Application, Project Purity
Herein lies this journal's application to project_purity
☣ Character
Character Name: Seth
Character Age: 600+, but for all intents and purposes looks and acts 16-17.
Canon + Format: Moon Child, manga, published in English by CMX. Rather obscure, but.
Background: Seth belongs to a species of intergalactic salmon-mermaids who happen to have the sexual determination system of clownfish. They spawn on Earth, the young swim out to planets light-years away in order to mature and live their lives to the fullest. Once they mature, the mermaids become either male or female, return to Earth to spawn again and die. Mermaids who fail to lay eggs die faster. Seth happens to be one of the three children of the Seira, the Little Mermaid in Anderson's fairy tale, who in the 14th century fell in love with a prince and traded her voice to become human. She obtained a pair of legs, met with the 'Prince', and loved him so much that she'd happily sell her entire race to the Inquisition in order for the prince's family to gain status in Christendom. The prince, however, did not love her back---and so Seira did not become entirely human. She laid her mermaid eggs in the sea and then turned into sea foam, leaving behind a horrible legacy---the witch hunts continued until the 18th century, destroying all unknowing mermaids returning from space to mate and effectively putting the mermaid race to the brink of extinction. A fairly nasty prophecy began to spread among the mermaids still surviving on Earth : if the daughter of Seira and the Prince does not mate with the son of her intended mermaid betrothed, all the waters on Earth will be polluted, and all life, including the mermaids, would die. Seira's infertile sisters took her eggs to the moon, where they hatched into identical triplets---strong and clever Teruto; kind, fragile Seth and willful, ever-cheerful Benjamin.
For six centuries, the siblings lived on the moon with their foster mothers. Seth had always been the favourite of Teruto, who fussed over him and his well-being with a dedication that bordered on obsessive, and grew up to be delicate, kind and gentle, having received nothing else in his life, knowing neither ugliness nor cruelty. His precarious health, however, convinced Seth that he'll never mature into a full mermaid and fall in love, resigning himself to living and dying for the sake of whichever sibling does. He always thought this to be Teruto's role----Teruto's affections were fully returned, which left Benjamin in a somewhat lonely position---but unbeknowest to him, Teruto cannot turn female, as he lacked an ovary. Teruto also fervently hoped the one to mature would be Seth, so he could protect and live for Seth and Seth's children, but the one to turn into a woman was in fact Benjamin. This means that both Seth and Teruto were fated to live and die meaninglessly for Benjamin's sake, unless Benjamin happens to die first.
Seth was surprised, but accepted this with a smile like everything else. Teruto could not.
In the summer of 1985, the foster mothers died and the three siblings returned to Earth. Benjamin, to fall in love and lay eggs. Seth and Teruto, to protect 'her' until she does, and the eggs until they hatch. Things seemed to be progressing smoothly until Benjamin disappeared one day, lost her memory and fell in love with a ballet dancer named Art. By the time Seth and Teruto found Benjamin, she had already refused to turn into a full female mermaid, instead switching back and forth between the form of the radiantly beautiful woman she was supposed to become and a 12-year-old boy (because Art liked him like a little brother, and refused to believe she was the woman). This cemented Teruto's hatred of Benjamin's 'ungratefulness', believing that Seth is more deserving of the chance. Seth disagreed and thought they should do what they were supposed to do all along---support Benjamin as her spares, as her siblings, until the very end. He was growing more sickly by the day, however, due to the polluted air of New York and his refusal to let Teruto go to the sea witch's lair to get medicinal seaweeds. He needed more and more rest, and began to cough more often.
And one day, Seth died.
Teruto, beside himself with grief, took his body and went to the sea witch's lair, willing to do anything in order to return Seth back to life. He promised to give away himself, everything he was, everything he could become---but then, what would happen to Seth in a world without him? How would Seth be happy? The answer, obviously, lies in another contract : in exchange for reviving Seth and allowing him to bear the eggs of the mermaid prince instead of Benjamin, Teruto would destroy all life on Earth for the witch.
When Seth woke up again, he was back in his bed and Teruto was gone. Having no knowledge about how to survive and feeling helpless, hopeless, and desperate, he spent most of his time looking for Teruto until the day he walked too long under the summer rain and fell unconscious. When he woke up again, he discovered that he has been carried back to his apartment by a merman who seemed to be a bit of a jerk. This was Shonach, the son of the original mermaid prince---the one in Teruto's contract. Despite knowing that Shonach has been in love with Benjamin's image for centuries and knowing that this is a piece of destiny he is not meant to tamper with, he can't help falling slowly in love. This has began to awaken in Seth a sense of selfishness that he never had before, despite his attempts to properly set the prophecy right and ensure everybody's happiness, and matters get even more complicated when he and Benjamin both started to have dreams of horrible disasters that always came true. Volcanoes, airplane crashes, international incidents---and lastly, a vision of a great explosion, a lifeless wasteland, a chain of ecologically cataclysmic events that finally turned Earth into a dead planet.
