C&C Application

[smallblackmage]

[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Lofywr
AGE: 30
JOURNAL: lofwyr
IM: Windows Messenger: lofwyr.troubadour@gmail.com
E-MAIL: lofwyr.troubadour@gmail.com
RETURNING: No - first time.


[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Vivi Ornitier
FANDOM: Final Fantasy IX
CHRONOLOGY: Fresh from the defeat of Necron [final boss]
CLASS: Hero - it comes naturally to him.
SUPERHERO NAME:
ALTER EGO: Vivi Ornitier, assistant librarian.

APPEARANCE:
Vivi is around the same height and build as a nine year old child and has a very "generic" appearance, as if someone figured out the "statistical average" of every possible facial feature and compiled them together in one person. Vivi is completely androgynous (though he identifies as male). The only unusual feature he has is his eye colour; they're bright yellow rather than any typical human colour. He wears a wide-brimmed straw coloured pointed hat similar to the archetypical wizard's hat, but there's a fold halfway up, leaving the tip of the hat pointing back down at the brim. The brim is wide enough to conceal most of Vivi's face in shadow. He has green and white striped pants held up with a large belt, a blue coat with folded cuffs over the top, red gloves and matching shoes; the only visible part of his body is his face. He carries a staff that's a little shorter than he is, apparently made of pine and with curled embellishments near the top. If forced to wear other clothes, Vivi will prefer outfits that conceal as much of his body as possible. If he enters Trance, his entire body and clothes start glowing a bright blue-white and his hat stands up straight.

BACKGROUND:
Vivi came from Gaia, a world going through something of an industrial revolution. There is magic, certainly, but there are also new discoveries being made - for example, one kingdom has invented and is refining the steam engine. Before that, many ships were either sailing through the seas or using the omnipresent Mist that blanketed most of the appropriately named Mist Continent. There are other continents, but they are somewhat sparsely populated. There is also war brewing in the kingdom of Alexandria, one of the kingdoms of the Mist Continent.

It is this war that gave birth to Vivi.

Vivi was the very first Black Mage - a soldier brewed from Mist, designed solely to use black magic spells against their foes. He was meant to be shipped to Alexandria from the black mage facility but fell off the Mist ship transporting him. He was fished out of the Mist by a Qu called Master Quale and spent a year in Master Quale's care, learning as much as he could before Master Quale died of old age. Having to make his own way in the world, Vivi went to Alexandria to see a play - "I Want To Be Your Canary."

Circumstances conspired to sweep him into something greater, and he met up with Zidane, a thief from the Tantalus group who was charged with the kidnapping of Princess Garnet, the heir to the Alexandrian throne. When the airship they were escaping on crashed, Vivi, Zidane, Princess Garnet and her protector Captain Steiner made their way to Lindblum, another kingdom on the continent. After many other adventures including chasing after an absconding Princess Garnet, discovering Kuja, the "girly-man behind the man" and discovering whole new continents, Vivi eventually learned the truth about his existence; he was created from Mist, the torn-up souls of the original inhabitants of Gaia. Kuja, his creator, had used an artefact called the Iifa Tree to "sort" the souls from both Gaia and his dying planet Terra, helping the Terran souls live and recycling the shredded Gaian souls back into the world as Mist.

Vivi spent a lot of his journey questioning the nature and meaning of his existence, and was best able to come to terms with it thanks to the efforts of Zidane, who treated Vivi as something of a younger brother. By the time he learned to come to terms with his limited lifespan - the threat of "stopping moving" - and the value of his friends, Kuja had gone somewhat insane and was gathering enough power to destroy both Terra and Gaia. Zidane, Vivi and the others they'd gathered together, along with the armies of Lindblum and Alexandria, worked to defeat Kuja and save their world. Vivi fought fiercely by his friends' sides - for the first time in his life he had true friends at his back, someone he could even call a brother of sorts in Zidane, and felt like he belonged. Their journey had given him courage and confidence in his abilities and himself and while it hadn't completely answered all his questions, he'd come further than he ever could have alone.

Vivi credits both Zidane and Mr. 288, the "leader" of the black mages in the Black Mage Village, with a lot of his growth into who he is now. All the black mages that were in the Village had "woken up" from their servitude and were trying to learn about how the strange new world they were in worked. 288 was the wisest among them; he explains the concept of "death" to Vivi and tries to get him to understand it, even as he struggles to understand it himself. Vivi actually served as a role model to the other black mages, to show that they shouldn't be afraid of this strange new world they were in. In turn, the black mages got to teach the evacuated genomes - the refugees from Terra's destruction at the hands of Kuja - about the world, despite their own naivete.

PERSONALITY:
Vivi is very inquisitive and contemplative, constantly questioning the nature of existence (particularly his) and trying to understand difficult concepts (such as death and the nature of the soul). Initially very timid and easily cowed in the face of danger, Vivi gradually lost his fear and gained courage (thanks largely to Zidane's influence) over the course of their journey together. If his friends are threatened or attacked he will readily rise to their defence. He despises senseless death and people "using" other people for any purpose (in much the same way that the Black Mages were used by another for war), and while he's difficult to rouse to anger, he is NOT pleasant to be around if it happens.

Being a construct, Vivi has a very limited understanding of concepts that other people readily accept and he will often phrase concepts he has some understanding of in strange ways; death, for example, he defines death as "stopping moving," as that's how the concept was explained to him. His mindset is very child-like and seeking, always wanting to understand the world around him and his place within it - something he has still yet to completely figure out. If anyone's going to ask a tricky question, it's likely to be Vivi.

