[holloways application]
Name: Wicke
Age: 18
Journal: munchacha
Contact: you have these <3
1. Character's Name: Nel Zelpher
2. Fandom: game: Star Ocean 3 // Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
3. Time Frame: post-canon (after half a year in ms-elegante)
4. Age: 23
5. Background: In a galaxy far, far away from Nel's world (Elicoor II), intergalactic space travel was a common occurrence nobody hip with the times would sneeze at. But on an 'underdeveloped' planet like Elicoor II, the Federation - a group with authority over much of the galaxy - applied a UP3. 'UP3' stood for Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact and forbade any interference in the growth of people whose technology had not sufficiently advanced.
This meant Nel and everyone else on her world were unaware of the civilization beyond their skies. The Elicoorians, her planet's main bipedal race, certainly had their guesses; the Church of Apris was a mainstay in much of the daily life of the self-professed Sacred Kingdom of Aquaria, the country Nel would be raised to serve loyally. Its neighbors in the Continent of Gaitt were Airyglyph, a military superpower, and the Sanmite Republic, a less powerful region of hilly green.
Her father was Nevelle Zelpher, half of a royally sanctioned dual-member organization called the Crimson Blade. Nel was born in growing season, and her mother, already ill, passed a day later. Nevelle instilled in her patriotic pride and strict moral guidelines to follow wherever life took her. He raised her in Aquios Castle, the center of his country, where she grew up surrounded by soldiers, scholars and court decorations. Close as they were, when the neighboring nation Airyglyph declared war on Aquaria, he had less and less time for her as his duties as a royal spy were first priority.
While Nevelle fought, his daughter's talent for runology, or magic, was discovered at around eight years old. Like most others who were too young or incapable of controlling their potential, she had runes branded into her skin to serve the same purpose as a lightning rod-- they acted as conduits, and later, would be amplifiers.
In Nel's adolescent years, her father was declared missing in action during a skirmish with the Glyphian Storm Brigade, their mounted forces. His squad returned without him, and nobody could tell his child what had become of him. Nel could not abide it. She stayed in the castle as she had her whole life, and with Nevelle's absence, his room became hers. As soon as she was old enough, her obsession with emulating him led her to enlist in the holy Queen's army.
Training turned out to be her one focus. If not for the persistence of a girl her age named Clair Lasbard, she wouldn't have had a single friend for her single-minded pursuit of making her body and runology deadly weapons. They confided, trusted, went to each other for advice. They sparred and fought and ascended ranks together, attaining skill unmatched by their peers. Nel took the privilege of a Crimson Blade though her training was not yet complete, as did Clair, whose father had also been a Blade. The two of them were the organization's double-edge. Unlike Clair, who would become Commander, she bore the mantle of leading Aquaria's Secret Legion, gathering intelligence on friend and enemy alike.
The war pressed on. Airyglyph proved a hardy foe, and while Aquaria had the advantage of resources and runology, the enemy had numbers and tactical brutality. Research into a 'wondrous' runological weapon wasn't moving quickly enough. Nel's hatred of them grew every year. When she heard of what sounded like a devastating weapon crash-landing into the Glyphian capital - and of two men inside it taken prisoner - she had to investigate.
Alone, she infiltrated the castle holding them. After she killed the soldier guarding their cell, Nel offered the two an ultimatum: give their word they'll lend technological expertise to her country, or stay in the prison and rot-- or die under the Glyphian interrogator's whip. With no other options, they acquiesced, and followed.
The escape to Aquios didn't go as planned. Nel's subordinates Tynave and Farleen were captured while creating a distraction for the Glyphian riders of the Dragon Brigade. As soon as she got her charges Cliff and Fayt (the two men she'd saved, who claimed to be engineers from the nation of Greeton) to Aquarian territory, she abandoned what had been priority to split from them to charge into what she knew to be a suicide mission. Though days earlier she'd said her subordinates knew the risks of the jobs they undertook, Nel absolutely could not leave them behind. A remnant of her father's probable demise, even if she didn't recognize it, and her own martyr complex.
