[Application]
[ PLAYER INFORMATION ]
[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: (Colonel) Jade Curtiss
Age: 35 when the game begins; 38 by the end of the game.
Gender: Male
Fandom: Tales of the Abyss, video game verse.
Timeline: Post game.
History: Here! This part covers Jade’s past until the events of St.Binah where they go to to meet Anise; the rest is in another entry.
Character Personality:
“But I assure you, I’m always serious.”
That sentence reveals a lot more about Jade Curtiss than one might imagine. Well-spoken, calm and sensible, Jade appears to be a very charming and affable man at first, being able to talk amiably with people all while smiling and being polite to the point of sounding humble. Why, he’s such a genial and kind-hearted man that you might almost forget that he has a spear pointed in your direction and he has an important member of your party held as an hostage! Oh,
and that he’s going to kill that person unless you surrender and leave this instant~
While Jade really can play the part of a charming conversational partner (Note how that DIDN’T say ‘friend’; you’ll see why) and even enjoy a cup of tea with you if he’s feeling like it, he makes it very obvious that social interaction isn’t an integral part of his life and that people should really be getting a move along. For all of his complaints about being old, getting poor Guy to explain the mundane things and his insistence that someone else can do the job, Jade is by far the most purpose-driven member of the group, always quick to point out that the party’s already wasted too much time talking already and that they really must be going to place X to initiate event Y or talk to NPC Z to get cutscene A (You get the idea). He doesn’t always do it politely either; Jade is more than capable of being sardonic when-
Wait, what am I saying? Jade is more than capable of being sardonic; it’s practically his default mode when he’s not obliged to be polite (And even when he’s being polite or he’s giving a compliment, Jade can make just about anything sound insulting. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the importance of tone when delivering your messages!). But back to my point. That Jade frequently joins in the conversations and skits by being an obnoxious troll does not mean that he’s become any less focused in what he’s doing or that he’s somehow become friends with this merry ragtag band of travelers, albeit high-profile ones.
The truth is that Jade is far from being what most people would call a pleasant human being, and that Jade is fully aware of this really doesn’t make things better. In order to understand this, one has to look back at his past: Notably, his sister Nephry describes her brother as a ‘monster’ at one point of the game. While Jade has come a long way from being a cold child who cared for little, was generally emotionless and thought nothing of killing harmless animals
for research, he hasn’t changed enough that you can forget how disturbing Jade can be once you’ve got past the teatime stage of interaction with him and proceeded to working with him.
Jade is very pragmatic, so much that it scares the main character at first. One good example of this happens when a villain chasing after them is knocked unconscious and he fully intends to kill her right there, responding to the Luke’s protest over it that it’s better this way so that she won’t become a nuisance later. But that’s not everything; aside from being practical, Jade still does not understand the meaning of life even after so many years of causing death. He’s capable enough of sympathizing for people going through losses and apologizing over a young soldier’s death to the young man’s parents, but he feels practically nothing when faced with death. No tears, no heart-wrenching feeling, no screaming- Considering the huge amount of losses that happen across the events of the game, it’s really small wonder that Jade is frequently thought of as being cold, just doing his duty.
Jade is also the least affected emotionally of the party members whenever something happens, urging them to press on even when said thing was a horrible and life-altering revelation. It’s very telling that he does this even after he loses his cool in one particular scene; to him, dwelling on a matter, weeping and moping about things when there’s something to be done is stupid. This again reveals more about Jade than one might suspect; he does carry a lot of guilt for something that he did in the past and he intends to make up for it by helping to save the world.
There’s a scene in-game that hints at the actual level of guilt he feels; even though he jokes with the main character that he’ll have to punish him if he blabs about what they talked about to anyone, it’s painfully clear that he has doubts about whether he can ever undo the damage he’s done. Although Jade isn’t very emotional to begin with, it’s also obvious at some points that he deliberately hides his feelings on a matter so that the world can be saved; one of the best examples of occurs when the miasma threatening the world returns and Jade comments that it’d be even worse if Luke were to be sacrificed instead; you can’t see his expression, but his tone and hesitation indicate that he’s become fond of Luke by that point but he knows that the world will be doomed if they were all selfish in their desire to keep Luke alive.
Despite all of that, it would be rude and overly simplistic to describe Jade as an emotionally-repressed and sardonic man. Even though Jade makes a point out of being mean, there’s quite a few hints in the game that he can be a very nice man- er, relatively nice by Jade Curtiss standards. One prime example of how Jade can be nice while still being mean lies in a sidequest where he doesn’t try to stop a man from applying fonic sight to his eyes which leads to his blindness. Now, most people faced with having someone doing something dangerous would either care or not care, but Jade does provide the blind man with help after he’s foolishly chosen not to listen to him. The same can be said of other instances; while Jade can be somewhat mean with his words and lazy, he helps whenever it really counts and he’s also surprisingly good to go to for advice as he’s practical and he can see things clearly. He also thinks of the party’s well-being in some rather odd ways such as when he thinks Natalia should stay behind rather than to be forced to meet her father again and possibly face the trauma of being rejected.
In sum, Jade may be eccentric, he may be a jerk, he may be frigid and he’s not your best friend but he’s not bad as an acquaintance of sorts. Failing that, you still don’t want him to be your enemy~ Oh, and that line from before? He was being serious after all.
Character Abilities:
First and foremost, Jade is one of the world’s most powerful men, capable of controlling the First to Sixth Fonons (Oddly enough, he only gains one light-based arte from a sidequest and never uses a Darkness-based arte). These fonons all have a different elemental attribute; Jade can absorb and release them efficiently, channelling them into deadly fonic artes. Besides his natural talent, Jade can also absorb fonons three times faster than a fonist of his capability as he has fonic sight, which channels fonons into the eyes (They have more fon slots than the other parts of the body; this is also why his eyes are red).
