○ Character Information ○
Mun
Name: Ashlee
Livejournal Username: bushyeyebrows
E-mail: ashtraydentist@aol.com
AIM/MSN: ashtraydentist
Characters at Luceti:
not_a_bluesbro
asobouyo
whats_a_sneeze
normalwhispered
Character
Name: Ian Kolansky
Gender: Male
Age: Over 180 [Birthday: February 25th][Grew: Around 1476, turned human aaaaround 1526.]
Wing Color: green, like his hair
Physical Appearance:
He's shorter than the average man, roughly about 5'4" (yes, he's a fantastic armrest). He's dark-skinned, mainly because he's a tree-turned-human, and even the whites of his eyes are... er, not white. His irises and eye whites are brown like his skin. His hair and eyelashes are the same green as the leaves he had when he was a plant (when a tree is turned into a person, the condition they're in is key-for example, Rupert, Ian's friend, has red-orange hair, as he was turned in the Autumn). Other than this, he has two scar-nicks across one cheek and a rounded bite out of his ear where his bark had been marred by stray bullets. He... also has a tree hole in his torso, in his side. Yep. If he ever pulls something out in what seems like a hammer-space maneuver, that might be the issue.
There's an engraved A + R in a heart on his back-from star-struck young lovers, probably, and he'll eyeball any couple and ask for their first names if he runs across them. But the most notable thing about Ian is that his body, while build like a man's, is not entirely human. He has no nipples/belly button/genitalia (something which he's ashamed of V_V, and I figured this should be noted, ahaha...). This is because he has no functions to reproduce or eat, and was never in a womb. In a sense, he's the Ken doll.
He generally wears collared shirts. Red is the preferable color, as blood shows up less on it. But his fashion sense can be downright awful, if not an eyesore to the eyes.
History:
[Age 0 - 30]
Ian started his existence as a cute little pear tree in its youth, alone in a little meadow of flowers. In this unnamed world, trees all have a sort of... life to them. They can't talk, see, or speak out loud, obviously, but they do have a presence most are incapable of even knowing about. Their entire life depends on touch. Their existence is spent in the dark, consisting of simple pings of pleasure from their usual sugars, or pain from a creature crossing their claws against their bodies. Simple, basic. Out of humans, animals, and bugs, trees are at the very bottom of the 'voice' pyramid. Of course, things don't always last like that.
Ian himself was a plain pear tree for over 30 years. In those thirty years, he was able to label in his 'mind' the shape of humans, from the many times they've leaned against his trunk and plucked his pears (talk about making yourselves at home, geez :U). He understands simple things, like how creatures take refuge in his branches or around his frame, or even in the hole in his torso.
A voice called out to him, one morning. It was entirely unfamiliar. And for a moment, unintelligable. But the longer it spoke, the more and more he began to understand it-he wasn't sure why, but he did. The dark of his usual life was suddenly gone and replaced with the person's field of vision. They were standing in front of him, this tall pear tree. And they turned and looked into the scenery of a nearby meadow. Ian could smell, hear, see, and after the figure bit into one of his own pears, taste.
He was never able to see their face-seeing through their eyes and all-but their voice was crystal clear:
"Would you like to experience life like this?"
He agreed immediately. The sensations he'd experienced were beyond amazing. And so, a bright flash of light took him away for a few hours and left him alone in a slumber. When he woke up, the unseen person was gone. And he was alone in the middle of where he used to be rooted, naked, alone.
[Ages 30ish - 50ish ]
He ended up traveling to a nearby village, where an older couple on the outskirts of town brought him in and offered him a place to stay. For the next 19 years, this is where he lived. The old woman's name was Beatrice, and her husband's name was Dewey: an elderly couple that absolutely hated their marriage and each other. Many a-night consisted of a drunk Dewey and a bottle-wielding sharp-tongued Beatrice kicking him out. "Go chill with your drinking buddies, you shitty old bastard", in nowadays terms.
However, both took a strong liking to the already adult-sized day-year-old pear-tree-man. He was named Ian, a name Bea was fond of. And over time, as they taught him how things work-the ways of life and all that entails-they even weened him into the village nearby. Of course, there were problems along the way. The first was that Ian was incapable of eating. He would attempt to eat even something as simple as soup, only to vomit it back up and grow very ill. The only thing he seems capable of holding is sugar and water, and even then he doesn't need sugar all the time. Water is the only real thing he needs, which he consumes in large inhuman quantities.
He was also immortal, regenerative, as proven by the year he'd gotten his entire arm yanked off in the field: after about a minute of panic, the whole thing sprouted right back, fine and dandy. And every time he's injured, he heals up no problem.