Having the men she'd coerced into cooperating with her for their freedom save her from certain death was a slap to the face. Being lectured by them for recklessness frustrated Nel, who expected to die in the line of duty and inexplicably resented the decision being taken out of her hands. In spite of this, their camaraderie solidified from the incident. The trek continued with further and story-irrelevant incident, but by their arrival at Aquios, Cliff, Fayt and Nel were tightly bonded.
Their task was to complete the runological weapon in development. The Aquarians had advanced technology far beyond what a Medieval-era continent should possess, partly due to the many uses of magic (e.g. every room in the castle was equipped with a heater and air conditioning in the form of rune-inscribed globes). The 'weapon' they were working on was essentially a cannon powered by electricity, or as they called it, 'channeled force'. Cliff and Fayt looked over the schematics and suggested the metal copper for better conductive properties.
This would be a problem, as the only mine with copper in any notable quantity had been overrun by dragons and occasionally the Glyphian Dragon Brigade seeking new mounts. Nel, her rescued subordinates, Cliff, and Fayt departed Aquios with a handful of guards to take the necessary risk. The monsters posed less trouble than the return trip with a wagon full of raw copper; they faced first the Dragon Brigade's second in command, Demetrio, and not a while later the General in charge of the Black Brigade-- the group who'd stolen away Tynave and Farleen.
Defeated, it took every ounce of self-control Nel had in her not to cut down General Albel Nox as he crumpled to his knees. She left him alive as an insult, not because Fayt announced there to be no challenge in killing him. Since Demetrio had revealed a spy in the Aquarian ranks leaked information on the runological weapon, they had to rush back to the capital to finish the construction before war knocked at the gates.
The battle almost came too soon. The odds weren't in Aquaria's favor, and if celestial ships (starships) had not appeared in the sky mid-fight to wreak bloody havoc on both factions, they may have lost. They would've died anyway if Fayt didn't manifest the destructive ability to obliterate the attacking vessels.
Post-battle, Nel got very, very upset. She listened in on Fayt and Cliff, found out they called the people aboard the ships Vendeeni, and that they had not been honest with her regarding their origins... which she had already harbored suspicions about. She had no time to question them further before another Vendeeni ship attacked.
Fayt, who the Vendeeni had been after all along, wanted to give himself up. Nel would not allow it even if she didn't know the details, and neither would Cliff and Mirage, whose Quark allies (an offworlder anti-Federation group) entered the planet's atmosphere and counter-assaulted the Vendeeni. Quark's leader Maria Traydor teleported to Aquios Castle, conversing with, it felt like, everyone but Nel.
Anger mounting, the Holy Mother and Queen of Aquaria had to explicitly order her to stand down. This didn't stop her from eavesdropping on Maria and the other offworlders to find out the truth.
The truth being: Fayt's friend and father had been captured by the Vendeeni, that he and other children (including Maria) had been genetically modified into living weapons, other miscellaneous information... and then Cliff caught her listening. To her ire, nobody batted an eyelash, and her presence was totally disregarded. They expressed a need for a powerful weapon to distract the Vendeeni with and Nel re-asserted herself on the basis that these attackers were a threat to everyone INCLUDING her country and would be returning for another barrage. She trusted Fayt and Cliff, thus she offered the Thunder Arrow, Aquaria's finished weapon.
The Queen relented. While they tried to think of a way to get the cannon in range of the Vendeeni, an outcry went up; they had infiltrated the Shrine of Kaddan, a holy land under the Aquios Castle church containing the Sacred Orb and a symbol of the Church of Apris. According to offworlder scanners, the Orb was actually an OPA or Out-of Place Artifact of technology too advanced to properly identify. Nel and her unit fought the encroaching outsiders off successfully and resumed negotiations on how to proceed.
She wasn't a little horrified on how events played out next. The Queen arranged for peace talks with the King of Airyglyph. Not only were they successful, but they had to cooperate with Albel Nox, sadistic Glyphian bastard extraordinaire, to procure their only hope of having range enough with which to attack the Vendeeni. The biggest dragon of all time! Who neither appreciated their presumption nor their gumption. The great dragon Crosell made them defeat him before he'd allow them to ride upon his back in battle or otherwise.
From there it went further downhill. The runological weapon did diddly squat against the Vendeeni and they would probably have died if a mysterious beam of energy hadn't ripped through the sky and exploded the enemy ship. Confused but too relieved to take it for granted, Fayt and co. (minus Nel) beamed up into the Quark's vessel Diplo.
