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victimlessdetails) wrote2014-05-31 08:36 am
victimlessdetails) wrote2014-05-31 08:36 am
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bravenewworld
PLAYER INFO
Name: Nerdo
Contact Information: AIM Nerdorama09,![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
Nerdorama
Time Zone: US Central
Characters Played: Rise Kujikawa
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Isabela
Character Canon: Dragon Age II
History: Isabela
Dragon Age II
(Isabela appears in Dragon Age: Origins as well, but it's basically a one-scene cameo)
AU History: The Archipelago to Union's south has a number of populated islands with different human tribes, each with their own quirks. Some are isolated paradises (before Zubats happen), some are aggressive raiders pillaging their neighbors for food, funds, or labor, and some used to be the former before getting taken over by a bunch of fanatical thugs and becoming the latter, such as Isabela's homeland.
That's how Isabela tells the story, anyway, and regardless of her understanding of her home island's culture, she was well out of it at a young age. The people of the archipelago hold a somewhat better understanding of the sea, traveling in small galleys or large Water-types to move between the islands, whether to trade resources or take them. Always a rebellious girl - in a culture where rebelliousness was often punished with rather arbitrary harshness - her mother arranged a marriage between her and one of said traders supposedly just to get her someplace safe, although Isabela insists she was simply traded for a few shiny coins and a Gogoat. Again regardless, Isabela found herself plying the waves with her new "husband" and found that while she hated the man, she loved the sea.
After her husband died in a tragic shaving accident that had nothing to do with her promising the ship's crew doubled pay if she was in charge, Isabela found herself in possession of a sturdy galley. She did the logical thing, of course, and turned to a life of piracy, using force of arms and force of Pokémon to take money from various villages and vessels in the area, while simultaneously teaching herself to fight and command. She found herself preferring to fight herself or with Pokémon more than ordering a bunch of distracted-by-her-looks men around, earning a reputation as a duelist - someone who can fight on her own in a flashy manner more so than someone who sits back and gives orders to others.
Everything was going fairly well until she drew a little too much attention from the lords of her homeland while a little too low on goodwill from her fellow criminals, and said lords sent a larger, better-armed vessel to run her to ground. Fleeing north into the generally calm waters that lie between the Archipelago and Union, Isabela was quite surprised to be run aground in a freak storm which destroyed her ship and scattered or killed most of her crew. She washed up on the coast near Union's under-construction port with nothing but the clothes on her back, the knives in her belt, and her loyal Honedge - lacking a Warp Band, the rest of her Pokémon were scattered and lost along with her crew.
Isabela made some not entirely polite inquiries at the port and was surprised to find, considering the slapdash affair that was the construction there, a huge city within the nearby forest. After quickly sweet-talking her way into temporary citizenship and a Warp Band, Isabela decided to settle down for a while and accumulate (read: quietly steal) resources and information before finding some way to put back out to sea from this landlocked city of superpowered weirdos. Thus far, she's spent most of her time drinking and causing scenes in bars. Those are important parts of piracy, you know.
Canon Personality: Isabela is a wanton hedonist, a criminal, a cheat, a pathological liar, a self-centered murder-happy pirate with no morals to speak of, and still one of the nicest and most level-headed major characters in Dragon Age II (thanks for existing as a point of comparison, Anders/Fenris/Meredith/take your pick).
The first thing you need to consider about Isabela is that she's only out for herself. At any given moment, she's most likely doing whatever it is gives her the most pleasure in the short term. She loves to fight, loves to flirt, loves to follow up on the flirting, loves material gain and drink and all the physical pleasures of life to the point of distraction. She seldom thinks of anyone's needs but her own unless it's for the sake of coercion, and never thinks more than about ten minutes ahead. She lives life in the moment and for herself, and seems to think anyone who doesn't is some kind of sucker, or at least someone to be needled within an inch of a fistfight. Even in "romantic" relationships, without being carefully badgered about it during the game, she considers physical pleasure the only real goal, with emotional attachment to be studiously avoided. That strategy and a habit of casting an extremely wide net gives her a reputation she's proud of, even if not everyone would be.
