Sebastian app 2/?shirhan_bladeMarch 9 2009, 20:43:11 UTC
He can be incredibly protective of the (very, very few) people he's attached to, and very attentive to their needs, goals, and wants - although he has no problem with "bitter medicine", reminding them of their own faults, needling them about their own weaknesses, and nudging them to do something about it. Ironically, one of the surest signs you have a shot at being on Sebastian's good side is if he goes on a razor-tongue stint carving off any hope of denial about your own flaws, foibles, or delusions until you give in and acknowledge it - and then stops there, or gives some clue or nudge of advice about it. Outside of people he's attached to or has reason to help and want in one piece, he's generally perfectly polite and friendly... Unless he's given a good reason to be annoyed, a reason to think that you might be a threat, or any of the above combined with you being somehow in the path of whatever his goals are. He has a pronounced sadistic streak that manifests with the same kind of poise and dignity as anything else, so that there's precious little warning in between pleasantries and stripping someone to the bone. He's perfectly content to usually keep it to emotional injury and twisting psychological wounds...but that's hardly a limiting line, and he can be just as cruel in other ways if he's sufficiently crossed and a fight breaks out. He can also be incredibly manipulative, using whatever temptations and weak points he can find.
Strengths: Sebastian's very clever and a very fast thinker; he excels at thinking and planning on the spot, and is known for an ability to salvage just about any debacle, even if his nerves might fray in the process. He's also very good at picking out nerves and feeling out people's psychology, particularly at picking up on weak points; whether this gets used in their interest or not depends a great deal on who it is and what the circumstance is. He recovers well from disappointments and setbacks, and is nearly impossible to truly break - he's more likely to fall into a sort of bitter determination/vengeful-pissed-stewing than anything like depression or giving up. He's an excellent actor with a very good poker face, and is good at playing things off and hiding the extent of his reactions. Sebastian also has a VERY high pain tolerance, and can function through severe injuries. He's also a fast learner, and in his time working as a servant, has become a master of domestic skills; he's a fantastic cook, and has picked up almost an OCD tick about housekeeping.
Sebastian app 3/?shirhan_bladeMarch 9 2009, 20:43:58 UTC
Weaknesses: Sebastian is good with people to a point; he doesn't have a lot of patience for dealing with people that are less competent or quick to pick things up, and is generally better at breaking people or manipulating them than encouraging them. He fails HARD at empathy and sympathy, although he can fake it alright if he thinks there's a good enough reason to. He's stubborn, proud, and tends to get pointier and more prone to picking at others or bouts of quiet sadism when he's frustrated or agitated. He has the slightly bad habit of not making backup plans until they're needed - acting as if Plan A will work, then relying on his ability to think fast if it falls through. He can be thrown off-balance and flustered, as much as he tries to downplay it or avoid admitting it. While he's protective of the people he's close to, he has no problem with letting them fall on their faces or get themselves hurt, usually with the logic that they'll learn to watch out more next time, but sometimes just avoiding warnings or not-helping for his own amusement. There are very, very few people that could honestly trust him, and it's not always easy to tell if you're actually on his good side or just someone he finds interesting/potentially useful - the latter position can be a very dangerous place.