It is around this time that his 'father' Dewey died-what it was from, none of them knew, but more than likely it was his heavy drinking and poor health in general. A year later, a horrible blizzard hit, one that no one had anticipated. Many people died in the cold, food-less rush of winter, Beatrice included. Parent-less, unable to remain at the place where the two were gone forever, and wanting to know more about himself, he decided to depart from the village and travel.
[Ages 50ish - 176ish]
For years and years he's been traveling around, the simple disguise of a wig and glasses masking what he is-an enthusiastic 'medicine man', floating in and out of towns and healing flesh wounds; he makes mixtures out of sugar and his own dried-out blood, delivering it to people and finding with pleasure that they heal wounds within a minute of consumption (depending on the size of the wound). Apparently, his regenerative abilities can in fact be passed to other organisms, through blood.
It's around the time he's 170-years-old that he meets Rupert: as he's scaling past a cliff-side, he notices a figure literally crushed under rocks after an unpleasant rock slide. Ian manages to get rid of the heavy boulders and frees the tree-person so that he may tell his story. Rupert was an Autumn Oak, brought to life over 300 years prior, who was traveling the heavily-forested world to find his 'lover'. He'd been next to another oak when he was still a tree-normally trees can't speak to each other, but when their roots are intertwined, they become almost the same entity. Companions. When he was visited by a figure similar to Ian's experience, he was turned into a human as well... and his lover oak was gone. He believes that, perhaps, she had been turned into a person as well. So he's a-searchin and a-wanderin for her, with little to go on, really. But as he says "I have nothing better to do but stay in love, right?"
But Rupert lets Ian in on a very important thing-The Capital? They were looking for tree people. There were plenty of them, apparently, and Rupert was almost nabbed himself by one of the army factions because they'd finally learned the truth about what tree men were capable of. The Capital was in the middle of a violent war with The State over a.) unclaimed territory and b.) the murder of The Capital's Senior Director (which amounts to 'King' or 'Emperor'). He tells Ian to be very careful, because they've already been getting after tree people, bleeding them day and night for the blood that heals wounds in moments. But instead of parting from each other, the two tree men decide to just journey together as medicine dealers. After all, Ian's traveling just to travel, Rupert's traveling just to travel...
Why not keep one another company!
The two stop in a little place north of The Capital called Rwandu to rest themselves after walking for hours and hours to leave the canyon, when they bump into a large-chinned girl named Henrietta. She accidentally de-glasses Ian during a crowded street performance, in which she instantly recognizes what he is. She's very curious about him, free of malicious intent, and after he tells her about his predicament, she comes clean and tells him she's the 16th in line to be Senior Director of the Capital. But that would be if all 16 of her siblings were to die. She often is sent to little villages around the main city to oversee festivals or shows, and finds it a fulfilling schedule she'd rather keep.
"Watching people dance around and be merry is better than watching angry people point fingers."
But Henrietta's bodyguard Nomamura isn't far off, and she's far less kind to Ian's situation. A tree man is valuable! Why would they not take him and use him for the good of The Capital? When Ian finally says goodbye to Henrietta, Nomamura follows with her own group of men. By the time Ian and Rupert are in the next town over, she corners Ian at the local tea shop, having already taken in Ian's oak tree friend. He does manage to escape through the window, but Nomamura fires a poison-tipped arrow and hits him just below the collarbone. A few days later, they manage to hunt him down and find him still under the repeating death throes of the crippling arrow.
What follows is 6 years of confinement.
[Age 176ish - 180ish]
Rupert and Ian are taken to The Capital placed in separate cells, where their blood is extracted to make powder for the main army to take. In this time period, war was good, and The State was gradually shrinking back. A Winter Willow named Carolina is also found by the army (a tall tree girl, who'd been on the run from them for a while now). The three trees are finally grouped when The State unleashes a violent attack on the city. Rupert manages to get free in the struggle and chaos, and aids Carolina and Ian out of their binds. It's a bumpy and bloody route to get back into the forest, and while it happens, Ian is stunned by the images of death all around him. When they reach the edge of the city, a small army led by Nomamura cuts them off... but instead of reclaiming them, Nomamura asks that they come with her and heal Henrietta, who has been injured in her escape from the city.
While Rupert adamantly refuses to help her and Carolina is neutrally silent in the affair, Ian decides that he'll allow her a drink of his blood. Nomamura leads the three to the cave where her few remaining soldiers are, as well as Henrietta and her sister Ella. Healed and ready to flee from Statesmen pressing more and more inland, Carolina, Nomamura, and the soldiers fight back enemies while Rupert and Ian take the two sisters toward the forest. Unfortunately, Ella is killed by an enemy soldier in the frenzy, despite Ian's attempts to heal her.