The second thing you need to consider about Isabela is that that first point is actually a lie she tells herself and everyone else, and becomes more of one over the course of her story. Isabela's actually got a very solid sense of right and wrong - she usually doesn't care, but at many times she just can't bring herself to do something that would benefit her if it's truly terrible, like running slaves or leaving a Hawke that she has even the tiniest reason to trust hanging out to dry in front of an army of fanatics she personally pissed off. She blames a lot of this on Hawke's influence if he or she's played the goody-two-shoes in front of her, but based on available evidence she's always had her standards; they're just different from most other people's.
She also cares a great deal about the few people she does get close to, namely the other party members in Dragon Age II. The one person she seriously argues with is Aveline, partly because their personalities are polar opposites but increasingly over the course of the game because she's attempting to use her wit and insults to build up the other woman's self-esteem; something Aveline seems aware of as of about Act 3. She's protective of friends who need protecting, comforting of friends who need comforting, and will argue up and down with a friend who she thinks is doing something stupid for the sake of protecting them from it. She's also the only person who straight up suggests sparing Anders consequence-free after his spoilertastic action at the end of the game, but that could be part of her general philosophy of the past being the past even if it was five seconds ago, too.
The final main thing you need to know about Isabela is that she's a lot smarter and more thoughtful than she looks. She might not be much for applying her intelligence in a forethoughtful way, but she is a very socially and philosophically aware person. One of the big points of interest in Dragon Age II is the running debates between companions on various points throughout the game, and one thing that really shines through about Isabela in these conversations is that she always takes the Realist viewpoint; she's aware of esoteric ideas about how things ought to work, but she ignores them in favor of thinking about how things work in the real world. Her apparently self-centered and short-sighted thoughts and actions come about because Isabela is concerned with what she can see and what she knows exists. Ideals don't put food in her stomach and arbitrary moral standards don't keep her from getting knifed in an alley; if petty theft and a couple of ready knives do, she'll take the petty theft and couple of knives any day of the week, and pass that knowledge on to anyone who starts trying to talk to her about Justice as anything but an abstract concept or a voice in Anders's head.
AU Deviation: The main difference for Isabela is, being in a world where she has to many times rely on Pokémon to make her way through challenges, the fact that she's less utterly selfish most of the time. Her Pokémon are her crew in this setting, more than any humans are, at least as of her start in the game. She depends on them and they depend on her, so her usual priorities of "me, myself, and I" are automatically "me, myself, and my cutesy fighting monsters".
She's also just plain less prone to murder as a solution; even not being a Union native, killing people is just wasteful in this world, unlike in Thedas where it's a good way to liven up a slow evening. She's much more likely to leave someone in a drunken stupor or beaten senseless than knifed to death in an alleyway or bleeding out on a ship's foredeck. She's still a duelist, but barring the one incidence with her husband in her backstory, she'd rather you be alive to be gloated at than dead now.
Canon Abilities: Isabela is a rogue in canon - being an actionish-RPG character, this means she's so good at mundane fighting, dirty tricks, and thievery that she can hold her own in a fight with almost anything, as well as performing fine manipulation duties like picking locks, disabling traps, and goading the captain of the guard into a catfight. As a duelist, she's got a specialty in fighting one on one with paired daggers and manipulating the opponent into a vulnerable position; as someone who gets in a lot of bar fights and boarding actions, she can also handle a general melee through sheer agility, knowing when to fold 'em and disappear, or carrying various face-scalding concoctions in discrete and easily-throwable vials.
Aside from game mechanical stuff, Isabela is a damn good pirate. She's sadly without a ship for the duration of Dragon Age II, but that's only because she tied in a fight with a much larger and more advanced warship off-camera. Said warship was chasing her because she stole one of the most holy relics of an insanely militarily aggressive religion and ALMOST got away with it clean, which should give you an indication of how good she is at stealing things.
Enlightened Abilities: Far From Ordinary with the Mastery of Battle perk and a specialization in Dark types.
Isabela has no supernatural Enlightened abilities, instead relying on mundane skill with knives and a studied knack for exploiting an opponent's weaknesses in a head-on fight, whether on her own or directing Pokémon.
Starter Pokémon: Honedge, Purrloin, and Lotad
Notes/Special Considerations: I'd like Isabela to come from somewhere far away from Union across the ocean, whether in the Archipelago or beyond that that has at least basic seafaring technology to keep her "marooned pirate" background going. However, I'm willing to keep it as vague as needed if there are no plans in place for that kind of location. If there ARE those kind of plans, I can drop hints. Isabela doesn't like talking about her past in any world.
SAMPLES
-What would you say the role of Pokémon is in your life?