Background: (As usual for secretive demon bastards, up until his appearance in canon, this is entirely me making shit up to fill in the blanks.) Sebastian is originally native to a shadowy plane that exists somewhat close to the mortal plane - one of the more "demonic" realms by mortal reckoning, to be sure, but not that far away, and for much of his life, went by a different name. At one time when he was younger, his race was among a number of other fae, demons, and divinities that dwelt as much in the mortal plane as in their own - his clan, identified as "ravens", having spread out across the British Isles. Sebastian grew up partly among humans, as some of his clan had gained places as royalty among some of the tribes; during the Roman invasions, he lived as much in Wales as in his race's native realm, and does have some memory of the days when his kind were at least fearfully revered by some of the "pagan" religions. Shifts in human politics and human religions affected the traffic of other beings; as Christianity began to gain a foothold, ties to his original native plane were slowly frayed and shattered, between various leaders retreating and closing gates as they left and intentional destruction of gates. Sebastian was among the last that remained, preferring the mortal world to their native plane, trying to keep some kind of foothold. Around AD 340, he slipped up, was caught injured and hauled back to one of the early churches that happened to have a bishop who had some skill with magic and banishings - enough to try to "banish the demon back to where it came"... Except the banishing-gate was directed slightly the wrong direction, skewed by the bishop's understanding of demons. (Of course, by this point, the remaining "royalty" among his kin had retreated to their home plane, slammed and blocked the doors, leaving only thin border areas accessible - so it's unlikely the bishop could've banished him to the proper realm if he'd known.) Insult was added to injury that the structure of the banishing used bound him to that other realm. Sebastian found himself in something much closer to the traditional reckoning of Hell - a tangled, dark place largely populated by corrupted dead souls, imprisoned fallen angels warped into different forms, and various other demons and entities that'd been trapped in that realm. He was neither happy with this development nor had any plans of staying...but didn't exactly have a good way to leave, either. Unhappy as he was with it, he chose not to hide out and sulk about his fate, instead trying to get a handle on the new environment and gain whatever he could there that might be useful.
Re: Sebastian app 4/?shirhan_bladeMarch 9 2009, 20:45:04 UTC
The "Hells" were a mismatched whirl of politics and posturing, a huge prison with no real wardens or controls save various former powers that tried to recreate some shadow of their former glory in their imprisonment. Sebastian managed to be fairly good at the power-plays and idle games, earning some titles of distinction in the aimless hierarchy; he stalled out just short of being high-ranking. The holding pattern at a middling-higher rank wasn't so much a matter of lack of ability or guile, as that he didn't care about amassing a great deal of power in what was essentially a prison he planned on leaving at some point; he only really cared about gaining enough power to be able to accomplish his goals, and keeping himself occupied while he was trapped. The monotony of Hell's politics was broken up occasionally by summonings, as his name had managed to make it into some major occult texts; he found himself with occasionally even extended breaks from Hell in the mortal realm, called by various humans with orders, demands, and agendas. As much as it was a break from Hell, most summons - especially those in the same "names of God" that'd been used to banish him there - grated against his pride, and he searched for every opportunity to interfere with the summons as it happened or twist the terms of his summons; quite a few of his would-be summoners instead ended up prey, massacred before the nature of his banishment and the backlash from the summon-spells he'd broken free of drug him back to Hell. That and his habit of twisting requests and being less than happy to be there eventually made it into the summoning texts, until he was largely summoned for assassinations and sowing conflict, with the epithet, "the author of discord", and warnings about his habits of killing summoners. (end of bullshitting!) Time passed that way until 1882, when there was what would have been a successful summoning ritual, drug out longer and more complicated as usual by Sebastian's struggling against it - particularly since it was meant to be a long-term binding, and Sebastian didn't particularly enjoy spending decades at a time enslaved by arrogant mages. The problem was that the child being used as a sacrifice to lend power to the spell was much more stubborn than usual for someone in that kind of a position; somewhere in his blood hitting the circle, the boy had managed to be connected to the spell enough to give Sebastian an out. The demon gave the boy the opening to claim the binding and give commands; by not struggling against that, the pact would go to the child instead of the one who'd initially cast the circle. The child grasped that chance - And the first command was to kill the summoner and all of his cohorts, cementing Sebastian's piqued interest in a human child with a strong enough will to keep fighting while tied to an altar and dying. With the binding done, Sebastian managed to locate a doctor there in London that was willing to keep discrete about Ciel's injuries. Sebastian's current human name came from a half-delirious blurt of Ciel's; Sebastian may or may not have learned by now that he was partly named after the (now deceased) family dog. As soon as Ciel had recovered enough to be coherent, the boy insisted on taking on the responsibilities of his house - being the royal watchdog on the underworld. Sebastian stepped into the single easiest explanation for his constant presence around his young master, serving as the household's butler.
