[OOC] [CnC] Application
PLAYER
NAME: RM
JOURNAL: zinthos
IM: EpicFailNinja
E-MAIL: ishidaaaugh[at]gmail[dot]com
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Nico di Angelo
FANDOM: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
CHRONOLOGY: Post-series.
BACKGROUND:
The world of Percy Jackson is almost entirely similar to ours... with one ever-so-minor twist: Greek mythology is real. Real, and very much alive, even though the places and names have changed a little. Like Mount Olympus being on top of the Empire State Building, or Typhon being trapped underneath Mt. St. Helens. Naturally, the gods are still doing what gods do best ... which includes having sex with lots and lots of mortals.
Nico di Angelo is the product of one of these unions. He's a half-blood-aka a demigod, in the classical Greek sense. His mother, Maria, was perfectly normal, but his father? Hades, Greek god of the underworld. When he and his older (and similarly half-blooded) sister Bianca were still young, a Great Prophecy was made. Supposedly, a child of the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) would be offered a choice that would either save or destroy the gods once they turned sixteen. Since Zeus wasn’t exactly in the habit of trusting demigods, much less ones that belong to his not-so-friendly brother, he attempted to kill Bianca and Nico on the spot. Hades managed to save the children, but he was too late to prevent their mother from dying horribly. He erased their memories and sent them to stay at the Lotus Casino in Vegas, where they’d be safe - if frozen in time - until Zeus stopped trying to kill them.
They remained like that for nearly seventy years. Then, one day, a young Poseidon-born demigod named Percy Jackson showed up. With a son of the Big Three suddenly on the scene again, Hades knew that the time was right to free his children. He sent a Fury to go and retrieve the two siblings, after which they spent a year at a prep school in New York before Percy and his friends found them. There was a scuffle, of course. Monsters love eating demigods, especially new and vulnerable ones, but Jackson and his group successfully led the di Angelo siblings to Camp Half-Blood- a refuge for demigods like themselves. Bianca immediately went out on a quest after arriving, but Nico, who was only ten years old at the time, remained behind. This upset Nico quite a bit. He pleaded with her not to leave … and when that failed, he made Percy promise to keep his sister safe. Except she died anyway. Nico was furious. So furious, in fact, that he opened a fissure to the Underworld (accidentally) and disappeared.
Nico spent the next year or so learning about his powers and being terribly angry at Percy. At the same time, he also tried to find a way to bring his beloved sister back to life. He was the son of the god of the underworld, after all. But summoning ghosts (with fast food, no less) didn't bring him any answers; his sister refused to speak to him herself, and his guide, King Minos, only attempted to use him. It took a confrontation with Percy to convince him that a) Bianca's death wasn't Percy's fault, and b) trying to bring his sister back to life was, in fact, a Bad Idea. They started an uneasy truce after that, which bloomed into an equally uneasy friendship after Nico saved Percy and his friends’ lives. Nico refused to return with the others and live at Camp Half Blood, saying that he “didn’t belong” due to his position as a son of Hades, but he continued to do his own thing in regards to preventing the return of big bad titan Kronos. During the final book, he suggested that Percy dip himself in the River Styx and gain invulnerability--a risky, if ultimately successful plan. Additionally, he managed to convince his father to participate in the final battle against the Titans. For that, he was finally recognized as a worthy demigod. He returned to Camp Half-Blood after that. (He's just shy of thirteen years old by the end of the series.)
PERSONALITY:
By the end of the series, Nico is a dark, intense young man. He tends to fixate on things to the exclusion of all else-his geeky hobbies while he was still oblivious about his heritage, then his sister’s death, and then his relationship with his father, Hades. In some ways, this is a positive trait. He never loses track of what he wants, once he knows that he wants it, and he’s good at seeing the most direct route towards getting it. He is incredibly loyal as well. Still ... just because something might be the direct route doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the right one. Or the safest one. Nico has a tendency to get himself all tangled up in his own plots before he realizes that he might actually be on the wrong track. He was so focused on trying to resurrect his sister, for example, that he summoned an evil ghost king and followed some very bad advice before Percy (and Bianca’s spirit) talked him out of it.
