Soul Campaign Application
[ CHARACTER INFORMATION ]
Name: Vash the Stampede, Aka The Humanoid Typhoon, The 60,000,000$$ Man, Quite Possibly the Devil Himself, and known to go under false names such as Ericks, John P. Smith, and Valetinez Alkalanela Zeehok Sushira Boheres Gombigonela Blue Stradavari Tralentent Pierre Andre Charlatenhemost I'vanovitchi Baldos George Doitzel Kaiser III.
Age: He’s a man who looks to be in his mid-twenties. He’s actually a little bit older than 153.
Gender: Male
Fandom: Mangaverse, Trigun and Trigun Maximum (same story, got bought by another publisher halfway though).
Timeline: After the very last panel of Trigun Maximum.
History: http://trigun.wikia.com/wiki/Vash_the_Stampede
Character Personality:
Vash is a gentle, loving person who suffers from a persistent need to protect every single living human being as though they were his own family. He would describe himself as a hunter of love and peace, and tends to err on the side of dramatic with both his speech and his actions. He wants people to live peacefully and share his belief in pacifism.
He’s also very optimistic and believes that anyone can stop being a killer by simply not killing any longer. It sounds simple but where he’s from, bloodshed is considered essential. He would never even consider killing a killer, because you’ve taken away their chance to change, no matter how bad they’ve been before. Needless to say, walking away from his enemies puts Vash in a lot of danger, and a lot of people would consider him a naive fool for his actions. That’s really the least of his problems.
He endures the vast amount of pain his ideals bring him, both the physical pain of injuries he sustains during gunfights as well as the emotional pain of watching every person he meets eventually die or turn against him. It wears him down, pushing him to keep his feeling to himself by bottling them up, drowning his feelings in a bottle or acting contrary to his own nature by trying to keep from getting close to people. It’s all equally impossible for Vash because his heart’s just too big. He needs people, and being surrounded by people that would treat him like family makes him the happiest man in the world.
One particular trait about Vash that’s particularly important is that Vash likes to act like an idiot to disarm others both about how he might really be feeling and to keep them from being afraid of him. People who meet him assume he’s stupid, but if he makes them smile and laugh that’s alright by him.
He finds it a little bit discouraging when people know about his reputation beforehand and run away screaming. He’s not above playing up his terrible reputation if he needs to create a panic or a stir. He’s quite the clever little monkey when it comes to working up a crowd. In fact, he’s pretty clever in general, and particularly observant. He can figure out how to use things to his advantage, as well take advantage of his talent for empathy to figure out what people really want or need.
Vash is usually pretty polite and well spoken, but he has an inclination to be ornery. He’s good at tacking on a quick joke, and he relentlessly pesters people who seem too uptight for his tastes. He’s a shameless flirt with women that he expects wouldn’t go home with him, and if he gets someone willing to play along with his jokes he could go on for hours with his comedy partner. When he’s drinking beer he’s all over the place singing, dancing and celebrating with the people around him. He’s also a lightweight, and in general he wears his heart on his sleeve. When he’s happy, he’s prancing around, when he hears something sad, he’s crying and when he sees a beautiful woman he’s smitten almost at once.
He hardly has any temper to speak of, he gets frustrated rather than angry and even after all the things Knives and Legato do to him, he only goes though a few short periods of being angry enough to kill his brother and that quickly dissolves before actually confronting Knives. Because he doesn’t get very angry, Vash generally lets people walk all over him. He’d be the last person to stand up for himself, so it’s up to others to stick up for him, or he’ll just take whatever abuse people give him. This could be as mild as friendly teasing that hits a tender-spot, all the way up to enslavement and torture.
Vash’s biggest fears are that people could die, that he couldn’t save people from dying, and losing his personal identity through assimilation into either a collective unconscious native to his species, or being absorbed into his brother (don’t ask).
Character Abilities:
First, Vash has lost a lot of his powers simply because his battery is drained. Because he’s a plant, he’s born with a certain amount of power he can expend during the course of his life. He done used it up. However, his physical prowess and technique and skills remain. He has spent over a hundred years training his body into peak condition for speed, endurance, and flexibility. He may be outclassed by many others in terms of physical power, but Vash is very fast. He’s also trained his body and mind to be the perfect sharpshooter. He sees openings people don’t even look for, and he can have his gun up faster than most people can blink. Of course, part of this comes from a superhuman set of stats, but most of it was hard earned by working at it so long.
It’s also easy to underestimate Vash’s intelligence, since he enjoys carrying on like a primate so often. He’s very attentive and he has an excellent memory due to his plant nature. He’s clever, resourceful, and so many years of experience has led him to think outside of the box. This kind of thinking led him to put a machine gun in his prosthetic arm and retractable knives in his boots, Vash thinks ahead and tries to prepare for the things he imagines.
He also knows how to throw a punch, take a punch, and crawl out under the tables in a bar brawl.
Character Weaknesses:
Vash is kind of a delicate flower. A Kobayashi Maru type situation, where there’s no such thing as no casualties is the kind of thing that makes Vash shut down. Actually having someone die in front of him can render him unable to move on, and actually killing someone will leave him catatonic. Vash emphasizes with others too much, and hearing a sad story will break his heart. The problem with that is that he’s also very gullible. He takes the things people say at face value and he never watches his own back for any knives about to go in it. Sometimes he’s even self-sacrificing to the point of suicidal, if it wasn’t for his plant powers to save him.