She thought it to be the end of all crazy offworlder shenanigans. Left with the task to collect intel on how various territories were coping with the end of the Airyglyph-Aquaria war, she was ghosting through the Black Brigade training facility where countless Aquarian lives were lost when... well. More shenanigans. Fayt and co. plus his father and friend Sophia were trapped by a Vendeeni device preventing their beaming up to safety. Nel, productive by nature, destroyed the transmitter and got a direct hit from a laser beam for her efforts. The others ignored her protests and brought her aboard the Diplo to heal.
And that's how they got stuck with her. She accompanied them to distant stars, the politics of which she loosely understood as not unlike politics everywhere. Nel also understood the gravity of the situation when the group figured out why Fayt and the other children his age had been genetically modified; they were destined to rebel against the inevitable attack of their universe's Creator. Her faith in Apris, previously unshakable, began to falter.
When they accessed the fourth dimension, home to '4D beings' who played in her universe like a virtual reality sim - when she found out her universe WAS a reality sim, composed of data, a concept she could barely grasp - her faith and a small piece of her mind broke down. Nel continued on as if nothing was amiss, fighting alongside her companions and ultimately killing Luthier, the man and Creator of herself and everybody she knew. In his last moments he initiated the deletion of her reality. Through a fluke she'd never know the reason behind, it recreated itself as it was just after everything went kaput.
Nel maintained her facade of calm. She went home and told no one of what she'd seen, or be branded a seditious heretic.
6. Personality: Nel Zelpher is very much a product of her upbringing. She grew up surrounded by educated and self-contained individuals, learning from an early age the importance of intelligence, confidence and control. The politics of the Aquarian court left their mark, too; Nel is extremely conscientious of what effects her actions might have in the future, and by virtue of this forethought is a very cautious woman. Rarely does she allow her emotions to run ahead of her mouth and brain. When they do take the lead, her indomitable willfulness can cause no end of problems.
Experience has left her world-weary and raw, though her repression keeps it well-hidden. She's good at seeming one way when her personal feelings are the exact opposite of what she conveys, part of her job as a spy. Sometimes she's overly curious and/or manipulative of her friends without even seeing the signs, and ashamed when she finally realizes her mistakes. At odds with the requirements of her profession is Nel's steadfast honor. She will not go back on her word, and genuinely prefers misleading as opposed to outright lying.
She cannot let go of the past. Nel can bury it, but there are people and ideals she can't forget or abandon. She has an obnoxious propensity for suffering in silence and martyring herself to save her comrades.
7. Previous Game Developments: She spent six months in ms-elegante, a mystery/horror game set on a cruise ship in a neverending ocean. She recovered from her post-game faith crisis and explored aspects of the social life she'd never had time for in SO3. Learned stilted, formal English thanks to several people very near and dear to her new existence: Cliff, from her universe, Kevas, a gentlemanly alcoholic troll, and Joseph Ivers, an Irish heartbreaking cook.
Nel needed to keep busy; in addition to daily patrols of the M.S. Elegante, she commenced operating an empty kitchen to distract her mind from no longer having an overarching mission to make progress on. Friends helping around allowed her to relax, just a little bit, without having to exhaust herself.
She had her martyr complex challenged, but not gotten rid of. Her survivor's guilt intensified after Elegante ended, and her mind broke down a little... finding the piled corpses of friends, acquaintances and strangers will do that to a person. Trapped on a deserted island with the surviving passengers of the cruise ship, she shut down temporarily to function on autopilot. Time, hope and companionship could heal it.
8. Appearance: ***Will point out that being 5’7” and 112 pounds is bullcrap no matter what the game manual says. Her in-game model and concept art depict her as a shorty, Nel is an active warrior, regularly carries heavy equipment and while light on her feet, there is no way she’d weigh so little. Muscle’s going to make a difference.
In actuality, her height is closer to between 5'4” and 5'5”. She's a slender woman but also an athlete, shaped through training for speed and strength. Her red hair is kept in a practical bob extending a little below her chin, framing steely violet eyes in a face softer than one would expect in a hardened military woman. Nel keeps fit and clean. Down the front of her legs, her biceps, the backs of her hands and her chest, runes are inscribed into her flesh.