Similarly, Nico has a real problem with the whole grudge thing. According to the books, holding a grudge is the fatal flaw of Hades-born demigods … a fact that Nico embodies pretty well. While he can, and does, work past his grudge against Percy, he still tends to feel isolated and wronged at even the smallest perceived slight - and he doesn’t forget these wrongs. Ever. His temper is also pretty nasty, if you push his buttons in the right way. His time with Percy and the other demigods at Camp Half Blood has mellowed him somewhat, but he still gets extremely pissy and grumpy when he thinks someone is messing with him. Though, he has good reason for that too. His heritage sits heavily on him, making him seem much older than he is; however, he’s still … only twelve years old. He can be incredibly naive at times, and he has a tendency to get used by beings stronger and wiser than himself. Even his father tends to use him, albeit somewhat more affectionately. Ish. He craaaaaves approval. From his father especially, although it extends to anyone he looks up to, as well as to more general situations. Like Percy Jackson, or being accepted at Camp Half Blood.
This doesn't mean that his early-books persona is completely gone, however. Underneath all this intensity is an extremely curious young boy who absolutely loved his geeky little hobbies. There are probably a lot of things in the City that will ping him as being fascinating or interesting -- superheroes, heroes in general, meeting mythological things outside the Greek sphere of influence. And while he doesn't like to admit it, what with him being totally adult and thirteen and therefore Too Old for all of this, he is still fascinated by the supernatural. It's just that he's a lot more difficult to impress nowadays, what with being a demigod and all.
Overall, Nico is a seriously intense little goth-in-training. As to be expected from a son of Hades, he’s pretty morbid, often negative, and definitely intense, but underneath it all he’s still a fairly young boy with a lot of growing left to do.
CLASS: Anti-hero. On the one hand, Nico likes to think he's pretty jaded about this whole hero thing. It took a while for Camp Half-Blood to accept a Hades kid properly, and that still stings. ... but he's a good kid, and secretly he would probably be thrilled to be involved in superheroic antics.
SUPERHERO NAME: The Ghost King
ALTER EGO: Nico di Angelo
POWER:
Canon
+ Demigod: All half-bloods (Nico included) are significantly tougher, faster, and harder to kill than the average mortal. Their combat reflexes are quite good (a fact that makes them all mildly ADHD in non-combat scenarios), they can read Ancient Greek (but are dyslexic when it comes to normal English), and they all tend to have minor affinities according to their divine heritage. Nico in particular is good with with swords, prefers the company of dead people to living ones, and has a body temperature a couple degrees lower than average.
+ Earth Manipulation: As a son of the god of the Underworld, Nico has dominion over the earth. He's not very good at delicate work, but if you need a rock shattered, a wall raised, or a fissure opened, then Nico's your kid. In his own world, opening a fissure would result in a lot of fire and an immediate trip to the Underworld. ... but since the City kind of lacks an afterlife, there's nowhere to go; it just opens up a big hole in the ground.
+ Shadow Teleportation: Nico can do something known as "shadow travel" -- he can use shadows as a passage-way to just about anywhere in the world, provided that a) he has a shadow to jump into, b) there's a shadow to come out of on the other end, and c) the place where he's trying to teleport to isn't protected or otherwise off-limits. Going somplace he's been before is easiest, of course. Trying to go somewhere new often ends with him overshooting terribly. (He took a couple accidental trips to China when he was first figuring out his powers.) This power is incredibly draining; he can only use it once or twice per day.
