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OOC:
Name: skidmo
Are you over 16?: yes
Personal DW:
skidmo
Email: prefer to be contacted by other means
Timezone: Pacific (GMT -8, I believe?)
Other contact: skidmowa on AIM, skidmo on plurk
Characters already in the game: none
How did you find us?: ATP
IC:
Character name: Orpheus
Fandom: Greek Mythology
Timeline: modern era
Age: over 3000, appears late-twenties, early-thirties
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: Orpheus music has the ability to affect the mood of those around him. It can also induce inanimate objects to move. Just how much effect it will have depends on the person and how much effort Orpheus is putting into it, though sometimes when he feels something particularly strongly, it creeps into his music whether he wants it to or not. Some of the power is in his voice, but it’s magnified with the instrument Apollo gave him (once a lyre, now a guitar, having been several other stringed instruments throughout the centuries).
How would they use their abilities?: Generally he just uses it to make a living. He does sometimes play things based on the moods of those around him. Most of the time he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Sometimes he uses it to calm people down.
Appearance: 6’0”, brown hair, blue eyes, perpetually scruffy and unkempt. Athletic build. He has a thin scar running around his neck as a sort of souvenir from his time as a disembodied head.
like so
or so
Background/Personality:
Orpheus is the son of the muse Calliope and King Ogreas of Thrace. He grew up in the shadow of Mount Olympus with his mother and her sisters. When he was very young, Apollo, who occasionally spent time among the muses, came down from Olympus and gifted Orpheus with a golden lyre. Calliope (muse of epic poetry) taught him verses for singing, and Apollo taught him to play.
His earliest days were spent among his mother and her sisters, learning music and poetry and being generally enamored of life and Apollo.
When he was a bit older, he was sent to live with his father, to be raised as a prince of Thrace. In Ogreas’ court, he and his brother Linus learned to conduct themselves as royalty, to fight and to play. Linus became an expert in meter, and Orpheus took that knowledge-along with the skills he’d learned from Apollo and his mother-and used it to craft the most beautiful songs anyone had ever heard. His talent was so great that he could charm rocks and trees to move and his music could divert the course of rivers.
When he was older still, he was invited by Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece, and he traveled with the Argonauts on their voyage. While there, he used his talents to get them out of a few sticky situations, including playing and singing a song more beautiful than that of the sirens to prevent them from crashing their ship on the rocks.
After his voyage with the Argonauts, his life changed when he met the nymph Eurydice. He fell in love immediately, and they were inseparable. She inspired his music as no one else ever had, and her dancing was the one thing in the world that could induce him to be silent. On the day that they were meant to marry, she took a wrong step and trod on a viper that bit her heel, killing her with its poison. (Whether she simply stumbled or was being chased is a mystery Orpheus has yet to solve.) After mourning for quite some time and failing to recover from his grief, he followed her into the underworld, using his music again to gain entrance and to beg a favor of Hades. He was granted the opportunity to bring her back to the living world on the condition that he not look back to see if she followed until she made it to the light. This being a Greek story, of course, he looked back at the last minute, and saw her one last time as she was taken back to the underworld.
After this loss, he swore he'd never love another woman, taking only men as lovers.
For quite a while, he traveled the country, singing and playing and occasionally spreading what mysteries of the gods he knew. On one very unfortunate day, he encountered a group of maenads who invited him to join in their revels (or possibly to name one of them the most beautiful, the stories vary). He refused, and they were enraged. At first they attempted to kill him by throwing spears and rocks, but Orpheus sang and the missiles refused to strike him. Eventually the maenads attacked him directly, tearing him apart with their hands and tossing his head into the river.
Even after this, he continued to sing until he was picked up by some nymphs and placed safely in a cave. He stayed there for several years, but since he was mostly entertaining himself by making prophecies that were rather more precise and accurate than those of Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, the god came down and asked him to stop, after which he stayed silent.