Her arms, legs and torso are covered in fine scars from blades (wounds magically healed don't always heal the whole way through, depending on the energy put into the spell). The biggest is an ugly splotch of scar tissue in her right shoulder where a laser disintegrated... well, most of the shoulder. Everything was regrown, but it left a mark.
9. Abilities: Nel is a medieval ninja wizard special forces government agent.
From the Aquios library, copied for the sake of avoiding a migraine:
Runological force is pure energy that is the source of all action in this world. The power of runological force can be artificially manipulated by carving patterns called runes when needed. And, by combining different runes, it is possible to control the flow of runological force so it can be converted into forms engineers desire in order to produce particular results. The phenomenon that is produced in this manner is known as 'runology'.
The runes it’s talking about, and the original six allegedly bestowed to Aquaria I by the sun god Apris, are the wind, water, fire, earth, light, and darkness runes.
In layman’s terms she’s an elemental witch and a healer, ignoring her non-magical prowess in combat for the time being. Normally, she can produce devastating phenomena like colossal lightning clouds, a steady rain of fire, etc. with leanings toward wind-based attacks. In the Keep, Nel's area of effect is limited to three meters extending from her person. Environmental spells (e.g. something destructive) sucks her energy way faster than, for instance, a healing. She has to conserve her energy like a boss nobody's business. Completely draining her reservoir is a fast track to feverish illness.
10. Languages: Elicoorian (alien language), stilted English (thanks to previous game development). She can read an Elicoor-specific written language, Dragon Runes, that won't be of any use whatsoever off her world.
11. Items: Leather armor, a long scarf and a friend's communicator that enables audio back-and-forth translation. She hears everyone else speak in the language she's most comfortable using, and vice versa. She carries a pouch of medicinal herbs and a second containing ingredients for producing a poison cloud.
12. Weapons: Keep-blunted runic daggers. The amplification they give to her powers will be minor, at best. The smaller knives she keeps hidden are equally blunted.
13. Writing sample - Third Person Prose: “Stop squirming.”
The tailed Menodix boy had to be all of four feet high, but he managed to make himself several dozen handfuls of high-maintenance. Nel smacked his rump for trying to wriggle out of her grip and Roger squealed girlishly.
“B-but miss, I'm fine, honest, ya don' need to...” She wasn't buying it. Not from him. “Miss--”
This time she pinched him, hard. The breathy squeak he emitted from underneath his ridiculous helmet made the Klausian across camp snigger. “Hold still so I don't singe you.” Now there technically wasn't any danger of singing, but what Roger didn't know... hm. He didn't know a lot of things, so that saying applied less. No matter. As long as he sat quietly during her healing, he could be noisy and hyperactive afterward for what she cared.
Nel's hands cupped the air over the gash on his twiggy back, better than it looked in that he hadn't precisely lost gallons of blood. The biggest worry was infection, if she didn't take care of it right this second, which she was; light encompassed her palms and the wound, scorching out bacteria. The muscle and skin knitted itself together in record time. Little bodies were simpler.
“Alright,” she began, relaxing a tad now that she could release him in good conscience, “You can...”
“THANK YOU!” he yelped and twisted in his seat, jumping to give her a messy peck on the cheek. Off the log he shot, tail streaming behind him like a fluffy striped banner. Nel sat back, rubbing her face to dry it and looking fondly disgruntled. It wasn't often her patients were so exuberantly grateful for her assistance. As if summoned by her ill will, Albel raised his shaggy hair and stared in her general direction.
She glowered. This only earned her a toothy smirk. Sensing that if she stayed her rising temper would cause her to say something regrettable, Nel got busy feeding the campfire.
14. Writing sample - First Person Prose: Lord Deior,
I do not begin to understand the game you're playing, but I've had my fill of heroics. What sets you apart? Why... how can you, where others have failed, succeed?
Do you have armies? They won't help. You'll need a hundred miracles to achieve this.
Maybe I shouldn't be so skeptical, but you have to know what's happened to us. You more than anyone, if you are who you claim. It's too much, Lord. If you have something, please, give us a sign.
Just one will do.