+ Communicating with/Summoning/Commanding the Dead: Out of all his powers, this is definitely the strongest ... and the weakest, at least in the City. Theoretically, Nico can summon and command the dead and otherwise Underworld-aligned. Skeletons, ghosts, cerberuses, zombies, etc. -- all of these are technically in Nico's domain. However, he needs a Stygian iron blade to focus this ability, and he doesn't have it with him. Even if he did have access to his sword, the lack of a true afterlife in the City means that Nico's death-based powers are greatly limited. He can't just summon a bunch of ghosts or an army of skeletons wherever he wants, like he can in the series. He might manage a skeleton or two, if he goes to a graveyard and is willing to borrow a specific body. And he can certainly see/interact with ghosts, if they happen to be around. Commanding dead/underworld-aligned spirits is also iffy. Mostly, dead things have a tendency to listen to him and/or do favors for him, but he can't actually force them to do anything.
To summarize: Nico still has an affinity with death, and could probably get a skeleton or two to follow him around if he really tried, but this power is mostly inoperative while he's in the City.
Blocked while he's in the City. He's got just enough of an affinity with death to be recognizable as a son of Hades; otherwise, his connection to the Underworld is completely cut off.
Non-Canon
None. Nico's powerful enough on his own.
COMMUNITY POST SAMPLE: This is not San Francisco.
This isn't even California, is it. It's been ages since I messed up shadow traveling, but... that was a really big oops. And I'm not really in the mood to hang out and make mistakes. I've got a job to do. Nothing time sensitive, but my dad isn't really the patient type. He's not going to like it if I get back to the Under--I mean, home late. You can't tempt me by saying I get to be a hero. I've read enough comics to know how this sort of thing goes. Good guys are the ones with nice powers -- healing, cosmic rays, that sort of thing, you know? They don't hang out with dead people. They don't even hang out with the people who hang out with dead people.
So if nobody's going to help me, that's just fine. I can get home on my own. That's the way my side of the family usually ends up doing things.
THIRD PERSON: It was a dark and mildly drippy night.
The dark part suited Nico di Angelo just fine. He'd spent most of the last year either in the Underworld or spying on the Titans, neither of which involved much sunlight. Even at Camp Half-Blood, where he'd finally been allowed to stay and construct a cabin for Hades, he found that late-night hours suited him better. So walking down the streets of a strange city, with nothing but a few flickering street lamps to light his way? Fine with him.
Just fine, he thought, pulling his aviator's jacket a little tighter around himself. Nevermind that he'd accidentally shadow-traveled into a weird sci-fi room, with a lot of blather about heroes that made him want to hit something. He'd barely adjusted to the fact that he was welcome at Camp Half-Blood, creepy death powers and all. The thought of doing that all over again, with a different set of "heroes" made him want to curl into a ball and--
Nico bit his lip, his olive-skinned face flushing with anger. "No," he muttered, turning into an alleyway. "This is ridiculous." Think, Nico. Think. He'd shadow-traveled to get here; surely he could shadow-travel his way back. He tried not to think about how tired he would be if his attempt failed, just as it had when it had dropped him him here.
He took a deep breath. The nearest streetlamp was several paces away; the alley had plenty of shadows to dive into. Simple. "Back to the Underworld," he muttered to himself. "Charon's ferry." He pictured himself emerging from the shadows on the other side of the jump. Pictured himself next to the Styx, with the white whisps of dead souls drifting past him on the way to the ferry. And then he threw himself forward, catching the edge of the shadow with his fingertips and pushing through.
For a split second, he thought he'd succeeded. There was a brief, familiar rush of movement-- and then he hit a brick wall. Literally. He collapsed back onto the pavement heavily, dizzy from both the travel attempt and the fact that he'd just smacked his head into a wall. Lights flickered above him. When he opened his eyes, he saw the words River Styx in bright neon letters. Above a bar. Less than half a block from where he'd attempted the jump to begin with.
He muttered a curse in ancient Greek and got awkwardly to his feet. If he'd been any other almost-thirteen-year-old, he might have cried. But he was a son of Hades, dammit. So the tears that burned at the edges of his eyes were angry, thank you very much. He'd have to try again tomorrow, when he wasn't about to fall over.
And when he found out who (or what) the hell had blocked his access to the Underworld, they'd be sorry.