After the carnage ends, The Statesmen retreat, leaving The Capital victorious but horribly damaged. Henrietta is disgusted by the carnage and grief-stricken by the death of her sister, and decides to go with Rupert and Ian... when Nomamura and Carolina rejoin them, the Japanese bodyguard tells Henrietta that, no matter what, she'll follow her and help guard her as she's always have. This small group travels town to town and helps with war-torn areas damaged by the many feuds, and for a while, everything is finally calm.
[Age at the start of his stay at Luceti: around 186, in 1662]
Personality: Ian is kinda a chickenshit.
Well, he's an opportunist-and by that, I mean he'll take the opportunity to flee from all danger. He's a peaceful person, yes, but that also contributes to the fact that he's a horrible fighter. In that regard, he never wants to stick around when anything bad's going down (unless, of course, friends are in danger). He's used to being killed a lot, and in that respect he figures it's easier to spare him the pain and just high-tail it out of there like a swarm of bees are on his tail. His strategy in most scenarios is screaming and flailing his way haphazardly through a battle zone; despite some of the points in his history, his life is fairly peaceful. The most he tends to deal with are stray thieves or thugs in his many years of wandering. He has weak sissy punches, to boot, and is more than likely going to get mocked than taken seriously.
He does change in terms of abilities after the point he'll be taken from, but that's if I ever decide he's worth a 'canon update'-otherwise he's more interesting to introduce him into the setting as his 'barely-post-Capital-escape' self.
Ian is also pretty gullible and, uneducated-even, dare I say, stupid to a degree. His ability to trust hasn't changed since he was created, and to this day he's unbelievably easy to tease and fool. He can't read or write very well (sob), and as far as mathematics or anything scientific goes: there is just no way. You might as well try teaching it to an old dog instead, because he will not get any of it. But... despite this, he has his usual gems of wisdom about life in general. He's not dumb when it comes to the way of the world: that things will die, people will hate, people will love-unlike Carolina, he's not bitter about his experience with people. Cruelty is a staple of humankind, but so is love and understanding. For every bad person, there's a good one. And even when he was locked away in a cell and turned into a living juicer for medicine, he harbored no ill will against the masses. He may have disliked the Senior Director in charge of his imprisonment, or the callousness of Nomamura during their initial meeting, but how could he hold those feelings against, say, a 10 year old he's never met 30 miles away?
And therein lies one of his central mulling points: the desire to be just like a human. That is to say, he will never turn away from his history of being a tree, but the fact of the matter is he sees that being a plant sucks in comparison to being a human. He can see and smell and hear. He's no longer bound to the ground in pitch blackness, alone in his own mind. He's a free, moving, breathing creature that can enjoy the company of those who enjoyed his. And while he can still feel pain, he can actually voice that pain instead of silently suffer. Being a tree is a slow, quiet life. It's peaceful, but it lacks. Granted, a tree would never know there's a level beyond sitting in the sun and enjoying the light and water, but now that Ian knows what it's like to be a man, one of his greater fears earlier in the story is that he'd have to go back to being stationary and in the dark. Furthermore, he wants a typical human life, too. He wants a lover-even with his inability to reproduce or have sex to begin with-and perhaps even children of his own. The only thing that seems to be a downside in his mind is that he would have to live passed them, which is something that is just far too depressing to think about.
Going back to his extreme cowardice, there is one thing that will always overshadow it: the belief that he could defend people where no one else could. The one restriction many humans have that stop them from saving another is one very basic thing: the fear of death. Death halts people in their tracks. It stops them from nobility or braveness. But for a tree man, there is no such thing. Ian can try with all his might to rescue a living being without the repercussion of mortality. If there is a person who is good at heart in danger, he'll help. Perhaps with hesitancy, but he will help nonetheless. And in the sloppiest way he can. Oh, and if you're a strong, able person? Sorry, he'll be watching you fight from over here, behind this tree. You'd better be getting your ass handed to you before someone like him would jump in.
That said, Ian is as kind as he is cowardly. Sharing is caring, and he does a lot of that! Even in his profession-a [in a sense, fake] medicine seller-he charges very little for his work, and in cases where people are too poor, gives it to them for free. Which is good, because he's either the best salesman ever, or the worst. His enthusiasm is through the roof, but his questionable materials often make for him trying (lamely) to lie through his teeth.
...He's a piss-poor liar, too.
Nomamura nicknames him Pinocchio, and for good reason. Not only is it because he's similar in a physical and mental way to the puppet, but it's fairly obvious when he's trying to lie just by reading his facial expressions, or listening to the way he speaks. His nose doesn't grow, sure, but the uncomfortable falseness of his presentation is what really makes it obvious. So, can he keep secrets? Well, yes. He can. He won't jabber to someone about someone else's deep dark mysteries. However, the question soon becomes 'can you tell he's lying about not knowing their secret?'. The answer?
