APPLICATION ROUND ONE
We welcome applications from people with tons of roleplaying experience and people with none. The cardinal virtues of roleplayers are, I think: flexibility, creativity, respect. These count for more than experience. The game is not quite ready for launch, but I thought I'd get the application post up now, as starting to form concrete ideas for
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Name: Frances
Age: ...ohgod. If I weren't over eighteen, I would have to have been thirteen when Excolo started.
--ahem. Right. Yes. Over eighteen. Over thirty, even!
Email address: fmoffatt@gmail.com
Have you roleplayed before? What kinds of games?: Yep! Tabletop, LJ, and LARP. For years. And years.
YOUR CHARACTER:
THE BASICS
Name: Manal al-Atrash
Age: mid-thirties?
Gender: Female
Nationality and/or ethnicity: Syrian Bedouin, settled in Konstantiniyye for several years now
Religion: Shia Muslim, non-practicing
Marital status: Single, I'm thinking.
Occupation: Smuggler and dealer of al-kemia, automata, and art.
Physical description: Rangy, medium height, unpretty; heavy jaw and sharp teeth. Long black hair that is bound back under a headscarf, ropey muscles, calloused hands, and tattoos on her jaw and arms. An expression that is quick to sour when dealing with idiots or the naive (the two are interchangeable? no? yes). She is unusually strong for her build, and occasionally speaks of her past in a way that suggests she is older than she looks by at least a generation; Occam's Razor would note that she is certainly not inhumanly strong, and that stories of unnatural abilities are very useful when building a reputation in the Konstantiniyye underworld. Manal generally seems pleased to hear gossip that suggests she uses some of the substances she has smuggled to enhance her vitality.
(No, there is no dressing as a bat. Management thanks you for considering the "superstitious and cowardly" reference to have been made. ;) )
Prone to hard-wearing, practical clothing. If she's looking to make an impression, she will toss on a more elaborate layer--ornately brocaded vest over trousers and shirt, gold medallions or jewelry, gilded and pounced belt. She spends much of her time down by the docks; I'm kicking around the idea of her having a tavern. Not owning one on paper, you understand, just claiming it as the heart of her territory.
PB: ["Played by" - typically an actor used to represent your character in icons. Optional!] Would love some help on this! I like
very much, but she is paler than I was thinking, and not quite rangy/leathered enough.
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FURTHER DETAILS
Back story: Manal came to Konstantiniyye around a decade ago; from contacts already in the city, she has carved herself out a niche in the black market, and is a fairly powerful figure therein. Although she cannot have been more than a child when her family left Syria (if that!), she is bitterly resentful of its state under the Ottoman Empire. (I'm figuring that on top of many of Syria's villages turning into ghost towns, and the falling population, the Industrial Revolution pretty much passed it by as a backwater.) She occasionally speaks as if she had personally seen many of the villages wither away, presumably to fuel the rumours about her age.
Personality: Manal is cocky (although smart enough to know offending everyone is just a bad idea) and loud; if she gets drunk, the word bombastic probably fits. She doesn't practice her religion, and clearly engages in haraam (unlawful in the eyes of Allah) behaviour; she flaunts the latter among her own social group, and feels guilty about both of them in private. She is self-conscious and rather brittle around those of higher social status, territorial, and can be theatrically cruel to competitors or underlings when she feels she needs to make a point. You know that overloud I-am-new-and-therefore-nervous vibe people will get when being introduced to a new social group? I'm thinking like that, despite the fact that she's been running her business in the city quite successfully for years.
(Oh my god. I just realized I'm thinking of her in terms of the middling chapters of The Screwtape Letters. Moving on.)
How do you see this character fitting into the game?: I hear we are short on people on the lower end of the social scale, and I thought that with the piracy and espionage, there might be room for a smuggler/dealer. Plus the interest in al-kemia and automata can tie her into people who are interested in those things; if she isn't approached, she might gather her nerve up enough to approach them. Finally, her resentment towards the Ottoman Empire might draw her into efforts to shove them out of Konstantiniyye.
Anything else: Comments welcome?
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