Sebastian app 5/?shirhan_bladeMarch 9 2009, 20:45:43 UTC
Far from taking it as a blow to his dignity, Sebastian applied the same stubborn pride to that false identity as he had to everything else, managing to hold down the domestic chores of the household until Ciel had picked up a few more servants to do the worst of the work... Servants that were a trio of strays Ciel picked up at various times, who proved to often make more work for Sebastian than he'd had when it was just him alone. Ciel's treatment was a far cry from the usual imperious orders and threats that went with summoned servitude, but the boy proved to be both clever and suspicious, with a stubborn pride to match Sebastian's own - enough that, while it's been developing into an unusually amiable relationship between "master and bound demon", there's still flurries back and forth of minor jabs at dignity, hidden jokes at each other's expense, and various jabs trying to trip each other up when there was an opening where failure would be a survivable disaster. Instead of annoying the demon, Ciel's attempts at keeping pace and jabbing right back have merely amused him all the more. Sebastian's gotten content in the service of House Phantomhive, finding it a much more entertaining and comfortable arrangement than usual and a good break from his imprisonment. Where he would usually be plotting some kind of way to trip up his summoner to get them killed as soon as possible so he could claim their soul and get off their leash, he's been known to halfway volunteer information and act on his own to support Ciel's interests more than usual for a bound demon.
Third-person RP sample: Oh, this was definitely not right. Sebastian took stock of where he was, idly reaching out to pick up the newsletter that dropped out of the dispenser and page through it; his head was finally clearing, and it was an unusual sensation indeed. When he thought about it, the symptoms certainly would match something he'd seen humans go through - He'd been drugged. How lovely. He'd wonder how they'd managed that feat, save that there were a list of more pressing questions; he couldn't quite smell as sharp as he was used to, and other things felt off, a list of small little things, including not being able to tell where his master was. His first honest guess was that something was interfering with him on a grand scale; he would have to test a few things later, but an open hallway was hardly the place to do it. The area was utterly unfamiliar. If someone was toying with him to strike at Ciel, they had chosen a very odd way to go about it, although he would have to applaud them for managing to kidnap him when he caught them, before he exacted the proper retribution. He folded the paper in one hand, frowning at his claws and exposed mark, then folded his hands behind himself, hoping to obscure the offending talons and symbol. That done, he set off with a quiet, genial smile, to get some bearings on where he was, perhaps find someone to question.
Anything else? He is pointier than Neuro. Trust me, he is MUCH pointier than Neuro.
Your first assignments: - reply to this comment with your character journal. - Your character's ID number is: 3SN60 - Read the orientation posts if you haven't already here. - Post your contact details here. - Your character will receive an apartment assignation here within the next few days. - Join the IC, OOC and crack communities, and create your friendslist from the list. - Make a post in the OOC community to introduce yourself on your character journal. - Make an 'INBOX' post in your character's journal so they can receive messages from other characters throughout the game, and tag it with 'inbox' for easy location. The content of the post should be your character's 'email address' which is their ID number and '@city.net'. - Have fun!
Outside of people he's attached to or has reason to help and want in one piece, he's generally perfectly polite and friendly...
Unless he's given a good reason to be annoyed, a reason to think that you might be a threat, or any of the above combined with you being somehow in the path of whatever his goals are. He has a pronounced sadistic streak that manifests with the same kind of poise and dignity as anything else, so that there's precious little warning in between pleasantries and stripping someone to the bone. He's perfectly content to usually keep it to emotional injury and twisting psychological wounds...but that's hardly a limiting line, and he can be just as cruel in other ways if he's sufficiently crossed and a fight breaks out. He can also be incredibly manipulative, using whatever temptations and weak points he can find.