Despite his contemplative nature and fearsome destructive power, Vivi is still a child chronologically, and enjoys playing games - he's surprisingly good with a skipping rope, good enough at card games to compete in professional tournaments and is courageous enough to explore the world around him. If he comes across something unfamiliar Vivi will make a devoted effort to studying it, almost to the point of excluding everything else, and he will ask a LOT of questions about it.

A major quirk Vivi has is a habit of concealing his face in shadow; it's one he's only recently developed since he arrived as he's not used to having a visible face - back on Gaia he only had glowing yellow eyes and the rest of his face was an amorphous shadow. He's not yet entirely comfortable with his face , and will keep his usual wide-brimmed hat on as much as he can. In fact, he likes to have a hat on . He has a slight fear of death, mostly on the grounds that he doesn't know where he's going to go when he stops moving, but it's nothing crippling. He also likes cats and large birds and wouldn't mind one as a pet; it was usually him and Zidane that looked after Choco, the party's chocobo (giant riding bird).

POWERS:
Black Magic: Vivi's main ability is the power to use black magic; many of his spells deal either elemental (Fire, Ice, Thunder, Water, Shadow) or non-elemental damage, or they inflict a negative status effect (eg. Poison, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Death, Petrify). A couple of his spells allow his to drain health or mana from a victim and transfer it to himself. He's also good enough with black magic to be able to use it for more mundane stuff; jump-starting something electrical, cooling drinks, lighting a cigarette, filling containers with water and so on.

Trance: If Vivi feels a surge of powerful emotion, he can enter a state known as Trance. While he's in Trance, Vivi can cast black magic spells twice as fast as normal and his spells are greatly increased in power. However, Trance only last a short period of time (no longer than a minute or two) and, most importantly, Vivi has no control over when he enters Trance. Examples of emotions intense enough to trigger Trance include outrage at mass slaughter, a powerful desire to protect a loved one and overwhelming hatred for all life.


[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[Voice only]
[The voice is clear but hesitant, almost timid at first, but gradually becomes more confident as he speaks]

Um... does... does anyone know much about cats?

You see, I've always wanted a pet of my own, and I promised myself that when I found somewhere to stay and wasn't travelling around so much that I'd get a cat and a library of my own. The library I can do myself - well, mostly myself, since I'm not tall enough to put the big bookshelves together by myself very easily - but I've never owned a cat before. Back in Lindblum, lots of engineers owned cats - they were something of a... um... a good luck symbol, I think. Anyway, I haven't had any experience with keeping cats, so I'm not sure what to look for.

I was thinking of getting just the one cat, and I know there's more to keeping a cat than just getting a cat, but what should I look for when I'm finding a cat? And where do I go to get one? I've heard that there are shops you can go to buy one, but that doesn't seem right to me; you shouldn't be able to buy an animal over the counter like that, especially not if you want it as a friend. It makes the... well, kind of like when...

[There's a brief silence, followed by a sigh]

... anyway, since I don't know enough to get a cat yet, I need to ask other people, which is... yeah, why I'm here. What do I need to do or get before I get a cat? What should I look for? Where can I go to get a good cat? Do I need to do anything special to look after it? Is it okay just to get one or do I need to get a friend for it when I'm not home? What else do I need to think about that I haven't asked about already?

If anyone listening to this could help me answer my questions, I'd be really thankful.


LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:

Vivi lay back in his reading hammock and listened to the gentle cascade of water just below him. Daguerro had initially seemed strange to him - why would you want to keep books in a place that's half-flooded - but the longer he stayed here the more he liked it. The water itself never really got that close to the books and having the waterfall going through the middle of the town made the whole place feel peaceful. Plus there were lots of books for him to read, which was always an attraction as far as he was concerned. It was also a nice, quiet place, and Vivi did his best thinking in nice, quiet places.

He thought about what Black Mage No. 288 had told him at the Black Mage Village - that, of all the black mages, only Vivi truly understood what it meant to live and to die. He'd spent most of the trip to and from Madain Sari thinking about what Mr. 288 had meant by that, and it had stumped him the whole time. It wasn't until they'd arrived at Daguerro that Vivi finally managed to work out half of it. Unlike the other black mages, Vivi had "lived" before them. He'd had a grandfather - of sorts - who taught him many things, he'd been on adventures, he'd seen happiness and horror, cities rebuilt and cities destroyed. He'd been scared many times, but he'd kept going anyway because he had friends with him and he wanted to learn more. Grandfather had taught him so much before he died...

Vivi sat bolt upright in his hammock when it finally dawned on him. Grandfather was dead, but he'd cared for Vivi and asked him to go on. And he had gone on - to highs and lows, meeting new friends, making new enemies, discovering new places, learning new things... but throughout it all, Vivi still remembered him, still remembered things he'd taught him - things he'd now taught to the other black mages. And when Vivi was to die, he wouldn't be forgotten and the people he'd loved would still go on and teach things he'd taught them. Those that Grandfather had loved carried on. And when Vivi was to die, those he loved would carry on. They wouldn't let the fear of death stop them from carrying on their lives, because the dead would be remembered by those they loved in life. So as long as they were remembered, nobody could truly die.

He shivered and wiped away a tear before he even realized he was crying. Now he knew what No. 288 meant; even though he hadn't consciously realized it, Vivi was the first of them who'd actually worked out what it meant to live and to die, all thanks to Grandfather and Zidane. Grandfather had taught him what it meant to die, and Zidane had taught him what it meant to live. He took out a handkerchief and dried his eyes before getting up, grabbing his diary and writing implements from his bag and starting a new entry.