Application | citynet

[badfeyth]

OOC INFORMATION.

NAME: Alex

CONTACT: PM to this journal works!

AGE: 25+

OTHER CHARACTERS: I already play Thancred Waters (onlythans)!

TRIGGERS: I would appreciate a note for themes related to terminal illness. Thanks!

IC INFORMATION.

BASICS

CHARACTER NAME: Ghost

CANON: Original

CANON POINT: Around ten years after her involuntary exile into Ennalore.

AGE: 27

BACKGROUND

HISTORY:

Once upon a time there lived a little girl who was told she could change the world. Any world, as a matter of fact — and there were so, so many to choose from.

Ghost's history originates with an extradimensional organization known only as "The Agency", whose function is the "care, preservation, maintenance, and redirection of literature" — an institution that is part library, part architect, and part special ops unit. Their duty is to repair and protect the continuity of other universes within their multiverse, which are referred to in Agency vernacular as "Books". Much like pruning a bonsai to ensure the appropriate growth of the plant, the Agency monitors the universes under their supervision, identifies offshoot choices and undesirable outcomes that could potentially get out of hand, and steps in to rectify them before they can threaten the integrity of the original timeline. Operatives within the Agency are divided into two groups — the field operatives who investigate disruptions and gather information about the cause of a breach, and the "writers", who through the power of the written word (augmented by Agency technology) are able to remedy the defects and complete the "pruning".

Ghost is one such "writer"; she has no memory of where she was born, who her parents are, or even what universe in the multiverse she originates from. However, the Agency identified her early on as a potential candidate and consequently "retrieved" her to their extradimensional facility in order to have her trained in the rare and unique art that forms the foundation of the Agency's operations at its core. As such, her earliest memories are all of the Agency's facility, and she considers the personnel who resided in that facility during her formative years as her family, including her tutor Nym, her fellow "writer" candidate Meta, and the artificial intelligence tasked with the everyday running of the Agency facility, named Arche.

Unfortunately, Ghost never came remotely close to mastering the art of "writing" as the Agency had hoped she would, much less attaining any sort of reliable competence in it. In a classic case of great power necessitating more great responsibility than its practitioners gave it, a tragic accident occurred when Ghost was in her late teens: her fellow "writer" Meta inadvertently caused the death of their mentor after writing into being a construct that he ultimately was unable to control. In the ensuing chaos, Ghost was forced to flee from the construct's rampage and, with the help of Arche, escaped blindly into the pages of one of the many continuities overseen by the Agency. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Ghost, the bridge between the Agency and the continuity she chose was irreparably damaged as the construct's rampage continued, severing any possibility of using it as a route to return to the only home she'd ever known.

Abruptly stranded in an unfamiliar universe with no friends, no assets, and no knowledge of how even to begin trying to return home, Ghost was forced to fend for herself in the only way she knew how: by drawing on what training and skills the Agency had cultivated in her to try to make her way in the world around her. A path forward ultimately revealed itself when, upon coming across an enchanted kingdom straight out of a typical fairy tale, Ghost was able to leverage her familiarity with genre and specificity of phrase to find a loophole in the curse and free the residents from their bedevilment. And, as is often the case in such such circumstances, word traveled fast: could the wise sage who had broken that kingdom's curse lend her insights into the problems of another? A witch's curse, a faerie's geas; as the requests began to pile up, Ghost had found her means of carving out a niche for herself in the world.

After ten years of life in (what she eventually came to learn was called) the magical universe of Ennalore, Ghost has made a name for herself as the resident authority and subject matter expert of Fantasy Legal Bullshit™, being called upon by kings and peasants alike to help them navigate the tumultous waters of which fairies to invite to an infant princess's christening (all of them), how to circumvent a seemingly ironclad prophecy (creative word interpretation), and the like. She maintains a comfortable home and office in the resident city of Gilliyam with her pet dragon Perry and frequently gets up to magical misadventures in the course of discovering more about herself, her talents, and the future she wants to pursue — and what role, if any, a return to the Agency might play in it.

Essentially, she's a little bit Chosen One, a little bit isekai protagonist, and a little bit Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, all in one sassy redheaded package!


PERSONALITY:

How does your character handle stress? What do they do in an emergency?