15. Tattoo: 'Round her belly button.
Age: 18
Journal: munchacha
Contact: you have these <3
1. Character's Name: Nel Zelpher
2. Fandom: game: Star Ocean 3 // Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
3. Time Frame: post-canon (after half a year in ms-elegante)
4. Age: 23
5. Background: In a galaxy far, far away from Nel's world (Elicoor II), intergalactic space travel was a common occurrence nobody hip with the times would sneeze at. But on an 'underdeveloped' planet like Elicoor II, the Federation - a group with authority over much of the galaxy - applied a UP3. 'UP3' stood for Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact and forbade any interference in the growth of people whose technology had not sufficiently advanced.
This meant Nel and everyone else on her world were unaware of the civilization beyond their skies. The Elicoorians, her planet's main bipedal race, certainly had their guesses; the Church of Apris was a mainstay in much of the daily life of the self-professed Sacred Kingdom of Aquaria, the country Nel would be raised to serve loyally. Its neighbors in the Continent of Gaitt were Airyglyph, a military superpower, and the Sanmite Republic, a less powerful region of hilly green.
Her father was Nevelle Zelpher, half of a royally sanctioned dual-member organization called the Crimson Blade. Nel was born in growing season, and her mother, already ill, passed a day later. Nevelle instilled in her patriotic pride and strict moral guidelines to follow wherever life took her. He raised her in Aquios Castle, the center of his country, where she grew up surrounded by soldiers, scholars and court decorations. Close as they were, when the neighboring nation Airyglyph declared war on Aquaria, he had less and less time for her as his duties as a royal spy were first priority.
While Nevelle fought, his daughter's talent for runology, or magic, was discovered at around eight years old. Like most others who were too young or incapable of controlling their potential, she had runes branded into her skin to serve the same purpose as a lightning rod-- they acted as conduits, and later, would be amplifiers.
In Nel's adolescent years, her father was declared missing in action during a skirmish with the Glyphian Storm Brigade, their mounted forces. His squad returned without him, and nobody could tell his child what had become of him. Nel could not abide it. She stayed in the castle as she had her whole life, and with Nevelle's absence, his room became hers. As soon as she was old enough, her obsession with emulating him led her to enlist in the holy Queen's army.
Training turned out to be her one focus. If not for the persistence of a girl her age named Clair Lasbard, she wouldn't have had a single friend for her single-minded pursuit of making her body and runology deadly weapons. They confided, trusted, went to each other for advice. They sparred and fought and ascended ranks together, attaining skill unmatched by their peers. Nel took the privilege of a Crimson Blade though her training was not yet complete, as did Clair, whose father had also been a Blade. The two of them were the organization's double-edge. Unlike Clair, who would become Commander, she bore the mantle of leading Aquaria's Secret Legion, gathering intelligence on friend and enemy alike.
The war pressed on. Airyglyph proved a hardy foe, and while Aquaria had the advantage of resources and runology, the enemy had numbers and tactical brutality. Research into a 'wondrous' runological weapon wasn't moving quickly enough. Nel's hatred of them grew every year. When she heard of what sounded like a devastating weapon crash-landing into the Glyphian capital - and of two men inside it taken prisoner - she had to investigate.
Alone, she infiltrated the castle holding them. After she killed the soldier guarding their cell, Nel offered the two an ultimatum: give their word they'll lend technological expertise to her country, or stay in the prison and rot-- or die under the Glyphian interrogator's whip. With no other options, they acquiesced, and followed.
The escape to Aquios didn't go as planned. Nel's subordinates Tynave and Farleen were captured while creating a distraction for the Glyphian riders of the Dragon Brigade. As soon as she got her charges Cliff and Fayt (the two men she'd saved, who claimed to be engineers from the nation of Greeton) to Aquarian territory, she abandoned what had been priority to split from them to charge into what she knew to be a suicide mission. Though days earlier she'd said her subordinates knew the risks of the jobs they undertook, Nel absolutely could not leave them behind. A remnant of her father's probable demise, even if she didn't recognize it, and her own martyr complex.