'He's not fooling anybody.'
Strengths:
Physical: Ian's physical strength is minimal-like the usual shounen sort of guy, his world has the idea of 'jumping 2 stories = entirely normal what do you mean it's not'. He's capable of throwing mediocre punches or kicks, but other than that, he'd much rather be hauling ass out of there to let the big boys handle everything. He doesn't know how to use weapons, despite carrying around a switch-knife, but he can hold his own... kinda... in a fistfight with a random... drunk guy... or something.
No, his real strengths lie in his persistence. Or, rather, that he just won't die. He's immortal, and unless you obliterate him into tiny little molecules, he isn't going anywhere anytime soon-okay, that's only partially true. Thanks to Luceti, if you rip him into pieces, he won't really get to come back. But otherwise, stab wounds and arrow wounds and gunshot wounds are probably fair game for healing! Broken bones are also something he can fix up within himself.
While in his world he would be able to grow limbs back and close through-and-through wounds in seconds, the power-cap in Luceti causes him to take a minute or two, depending on the severity of the wound. Regardless, not being able to get killed is always a pleasure to him; come on, who'd want to get impaled and then die? That would suck.
Another physical strength is actually more something the people around him would like. As a medicine seller, he's discovered that he can actually heal other people's wounds, as well. However, they have to drink or otherwise consume some of his blood. This is why he sells small vials of what appears to be maroon-dyed powder: it's just sugar and flecks of dried blood. Yeah, that's really gross, but it's worth it if a vial will heal a broken arm or a cut or even a severed limb in a few moments, right? Just pop that tasty powder in your mouth and watch in horror awe as the arm you just lost grows right back out of that stump! It's magic! It's medicine! It's $9.99 with his own personal taxes!
Though, they cannot fix scars, or grow back limbs that are long gone and healed. Sorry, my amputee friends, but Ian's not very reliable there. And because of the power cap, any players who do get Ian's medicine can dictate how well it'd even help their poor character.
Perhaps this is a physical strength (though this can also fall into the weakness category, depending on how you look at it), but Ian can't physically consume anything but water (and lots of it) and sugar. It's just the way he is, man-plants don't need meat or vegetables. He gains energy from those as well as the sun, because he does in fact still photosynthesize.
Mental: He's persistent. Ah, already said, yes, but it bears repeating. Once he puts his mind to something in a dangerous situation, he'll do his best not to give into his own personal demons/terrors. But other than that, the only mental strength he has is the ability to take things into consideration: living, dying, what the outcomes of things are... He's a stupid fella in a lot of aspects, but he still understands right from wrong, crazy from sane. Those sorts of things. He's easy to get along with and he'll be as understanding to your situations as he can.
Emotional: Emotionally... er. He's easy to... Well, he's emotionally good at showing what he feels. He doesn't hold back, nor will he try and lie his way out of things (because, really, he knows he's an awful liar anyway). Things don't normally get to him, though. Even if something awful were to happen, he tries to look at it the best way he can. If something bad happened to him? Ha, well, time heals everything. Everything. He learned that after being trapped in those cells for six years. There's always something to look forward to. You just have to wait for it.
Weaknesses:
Physical: A physical weakness: poison. Ian's body won't die from poisoning, but it will still be affected in the same way a normal body would. In a sense: the greatest torture, for a treeman. He's only ever been poisoned once, when Nomamura caught him, and it was the worst thing he's ever had to endure. It was a type of death his immortality wasn't quelling any pain or symptoms over, and considering the length of time it takes for an extremely deadly poison to flush from the system, he would never want to go through it again.
Mental: He's not a very strong guy mentally. He's prone to anyone's mind tricks or abilities, and he's got no real walls against things like mind reading or anything of that sort.
Emotional: He's a blubbering idiot, sometimes. That is to say, he cries and mopes and whines a lot, instead of bottling up his emotions. He knows something like that wouldn't be healthy, but at the same time, he's maybe too emotional. Go ahead and tell him a story about your cat getting ran over, and see what happens. His compassion will and does get the better of him, sometimes sending him into situations he really shouldn't be in.
...At the same time, there's something underneath those compassionate layers. The thing he hates to admit most of all: because of all these years alive, he's fallen into a realist's point-of-view. You can't save everyone, and sometimes... sometimes people have to die. It's awful, but unavoidable. He can't bring himself to personally kill anyone, but... he'll fight on one side and watch others die. He wishes it wasn't like this, but he knows better. He knows conflict breeds an eventual victory. Eventual peace-he hopes.