Dealing with the day to day fantasy shenanigans of Ennalore for the past decade has made Ghost a remarkably levelheaded and practical individual. She is significantly genre-savvy as a result of her Agency training, which allows her to quickly draw analogies between novel situations and ones she might already have confronted in the past; this, in turn, makes her extremely competent when it comes to navigating situations like circumventing prophecies, arguing with the fae, and keeping herself and others from accidentally signing away her soul to one nefarious entity or another by mistake. Methodical, rational, and persistently low-grade exasperated, she's the type to take a problem and break it down into its component parts to consider as many potential outcomes as possible before eventually deciding on what she feels is the most optimal possible solution.

However, these tendencies largely only apply to situations where Ghost feels some semblance of control over the happenings around her — either by being able to guess at outcomes, predict actions, or otherwise draw on her base of expertise to arrive at solutions. In situations where she is not able to assert a level of control, however — such as, a situation she can't talk her way out of, or being put in physical danger reminiscent of the attack on the Agency in her teens — she is considerably more likely to get rattled and look to others for outside assistance; failing that, she will seek to escape the situation by any means necessary.

After all, running saved her life once. When a method is tried and tested, if it ain't broke you don't fix it.


What are some of your character's regrets? How is your character impacted by them?

Ghost's biggest regret is abandoning the agency the way that she did, even though rationally she knows doing so likely saved her life. In the ten years she's spent in Ennalore since her escape from the tragic circumstances that caused her exile, she's had a great deal of time to think through the events of that terrible day, and all the various junctures at which she might've done something differently: could she have spotted the flaws in Meta's creation somehow, such that he could've corrected them before the construct got loose and began its rampage? Could she have done more to try to save Nym and the other residents of the Agency from the attack? If she'd only studied harder, improved her skills, been better, could she have written something herself to mitigate it somehow?

Chief among these, however, is the fact that in her haste to make her escape, she never clearly thought through how she intended to get back from the world she fled to when she ran — and she continues to pay for that mistake even to the present day. Her failure to think through the possible consequences and ramifications of her hasty decisions have caused her to be stranded in the world of Ennalore potentially for the rest of her life, unsure of whether she'll ever be rescued or be able to cultivate her own talents to the point where she can attempt an escape on her own. She also feels guilty for having abandoned her friend Arche in their hour of need, prioritizing her own survival even if it meant leaving Arche, who as the AI in control of the facility was unable to escape the construct's rampage in the same manner that Ghost did. For all Ghost knows, Arche could be in permanent shutdown (and may well have been for years now) as a result of being too badly damaged to stay online — and with the way things currently are, it's very likely that she'll never know the ultimate fate of her dearest friend, either.


What are your character’s ambitions/goals? Why are they important to your character?

On some level, Ghost will always harbor the ambition to learn enough about the art of "writing" (either on her own or through whatever manner of research she's able to complete) to be able to utilize her talents and return to the Agency — the place she considers to be her true home. However, she's also rational enough to realize that it's altogether likely that she will never accomplish this goal, no matter how hard she works or how badly she might want it — fairy tales might come true in Ennalore, but that doesn't mean hers is guaranteed to end in a happily ever after.

However, if she's not able to secure a happily-ever-after for herself, then she'll at least settle for being happy: finding contentment in the work that she does for the denizens of Ennalore, adding notches to her victory board for every triumph over an unbreakable curse or an insurmountable obstacle. To a lesser degree, she secretly hopes that the one fairy-tale trope that will come true for her is that she'll someday find True Love™ — or at the very least, a relationship similar to the extremely close bond she shared with Arche during her Agency days.


INVENTORY:

Her work satchel, containing:

-- A variety of her journals, self-authored textbooks, and other legal-type documents she's developed and uses on the regular.
-- A small pouch of silver coins.
-- A small pouch of dry rice.
-- Cold iron paperclips.
-- A pressed and dried four-leaf clover.
-- Earplugs.
-- A travel-sized mirror that dispels illusions reflected through it (e.g. things reflected in it will show their true form, not the illusion.).
-- A lantern and tinderbox.
-- Dragon Snacks™ (it's literally just dried meat jerky branded as Dragon Snacks™).
-- A handful of ribbons about the length of hair ties.
-- A spare pair of extra-sturdy boots because you just never know sometimes.

A pendant necklace given to her by Meta when they were trainees at the agency.

One of those blisteringly neon Tyvek wristbands (like the kind amusement parks use to confirm admission) printed with the words "ADMITS ONE - RAVEYARD".