Having the men she'd coerced into cooperating with her for their freedom save her from certain death was a slap to the face. Being lectured by them for recklessness frustrated Nel, who expected to die in the line of duty and inexplicably resented the decision being taken out of her hands. In spite of this, their camaraderie solidified from the incident. The trek continued with further and story-irrelevant incident, but by their arrival at Aquios, Cliff, Fayt and Nel were tightly bonded.
Their task was to complete the runological weapon in development. The Aquarians had advanced technology far beyond what a Medieval-era continent should possess, partly due to the many uses of magic (e.g. every room in the castle was equipped with a heater and air conditioning in the form of rune-inscribed globes). The 'weapon' they were working on was essentially a cannon powered by electricity, or as they called it, 'channeled force'. Cliff and Fayt looked over the schematics and suggested the metal copper for better conductive properties.
This would be a problem, as the only mine with copper in any notable quantity had been overrun by dragons and occasionally the Glyphian Dragon Brigade seeking new mounts. Nel, her rescued subordinates, Cliff, and Fayt departed Aquios with a handful of guards to take the necessary risk. The monsters posed less trouble than the return trip with a wagon full of raw copper; they faced first the Dragon Brigade's second in command, Demetrio, and not a while later the General in charge of the Black Brigade-- the group who'd stolen away Tynave and Farleen.
Defeated, it took every ounce of self-control Nel had in her not to cut down General Albel Nox as he crumpled to his knees. She left him alive as an insult, not because Fayt announced there to be no challenge in killing him. Since Demetrio had revealed a spy in the Aquarian ranks leaked information on the runological weapon, they had to rush back to the capital to finish the construction before war knocked at the gates.
The battle almost came too soon. The odds weren't in Aquaria's favor, and if celestial ships (starships) had not appeared in the sky mid-fight to wreak bloody havoc on both factions, they may have lost. They would've died anyway if Fayt didn't manifest the destructive ability to obliterate the attacking vessels.
Post-battle, Nel got very, very upset. She listened in on Fayt and Cliff, found out they called the people aboard the ships Vendeeni, and that they had not been honest with her regarding their origins... which she had already harbored suspicions about. She had no time to question them further before another Vendeeni ship attacked.
Fayt, who the Vendeeni had been after all along, wanted to give himself up. Nel would not allow it even if she didn't know the details, and neither would Cliff and Mirage, whose Quark allies (an offworlder anti-Federation group) entered the planet's atmosphere and counter-assaulted the Vendeeni. Quark's leader Maria Traydor teleported to Aquios Castle, conversing with, it felt like, everyone but Nel.
Anger mounting, the Holy Mother and Queen of Aquaria had to explicitly order her to stand down. This didn't stop her from eavesdropping on Maria and the other offworlders to find out the truth.
The truth being: Fayt's friend and father had been captured by the Vendeeni, that he and other children (including Maria) had been genetically modified into living weapons, other miscellaneous information... and then Cliff caught her listening. To her ire, nobody batted an eyelash, and her presence was totally disregarded. They expressed a need for a powerful weapon to distract the Vendeeni with and Nel re-asserted herself on the basis that these attackers were a threat to everyone INCLUDING her country and would be returning for another barrage. She trusted Fayt and Cliff, thus she offered the Thunder Arrow, Aquaria's finished weapon.
The Queen relented. While they tried to think of a way to get the cannon in range of the Vendeeni, an outcry went up; they had infiltrated the Shrine of Kaddan, a holy land under the Aquios Castle church containing the Sacred Orb and a symbol of the Church of Apris. According to offworlder scanners, the Orb was actually an OPA or Out-of Place Artifact of technology too advanced to properly identify. Nel and her unit fought the encroaching outsiders off successfully and resumed negotiations on how to proceed.
She wasn't a little horrified on how events played out next. The Queen arranged for peace talks with the King of Airyglyph. Not only were they successful, but they had to cooperate with Albel Nox, sadistic Glyphian bastard extraordinaire, to procure their only hope of having range enough with which to attack the Vendeeni. The biggest dragon of all time! Who neither appreciated their presumption nor their gumption. The great dragon Crosell made them defeat him before he'd allow them to ride upon his back in battle or otherwise.
From there it went further downhill. The runological weapon did diddly squat against the Vendeeni and they would probably have died if a mysterious beam of energy hadn't ripped through the sky and exploded the enemy ship. Confused but too relieved to take it for granted, Fayt and co. (minus Nel) beamed up into the Quark's vessel Diplo.