Name: Ashlee
Livejournal Username: bushyeyebrows
E-mail: ashtraydentist@aol.com
AIM/MSN: ashtraydentist
Characters at Luceti:
not_a_bluesbro
asobouyo
whats_a_sneeze
normalwhispered
Character
Name: Ian Kolansky
Gender: Male
Age: Over 180 [Birthday: February 25th][Grew: Around 1476, turned human aaaaround 1526.]
Wing Color: green, like his hair
Physical Appearance:
He's shorter than the average man, roughly about 5'4" (yes, he's a fantastic armrest). He's dark-skinned, mainly because he's a tree-turned-human, and even the whites of his eyes are... er, not white. His irises and eye whites are brown like his skin. His hair and eyelashes are the same green as the leaves he had when he was a plant (when a tree is turned into a person, the condition they're in is key-for example, Rupert, Ian's friend, has red-orange hair, as he was turned in the Autumn). Other than this, he has two scar-nicks across one cheek and a rounded bite out of his ear where his bark had been marred by stray bullets. He... also has a tree hole in his torso, in his side. Yep. If he ever pulls something out in what seems like a hammer-space maneuver, that might be the issue.
There's an engraved A + R in a heart on his back-from star-struck young lovers, probably, and he'll eyeball any couple and ask for their first names if he runs across them. But the most notable thing about Ian is that his body, while build like a man's, is not entirely human. He has no nipples/belly button/genitalia (something which he's ashamed of V_V, and I figured this should be noted, ahaha...). This is because he has no functions to reproduce or eat, and was never in a womb. In a sense, he's the Ken doll.
He generally wears collared shirts. Red is the preferable color, as blood shows up less on it. But his fashion sense can be downright awful, if not an eyesore to the eyes.
History:
[Age 0 - 30]
Ian started his existence as a cute little pear tree in its youth, alone in a little meadow of flowers. In this unnamed world, trees all have a sort of... life to them. They can't talk, see, or speak out loud, obviously, but they do have a presence most are incapable of even knowing about. Their entire life depends on touch. Their existence is spent in the dark, consisting of simple pings of pleasure from their usual sugars, or pain from a creature crossing their claws against their bodies. Simple, basic. Out of humans, animals, and bugs, trees are at the very bottom of the 'voice' pyramid. Of course, things don't always last like that.
Ian himself was a plain pear tree for over 30 years. In those thirty years, he was able to label in his 'mind' the shape of humans, from the many times they've leaned against his trunk and plucked his pears (talk about making yourselves at home, geez :U). He understands simple things, like how creatures take refuge in his branches or around his frame, or even in the hole in his torso.
A voice called out to him, one morning. It was entirely unfamiliar. And for a moment, unintelligable. But the longer it spoke, the more and more he began to understand it-he wasn't sure why, but he did. The dark of his usual life was suddenly gone and replaced with the person's field of vision. They were standing in front of him, this tall pear tree. And they turned and looked into the scenery of a nearby meadow. Ian could smell, hear, see, and after the figure bit into one of his own pears, taste.
He was never able to see their face-seeing through their eyes and all-but their voice was crystal clear:
"Would you like to experience life like this?"
He agreed immediately. The sensations he'd experienced were beyond amazing. And so, a bright flash of light took him away for a few hours and left him alone in a slumber. When he woke up, the unseen person was gone. And he was alone in the middle of where he used to be rooted, naked, alone.
[Ages 30ish - 50ish ]
He ended up traveling to a nearby village, where an older couple on the outskirts of town brought him in and offered him a place to stay. For the next 19 years, this is where he lived. The old woman's name was Beatrice, and her husband's name was Dewey: an elderly couple that absolutely hated their marriage and each other. Many a-night consisted of a drunk Dewey and a bottle-wielding sharp-tongued Beatrice kicking him out. "Go chill with your drinking buddies, you shitty old bastard", in nowadays terms.
However, both took a strong liking to the already adult-sized day-year-old pear-tree-man. He was named Ian, a name Bea was fond of. And over time, as they taught him how things work-the ways of life and all that entails-they even weened him into the village nearby. Of course, there were problems along the way. The first was that Ian was incapable of eating. He would attempt to eat even something as simple as soup, only to vomit it back up and grow very ill. The only thing he seems capable of holding is sugar and water, and even then he doesn't need sugar all the time. Water is the only real thing he needs, which he consumes in large inhuman quantities.
He was also immortal, regenerative, as proven by the year he'd gotten his entire arm yanked off in the field: after about a minute of panic, the whole thing sprouted right back, fine and dandy. And every time he's injured, he heals up no problem.