NAME: RM
JOURNAL: zinthos
IM: EpicFailNinja
E-MAIL: ishidaaaugh[at]gmail[dot]com
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Nico di Angelo
FANDOM: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
CHRONOLOGY: Post-series.
BACKGROUND:
The world of Percy Jackson is almost entirely similar to ours... with one ever-so-minor twist: Greek mythology is real. Real, and very much alive, even though the places and names have changed a little. Like Mount Olympus being on top of the Empire State Building, or Typhon being trapped underneath Mt. St. Helens. Naturally, the gods are still doing what gods do best ... which includes having sex with lots and lots of mortals.
Nico di Angelo is the product of one of these unions. He's a half-blood-aka a demigod, in the classical Greek sense. His mother, Maria, was perfectly normal, but his father? Hades, Greek god of the underworld. When he and his older (and similarly half-blooded) sister Bianca were still young, a Great Prophecy was made. Supposedly, a child of the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) would be offered a choice that would either save or destroy the gods once they turned sixteen. Since Zeus wasn’t exactly in the habit of trusting demigods, much less ones that belong to his not-so-friendly brother, he attempted to kill Bianca and Nico on the spot. Hades managed to save the children, but he was too late to prevent their mother from dying horribly. He erased their memories and sent them to stay at the Lotus Casino in Vegas, where they’d be safe - if frozen in time - until Zeus stopped trying to kill them.
They remained like that for nearly seventy years. Then, one day, a young Poseidon-born demigod named Percy Jackson showed up. With a son of the Big Three suddenly on the scene again, Hades knew that the time was right to free his children. He sent a Fury to go and retrieve the two siblings, after which they spent a year at a prep school in New York before Percy and his friends found them. There was a scuffle, of course. Monsters love eating demigods, especially new and vulnerable ones, but Jackson and his group successfully led the di Angelo siblings to Camp Half-Blood- a refuge for demigods like themselves. Bianca immediately went out on a quest after arriving, but Nico, who was only ten years old at the time, remained behind. This upset Nico quite a bit. He pleaded with her not to leave … and when that failed, he made Percy promise to keep his sister safe. Except she died anyway. Nico was furious. So furious, in fact, that he opened a fissure to the Underworld (accidentally) and disappeared.
Nico spent the next year or so learning about his powers and being terribly angry at Percy. At the same time, he also tried to find a way to bring his beloved sister back to life. He was the son of the god of the underworld, after all. But summoning ghosts (with fast food, no less) didn't bring him any answers; his sister refused to speak to him herself, and his guide, King Minos, only attempted to use him. It took a confrontation with Percy to convince him that a) Bianca's death wasn't Percy's fault, and b) trying to bring his sister back to life was, in fact, a Bad Idea. They started an uneasy truce after that, which bloomed into an equally uneasy friendship after Nico saved Percy and his friends’ lives. Nico refused to return with the others and live at Camp Half Blood, saying that he “didn’t belong” due to his position as a son of Hades, but he continued to do his own thing in regards to preventing the return of big bad titan Kronos. During the final book, he suggested that Percy dip himself in the River Styx and gain invulnerability--a risky, if ultimately successful plan. Additionally, he managed to convince his father to participate in the final battle against the Titans. For that, he was finally recognized as a worthy demigod. He returned to Camp Half-Blood after that. (He's just shy of thirteen years old by the end of the series.)
PERSONALITY:
By the end of the series, Nico is a dark, intense young man. He tends to fixate on things to the exclusion of all else-his geeky hobbies while he was still oblivious about his heritage, then his sister’s death, and then his relationship with his father, Hades. In some ways, this is a positive trait. He never loses track of what he wants, once he knows that he wants it, and he’s good at seeing the most direct route towards getting it. He is incredibly loyal as well. Still ... just because something might be the direct route doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the right one. Or the safest one. Nico has a tendency to get himself all tangled up in his own plots before he realizes that he might actually be on the wrong track. He was so focused on trying to resurrect his sister, for example, that he summoned an evil ghost king and followed some very bad advice before Percy (and Bianca’s spirit) talked him out of it.