[Lie] They're great on long voyages. Extra hands that don't get distracted and an emergency food supply.
Seriously though, I'm just trying to get along. If a few Pokémon want to help me out, who am I to complain?
-What do you feel your role in Union is?
I'm just passing through. I've got no ship and no desire to hoof it across a bunch of Pokémon-filled wilderness to meet exciting new armies trying to conquer the planet, so I'm pretty much waiting around until you people have a ship large enough to be worth stealing.
-What do you seek for humanity’s future?
...you're joking, right? Is this a question you normally ask random travelers? If I told you cake and rum and free love for everybody, it'd be true, but it's not something that's going to happen because one person wants it.
-To what lengths would you go to rescue your allies if they were lost in the wilderness?
[Half a lie] Look, if we're working together, and you're too stupid to find your own way out of the woods, you can stay there and I'll keep your share.
Well, maybe I'd go back to help in exchange for your share of whatever we're in there getting.
-What would you say the most important occupation is within Union?
[Sarcasm] Pirate. Obviously.
-What does the story of the Savior mean to you?
It's not the dumbest religion I've ever heard of, but you're still way too concerned with things that happened thousands of years ago in a different world.
-What aspects and traits do you respect most in your individual fellow man?
Large muscles, stamina, manual dexterity, perhaps a willingness to be oiled, the same thing any woman looks for in a man.
-What do you look for in the Pokémon with whom you bond?
Loyalty's nice, but I'll take rarity and skill in a fight over that, really. It's a rough world out there, and a girl needs a reliable crew to get by.
-The gods of old have returned. How would you be judged if you were chosen as a representative of humanity?
First off, I'd judge the one who picked me pretty hard. But when it comes to talking to the gods, I haven't done anything terrible to any Pokémon. Nothing important, anyway. That's what they'd mainly be concerned about, right? I guess I'd just try to impart my live-and-let-live philosophy on them, seeing as I want to live.
-You plunge into the depths of the Old City. What is it that you seek from the past? Treasure, technology, wisdom?
Look, in my experience, there's never anything to be gained from poking around in old ruins where...wait, did you say treasure? No one mentioned treasure before.
-What do you do to ensure we never again awaken the wrath of the gods upon humanity?
Go back to the part about the treasure, please.
Name: Nerdo
Contact Information: AIM Nerdorama09,
Time Zone: US Central
Characters Played: Rise Kujikawa
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Isabela
Character Canon: Dragon Age II
History: Isabela
Dragon Age II
(Isabela appears in Dragon Age: Origins as well, but it's basically a one-scene cameo)
AU History: The Archipelago to Union's south has a number of populated islands with different human tribes, each with their own quirks. Some are isolated paradises (before Zubats happen), some are aggressive raiders pillaging their neighbors for food, funds, or labor, and some used to be the former before getting taken over by a bunch of fanatical thugs and becoming the latter, such as Isabela's homeland.
That's how Isabela tells the story, anyway, and regardless of her understanding of her home island's culture, she was well out of it at a young age. The people of the archipelago hold a somewhat better understanding of the sea, traveling in small galleys or large Water-types to move between the islands, whether to trade resources or take them. Always a rebellious girl - in a culture where rebelliousness was often punished with rather arbitrary harshness - her mother arranged a marriage between her and one of said traders supposedly just to get her someplace safe, although Isabela insists she was simply traded for a few shiny coins and a Gogoat. Again regardless, Isabela found herself plying the waves with her new "husband" and found that while she hated the man, she loved the sea.
After her husband died in a tragic shaving accident that had nothing to do with her promising the ship's crew doubled pay if she was in charge, Isabela found herself in possession of a sturdy galley. She did the logical thing, of course, and turned to a life of piracy, using force of arms and force of Pokémon to take money from various villages and vessels in the area, while simultaneously teaching herself to fight and command. She found herself preferring to fight herself or with Pokémon more than ordering a bunch of distracted-by-her-looks men around, earning a reputation as a duelist - someone who can fight on her own in a flashy manner more so than someone who sits back and gives orders to others.
Everything was going fairly well until she drew a little too much attention from the lords of her homeland while a little too low on goodwill from her fellow criminals, and said lords sent a larger, better-armed vessel to run her to ground. Fleeing north into the generally calm waters that lie between the Archipelago and Union, Isabela was quite surprised to be run aground in a freak storm which destroyed her ship and scattered or killed most of her crew. She washed up on the coast near Union's under-construction port with nothing but the clothes on her back, the knives in her belt, and her loyal Honedge - lacking a Warp Band, the rest of her Pokémon were scattered and lost along with her crew.