Magical ability aside, Jade is also very physically fit. Even at thirty-five, he is spry enough that he never seems to be tired even when the younger members of the party have become exhausted and he is quite capable of wielding a spear to defend himself. Besides this, Jade is a man of immense intellect. He developed the theory of fomicry and fonic sight at a very young age and he shows no sign of slowing down even in the present day, quickly analyzing situations and calmly suggesting ways to proceed with a plan. While he claims to only specialize in autopsies and fonic artes, he’s also been shown to have some degree of knowledge in fontech (Technology), biology, history and Ancient Ispanian.
Lastly, years of military training and handling diplomatic relations have honed Jade’s perception and self-control skills to a fine art. He notices many things well before anyone else in the party even suspects anything and he’s also very good at using this to draw out conclusions (Such as Guy not being who he is or Luke being a replica, for instance). He’s also almost completely unflappable even in the face of imminent danger, capable of exercising control and self-restraint instead of blindly attacking. This is invaluable to the party; were Jade not present, the party’s ...should I say, lack of diplomacy in dealing with political matters would certainly have led to disaster.
On the more mundane side of things, he’s also a pretty decent cook~
Character Weaknesses:
At a first glance, it would be hard for anyone to say that Jade has any weaknesses other than what any regular human might have...except for one: His personality. Dear lord, his personality.
If genius was always the counterpart to obnoxiousness, it’d only partially account for just how aggravating Jade can get. He has a real talent for making anything sound like an insult, he likes to hover over people in an annoying way, he’s rather fond of using his perceptive abilities to hit people where it hurts (Verbally; people would get blown up, frozen and variously killed if he was doing it literally) and he actually does not stop dishing the insults and sarcasm EVEN in most of the serious situations the party gets into. While an argument can be made that he could just be trying to diffuse the tension sometimes, it’s pretty clear that he finds these acts of his to be amusing as all hell and that could get him into trouble in Death City.
On a more serious note, Jade’s pragmatism and calmness can irk people, especially those that are more used to being compassionate. Jade can and indeed will be rather curt and cold when it comes to decisions; while his military training accounts for some of this, a large part of why Jade acts in this manner can be traced back to his personality (Again). Even though Jade has come a long way from the ‘monster’ he used to be, his lack of empathy is very glaring; throughout the game, he places emphasis on concrete terms like reducing civilian losses, not causing panic and the like when someone else would be talking more about getting people out alive or generally weeping that something like this would happen. He can also be downright tactless at times, such as when he says that he’d tell Luke to sacrifice himself if he was the emperor to Luke himself. This may become a liability to Jade and his eventual relationship with his partner as Jade’s understanding does not lead to what I’ll sardonically refer to as ‘soul-bonding’ and a fight between them could harm the Meister badly seeing that it is very important for Jade’s Meister to maintain control of their own emotions.
Going back to less serious weaknesses, Jade actually DOES have buttons that can be pushed. He’s not terribly fond of people calling him cute and nice as he certainly doesn’t see himself that way, going so far as to say “Really, of all the things to say!” when someone remarks that he only scolds people that he likes. This wasn’t much of an issue in the game’s events, but given SC’s regular cast of Cloudcuckoolander Cheerios, you can bet it’s going to crop up a lot and he’s not going to like it.
[ SOUL CAMPAIGN SECTION ]
What are the abilities that your character will retain in Soul Campaign?:
He’ll retain his fighting skills and intelligence, that’s all.
What are the weaknesses that your character will lose or gain in Soul Campaign?:
Jade will lose:
- His ability to use fonic artes. This in turn will throw him off-guard for a bit as he’s been using them for all of his life and a lot of the events in his life have involved his immense power.
- His ability to summon his spear. This would make him a little more guarded than usual physically as he won’t want to join the Watch and thus have no other weapon to protect himself.
- Emotionally, Jade will have to learn how to put up with people and be less lazy. It sounds easy considering his military training, but the fact remains that Jade doesn’t tolerate fools easily and he doesn’t particularly care for working with others. He may also have to make more compromises than he cares to and certain things (The existence of cloning, for instance) may throw him a slight curve.
Lastly, he’s not going to like that new addition to his abilities, I should imagine. :P
[ WEAPON ONLY SECTION ]
Why your character should be a Weapon: In a way, Jade has been a weapon for most of his life. As an adopted member of the Curtiss military family, he’s been involved in wars in some way for more than two-thirds of his life and he’s already killed thousands of people within that time. The important distinction here is that while Jade does question these acts, he follows them and he doesn’t intend to take charge, which would be more characteristic of a Meister.
Besides this, Jade could have easily wrested control of the party’s leadership during the events of the game but he does not. While he would point out that someone else is the leader, his actions also show a certain tendency for him to guide instead of lead. It is not that he can’t lead if he wanted to, but being in a support role is something Jade is more comfortable with and it also allows him to better play the role as the level-headed person in a conflict or a fight.
Finally, Jade is a fairly unmotivated man; as curiosity appears to be one of the few things that will make him work, it’s probably for the best if he’s allowed to explore the extent of his new abilities. He’ll still be obnoxious, but at least some Meister can direct it at the Witches instead.
(And you know you want to see him troll in glasses form. :P)
What is your character's Weapon form?:
Here!
[ SOUL INFORMATION ]
Soul Description: Sardonic, calm, cold, curious, reflective, playful.
Soul Appearance: Jade’s soul is slightly smaller than the average soul, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in brilliance, bathed in an almost obnoxious dark blue shade (Somehow). It sports his haircut and glasses, has an almost perpetual smile and its eyes are constantly hidden by the glasses too.
[ NOTES ]
Why is this so long?