Similarly, Nico has a real problem with the whole grudge thing. According to the books, holding a grudge is the fatal flaw of Hades-born demigods … a fact that Nico embodies pretty well. While he can, and does, work past his grudge against Percy, he still tends to feel isolated and wronged at even the smallest perceived slight - and he doesn’t forget these wrongs. Ever. His temper is also pretty nasty, if you push his buttons in the right way. His time with Percy and the other demigods at Camp Half Blood has mellowed him somewhat, but he still gets extremely pissy and grumpy when he thinks someone is messing with him. Though, he has good reason for that too. His heritage sits heavily on him, making him seem much older than he is; however, he’s still … only twelve years old. He can be incredibly naive at times, and he has a tendency to get used by beings stronger and wiser than himself. Even his father tends to use him, albeit somewhat more affectionately. Ish. He craaaaaves approval. From his father especially, although it extends to anyone he looks up to, as well as to more general situations. Like Percy Jackson, or being accepted at Camp Half Blood.
This doesn't mean that his early-books persona is completely gone, however. Underneath all this intensity is an extremely curious young boy who absolutely loved his geeky little hobbies. There are probably a lot of things in the City that will ping him as being fascinating or interesting -- superheroes, heroes in general, meeting mythological things outside the Greek sphere of influence. And while he doesn't like to admit it, what with him being totally adult and thirteen and therefore Too Old for all of this, he is still fascinated by the supernatural. It's just that he's a lot more difficult to impress nowadays, what with being a demigod and all.
Overall, Nico is a seriously intense little goth-in-training. As to be expected from a son of Hades, he’s pretty morbid, often negative, and definitely intense, but underneath it all he’s still a fairly young boy with a lot of growing left to do.
CLASS: Anti-hero. On the one hand, Nico likes to think he's pretty jaded about this whole hero thing. It took a while for Camp Half-Blood to accept a Hades kid properly, and that still stings. ... but he's a good kid, and secretly he would probably be thrilled to be involved in superheroic antics.
SUPERHERO NAME: The Ghost King
ALTER EGO: Nico di Angelo
POWER:
Canon
+ Demigod: All half-bloods (Nico included) are significantly tougher, faster, and harder to kill than the average mortal. Their combat reflexes are quite good (a fact that makes them all mildly ADHD in non-combat scenarios), they can read Ancient Greek (but are dyslexic when it comes to normal English), and they all tend to have minor affinities according to their divine heritage. Nico in particular is good with with swords, prefers the company of dead people to living ones, and has a body temperature a couple degrees lower than average.
+ Earth Manipulation: As a son of the god of the Underworld, Nico has dominion over the earth. He's not very good at delicate work, but if you need a rock shattered, a wall raised, or a fissure opened, then Nico's your kid. In his own world, opening a fissure would result in a lot of fire and an immediate trip to the Underworld. ... but since the City kind of lacks an afterlife, there's nowhere to go; it just opens up a big hole in the ground.
+ Shadow Teleportation: Nico can do something known as "shadow travel" -- he can use shadows as a passage-way to just about anywhere in the world, provided that a) he has a shadow to jump into, b) there's a shadow to come out of on the other end, and c) the place where he's trying to teleport to isn't protected or otherwise off-limits. Going somplace he's been before is easiest, of course. Trying to go somewhere new often ends with him overshooting terribly. (He took a couple accidental trips to China when he was first figuring out his powers.) This power is incredibly draining; he can only use it once or twice per day.