One of the nymphs who had rescued him and remembered his music was terribly upset at the thought of no one ever hearing it again. She pleaded with the gods to restore him, and since they were rather enamored of the idea of having his music again, they agreed. After that the only physical reminder of the incident with the maenads was a thin, jagged scar running around his neck.
Since then, Orpheus has spent his time doing what he has always done: traveling the world and making money off his music. He has not slept with a woman since Eurydice, and he has only rarely formed relationships that lasted longer than a night. He can count the number of people he’s genuinely fallen in love with in 3000 years on two hands.
In the modern world, he makes a living as the best damn busker you will ever hear, occasionally branching out to night clubs and coffee shops.
Rough timeline:
c.1260-1220 BCE - canon life and adventures
c.1220-1193 BCE - travels around Greece & Thrace, making his living as a musician once he’s been returned to his physical form. After the Trojan War, he decides to leave his home, not wanting to get drawn into any more squabbles between the gods
c.1193-150 BCE - He spent most of his time making forays further and further away from Greece without actually leaving Europe. He even made his way up into Scandinavia for a few years before realizing that while the summers were amazing, he simply couldn’t deal with the endless winter nights. As much as he was trying to distance himself from his connection to the gods, he couldn’t stand being that far separated from Apollo. As Greek power and influence began to wane, he put more and more effort into distancing himself from his identity as a Greek/Thracian except as the exoticness of it served his career. He noticed the slow wane of the power of the gods as well, but he stayed devoted to Apollo and Demeter, though his outward worship gradually lessened. (Throughout his life, he has greeted the sun with a song, and he does tend to pour out libations when he’s not too depressed to remember.)
c. 150 BCE- 450 CE - As the power in Europe started shifting towards Rome, Orpheus was drawn back towards the center of the world, mostly because he was feeling slightly homesick. Throughout the duration of the Roman Empire, he stayed within its bounds, taking advantage of the unification of the continent to explore further than he had before, heading back to major cities for the most part where he lived off the patronage of wealthy members of society, moving on from each location before people started asking too many questions about his lack of aging.
c.451-600 CE - Orpheus heads west through Europe until he finally crosses the channel into Britain, where he makes his way as a traveling bard and begins to delve into the mysteries of the druidic religion, drawn into the tradition by a young man from roughly Wales with whom he feels a strong kinship (and quite possibly falls in love with, though he’d deny that). When Christianity comes to Britain, he is so disgusted by the (relatively) easy acceptance of the idea of there being only one god that he spent a few years in the Celtic countries but eventually left in an attempt to find a place in Europe that was not falling to the Christians.
c. 600-1000 CE - He travels through Europe to the east, failing in his mission to find a society that is not losing its traditional religions to monotheism and eventually finds himself in Asia, making his way further and further east jumping from the court of one ruler to the next. He makes quite a splash given both his heritage and his talent. Even his eccentricities are forgiven because having him as a court musician becomes a symbol of high status. By the time he makes it to Japan, he is something of a legend even there, and stories begin to pop up that he is immortal. Most people dismiss this, though, believing that his name is a title handed down from master to student. To foster this belief, Orpheus begins to take on students. Or rather, lovers to whom he teaches as much of his craft as he can actually pass on. He finds the work an enormous chore, though, as no one lives up to his standards, and all of the apprenticeships end poorly. Eventually, he starts to make his way west again, hoping to find Europe different than when he’d left.
c.1000-1100 CE - What he finds is a continent warring amongst itself over the same religion, and while he stays for quite some time, he stays out of politics as much as possible, living as a traveling minstrel rather than a court musician. Around the time of the first crusade, he leaves Europe again, not wanting to get involved in what he sees as a conflict between gods who don’t even exist, and who, if they do, are the same person.
