-Application- [synodiporia]

[helborn]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Matt
AGE: 27
PLAYER JOURNAL: atrypical
TIMEZONE: Eastern US
CONTACT: AIM: demony0uko, atrypical, or PM
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Jun Ushiro

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Casper LeBlanc Jr.
CANON: Scion/Old World of Darkness (Fandom OC)
POINT IN CANON: On the road to Jupiter City.

AGE: 19
APPEARANCE: PB is Brady Corbet, and various artwork drawn of him.

Casper is fairly plain-looking - thin-ish with dirty blond hair. He's not all that tall, and for the most part keeps his posture casual and unassuming. Were he seen without his pants, though, it would quickly become obvious that he's not had a low-excitement life. One of his legs is missing from the knee down, replaced by a metal prosthetic in an ivory color. It has a number of Norse runes carved into it.
CANON HISTORY: A warning before you read further:

Casper's history deals with some fairly rough topics, including death, drug abuse, Nazis, fratricide, attempted rape, and emotional/possibly physical child abuse.

Got it? Good.

Casper's story begins up in Montreal, Canada. His father was a single parent, running a funeral home. Young Casper grew up around dead bodies and grieving widows, the scent of flowers and a knowledge from early on that the world was not as safe as it seemed. His city, you see, had a vampire problem. Bodies would come in with suspicious puncture marks, but his father told him to keep his mouth shut. No one believed him, anyway, just like no one believed him that there was a man who talked to him. 'Creepy Whisper Man' was no imaginary friend, but a ghost. He would sometimes tell Casper about what it was like to die, or what it was like to kill. He was the ghost of a serial killer, after all. Casper tried not to pay attention to the darker bits of his friend's discussions. Casper also had a bird that he rescued - a baby raven that he named Bob, in his infinite childhood creativity.

Casper and his father eventually moved from Montreal to Colorado when Casper was in high school, and there Casper made friends with a girl named Aiden. She was smart, capable, and funny, and willing to tolerate Casper's chronic tendency to put his foot in his mouth. Soon after they met, Casper was visited by a woman while he was researching mythology in the library. The woman had a face that was half-decayed, and she took Casper aside and told him that she was his mother, Hel. She gave Casper a bone necklace and told him that his raven was going to be important, as well. Without much more of an explanation, she was gone. Soon afterwards, Casper received a clear baseball bat that seemed very cold. He didn't give all of this too much more thought as school was picking up.

Unfortunately he didn't get to enjoy school for very long. On the way to a charity dinner that he had won a contest to go speak at, things went wrong. Trolls headed through things and buildings started to collapse, and the event's hall was quickly in ruins. Casper met up with Aiden and an older person named Caspian, as well as one of one of Caspian's friends, and together they fought off the trolls. They were doing pretty well until Aiden got captured, and Casper ran off after them, up towards the mountains. He rescued Aiden and they met up with the other two. Casper should have known something was wrong, but the revelation that they were all children of various gods was kind of more important at the moment.

They started traveling together, and eventually started heading towards Hawaii, bashing through monsters all the way. After some misadventures with cop cars, trolls, kidnappings, and mystical hobo sex, they finally made their way to the base of the Children of Hephaestus off the shore of Hawaii. And then they were promptly sent back to the mainland to deal with more monsters. Joy. More monsters rampaged across the land, and our intrepid heroes chased them down as much as they could before heading back towards Hawaii to relax. (And for Aiden's mom to get married. To Ares. Aiden was a child of Hades and this did not go over well.) Aiden got captured by a giant, and Casper tried to rescue her. Caspian made him leave by threatening to shoot Casper's father, so he went along with it. Aiden was strong... so she would be fine, right?

This was a mistake.