Strengths: Sebastian's very clever and a very fast thinker; he excels at thinking and planning on the spot, and is known for an ability to salvage just about any debacle, even if his nerves might fray in the process. He's also very good at picking out nerves and feeling out people's psychology, particularly at picking up on weak points; whether this gets used in their interest or not depends a great deal on who it is and what the circumstance is. He recovers well from disappointments and setbacks, and is nearly impossible to truly break - he's more likely to fall into a sort of bitter determination/vengeful-pissed-stewing than anything like depression or giving up. He's an excellent actor with a very good poker face, and is good at playing things off and hiding the extent of his reactions. Sebastian also has a VERY high pain tolerance, and can function through severe injuries.
He's also a fast learner, and in his time working as a servant, has become a master of domestic skills; he's a fantastic cook, and has picked up almost an OCD tick about housekeeping.
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While he's protective of the people he's close to, he has no problem with letting them fall on their faces or get themselves hurt, usually with the logic that they'll learn to watch out more next time, but sometimes just avoiding warnings or not-helping for his own amusement.
There are very, very few people that could honestly trust him, and it's not always easy to tell if you're actually on his good side or just someone he finds interesting/potentially useful - the latter position can be a very dangerous place.
Background: (As usual for secretive demon bastards, up until his appearance in canon, this is entirely me making shit up to fill in the blanks.) Sebastian is originally native to a shadowy plane that exists somewhat close to the mortal plane - one of the more "demonic" realms by mortal reckoning, to be sure, but not that far away, and for much of his life, went by a different name. At one time when he was younger, his race was among a number of other fae, demons, and divinities that dwelt as much in the mortal plane as in their own - his clan, identified as "ravens", having spread out across the British Isles. Sebastian grew up partly among humans, as some of his clan had gained places as royalty among some of the tribes; during the Roman invasions, he lived as much in Wales as in his race's native realm, and does have some memory of the days when his kind were at least fearfully revered by some of the "pagan" religions.
Shifts in human politics and human religions affected the traffic of other beings; as Christianity began to gain a foothold, ties to his original native plane were slowly frayed and shattered, between various leaders retreating and closing gates as they left and intentional destruction of gates. Sebastian was among the last that remained, preferring the mortal world to their native plane, trying to keep some kind of foothold. Around AD 340, he slipped up, was caught injured and hauled back to one of the early churches that happened to have a bishop who had some skill with magic and banishings - enough to try to "banish the demon back to where it came"...
Except the banishing-gate was directed slightly the wrong direction, skewed by the bishop's understanding of demons. (Of course, by this point, the remaining "royalty" among his kin had retreated to their home plane, slammed and blocked the doors, leaving only thin border areas accessible - so it's unlikely the bishop could've banished him to the proper realm if he'd known.) Insult was added to injury that the structure of the banishing used bound him to that other realm.
Sebastian found himself in something much closer to the traditional reckoning of Hell - a tangled, dark place largely populated by corrupted dead souls, imprisoned fallen angels warped into different forms, and various other demons and entities that'd been trapped in that realm. He was neither happy with this development nor had any plans of staying...but didn't exactly have a good way to leave, either. Unhappy as he was with it, he chose not to hide out and sulk about his fate, instead trying to get a handle on the new environment and gain whatever he could there that might be useful.
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The monotony of Hell's politics was broken up occasionally by summonings, as his name had managed to make it into some major occult texts; he found himself with occasionally even extended breaks from Hell in the mortal realm, called by various humans with orders, demands, and agendas. As much as it was a break from Hell, most summons - especially those in the same "names of God" that'd been used to banish him there - grated against his pride, and he searched for every opportunity to interfere with the summons as it happened or twist the terms of his summons; quite a few of his would-be summoners instead ended up prey, massacred before the nature of his banishment and the backlash from the summon-spells he'd broken free of drug him back to Hell. That and his habit of twisting requests and being less than happy to be there eventually made it into the summoning texts, until he was largely summoned for assassinations and sowing conflict, with the epithet, "the author of discord", and warnings about his habits of killing summoners. (end of bullshitting!)
