APPLICATION ROUND ONE

[rachel2205]

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

Comments

[polocrunch]

YOUR DETAILS:

Name: Call me Polos!
Age: 20s
Email address: PM me on LJ, if it please you
Have you roleplayed before? What kinds of games?: No, I am a complete roleplay virgin.

YOUR CHARACTER:

THE BASICS

Name: Lagos
Age: Late twenties, but looks much younger
Gender: Male
Nationality and/or ethnicity: mixed race, born in Lagos (IRL in Nigeria) of a French sailor and a Yoruba maid
Religion: Yoruba, Vodun and Muslim, but the latter only by necessity
Marital status: unmarried
Occupation: Slave
Physical description:
Lagos has a youthful appearance, despite probably being in his late twenties and having lived a tough life so far, with good skin, even features and all his teeth. He is mixed race, of medium build and average height. His characteristic expression is the calm deadpan of the slave, worn to avoid irking his masters; any other facial expression is, in his experience, likely to give them cause to beat him.

PB:

Something like James Howson.

FURTHER DETAILS

Back story:
Lagos is not my character's own name. His own name is for him; it is the only thing truly his any more.
He was born the illegitimate son of a Yoruba housemaid in the abandoned Portuguese colony of Lagos. He has been told his father was a French sailor, but knows little more about him.
He grew up in the household of a local notable, amid the wetlands and partial ruins of the old Portuguese slaving port at Lagos. The port has long been defunct, since the Ottoman invasion of Portugal disrupted its imperial trade.
When he was five, a wandering bokor [voodoo sorcerer] from the neighbouring Fon lands came across him at play by the lagoon. The bokor was shocked by what he found. The boy had woven a crude model of a bird from reeds and feathers. He now made it flap about and peck at the mud. The boy set the bird down and dug both hands into the soil, shaping it into a nest and eggs. The bokor watched, astonished, as the bird first twitched, then stood up of its own volition and waddled to the water's edge. Absorbed in his play, the boy did not notice the bokor as he looked on. As the toy bird reached the water, the bokor stepped forward to see if it would swim. The boy looked up, surprised, and the spell was broken. The bird fell to pieces into the water.
This bokor knew he had come across a child of a potency which he had never encountered before. He walked the boy home, and there proposed to his mother that he be allowed to test the boy for his suitability to become a white sorcerer of Vodun, a bokor like himself. Uncertain, his mother allowed the bokor to stay a while in an abandoned shed behind her master's house, intending to take her measure of him.

[rachel2205]

Awesome :) Would you be interested in being a PC's slave? That'd probably give you more interacting possibilities. I'd be happy to have Lagos in Ashraf's household, but you might also want to approach other players too based on what you want to do with him!

Welcome to Kostantiniyye!

[lagos_konstant]

Ah, as you see, the remainder is below and I was very much thinking along those lines. I don't think Lagos would necessarily suit Ashraf's household, so I'll wait and see on that front...

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[lagos_konstant]

But before either of them could come to a conclusion, Lagos was itself brutally finished by a Hausa slave raiding party, who burnt the town to the ground and killed many inhabitants. All three were enslaved and carried away across the Sahel and Sahara to be sold at Cairo. En route, the bokor was able to impart some of his knowledge to the boy. However, upon being discovered administering death rites to a fellow slave at Kano, the bokor was executed by his Muslim guards for witchcraft.
Lagos obtained his name upon being sold with his mother to a Portuguese merchant bound for Izmir. After several years' working in reasonable conditions in Izmir, and upon reaching manhood, Lagos was sold on to an olive trader based in Kostantiniyye, Pavlos Demetriadis. His mother remained in Izmir and they have not had contact since.
Demetriadis is now an old man looking to wind up his business and retire, so Lagos is to be sold again. For Lagos this could not have come sooner - Demetriadis has a cruel streak wider than the Golden Horn and has tormented Lagos for years.
Lagos' particular talents are known only to him and his mother. His owner's warehouse is on the shorefront of the Golden Horn, across the estuary from the city proper in a seedy part of Galata.

Personality: Lagos is outwardly quiet, hard-working and serious. Inside he grieves endlessly for his mother, who he has not seen in over a decade. In recent years, his grief has turned to rage, in particular at Demetriadis but also at the whole corrupt, stinking city which now utterly disgusts him and whose denizens daily humiliate him for his status as slave, his appearance as an African and his parentage as a bastard. He is haunted too by his experience as a abductee of the Hausa.

How do you see this character fitting into the game?:
Lagos is angry and potentially powerful, but currently contained in slavery and obscurity.
Anything else: His talent for animating the inanimate must surely be discovered. Anyone willing to assist?

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[manal_al_atrash]

...so I have a dealer-and-smuggler of, among other things, objets d'art, who spends most of her time down around the docks area? App is in the profile of this LJ; let me know if you think we can work something out?

Re: continued from above (this is polocrunch!)

[rachel2205]

I likey :)

Re: continued from above (this is polocrunch!)

[d_van_swinderen]

I would love to figure out some way for Diederik to meet Lagos. It seems like they have similar origins, but their stories took two very different paths.

Re: continued from above (this is polocrunch!)

[manal_al_atrash]

(You might want to reply to their comment, rather than mine? Don't know if they're tracking the post.)

Re: continued from above (this is polocrunch!)

[d_van_swinderen]

ack, whoops~! I thought I had.

Re: continued from above (this is polocrunch!)

[d_van_swinderen]

(not sure if you got this since I accidentally replied to someone else first!)

I would love to figure out some way for Diederik to meet Lagos. It seems like they have similar origins, but their stories took two very different paths.