Caspian, a heroin addict, stopped a car, shot the driver, and took the car. Casper went along with this because he wasn't sure what else to do. Unfortunately, there were two kids in the car. Caspian terrorized Casper into sedating one of them. The other one ran off, but Casper finally snapped and tried to attack Caspian when the ghosts Caspian had in his pocket (from a poker game) started calling Casper a monster. Determined to get the kids to a hospital, Casper stopped the car. Caspian handed Casper a tire iron to kill the kids with. Casper attacked Caspian, and ended up being shot in the leg and left to bleed out. Which he did. Fatally.

He went to Helheim, body included, to stand in front of Hel. Casper's mother was not pleased by this development, and allowed him to climb back up Yggdrasill in order to come back to life - but she stuffed his soul inside of his raven. Determined to not let his weakness be taken advantage of again, Casper clawed his way back to life out of his grave minus half of one leg. Fortunately, he made his way to the base where the Children of Hephaestus made him a prosthetic inlaid with runes.

More fighting ensued over the next months, and the group shifted focus. Casper wanted to go after Caspian, but Caspian ran off somewhere as the Titans and titanspawn started to become a bigger threat, and so it was just Casper and Aiden who joined up with a bunch of other Scions. (Caspian was a thief as well as a drug addict, and given that he was a child of Hermes, patron of thieves and tricksters, so if he didn't want to be caught, he wouldn't be.) Casper did some serious physical training during this time, so as to not be caught in a similar situation as the one he was in. A bunch of fights later, and Casper was visited by his mother again, instructing him to go take out a lab. Not willing to risk his mother's wrath, Casper went off to take out this lab, which turned out to be full of stolen Nazi experiments. And one of the experiments happened to be... Casper's older brother that he didn't know he had. Not half-brother, full brother, because as his father revealed when he came in to finish the job while Casper was getting the shit beat out of him, he was a mage and had been a scientist during World War II. Casper knew that their family line was German, but not... that. Somewhat disillusioned, he helped kill his brother and went back to rejoin the group.

Casper's soul was stuck in Bob until he 'proved himself', and this largely seemed to consist of being stuck with the worst jobs his mother could give him. He dragged souls around as he tried to find an entrance to the Underworld to shove them into, and kept fighting monsters with his new group along the way. One one trip back across the ocean from the base, their ship got sucked under the sea and into the domain of a powerful ocean spirit. They were treated to his 'hospitality', and given the choice of his children to spend the night with. Casper, in his infinite bad luck, was stuck with Prince Crab who was nice if somewhat misshapen... until they were alone and the prince tried to force himself on Casper. Casper climbed the walls and ceiling to get away from him and escaped, hiding out until the rest of his group was ready to go, and got the hell out of there with a newfound terror of crabs and shellfish. The group continued on their trip to the northeast part of the United States, dodging zombies and trolls and horrific creatures of all sorts on their way to Jupiter City, which is where the story leaves off.
CANON PERSONALITY: Casper has been through some shit, but you wouldn't know that just by initially talking to him, unless he was wearing shorts and you could see his prosthetic leg. The personality Casper does his best to put forward to people is a happy and friendly guy, who is always willing to help and sticks his foot in his mouth more than is generally advisable. This isn't wrong, really, but he does his best not to let people dig deeper. He's friendly because he cares! Because he genuinely wants people to be happy! Definitely not because he keeps needing to find ways of people validating that he's a decent, helpful person.

Of course not. That would be silly.

Casper's determination to be seen as helpful stems from a few things. One, he's just genuinely a person who tries to look for the good in people (though it's been tempered by recent events). Two, to hopefully win back some of the favor he's lost with his mother (and, to a lesser extent, the favor he never really had with his father). Three, to cover up his trauma by distracting himself. Being told that he was a failure, not worthy of even being able to hold on to his own soul was a huge blow for Casper. He'd frozen up, tried to do the right thing, and failed. To be cut down so much from a single mistake really hurt him badly, and while he resolved to do better, it drove home the point, more than anything else, that saving the world is not comic book material, it's not fun, no one really cares about the heroes, and things are not black and white. People fail, and fail badly, and he could fail - and sometimes there's no way to make up for failures. He'd thought that if he tried his hardest, things would turn out all right, but sometimes things just don't, no matter how hard you try.