Of course, Vash’s greatest weakness both in canon and SC is that that safety net of his power, the ability to regenerate unconsciously or defend himself from attack with feather shaped shields is now gone. He was constrained by design to only be able to use so much power for the course of his life, and he’s basically spent it. He has to live now with the same mortality of the people he wants to protect.
[ SOUL CAMPAIGN SECTION ]
What are the abilities that your character will retain in Soul Campaign?
- Sharpshooting Ability: Although SC physics will slow Vash down, he still knows how to point a gun and make it do what he wants.
- Physical speed and strength: Again, reduced but he should still be about as fit as someone who works out three hours a day training.
- Combat Experience: Vash will still have plenty of tricks up his sleeve for defending the citizens of Death City.
What are the weaknesses that your character will lose or gain in Soul Campaign?
- Vash won’t have his gun, which is an upsetting sort of thing when you’ve had your own for like, over a hundred years. This will throw him.
- He may not anticipate how much slower he’s going to be.
Keeping the game’s premise in mind, please give us a brief explanation of your plans for your character in Soul Campaign.
Since Vash's priority is the preservation of humanoid life, participating in the war will be a challenge because Kinshin Eggs and Witches both fall under the humanoid description. Instead of killing them, my character will try to convince others to simply incapacitate them, and work towards curbing the enemy's destructive urges. Hopefully, this provokes characters into thinking about warfare and loss of life in ways their canon doesn't address, or provoke characters into challenging Vash and how he thinks.
Either way, his staunch stand on pacifism should make some interesting CR in the middle of a war.
If your character has difficulty communicating (or can't communicate at all, e.g., most animal characters), we require you to please elaborate on how you intend to treat this in the game. I promise, Vash will be far more capable of communicating than anyone would like.
[ MEISTER ONLY SECTION ]
Why your character should be a Meister:
It might seem elementary that Vash would be a weapon because his body actually contains a transforming plasma canon, but based on the development of his character during the story of Trigun, I think being a Meister would be more applicable to the development he's made. Vash's big deal is transforming the function of a weapon from a tool for destruction to a tool that protects peacefully.
Vash's use of his revolver, a weapon Knives gave him to kill humans, is a good example. Vash decided he would use his gun without ever killing a soul to prove to his humans that it's possible. Also, one of the most important things about Vash's character development is that he stops being afraid of the weapon inside him, he learns to control it and makes it a tool he can use without harming anyone.
Being made into a weapon again, after that kind growth would be devastating for Vash.
Meister Ability: Nope, no real preference!
[ SOUL INFORMATION ]
Soul Description: Protective, Loving, Silly, Determined, Optimistic, Needy
Soul Appearance: A glowing, white-blue light bulb looking thing. It’s actually a plant, but you’d have to be from Gunsmoke to not go “Light bulb?” .
[ SAMPLES ]
First Person:
Woah! So this is what Earthling technology, huh?
[And suddenly, your screen is full of a grinning, beaming, green eyed face and a mess of black, broom shaped hair.]
This is pretty neat! Does it get any satellite radio stations? Are there any games on it?
[More fiddling, random button mashing...]
Oh! It's recording! Well then~!
[Vash smoothes back his hair, puts on the suave face and virtually sparkles.]
Hello, fine citizens of Earth, and fellow abductees! My name is Vash and I mean you no harm! Actually, if there's any pretty girls out there, I mean you anything but harm.
[Sparklesparkle.]
[Then Vash looks just a tiny bit more serious.]
You know, I don’t think I’m too big on this war thing. I’d make a really terrible soldier, so you’ll have to count me out! Nonetheless, I look forward to meeting all of you! If we’re gonna be stuck together we might as well get along!
Third Person:
Everything had come full circle. The legendary gunman, the most wanted man on the planet, lose and on the run again, laughing every step of the way. Vash felt himself surrounded by everyone and everything he ever loved, people and memories covering the planet of Gunsmoke and existing in beautiful, chaotic harmony under an endlessly blue sky.
It was perfect. It was everything Rem promised, and everything Vash had ever hoped for. Then in an instant, everything went black. Vash staggered for a moment, blinded until his eyes adjusted and stumbling on the new surface. It was some kind of large room, ad he could start to make out a pair of structures in the center. His hand went down to his hip, better to be prepared in a situation like this, but his blood flashed cold when his fingertips touched an empty holster.
“No way…” Vash muttered, he had his gun less than ten seconds ago and Vash was sure about that. Was this an illusion?
Then the televisions clicked on. Lost technology… Vash didn’t fall into the remains of a crashed ship, did he? Wait- Nevada? Why was that name familiar? It was a word from Earth- a place, or something. Vash never knew what people were talking about half the time, but places like “Nebraska” were supposed to be places on Earth people named things after.
Abducted by Earthlings. Vash let out a nervous laugh, that was a new one. Hopefully they hadn’t heard about his bounty getting upped a few hundred billion. The message continued but Vash still couldn’t feel any more at ease. War? Weapons? Maybe other plants? Was this how plants are made? The thought made Vash feel more than a little sick to his stomach.
Why in God’s name would they take him away from his home and his people and expect him to fight other people on Earth? As the video ended, Vash had a lot of questions he wanted to ask, but more importantly, he already had his answer to spirit.
Stepping out of the Kishin chamber and into the bright light once again, he winced, then put on a sheepish grin and came out with his hands up.
“I’m sure sorry, but I think you found yourself the wrong guy! Can I opt to be a civilian?”