It is around this time that his 'father' Dewey died-what it was from, none of them knew, but more than likely it was his heavy drinking and poor health in general. A year later, a horrible blizzard hit, one that no one had anticipated. Many people died in the cold, food-less rush of winter, Beatrice included. Parent-less, unable to remain at the place where the two were gone forever, and wanting to know more about himself, he decided to depart from the village and travel.
[Ages 50ish - 176ish]
For years and years he's been traveling around, the simple disguise of a wig and glasses masking what he is-an enthusiastic 'medicine man', floating in and out of towns and healing flesh wounds; he makes mixtures out of sugar and his own dried-out blood, delivering it to people and finding with pleasure that they heal wounds within a minute of consumption (depending on the size of the wound). Apparently, his regenerative abilities can in fact be passed to other organisms, through blood.
It's around the time he's 170-years-old that he meets Rupert: as he's scaling past a cliff-side, he notices a figure literally crushed under rocks after an unpleasant rock slide. Ian manages to get rid of the heavy boulders and frees the tree-person so that he may tell his story. Rupert was an Autumn Oak, brought to life over 300 years prior, who was traveling the heavily-forested world to find his 'lover'. He'd been next to another oak when he was still a tree-normally trees can't speak to each other, but when their roots are intertwined, they become almost the same entity. Companions. When he was visited by a figure similar to Ian's experience, he was turned into a human as well... and his lover oak was gone. He believes that, perhaps, she had been turned into a person as well. So he's a-searchin and a-wanderin for her, with little to go on, really. But as he says "I have nothing better to do but stay in love, right?"
But Rupert lets Ian in on a very important thing-The Capital? They were looking for tree people. There were plenty of them, apparently, and Rupert was almost nabbed himself by one of the army factions because they'd finally learned the truth about what tree men were capable of. The Capital was in the middle of a violent war with The State over a.) unclaimed territory and b.) the murder of The Capital's Senior Director (which amounts to 'King' or 'Emperor'). He tells Ian to be very careful, because they've already been getting after tree people, bleeding them day and night for the blood that heals wounds in moments. But instead of parting from each other, the two tree men decide to just journey together as medicine dealers. After all, Ian's traveling just to travel, Rupert's traveling just to travel...
Why not keep one another company!
The two stop in a little place north of The Capital called Rwandu to rest themselves after walking for hours and hours to leave the canyon, when they bump into a large-chinned girl named Henrietta. She accidentally de-glasses Ian during a crowded street performance, in which she instantly recognizes what he is. She's very curious about him, free of malicious intent, and after he tells her about his predicament, she comes clean and tells him she's the 16th in line to be Senior Director of the Capital. But that would be if all 16 of her siblings were to die. She often is sent to little villages around the main city to oversee festivals or shows, and finds it a fulfilling schedule she'd rather keep.
"Watching people dance around and be merry is better than watching angry people point fingers."
But Henrietta's bodyguard Nomamura isn't far off, and she's far less kind to Ian's situation. A tree man is valuable! Why would they not take him and use him for the good of The Capital? When Ian finally says goodbye to Henrietta, Nomamura follows with her own group of men. By the time Ian and Rupert are in the next town over, she corners Ian at the local tea shop, having already taken in Ian's oak tree friend. He does manage to escape through the window, but Nomamura fires a poison-tipped arrow and hits him just below the collarbone. A few days later, they manage to hunt him down and find him still under the repeating death throes of the crippling arrow.
What follows is 6 years of confinement.
[Age 176ish - 180ish]
Rupert and Ian are taken to The Capital placed in separate cells, where their blood is extracted to make powder for the main army to take. In this time period, war was good, and The State was gradually shrinking back. A Winter Willow named Carolina is also found by the army (a tall tree girl, who'd been on the run from them for a while now). The three trees are finally grouped when The State unleashes a violent attack on the city. Rupert manages to get free in the struggle and chaos, and aids Carolina and Ian out of their binds. It's a bumpy and bloody route to get back into the forest, and while it happens, Ian is stunned by the images of death all around him. When they reach the edge of the city, a small army led by Nomamura cuts them off... but instead of reclaiming them, Nomamura asks that they come with her and heal Henrietta, who has been injured in her escape from the city.
While Rupert adamantly refuses to help her and Carolina is neutrally silent in the affair, Ian decides that he'll allow her a drink of his blood. Nomamura leads the three to the cave where her few remaining soldiers are, as well as Henrietta and her sister Ella. Healed and ready to flee from Statesmen pressing more and more inland, Carolina, Nomamura, and the soldiers fight back enemies while Rupert and Ian take the two sisters toward the forest. Unfortunately, Ella is killed by an enemy soldier in the frenzy, despite Ian's attempts to heal her.