Casper is, by his very nature, nonhuman and getting even more so by the day. There's nothing wrong with that, specifically, but spend enough time thinking you're one thing and then having the world itself pull the rug out from under you can mess with you. In a year and a half's time Casper has been turned from the shy and awkward skinny kid who reads stuff like the Key of Solomon for fun to a backflipping and ghost-punching superhuman creature. Human brains can process only so much without starting to break a little bit, and then there's the trauma of him having died, been told he was a failure, and climbed the World Tree itself to come back to life.

Casper's strongest virtue (literally, in terms of character sheet) is loyalty. It is very difficult for him to imagine a friend doing something wrong - or it was, before Caspian. His faith in the innate goodness of everyone he meets was shaken by Caspian's actions, but he still remains devoted to helping people he cares about. He just tries to be a bit more selective about who he cares about... though his judgement still isn't the best. He also does what he can to endure above almost anything else, because he can't help anyone if he's dead or otherwise discorporated. He has taken training his body much more seriously, even as he's refused to harden his heart. He will not stop just because something's dangerous, but he's become a bit more cautious about blindly throwing himself into the line of fire. He's never been stupid, but his battle tactics have improved out of sheer need.

One of his strongest and weakest points, however, is his perception. It's literally superhuman, and it means that he can see in an overwhelming amount of detail. While this is also an ability, it does mean that he has a lot of information to sift through. He's not stupid - quite the opposite - but he has a problem with sifting through everything he's seen. While he is perceptive in the immediate, physical sense, this doesn't translate to perception in the social sense. He has an alarming tendency to blurt out his first conclusion without thinking of what it might mean to the people around him, his foot arriving in his mouth at startlingly superhuman speed. He does his best not to arrive to conclusions that hurt people, but sometimes his hesitance to hurt is what hurts people the most, either by inaction or just incredibly dumb plans.

However... just because Casper is good and nice doesn't mean he can't pull on the serious act when he needs to. He's nice and good mostly because that's how he chooses to be. If he needs to, he will absolutely step in with his serious face. His voice goes cold and commanding, the happy light seems to go out of his eyes, and there's something about him that commands attention from those with no specific resistance to it. He impresses his will on the universe, and it answers. The fact that he has the ability to do this means that he feels comfortable not doing it most of the time. Free will is extremely important to him, which is somewhat of an oddity in his pantheon (though a bit less so amongst Scions as young as he is). His pantheon is, after all, doomed, and Fate itself does not miss appointments. Many of his pantheon have caught themselves up in oaths in exchange for power - and Casper sees very little reason to involve himself in that. It's in this way that, ironically, he impresses his will the most - because the choice of not using an ability is still, in itself, a choice.

On a more mundane level, Casper questions himself during quiet moments. What could he have done better? What went wrong? He almost never asks 'what went right' because he attributes such things to other people nine times out of ten. He was just doing what was right, that doesn't mean that he's anything really that special compared to the others... he always has a ready excuse as to why he shouldn't get the credit. He also has a tendency to wake up at night in a cold sweat, even outside of dealing with ghosts. Due to his... incident with Prince Crab, he has a deep fear of shellfish and lobsters and crabs. If it looks like a bug that's from the ocean or the beach, he wants absolutely no part of it. He's also somewhat of a giant nerd for occult information. While magic isn't his strongest point, he's still more than happy to spend a day digging through books of occult lore. His base of knowledge in general is fairly wide, and he's a fast learner once someone sits down with him and teaches him something.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: Infiltrating would probably put Casper into the role of a student of some kind. If it's a more modern sort of setting he might be involved in mortuary science of some kind. If a more fantasy setting, he'd probably end up in a sort of 'cheerful necromancer' position, eagerly chatting away to anyone who will listen about how neat the processes of death can be. Personality-wise he might be a bit more withdrawn if not around people he 'knows', which could lead to him settling into more of an observer role - not so much for the purposes of common sense, but for the purposes of making sure all important and epic events get recorded. He'll probably always be socially awkward, likely because of odd interests.