c. 1100-1450 CE - When he leaves Europe this time, he heads south, traveling through Africa. It’s during this time period that he discovers that not only does he not age or die of natural causes, he cannot be killed through other means either. He spends days, sometimes weeks or months, without food or water, and he’s captured more than once by warring tribes, though usually this ends with him being given a position as a sort of holy man due to his gifts of music and prophecy. Once or twice in this time, he goes honestly mad from want of human society, though he is always brought back to sanity eventually. For all that he’s over 2000 years old by now, he still finds himself very much grounded in Western society, though, and he heads back to Europe when he begins to feel homesick once again.
c. 1450-1600 CE - When he originally gets back to Europe, Orpheus heads for Greece in an attempt to see if the holy places of his youth still hold their connection to the gods. Really he’s hoping to see his mother again. Or Apollo. It’s become easier and easier for him to distance himself from his life as a prince and a living legend, but he misses the touch of divinity that his life used to have. His searches are primarily fruitless, though, and he eventually leaves Greece for Italy and later for Spain. Part of his disgust at the concept of monotheism dilutes when he gets involved with a priest in Venice and sees the sincerity of the man’s devotion. It reminds him of his own fervent youth, and he renews his own devotion to his gods as well, which eventually leads to the relationship imploding. (That and the fact that he is still very much in love with his wife.)
c.1600-1776 CE - When people start settling the new world, Orpheus decides it’s time for him to move on as well, so he heads west when the opportunity arises. He begins in South America but eventually makes his way north. He travels through the colonies, developing his non-musical talents quite a bit as very few people will pay a musician in the newly formed settlements.
1776-1800 CE - During the American Revolution, Orpheus heads west again, not wanting to get involved in mortal politics and having very little opinion on the matter. His time in the American wilderness is much like his time in Africa. He spends a lot of time on his own and a little time moving between tribes, serving as a sort of shaman. Once things are settled down again back east, he moves on again, heading out of the country and taking a job on a merchant vessel traveling to Australia.
c.1800-1850 CE - In Australia, again, he’s forced to rely on other skills than his music, though his songs enable him to find steady jobs much easier as they make people trust him and rely on him inherently. It’s difficult for him to go unnoticed in such a sparsely populated area, though, so he moves on relatively quickly.
c. 1850-1914 CE - As usual, Orpheus finds himself drawn back to Europe. Greece is still a bit too painful for him, so he spends most of his time in Italy and Austro-Hungary, working as a music tutor. Most of his students are female this time around, so he doesn’t take nearly as many of them as lovers, which in this time period gives him a bit more job security.
1914-1918 CE - When WWI engulfs Europe, Orpheus does what he can to stay out of it. He’s seen too much change in the world to be worried about the outcome, knowing that whatever happens, he’ll still be standing at the end of it. On the few occasions that he cannot stay out of the conflict entirely, he volunteers for the Red Cross, using the skills he learned from Apollo to help where he can but again taking no political sides.
1918-1938 CE - As the world recovers from the war, Orpheus goes where life is interesting. He ends up in Berlin, watching as the city rebuilds itself and tries to forget about the horrors of the war. It seems to him that the world is growing smaller and the problems more all-encompassing. It’s more and more difficult to stay out of these conflicts.
1938-1945 CE - Again, he attempts to stay out of the conflict, but it’s more difficult this time around, and he honestly does see the wrong in the Third Reich. He leaves Germany for France where he meets an unusually passionate Frenchman who drags him, reluctantly, into the resistance where he works as a spy. The war itself interests him as little as did the one before it, but he feels enough for this man that he is willing to involve himself in it somewhat. When his lover is killed, he leaves France, heading to England where he finishes the war in an Army hospital, tending to soldiers in their last moments and doing what he can to ease their pain.
1945-1980 CE - After the war, Orpheus goes back to Asia, intending to make it a spiritual journey of a sort. He studies Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shintoism. He can never take seriously a religion other than the one he was raised in, though, and he finds it harder and harder to escape world politics no matter where he goes, so he eventually heads back to Europe. (He does meet the Beatles, though, in their treks to India, and may or may not have influenced their later albums.)