She thought it to be the end of all crazy offworlder shenanigans. Left with the task to collect intel on how various territories were coping with the end of the Airyglyph-Aquaria war, she was ghosting through the Black Brigade training facility where countless Aquarian lives were lost when... well. More shenanigans. Fayt and co. plus his father and friend Sophia were trapped by a Vendeeni device preventing their beaming up to safety. Nel, productive by nature, destroyed the transmitter and got a direct hit from a laser beam for her efforts. The others ignored her protests and brought her aboard the Diplo to heal.
And that's how they got stuck with her. She accompanied them to distant stars, the politics of which she loosely understood as not unlike politics everywhere. Nel also understood the gravity of the situation when the group figured out why Fayt and the other children his age had been genetically modified; they were destined to rebel against the inevitable attack of their universe's Creator. Her faith in Apris, previously unshakable, began to falter.
When they accessed the fourth dimension, home to '4D beings' who played in her universe like a virtual reality sim - when she found out her universe WAS a reality sim, composed of data, a concept she could barely grasp - her faith and a small piece of her mind broke down. Nel continued on as if nothing was amiss, fighting alongside her companions and ultimately killing Luthier, the man and Creator of herself and everybody she knew. In his last moments he initiated the deletion of her reality. Through a fluke she'd never know the reason behind, it recreated itself as it was just after everything went kaput.
Nel maintained her facade of calm. She went home and told no one of what she'd seen, or be branded a seditious heretic.
6. Personality: Nel Zelpher is very much a product of her upbringing. She grew up surrounded by educated and self-contained individuals, learning from an early age the importance of intelligence, confidence and control. The politics of the Aquarian court left their mark, too; Nel is extremely conscientious of what effects her actions might have in the future, and by virtue of this forethought is a very cautious woman. Rarely does she allow her emotions to run ahead of her mouth and brain. When they do take the lead, her indomitable willfulness can cause no end of problems.
Experience has left her world-weary and raw, though her repression keeps it well-hidden. She's good at seeming one way when her personal feelings are the exact opposite of what she conveys, part of her job as a spy. Sometimes she's overly curious and/or manipulative of her friends without even seeing the signs, and ashamed when she finally realizes her mistakes. At odds with the requirements of her profession is Nel's steadfast honor. She will not go back on her word, and genuinely prefers misleading as opposed to outright lying.
She cannot let go of the past. Nel can bury it, but there are people and ideals she can't forget or abandon. She has an obnoxious propensity for suffering in silence and martyring herself to save her comrades.
7. Previous Game Developments: She spent six months in ms-elegante, a mystery/horror game set on a cruise ship in a neverending ocean. She recovered from her post-game faith crisis and explored aspects of the social life she'd never had time for in SO3. Learned stilted, formal English thanks to several people very near and dear to her new existence: Cliff, from her universe, Kevas, a gentlemanly alcoholic troll, and Joseph Ivers, an Irish heartbreaking cook.
Nel needed to keep busy; in addition to daily patrols of the M.S. Elegante, she commenced operating an empty kitchen to distract her mind from no longer having an overarching mission to make progress on. Friends helping around allowed her to relax, just a little bit, without having to exhaust herself.
She had her martyr complex challenged, but not gotten rid of. Her survivor's guilt intensified after Elegante ended, and her mind broke down a little... finding the piled corpses of friends, acquaintances and strangers will do that to a person. Trapped on a deserted island with the surviving passengers of the cruise ship, she shut down temporarily to function on autopilot. Time, hope and companionship could heal it.
8. Appearance: ***Will point out that being 5’7” and 112 pounds is bullcrap no matter what the game manual says. Her in-game model and concept art depict her as a shorty, Nel is an active warrior, regularly carries heavy equipment and while light on her feet, there is no way she’d weigh so little. Muscle’s going to make a difference.
In actuality, her height is closer to between 5'4” and 5'5”. She's a slender woman but also an athlete, shaped through training for speed and strength. Her red hair is kept in a practical bob extending a little below her chin, framing steely violet eyes in a face softer than one would expect in a hardened military woman. Nel keeps fit and clean. Down the front of her legs, her biceps, the backs of her hands and her chest, runes are inscribed into her flesh.