Investigating, on the other hand, is where Casper's natural perception will likely pick up very useful information for the Travelers. While Casper isn't always the best at common sense, he's at least perceptive enough to start tracking down a clue when he sees a trail. He's also the special kind of thick-headed that's needed to not be deterred from his path even if it leads him into certain danger. He's awfully handy in a fight if that's what the Travelers need, and can easily slot into either the person actively chasing down the clues or the support staff running messages (psychic or otherwise) and beating the bad guys down to keep them away from others.
VETERAN?: Nope!
ABILITIES: Oh boy here we go.

His character sheet is here and his specifically supernatural powers are listed here, but since those are both just full of game terms and numbers, here is an attempt at breaking it down into a more narrative format.

First, his basic abilities - he's incredibly strong, very fast, and can push through a lot of things. He hits hard and he hits accurately. He can literally climb the walls just as fast as most people can run, and he can jump a pretty long distance. He can survive off of any sort of organic substance (paper counts) and even the most polluted water. With a little supernatural effort, he can heal from injury and even regrow lost body parts (though not his missing leg). He can even make it so that injuring him heavily, should an opponent be able to do so, causes him to hit harder instead of more weakly. He can take a lot of damage before he's even really hurt - certain amounts of damage just don't get through his defenses.

It's hard to take Casper by surprise, because his senses are incredibly keen. He has a very good sense of navigation internally, and even if he's blinded he doesn't have a problem fighting. He can track people and things by scent or near-invisible traces, and he's so attuned to things that if someone tells a lie, he automatically knows that they're lying. (It's not specifically what they said that's a lie, just that they're lying about something. If someone says 'I visited my aunt last Tuesday', it could be that they visited their uncle last Tuesday, or that they visited their aunt on Wednesday, or that someone else visited their aunt but it wasn't them.) He can look over a crime scene and find a clue in an instant (with a little supernatural effort) and, perhaps most terrifyingly of his 'basic' abilities - he can simply order someone to follow a very brief command and they will. (This will, of course, be part of his permissions post, and the commands can be interpreted loosely - 'shoot yourself' could end up with the person shooting their hand or foot rather than interpret it as a suicidal command. It can likely be resisted with sufficient willpower, but it's written as something that can overpower a 'regular mortal'.)

In terms of more 'mundane' abilities, Casper has a broad selection of knowledges. His training lately has been in how to hit things hard and be aware of his surroundings, but for someone with a fake leg he can be somewhat sneaky when he needs to be. He's also had experience in how to speak in a way that gets people to listen - both in terms of the 'inspiring hero' sense and in the sense of knowing how to make his voice commanding and direct. He doesn't use it very much, so he's not actually great at it... not with people who aren't his zombie creations, at least.

Now for his straight-up supernatural abilities, which are divided by 'Purview'. Each one is tied to an item of his, so without them he can't use those abilities (with the exception of Psychopomp, since it's tied to his lack of leg, and Jotunblut which is innate). That doesn't mean that someone could just steal them and expect to use his abilities, though. His baseball bat, specifically, is stored in a sort of minor hammerspace in his leg, though it can't store anything other than his baseball bat.

Darkness (necklace):

- Dark Sight: Can see in darkness.

Death (necklace):

- Death Sense: Can see, touch, smell, and hear ghosts, although the sense of touch is illusory and no physical contact is actually made. Can also look at a dead body and get a general cause of death.
- Corpse Eyes: Look a corpse, ghost, or undead in the eyes and see a little bit of time around the time of death (before or after) from the victim's perspective. Takes place in real-time.
- Unquiet Corpse: Raise a corpse as a zombie. It remains until either it or Casper is killed.
- Home for the Spirit: Places a free-roaming spirit (like a ghost, astral projection, or human kicked out of their body) into a soulless body, corpse, or effigy. This is difficult to do, and is more difficult the longer the corpse has been dead or how custom-made for the spirit the effigy is.
- Mother's Touch: He can grapple ghosts and inflict fairly heavy damage on them. He can even throw something at them and do the damage that way.