After the carnage ends, The Statesmen retreat, leaving The Capital victorious but horribly damaged. Henrietta is disgusted by the carnage and grief-stricken by the death of her sister, and decides to go with Rupert and Ian... when Nomamura and Carolina rejoin them, the Japanese bodyguard tells Henrietta that, no matter what, she'll follow her and help guard her as she's always have. This small group travels town to town and helps with war-torn areas damaged by the many feuds, and for a while, everything is finally calm.
[Age at the start of his stay at Luceti: around 186, in 1662]
Personality: Ian is kinda a chickenshit.
Well, he's an opportunist-and by that, I mean he'll take the opportunity to flee from all danger. He's a peaceful person, yes, but that also contributes to the fact that he's a horrible fighter. In that regard, he never wants to stick around when anything bad's going down (unless, of course, friends are in danger). He's used to being killed a lot, and in that respect he figures it's easier to spare him the pain and just high-tail it out of there like a swarm of bees are on his tail. His strategy in most scenarios is screaming and flailing his way haphazardly through a battle zone; despite some of the points in his history, his life is fairly peaceful. The most he tends to deal with are stray thieves or thugs in his many years of wandering. He has weak sissy punches, to boot, and is more than likely going to get mocked than taken seriously.
He does change in terms of abilities after the point he'll be taken from, but that's if I ever decide he's worth a 'canon update'-otherwise he's more interesting to introduce him into the setting as his 'barely-post-Capital-escape' self.
Ian is also pretty gullible and, uneducated-even, dare I say, stupid to a degree. His ability to trust hasn't changed since he was created, and to this day he's unbelievably easy to tease and fool. He can't read or write very well (sob), and as far as mathematics or anything scientific goes: there is just no way. You might as well try teaching it to an old dog instead, because he will not get any of it. But... despite this, he has his usual gems of wisdom about life in general. He's not dumb when it comes to the way of the world: that things will die, people will hate, people will love-unlike Carolina, he's not bitter about his experience with people. Cruelty is a staple of humankind, but so is love and understanding. For every bad person, there's a good one. And even when he was locked away in a cell and turned into a living juicer for medicine, he harbored no ill will against the masses. He may have disliked the Senior Director in charge of his imprisonment, or the callousness of Nomamura during their initial meeting, but how could he hold those feelings against, say, a 10 year old he's never met 30 miles away?
And therein lies one of his central mulling points: the desire to be just like a human. That is to say, he will never turn away from his history of being a tree, but the fact of the matter is he sees that being a plant sucks in comparison to being a human. He can see and smell and hear. He's no longer bound to the ground in pitch blackness, alone in his own mind. He's a free, moving, breathing creature that can enjoy the company of those who enjoyed his. And while he can still feel pain, he can actually voice that pain instead of silently suffer. Being a tree is a slow, quiet life. It's peaceful, but it lacks. Granted, a tree would never know there's a level beyond sitting in the sun and enjoying the light and water, but now that Ian knows what it's like to be a man, one of his greater fears earlier in the story is that he'd have to go back to being stationary and in the dark. Furthermore, he wants a typical human life, too. He wants a lover-even with his inability to reproduce or have sex to begin with-and perhaps even children of his own. The only thing that seems to be a downside in his mind is that he would have to live passed them, which is something that is just far too depressing to think about.
Going back to his extreme cowardice, there is one thing that will always overshadow it: the belief that he could defend people where no one else could. The one restriction many humans have that stop them from saving another is one very basic thing: the fear of death. Death halts people in their tracks. It stops them from nobility or braveness. But for a tree man, there is no such thing. Ian can try with all his might to rescue a living being without the repercussion of mortality. If there is a person who is good at heart in danger, he'll help. Perhaps with hesitancy, but he will help nonetheless. And in the sloppiest way he can. Oh, and if you're a strong, able person? Sorry, he'll be watching you fight from over here, behind this tree. You'd better be getting your ass handed to you before someone like him would jump in.
That said, Ian is as kind as he is cowardly. Sharing is caring, and he does a lot of that! Even in his profession-a [in a sense, fake] medicine seller-he charges very little for his work, and in cases where people are too poor, gives it to them for free. Which is good, because he's either the best salesman ever, or the worst. His enthusiasm is through the roof, but his questionable materials often make for him trying (lamely) to lie through his teeth.
...He's a piss-poor liar, too.
Nomamura nicknames him Pinocchio, and for good reason. Not only is it because he's similar in a physical and mental way to the puppet, but it's fairly obvious when he's trying to lie just by reading his facial expressions, or listening to the way he speaks. His nose doesn't grow, sure, but the uncomfortable falseness of his presentation is what really makes it obvious. So, can he keep secrets? Well, yes. He can. He won't jabber to someone about someone else's deep dark mysteries. However, the question soon becomes 'can you tell he's lying about not knowing their secret?'. The answer?