Isabela made some not entirely polite inquiries at the port and was surprised to find, considering the slapdash affair that was the construction there, a huge city within the nearby forest. After quickly sweet-talking her way into temporary citizenship and a Warp Band, Isabela decided to settle down for a while and accumulate (read: quietly steal) resources and information before finding some way to put back out to sea from this landlocked city of superpowered weirdos. Thus far, she's spent most of her time drinking and causing scenes in bars. Those are important parts of piracy, you know.
Canon Personality: Isabela is a wanton hedonist, a criminal, a cheat, a pathological liar, a self-centered murder-happy pirate with no morals to speak of, and still one of the nicest and most level-headed major characters in Dragon Age II (thanks for existing as a point of comparison, Anders/Fenris/Meredith/take your pick).
The first thing you need to consider about Isabela is that she's only out for herself. At any given moment, she's most likely doing whatever it is gives her the most pleasure in the short term. She loves to fight, loves to flirt, loves to follow up on the flirting, loves material gain and drink and all the physical pleasures of life to the point of distraction. She seldom thinks of anyone's needs but her own unless it's for the sake of coercion, and never thinks more than about ten minutes ahead. She lives life in the moment and for herself, and seems to think anyone who doesn't is some kind of sucker, or at least someone to be needled within an inch of a fistfight. Even in "romantic" relationships, without being carefully badgered about it during the game, she considers physical pleasure the only real goal, with emotional attachment to be studiously avoided. That strategy and a habit of casting an extremely wide net gives her a reputation she's proud of, even if not everyone would be.
The second thing you need to consider about Isabela is that that first point is actually a lie she tells herself and everyone else, and becomes more of one over the course of her story. Isabela's actually got a very solid sense of right and wrong - she usually doesn't care, but at many times she just can't bring herself to do something that would benefit her if it's truly terrible, like running slaves or leaving a Hawke that she has even the tiniest reason to trust hanging out to dry in front of an army of fanatics she personally pissed off. She blames a lot of this on Hawke's influence if he or she's played the goody-two-shoes in front of her, but based on available evidence she's always had her standards; they're just different from most other people's.
She also cares a great deal about the few people she does get close to, namely the other party members in Dragon Age II. The one person she seriously argues with is Aveline, partly because their personalities are polar opposites but increasingly over the course of the game because she's attempting to use her wit and insults to build up the other woman's self-esteem; something Aveline seems aware of as of about Act 3. She's protective of friends who need protecting, comforting of friends who need comforting, and will argue up and down with a friend who she thinks is doing something stupid for the sake of protecting them from it. She's also the only person who straight up suggests sparing Anders consequence-free after his spoilertastic action at the end of the game, but that could be part of her general philosophy of the past being the past even if it was five seconds ago, too.
The final main thing you need to know about Isabela is that she's a lot smarter and more thoughtful than she looks. She might not be much for applying her intelligence in a forethoughtful way, but she is a very socially and philosophically aware person. One of the big points of interest in Dragon Age II is the running debates between companions on various points throughout the game, and one thing that really shines through about Isabela in these conversations is that she always takes the Realist viewpoint; she's aware of esoteric ideas about how things ought to work, but she ignores them in favor of thinking about how things work in the real world. Her apparently self-centered and short-sighted thoughts and actions come about because Isabela is concerned with what she can see and what she knows exists. Ideals don't put food in her stomach and arbitrary moral standards don't keep her from getting knifed in an alley; if petty theft and a couple of ready knives do, she'll take the petty theft and couple of knives any day of the week, and pass that knowledge on to anyone who starts trying to talk to her about Justice as anything but an abstract concept or a voice in Anders's head.
AU Deviation: The main difference for Isabela is, being in a world where she has to many times rely on Pokémon to make her way through challenges, the fact that she's less utterly selfish most of the time. Her Pokémon are her crew in this setting, more than any humans are, at least as of her start in the game. She depends on them and they depend on her, so her usual priorities of "me, myself, and I" are automatically "me, myself, and my cutesy fighting monsters".