+ Communicating with/Summoning/Commanding the Dead: Out of all his powers, this is definitely the strongest ... and the weakest, at least in the City. Theoretically, Nico can summon and command the dead and otherwise Underworld-aligned. Skeletons, ghosts, cerberuses, zombies, etc. -- all of these are technically in Nico's domain. However, he needs a Stygian iron blade to focus this ability, and he doesn't have it with him. Even if he did have access to his sword, the lack of a true afterlife in the City means that Nico's death-based powers are greatly limited. He can't just summon a bunch of ghosts or an army of skeletons wherever he wants, like he can in the series. He might manage a skeleton or two, if he goes to a graveyard and is willing to borrow a specific body. And he can certainly see/interact with ghosts, if they happen to be around. Commanding dead/underworld-aligned spirits is also iffy. Mostly, dead things have a tendency to listen to him and/or do favors for him, but he can't actually force them to do anything.
To summarize: Nico still has an affinity with death, and could probably get a skeleton or two to follow him around if he really tried, but this power is mostly inoperative while he's in the City.
Blocked while he's in the City. He's got just enough of an affinity with death to be recognizable as a son of Hades; otherwise, his connection to the Underworld is completely cut off.
Non-Canon
None. Nico's powerful enough on his own.
COMMUNITY POST SAMPLE: This is not San Francisco.
This isn't even California, is it. It's been ages since I messed up shadow traveling, but... that was a really big oops. And I'm not really in the mood to hang out and make mistakes. I've got a job to do. Nothing time sensitive, but my dad isn't really the patient type. He's not going to like it if I get back to the Under--I mean, home late. You can't tempt me by saying I get to be a hero. I've read enough comics to know how this sort of thing goes. Good guys are the ones with nice powers -- healing, cosmic rays, that sort of thing, you know? They don't hang out with dead people. They don't even hang out with the people who hang out with dead people.
So if nobody's going to help me, that's just fine. I can get home on my own. That's the way my side of the family usually ends up doing things.
THIRD PERSON: It was a dark and mildly drippy night.
The dark part suited Nico di Angelo just fine. He'd spent most of the last year either in the Underworld or spying on the Titans, neither of which involved much sunlight. Even at Camp Half-Blood, where he'd finally been allowed to stay and construct a cabin for Hades, he found that late-night hours suited him better. So walking down the streets of a strange city, with nothing but a few flickering street lamps to light his way? Fine with him.
Just fine, he thought, pulling his aviator's jacket a little tighter around himself. Nevermind that he'd accidentally shadow-traveled into a weird sci-fi room, with a lot of blather about heroes that made him want to hit something. He'd barely adjusted to the fact that he was welcome at Camp Half-Blood, creepy death powers and all. The thought of doing that all over again, with a different set of "heroes" made him want to curl into a ball and--
Nico bit his lip, his olive-skinned face flushing with anger. "No," he muttered, turning into an alleyway. "This is ridiculous." Think, Nico. Think. He'd shadow-traveled to get here; surely he could shadow-travel his way back. He tried not to think about how tired he would be if his attempt failed, just as it had when it had dropped him him here.
He took a deep breath. The nearest streetlamp was several paces away; the alley had plenty of shadows to dive into. Simple. "Back to the Underworld," he muttered to himself. "Charon's ferry." He pictured himself emerging from the shadows on the other side of the jump. Pictured himself next to the Styx, with the white whisps of dead souls drifting past him on the way to the ferry. And then he threw himself forward, catching the edge of the shadow with his fingertips and pushing through.
For a split second, he thought he'd succeeded. There was a brief, familiar rush of movement-- and then he hit a brick wall. Literally. He collapsed back onto the pavement heavily, dizzy from both the travel attempt and the fact that he'd just smacked his head into a wall. Lights flickered above him. When he opened his eyes, he saw the words River Styx in bright neon letters. Above a bar. Less than half a block from where he'd attempted the jump to begin with.
He muttered a curse in ancient Greek and got awkwardly to his feet. If he'd been any other almost-thirteen-year-old, he might have cried. But he was a son of Hades, dammit. So the tears that burned at the edges of his eyes were angry, thank you very much. He'd have to try again tomorrow, when he wasn't about to fall over.
And when he found out who (or what) the hell had blocked his access to the Underworld, they'd be sorry.