'He's not fooling anybody.'
Strengths:
Physical: Ian's physical strength is minimal-like the usual shounen sort of guy, his world has the idea of 'jumping 2 stories = entirely normal what do you mean it's not'. He's capable of throwing mediocre punches or kicks, but other than that, he'd much rather be hauling ass out of there to let the big boys handle everything. He doesn't know how to use weapons, despite carrying around a switch-knife, but he can hold his own... kinda... in a fistfight with a random... drunk guy... or something.
No, his real strengths lie in his persistence. Or, rather, that he just won't die. He's immortal, and unless you obliterate him into tiny little molecules, he isn't going anywhere anytime soon-okay, that's only partially true. Thanks to Luceti, if you rip him into pieces, he won't really get to come back. But otherwise, stab wounds and arrow wounds and gunshot wounds are probably fair game for healing! Broken bones are also something he can fix up within himself.
While in his world he would be able to grow limbs back and close through-and-through wounds in seconds, the power-cap in Luceti causes him to take a minute or two, depending on the severity of the wound. Regardless, not being able to get killed is always a pleasure to him; come on, who'd want to get impaled and then die? That would suck.
Another physical strength is actually more something the people around him would like. As a medicine seller, he's discovered that he can actually heal other people's wounds, as well. However, they have to drink or otherwise consume some of his blood. This is why he sells small vials of what appears to be maroon-dyed powder: it's just sugar and flecks of dried blood. Yeah, that's really gross, but it's worth it if a vial will heal a broken arm or a cut or even a severed limb in a few moments, right? Just pop that tasty powder in your mouth and watch in horror awe as the arm you just lost grows right back out of that stump! It's magic! It's medicine! It's $9.99 with his own personal taxes!
Though, they cannot fix scars, or grow back limbs that are long gone and healed. Sorry, my amputee friends, but Ian's not very reliable there. And because of the power cap, any players who do get Ian's medicine can dictate how well it'd even help their poor character.
Perhaps this is a physical strength (though this can also fall into the weakness category, depending on how you look at it), but Ian can't physically consume anything but water (and lots of it) and sugar. It's just the way he is, man-plants don't need meat or vegetables. He gains energy from those as well as the sun, because he does in fact still photosynthesize.
Mental: He's persistent. Ah, already said, yes, but it bears repeating. Once he puts his mind to something in a dangerous situation, he'll do his best not to give into his own personal demons/terrors. But other than that, the only mental strength he has is the ability to take things into consideration: living, dying, what the outcomes of things are... He's a stupid fella in a lot of aspects, but he still understands right from wrong, crazy from sane. Those sorts of things. He's easy to get along with and he'll be as understanding to your situations as he can.
Emotional: Emotionally... er. He's easy to... Well, he's emotionally good at showing what he feels. He doesn't hold back, nor will he try and lie his way out of things (because, really, he knows he's an awful liar anyway). Things don't normally get to him, though. Even if something awful were to happen, he tries to look at it the best way he can. If something bad happened to him? Ha, well, time heals everything. Everything. He learned that after being trapped in those cells for six years. There's always something to look forward to. You just have to wait for it.
Weaknesses:
Physical: A physical weakness: poison. Ian's body won't die from poisoning, but it will still be affected in the same way a normal body would. In a sense: the greatest torture, for a treeman. He's only ever been poisoned once, when Nomamura caught him, and it was the worst thing he's ever had to endure. It was a type of death his immortality wasn't quelling any pain or symptoms over, and considering the length of time it takes for an extremely deadly poison to flush from the system, he would never want to go through it again.
Mental: He's not a very strong guy mentally. He's prone to anyone's mind tricks or abilities, and he's got no real walls against things like mind reading or anything of that sort.
Emotional: He's a blubbering idiot, sometimes. That is to say, he cries and mopes and whines a lot, instead of bottling up his emotions. He knows something like that wouldn't be healthy, but at the same time, he's maybe too emotional. Go ahead and tell him a story about your cat getting ran over, and see what happens. His compassion will and does get the better of him, sometimes sending him into situations he really shouldn't be in.
...At the same time, there's something underneath those compassionate layers. The thing he hates to admit most of all: because of all these years alive, he's fallen into a realist's point-of-view. You can't save everyone, and sometimes... sometimes people have to die. It's awful, but unavoidable. He can't bring himself to personally kill anyone, but... he'll fight on one side and watch others die. He wishes it wasn't like this, but he knows better. He knows conflict breeds an eventual victory. Eventual peace-he hopes.