OOC ⚡ Elegy City Application
[Player LJ] kaviiq
[Player Name] Pyraven
[@ Elegy] N/A
[Series] Tales of the Abyss
[Character] Colonel Jade "The Necromancer" Curtiss/Dr. Jade Balfour
[Description] Jade is of average height - about 6'1" - and lean, bordering on skinny. Even though he's going on 40, he has a youthful face and may be able to pass for as young as 25. His hair is golden-brown, and he wears it long. His eyes are red as a side-effect of his Fonic Sight.
He is most often seen in his military uniform, and almost never without a smile.
[Personality] Appearances are often deceiving. Such is the case with the Colonel - he normally appears to be a cheerful, nice, well-groomed young gentleman.
Don't let his guise fool you. Jade is a jerk. A smartass. A grade-A bastard. He just happens to sound cheerful about it.
Don't bother complaining to him about it, either - he'll just prove to be even more obnoxious. Jade is no stranger to sarcasm, and he will use it to great effect on anyone as he sees fit. Anyone. Especially Even if you're royalty. Usually, though, he settles for playful teasing, leaving his more scathing wit for more worthy targets (That is, the people who deserve it. And those who'll have the most entertaining reactions).
Jade is incredibly difficult to read, having long since learned to hide his true thoughts and feelings behind an easygoing smile. This smile, combined with his teasing nature, often make him appear to be insensitive about others' feelings.
Still, perhaps it is better that he hides his true self. Behind his grin lies a twisted and restless genius - the sort who would unravel the threads of space and time without regarding the consequences simply to satisfy his curiosity. He also lacks a strong understanding of what it means for someone to die. When faced with death, he finds himself unable to feel sadness. This is not to say he does not feel anything when faced with death. He becomes agitated, even enraged on occasion, if someone close to him is hurt or killed. But even so, he does not understand grief.
For all his jerkish tendencies, Jade is not, in fact, a bad person. He has redeeming qualities, though he tends to only show them to people that he trusts. Under layers of sarcasm and regret is a resolved and perceptive man, someone who has tried to put his past behind him and look to a better future. After years of being firm in his opinions, Jade has started to accept that people can change their ways - himself included. And while there are only a few, he has begun to open up to trusted friends about his true feelings.
[Canon] Jade plays a large role in the story of Abyss, as he had invented a substantial amount of the technology employed by Van and the God-Generals some 25-odd years before the main story.
Jade's most important invention is the theory of Fomicry, the replication of living and nonliving matter. By age 12, he was able to use arte-based fomicry to replicate his dying teacher, Professor Gelda Nebilim. The replica Nebilim was born without the memories of the original, and went on a killing spree that claimed the lives of a full company of imperial fonists.
Jade and another of Nebilim's students, Saphir, went on to make Fomicry more efficient by employing fon machines instead of artes. Instead of using the First through Sixth Fonon in their replicas, they were able to create stable replicas with the Seventh Fonon. The replication facilities were mainly concentrated on the Isle of Hod. As tensions along the border with Kimlasca-Lanvaldear grew, Jade ordered that the facilities be shut down and destroyed. A young Seventh Fonist, Vandesdelca, was hooked up to a fon machine that created an artificial hyperresonance. The Sephiroth supporting Hod was destroyed and the island sank into the Qliphoth, a sea of poisonous boiling mud.
This was probably a bad move on Jade's part, because Van lived through the fall and came back 16 years later to effectively destroy the world.
Shortly after the Hod War, Jade gave up on fomicry. He realised that replicas did not, and never would, have memories of their past selves. He ended his partnership with Saphir and went on to pursue a career in the Malkuth military.
By the main story, Jade is a full colonel and commander of the Third Division of the Malkuth Imperial Forces, the right-hand man/best friend of Emperor Peony IX, and a world-famous - or more accurately, infamous - fonist. Called "The Necromancer," Jade is shrouded in rumour. Stories that have circulated all throughout Auldrant tell that he scavenges corpses from battlefields to use in dark experiments. Some go so far to claim that the entire Third Division is composed of the living dead.
All such tales are entirely false, but Jade doesn't exactly go out of his way to stop them from spreading. ♥
Initially sent to Kimlasca-Lanvaldear on a mission of peace, Jade finds himself picking up two teenagers that had been stranded in the middle of nowhere by a freak hyperresonance. Hilarity ensues, and Jade ended up serving as a source of wisdom, motivation, snark, and spells 'that makes the peoples fall down' to Luke and Co.
Over the course of the game, he becomes a sort of mentor/father-figure to the younger members of the party, particularly Luke and Anise. Luke, at least before he cleans up his act, reminds Jade very much of his younger and more irresponsible self. But when Luke starts to prove himself to be more trustworthy, Jade begins to accept him as a friend. And although Jade absolutely refuses to teach Luke formally, Luke still thinks of him as a teacher - even if he has to steal his education. With Anise, he shows a softer side; she gets teased more than anyone else, but he doesn't say anything that would actually hurt her. Jade often plays along with her antics, which have included ganging up on and tickling Guy, various plots to get at Luke's money, and pretending to be father and daughter.
Jade also serves as a stark contrast to his former partner Saphir, also known as Dist the Runny Rose Reaper. Dist works for Van; Jade befriends Luke. Dist is unable to control his emotions; Jade is usually very calm and collected. Dist has no qualms about continuing fomicry research despite its flaws; Jade gave up when he realised that there was no way for him to revive Nebilim - his sole reason for continuing such an expensive and harmful science. Dist treats replicas as though they are less than human; Jade acknowledges and accepts that replicas are living beings with thoughts and emotions of their own, and are to be treated with respect.
It is generally recommended to avoid a head-on confrontation with him, because he can fight in close quarters in addition to long-range spellcasting - it's just not his specialty. If the need arises, however, he is able to draw a spear out of his arm with magic a contamination arte. Yes, Jade regularly keeps a spear embedded in his arm. Even so, he is still only human and is susceptible to human weaknesses, except maybe extreme heat. (The results of Operation Keeping Cool were... sketchy.)
[Timeline] Postgame
[RP Sample] The miasma burned his throat, his skin, his eyes. Even with the Tartarus' ventilation system at full blast, it was thick in the air.
Jade wasn't surprised. The landship had fallen into the Qliphoth, after all.
Few places on Auldrant had been completely foreign to him. His job in the military had moved him across the globe, from Kaitzur to Chesedonia to Sheridan and back. Even if he had been stranded in the Zao Desert, or the Rugnica Plains, or the unforgiving wastelands of Sylvana, there would have been some way for him to relate to the people that lived there.
Perhaps that was why the Qliphoth felt so... alien. Nothing should have lived here. Not monsters, not demons, and certainly not people. The sea of hot mud and poison would have boiled them alive. The Qliphoth was a place of death.
He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and adjusted the Tartarus' course. "Two degrees northwest," he muttered to no one but himself. Like the rest of the Qliphoth, the bridge was seemingly devoid of life. Jade was running the dreadnought on a skeleton crew of one, a feat that very few captains would have been brave - or stupid - enough to try on land. Cruising on an ocean of mud in a damaged ship would have been an impossibility at best.
And against all expectations, it had worked. In Jade's lexicon, 'impossible' was just another way of saying 'incredibly difficult, deranged, and lethal.'
It was then that one of the sensors picked up a new fonon signature. He glanced at the radar screen, noting a large object - far too large to be a living creature - approaching from the west.
It was Tear's Yulia City, no doubt.
He let out a mirthless chuckle. Maybe this journey wasn't as impossible as he had thought.
[I have read and understand the rules?] Yes.