and ultimately just want everyone to have fun (again, OOC. IC, let's put these kids through hell, yeah?). One thing I am definitely not intending is an outright Redemption arc; even were there no other FFXIV characters here, the scale of his crimes and the complete ownership he takes of them make that feel like entirely the wrong direction. But I think despite the monstrous melodrama of it all the dilemmas he's grappling with are at their heart very human, and I want to poke at that somewhere robust enough to accommodate the Zenos of it all.

Basically, I want to push all the things. Myself as a writer (fun fact: despite picking someone who absolutely would fistfight God, combat rp is very much not my usual comfort zone). Him as a character. Other people. Big red buttons that say “Don't Touch.” ALL THE THINGS.

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