Frost (baseball bat):

- Frost Immunity: Immune to cold. No matter what, the cold just doesn't affect him. No frostbite here!
- Ymir's Blood: He can freeze things! Either six cubic yards of water, or a thinner sheet over water that he's trying to stand on (so he can use it to walk across water). He can freeze plants and cause them to wither using it, too. He can also freeze non-liquid things to make them more brittle, though he can't do nearly as much material as he can water.
- Hrimmthurssar's Touch: Adds cold damage to unarmed attacks. If he's holding a metal weapon, he can use it to transfer the cold damage instead.

Animal (Raven) (Bob the raven):

- Animal Communication: Can speak to birds, but understands ravens the best.
- Scent of Man: Makes tame animals obedient/not skittish around him, and makes feral predators give him space (since it makes them recognize him as a predator).
- Animal Aspect: Meditate on a token of his animal, get stat enhancements associated with that animal. In his case, it improves his perception or intelligence.
- Ride Animal: Allows him to see through the eyes of Bob (or any raven, but Bob works best). Doing enough damage to whatever he's hitching a ride on forces him out.
- Animal Feature: Changes parts of his body to match a raven's. This means he can give himself wings, but he can't fly very far or very long.

Psychopomp (only without leg):

- Unerring Orientation: If a place is familiar, he knows how to get from one point to another. If it's unfamiliar, he knows compass directions. He can study a map for five minutes and retain the information forever. He can also tell the distance and direction to home.
- Where Are You: If in remote contact with someone, he knows how far and in what direction they are.

Magic (runes on the prosthetic leg):

- Unlidded Eye: Can see magic that would normally be invisible. He can also determine how powerful a being is.
- Bona Fortuna: Makes a(nother) person's actions more likely to succeed, but only for a little bit.

Jotunblut:

- Bestial Endowment: Feeds some of his blood to a beast, and it gets a little stronger but is forced to become supernaturally loyal to him for a month.
- Human Endowment: Feeds some of his blood to a human, they get stronger but are forced to become supernaturally loyal to him for a month.

INVENTORY: Necklace, Bob the raven, baseball bat, ivory-colored prosthetic leg, wallet (with ID and a little American cash), old-looking cellphone. Also clothes, but that's obvious.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? His soul is in his raven, Bob. Bob can go decently far from him, but not too far or Casper starts to strain. If Bob gets struck by something that's enough to damage him on a nonphysical level, it'll hurt Casper, too.

M A R K S;
JUSTIFICATION:
Chariot might be a suitable choice for Casper, due to both the Aesir's insistence on HONOR and VICTORY and his own tendency to jump the gun a bit. He doesn't have the self-confidence angle down, but he sure as heck has the energy and anxiety parts down.
Tower wouldn't be the worst place for Casper, either. Over the past year and a half his world has exploded, and he's come to realize the power he has in his hands. He's a nerd, yes, but he's a nerd with the power to destroy life far too easily.
Another good fit is Moon - Casper, right now, has no real clarity in his life other than 'defeat the titans'. There are forces moving beyond his control that have hidden things from him. He has a romantic idea of what a hero is and should be, and even though that's been cut down somewhat over the past year and a half, he still holds those stories close.
VETO:
Vetoing Death on the basis of "I already have a character marked by Death". There's also the fact that it's too easy to sort a child of a death goddess under Death and even though he's a good fit personality-wise, wouldn't it be fun for another Arcana to grab someone Mort wants?
Also vetoing Justice - Casper sometimes likes to think he's impartial but he really can't separate himself emotionally enough to qualify as Justice.

S A M P L E S;
ACTIONSPAM SAMPLE: Previous game sample
PROSE SAMPLE: Previous game sample