Her arms, legs and torso are covered in fine scars from blades (wounds magically healed don't always heal the whole way through, depending on the energy put into the spell). The biggest is an ugly splotch of scar tissue in her right shoulder where a laser disintegrated... well, most of the shoulder. Everything was regrown, but it left a mark.
9. Abilities: Nel is a medieval ninja wizard special forces government agent.
From the Aquios library, copied for the sake of avoiding a migraine:
Runological force is pure energy that is the source of all action in this world. The power of runological force can be artificially manipulated by carving patterns called runes when needed. And, by combining different runes, it is possible to control the flow of runological force so it can be converted into forms engineers desire in order to produce particular results. The phenomenon that is produced in this manner is known as 'runology'.
The runes it’s talking about, and the original six allegedly bestowed to Aquaria I by the sun god Apris, are the wind, water, fire, earth, light, and darkness runes.
In layman’s terms she’s an elemental witch and a healer, ignoring her non-magical prowess in combat for the time being. Normally, she can produce devastating phenomena like colossal lightning clouds, a steady rain of fire, etc. with leanings toward wind-based attacks. In the Keep, Nel's area of effect is limited to three meters extending from her person. Environmental spells (e.g. something destructive) sucks her energy way faster than, for instance, a healing. She has to conserve her energy like a boss nobody's business. Completely draining her reservoir is a fast track to feverish illness.
10. Languages: Elicoorian (alien language), stilted English (thanks to previous game development). She can read an Elicoor-specific written language, Dragon Runes, that won't be of any use whatsoever off her world.
11. Items: Leather armor, a long scarf and a friend's communicator that enables audio back-and-forth translation. She hears everyone else speak in the language she's most comfortable using, and vice versa. She carries a pouch of medicinal herbs and a second containing ingredients for producing a poison cloud.
12. Weapons: Keep-blunted runic daggers. The amplification they give to her powers will be minor, at best. The smaller knives she keeps hidden are equally blunted.
13. Writing sample - Third Person Prose: “Stop squirming.”
The tailed Menodix boy had to be all of four feet high, but he managed to make himself several dozen handfuls of high-maintenance. Nel smacked his rump for trying to wriggle out of her grip and Roger squealed girlishly.
“B-but miss, I'm fine, honest, ya don' need to...” She wasn't buying it. Not from him. “Miss--”
This time she pinched him, hard. The breathy squeak he emitted from underneath his ridiculous helmet made the Klausian across camp snigger. “Hold still so I don't singe you.” Now there technically wasn't any danger of singing, but what Roger didn't know... hm. He didn't know a lot of things, so that saying applied less. No matter. As long as he sat quietly during her healing, he could be noisy and hyperactive afterward for what she cared.
Nel's hands cupped the air over the gash on his twiggy back, better than it looked in that he hadn't precisely lost gallons of blood. The biggest worry was infection, if she didn't take care of it right this second, which she was; light encompassed her palms and the wound, scorching out bacteria. The muscle and skin knitted itself together in record time. Little bodies were simpler.
“Alright,” she began, relaxing a tad now that she could release him in good conscience, “You can...”
“THANK YOU!” he yelped and twisted in his seat, jumping to give her a messy peck on the cheek. Off the log he shot, tail streaming behind him like a fluffy striped banner. Nel sat back, rubbing her face to dry it and looking fondly disgruntled. It wasn't often her patients were so exuberantly grateful for her assistance. As if summoned by her ill will, Albel raised his shaggy hair and stared in her general direction.
She glowered. This only earned her a toothy smirk. Sensing that if she stayed her rising temper would cause her to say something regrettable, Nel got busy feeding the campfire.
14. Writing sample - First Person Prose: Lord Deior,
I do not begin to understand the game you're playing, but I've had my fill of heroics. What sets you apart? Why... how can you, where others have failed, succeed?
Do you have armies? They won't help. You'll need a hundred miracles to achieve this.
Maybe I shouldn't be so skeptical, but you have to know what's happened to us. You more than anyone, if you are who you claim. It's too much, Lord. If you have something, please, give us a sign.
Just one will do.
15. Tattoo: 'Round her belly button.