1980-present - Beginning in Athens, Orpheus travels from major city to major city throughout Europe and occasionally North America working as a busker and making a decent living. He keeps moving partially because he is looking for something new and partially because he keeps getting hounded by record producers and he really doesn’t think it would be a good idea for him to record anything. The smallness of the world continues to strike him, and though he can see minute differences in each of the cultures he experiences, he is beginning to despair of finding anything at all to remind him of his youth. He is feeling his age and his weariness with life, and he has more than once thought about trying to end his life, but he knows that it would be useless so he doesn’t dare try. Technology also seems to be moving faster than he can keep up with it, and he tends to be a little bit behind on that front
Orpheus is the quintessential 'lover not fighter'. He can usually avoid fights by using his music, and he prefers to do so. He is legendarily devout in his belief in the gods, even if he understands that they can be cruel and are rarely to be trusted.
Having successfully screwed up his own life, he feels a sort of obligation to help others with theirs whenever he can. He has a tendency toward melancholy, and he is very much a man of his word. (In the end of his story, it ends up getting him killed.) He is used to being loved of the gods, and that can go to his head at times, but he's a decent person at heart. His ego is massive, but with good reason, and he cannot stand it when people don’t appreciate, or worse denigrate, his music
For the most part, he's a friendly, helpful, laid back person, generally willing to cheer up those around him with a song or two. On occasion, he dips into melancholy, and when he plays, that can extend to those around him. He can really bring down a party when he gets into a mood. He's ostensibly trusting, but he knows enough of the gods to be wary of strangers and gifts unlooked for. He can't help loving some of the gods he's met, though, Apollo and Demeter foremost among those.
Above all else, possibly even above his devotion to the gods, Orpheus believes in love and that it is worth fighting for. He doesn't think he'll ever find it again, and he's actually sworn never to love another woman, but he always wants to help other people find their love or at least to believe in the possibility of it.
Over the centuries, Orpheus’ ego has become somewhat muted. He still knows that he is the most talented musician ever to live, but he has become used to not being remembered and it doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it used to. He still doesn’t take well to people not appreciating his music, but he’s learned not to let that affect him as much as it used to do.
Over time he’s also begun to pull away from mortals in general. As a young man, he used to have quite a few friends and be good at making and keeping them. Anymore, he can’t be bothered to put in the effort. Everyone he cares about has died or left him, and he knows that this will always be the case. It takes a remarkable or relentless person to push past this barrier. He still finds it easy to talk to people, and he offers help when he can, but though he genuinely cares about people, he doesn’t let himself get upset when the relationship ends. Or rather, he doesn’t let himself show that he is upset. He’s become very adept at lying to himself.
He tends to look on mortals as students, people he can teach who may need his help but not people from whom he expects anything in return.
He is still, on occasion, very much the spoiled, arrogant prince of Thrace he was in his youth, but for the most part, he has the understated weariness of someone who very much feels every one of his 3000 years. It’s developed a patience in him he didn’t have as a young man, and it is much more difficult to offend him than it once was.
Given the arrogance of his youth, in the beginning of his life, Orpheus rarely let the fashion of the time tell him what his morality should be. And once that arrogance was tempered, his own ideas of right and wrong were so firmly entrenched that he held to them quite strongly, so that if they changed at all it was very, very slowly over time. For instance, he still doesn’t see slavery as such a bad thing, provided the slaves are well treated. He’s realized as time went on that very little of what society says is right or wrong actually affects him, so he doesn’t pay it too much mind. Occasionally someone will come along who is fervent enough to convince him otherwise, but the occurrence is very rare.
Have you read up on how the game works?: The plug-in is called FlamingFerret, and you can earn money through permanent jobs, gambling, and missions
1st person sample:
here
3rd person sample:
here
Questions?: nope :)
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: yes