Time passed that way until 1882, when there was what would have been a successful summoning ritual, drug out longer and more complicated as usual by Sebastian's struggling against it - particularly since it was meant to be a long-term binding, and Sebastian didn't particularly enjoy spending decades at a time enslaved by arrogant mages.
The problem was that the child being used as a sacrifice to lend power to the spell was much more stubborn than usual for someone in that kind of a position; somewhere in his blood hitting the circle, the boy had managed to be connected to the spell enough to give Sebastian an out. The demon gave the boy the opening to claim the binding and give commands; by not struggling against that, the pact would go to the child instead of the one who'd initially cast the circle. The child grasped that chance -
And the first command was to kill the summoner and all of his cohorts, cementing Sebastian's piqued interest in a human child with a strong enough will to keep fighting while tied to an altar and dying.
With the binding done, Sebastian managed to locate a doctor there in London that was willing to keep discrete about Ciel's injuries. Sebastian's current human name came from a half-delirious blurt of Ciel's; Sebastian may or may not have learned by now that he was partly named after the (now deceased) family dog. As soon as Ciel had recovered enough to be coherent, the boy insisted on taking on the responsibilities of his house - being the royal watchdog on the underworld. Sebastian stepped into the single easiest explanation for his constant presence around his young master, serving as the household's butler.
Reply
Servants that were a trio of strays Ciel picked up at various times, who proved to often make more work for Sebastian than he'd had when it was just him alone.
Ciel's treatment was a far cry from the usual imperious orders and threats that went with summoned servitude, but the boy proved to be both clever and suspicious, with a stubborn pride to match Sebastian's own - enough that, while it's been developing into an unusually amiable relationship between "master and bound demon", there's still flurries back and forth of minor jabs at dignity, hidden jokes at each other's expense, and various jabs trying to trip each other up when there was an opening where failure would be a survivable disaster. Instead of annoying the demon, Ciel's attempts at keeping pace and jabbing right back have merely amused him all the more. Sebastian's gotten content in the service of House Phantomhive, finding it a much more entertaining and comfortable arrangement than usual and a good break from his imprisonment. Where he would usually be plotting some kind of way to trip up his summoner to get them killed as soon as possible so he could claim their soul and get off their leash, he's been known to halfway volunteer information and act on his own to support Ciel's interests more than usual for a bound demon.
Third-person RP sample:
Oh, this was definitely not right.
Sebastian took stock of where he was, idly reaching out to pick up the newsletter that dropped out of the dispenser and page through it; his head was finally clearing, and it was an unusual sensation indeed. When he thought about it, the symptoms certainly would match something he'd seen humans go through -
He'd been drugged.
How lovely.
He'd wonder how they'd managed that feat, save that there were a list of more pressing questions; he couldn't quite smell as sharp as he was used to, and other things felt off, a list of small little things, including not being able to tell where his master was. His first honest guess was that something was interfering with him on a grand scale; he would have to test a few things later, but an open hallway was hardly the place to do it.
The area was utterly unfamiliar. If someone was toying with him to strike at Ciel, they had chosen a very odd way to go about it, although he would have to applaud them for managing to kidnap him when he caught them, before he exacted the proper retribution.
He folded the paper in one hand, frowning at his claws and exposed mark, then folded his hands behind himself, hoping to obscure the offending talons and symbol. That done, he set off with a quiet, genial smile, to get some bearings on where he was, perhaps find someone to question.
Anything else? He is pointier than Neuro. Trust me, he is MUCH pointier than Neuro.
Reply
Your first assignments:
- reply to this comment with your character journal.
- Your character's ID number is: 3SN60
- Read the orientation posts if you haven't already here.
- Post your contact details here.
- Your character will receive an apartment assignation here within the next few days.
- Join the IC, OOC and crack communities, and create your friendslist from the list.
- Make a post in the OOC community to introduce yourself on your character journal.
- Make an 'INBOX' post in your character's journal so they can receive messages from other characters throughout the game, and tag it with 'inbox' for easy location. The content of the post should be your character's 'email address' which is their ID number and '@city.net'.
- Have fun!
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