She's also just plain less prone to murder as a solution; even not being a Union native, killing people is just wasteful in this world, unlike in Thedas where it's a good way to liven up a slow evening. She's much more likely to leave someone in a drunken stupor or beaten senseless than knifed to death in an alleyway or bleeding out on a ship's foredeck. She's still a duelist, but barring the one incidence with her husband in her backstory, she'd rather you be alive to be gloated at than dead now.
Canon Abilities: Isabela is a rogue in canon - being an actionish-RPG character, this means she's so good at mundane fighting, dirty tricks, and thievery that she can hold her own in a fight with almost anything, as well as performing fine manipulation duties like picking locks, disabling traps, and goading the captain of the guard into a catfight. As a duelist, she's got a specialty in fighting one on one with paired daggers and manipulating the opponent into a vulnerable position; as someone who gets in a lot of bar fights and boarding actions, she can also handle a general melee through sheer agility, knowing when to fold 'em and disappear, or carrying various face-scalding concoctions in discrete and easily-throwable vials.
Aside from game mechanical stuff, Isabela is a damn good pirate. She's sadly without a ship for the duration of Dragon Age II, but that's only because she tied in a fight with a much larger and more advanced warship off-camera. Said warship was chasing her because she stole one of the most holy relics of an insanely militarily aggressive religion and ALMOST got away with it clean, which should give you an indication of how good she is at stealing things.
Enlightened Abilities: Far From Ordinary with the Mastery of Battle perk and a specialization in Dark types.
Isabela has no supernatural Enlightened abilities, instead relying on mundane skill with knives and a studied knack for exploiting an opponent's weaknesses in a head-on fight, whether on her own or directing Pokémon.
Starter Pokémon: Honedge, Purrloin, and Lotad
Notes/Special Considerations: I'd like Isabela to come from somewhere far away from Union across the ocean, whether in the Archipelago or beyond that that has at least basic seafaring technology to keep her "marooned pirate" background going. However, I'm willing to keep it as vague as needed if there are no plans in place for that kind of location. If there ARE those kind of plans, I can drop hints. Isabela doesn't like talking about her past in any world.
SAMPLES
-What would you say the role of Pokémon is in your life?
[Lie] They're great on long voyages. Extra hands that don't get distracted and an emergency food supply.
Seriously though, I'm just trying to get along. If a few Pokémon want to help me out, who am I to complain?
-What do you feel your role in Union is?
I'm just passing through. I've got no ship and no desire to hoof it across a bunch of Pokémon-filled wilderness to meet exciting new armies trying to conquer the planet, so I'm pretty much waiting around until you people have a ship large enough to be worth stealing.
-What do you seek for humanity’s future?
...you're joking, right? Is this a question you normally ask random travelers? If I told you cake and rum and free love for everybody, it'd be true, but it's not something that's going to happen because one person wants it.
-To what lengths would you go to rescue your allies if they were lost in the wilderness?
[Half a lie] Look, if we're working together, and you're too stupid to find your own way out of the woods, you can stay there and I'll keep your share.
Well, maybe I'd go back to help in exchange for your share of whatever we're in there getting.
-What would you say the most important occupation is within Union?
[Sarcasm] Pirate. Obviously.
-What does the story of the Savior mean to you?
It's not the dumbest religion I've ever heard of, but you're still way too concerned with things that happened thousands of years ago in a different world.
-What aspects and traits do you respect most in your individual fellow man?
Large muscles, stamina, manual dexterity, perhaps a willingness to be oiled, the same thing any woman looks for in a man.
-What do you look for in the Pokémon with whom you bond?
Loyalty's nice, but I'll take rarity and skill in a fight over that, really. It's a rough world out there, and a girl needs a reliable crew to get by.
-The gods of old have returned. How would you be judged if you were chosen as a representative of humanity?
First off, I'd judge the one who picked me pretty hard. But when it comes to talking to the gods, I haven't done anything terrible to any Pokémon. Nothing important, anyway. That's what they'd mainly be concerned about, right? I guess I'd just try to impart my live-and-let-live philosophy on them, seeing as I want to live.
-You plunge into the depths of the Old City. What is it that you seek from the past? Treasure, technology, wisdom?
Look, in my experience, there's never anything to be gained from poking around in old ruins where...wait, did you say treasure? No one mentioned treasure before.
-What do you do to ensure we never again awaken the wrath of the gods upon humanity?
Go back to the part about the treasure, please.