POWERS

SKILLS/ABILITIES:

- GENRE SAVVY — A major part of the reason Ghost knows so little of the magical aspects of "writing" is because the vast majority of her education was front-loaded with theory. As a consequence of this, she's had rigorous training in the things that make a story "work". She's essentially a walking encyclopedia of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index and specializes in things like finding workarounds for curses and loopholes in prophecies. Of significant note is that she is not a fourth-waller, and her genre savviness extends only to generic tropes, folklore, myths, and so on; in other words, though she might be able to look at a story and guess from its themes and foreshadowing, "Oh, I'll bet the protagonist was dead all along, wasn't he", she would not have any actual knowledge of the fact that said trope shows up in The Sixth Sense.

- LEGAL EAGLE — Ghost has spent the past ten years making a name for herself as Ennalore's foremost legal authority on finding technicalities in supernatural bullshit. She has quite literally written the book (a few books, actually) on the subject and comes with the skillset one might expect of such a career path. Also the books that come with such a career path. You know, the ones she wrote.

- SUPERNATURAL AFFINITY — As Rydia FinalFantasyIV can attest, you don't spend ten years in the Feymarch without making some friends along the way. Though Ghost is not strictly speaking a user of magic herself, she has had a variety of supernatural wards and blessings placed on her over the years. She is attuned to the supernatural in the form of a sort of psychic radar (think similar in nature to a Spidey Sense but operating mostly on nonspecific Vibes™) and has relationships with a variety of supernatural institutions that afford her a level of protection — though she is not immune from the trickery of the Fae or of getting a spell cast on her by a witch or having a fuath try to drown her, she carries something not unlike Fantasy Diplomatic Immunity™ with many of the more common varieties, and has had their respective acknowledgements of that fact placed upon her as a result.

- POLYGLOT — She is at least conversationally fluent in a variety of fantasy languages and is familiar with common courtesies and customs of a variety of supernatural creatures that she has had dealings with in Ennalore.

- WRITING — Theoretically, Ghost is an individual capable of creating gateways and bridges throughout the multiverse, connecting to various universes and working a sort of reality-manipulation magic upon them. However, given the vast potential of this type of ability, it probably comes as no surprise that the skilled practitioners of it had no interest in throwing novices into its study without literal decades of dedicated training! And, thanks to the tragic accident that unfolded at the Agency when she was approximately seventeen, Ghost has neither had this requisite level of training nor is she aware of any living practitioners of it who might be able to teach her. The potential is there, but she has little to no idea of how to even begin using it except in the most absolutely rudimentary (and theoretical) of forms. (She is also not aware that she would have to use ink that utilizes her blood as a component to do it.)


NERFING:

- SUPERNATURAL AFFINITY — This is largely a passive "ability" so I would say that, appropriate for a DWRP, supernaturally-inclined player characters could choose for themselves the level at which they wanted to recognize (or reject!) Ghost's Fantasy Diplomatic Immunity™, NPCs would of course not be beholden to it at all without specific mod confirmation that it might have that effect (and to what degree), and in general she would simply have an awareness of Vibes as appropriate and with player consent to produce interesting CR hooks.

- WRITING — Because writing is not strictly speaking a use of magic so much as it is manipulation of an existing reality, I'm going to assume that Ghost's ability to write would need to be essentially 100% nerfed — which is fine, because she doesn't possess the requisite training or skillset to reality warp, anyway. However, if she were to become aware that blood ink is one of the components, in theory with time, effort, and overflow points she could probably produce a "manifestation"-like familiar — which is, coincidentally, precisely what Meta did when his experiment went out of control and, y'know, killed everyone. This would involve her "writing" in blood ink, defining the parameters of said manifestation, drawing it out of the pages she'd "written" it on, and then presumably actively maintaining it via some connection to herself for the duration she wanted it to last. In short, this would be a long-term goal she would actively have to work and develop towards, not something she could just do immediately even if she wanted to.

- ITEMS — Her magic mirror will just become a regular mirror! Theoretically it's something she could potentially upgrade down the road, but for the time being it'll just be generic seven years' bad luck if she breaks it.


WEAKNESSES: She is a flesh and blood human being who dies when killed.

SAMPLES.

- TOPLEVEL on the City TDM
- THREAD with Cyclops on the City TDM
- THREAD with Dorian on the City TDM
- THREAD with Lestat on the City TDM