Seth, Benjamin and Shonach began to try and figure out the connection between these disasters, the dreams and the mermaids' prophecy, and their path eventually led them to Kiev, USSR, where the enigmatic multi-billionaire Gill Owen is holding a grand ballet in which Art was going to perform. Benjamin was led to to believe that she would be the cause of the final disaster and tried to convince Art to kill her, leaving Seth and Shonach to figure out the mystery. They stayed in the USSR for some time, trying to find out what was going to happen and if the the they were responsible for the disasters in their dreams. Seth, on one hand, was also preparing to turn into sea foam and die, and on the other hand was started to hope otherwise. It was the beginning of the end of the mermaids' mating season---the end of Seth's supposed lifespan, but he had been told by Gill Owen, who is heavily involved in the USSR's science programs, that something would happen before the end of spring that would turn him into a mature mermaid. He knew that it was probably going to be something terrible, but found himself reluctant to stop it despite the horrific dreams he kept seeing. And then it was the week before April 25th, 1986, when the name of the disaster finally becomes clear : the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl.
(Due to the nature of the Chernobyl disaster in canon being dissimilar from the disaster in our world, its destruction is suggested to eventually lead into a great war that turns into a nuclear apocalypse.)
Canon Point: Near the end of volume 12, the day before the scene where Shonach originally planned to leave for Chernobyl. At this point Seth hasn't turnd into his mature form, they know Chernobyl's going to explode and the day it's going to explode, they just don't know what to do. Seth himself has more or less decided that Chernobyl exploding is a Bad Thing, but he's still not sure if they should try to stop it.
[Optional] Previous RP History: N/A
Personality: Seth is, in general, a total sweetheart. Growing up under the zealous devotion of his brother, he was allowed to possess a completely pristine way of thinking, unmarred by even the slightest hint of negativity towards anyone. His weak constitution leads into an empathy for all things living. The constant teachings of his foster mothers that he (and his other siblings) needs selflessly devote their lives to whoever among them became female gives him a tendency to put others before himself, regardless of the personal cost, as Seth never expected to become female in the first place. He hoped, but never expected, never claimed anything as his own. Perfectly willing to live a meaningless life as somebody else's spare and call it happiness that he could do that for someone, although it's motivated by love as much as expectation. He loves his siblings, does everything in his power to make Benjamin happy, and in his dying moments tried to ensure that Teruto wouldn't do anything that endangers himself. But in general, this is a person whose primary driving force to be good is neither 'because it's right' nor 'because it feels nice to help others', but 'because someone would've wanted me to', even if it means handing something he desires most to somebody else. Especially if it meant that.
Seth hated himself that way.
Although he is still sweet and gentle and has a heart made of gold, that's precisely what he dislikes most about himself. Seth has always had a resentment against the world that he only very occasionally thinks about, but is highly implied to always lurk at the back of his mind. He resents the world for denying him a happy ending. He resents the people who takes him for granted. He resents his own destiny for giving him no option but to die meaninglessly. Most of all, he's jealous of the world that his siblings see, that Teruto is clever and strong and will always be a 'better' person than he is, that Benjamin is beautiful and lucky and that she won't die for his sake the way he has to live for hers. And most of all he resents himself---gentle Seth, kind Seth, Seth who is unable to raise a voice to anybody, who is unable to say what he really wants, who is incapable of anything but smiling and waiting for everyone else to be happy. Through falling in love, he has started to begin to change. He despises the act of waiting more and more, and began to do things even if he expected nothing from the outcome. He has learned what it is like to be selfish, to want something desperately that he would consider leaving thousands to die, to want his sister dead, just to have it. He is very horrified with this. It's still not going away, and it's this mixture of selflessness and selfishness, inertia and action, love and hate, that drives much of Seth's development in canon.
To give you an idea : What he wanted was really simple. He didn't want a happy ending. He didn't expect to be loved back, being a 'number two, or three or four' is fine. What he wanted was just the right to spend his last moments with the person he loves, and not to die alone, forgotten and unmourned. He doesn't really allow himself to fight for it, but he wants it, and wants it badly. And it's implied that he himself wouldn't mind doing nothing about Chernobyl and let thousands of people die, ignoring signs and portents that Earth would turn into an ecological wasteland if it happens, if it means he has that right. Even if he does wind up doing the right thing, it's quite unclear whether that was truly his intention or just fate intervening at just the right time (or the wrong time, depending on the interpretation).
On meeting him for the first time, Seth would look like a quiet, polite young man who is a little shy of strangers. Quietly determined and accommodating, he would seem like the embodiment of calm and grace itself. Then he trips on something, apologizes profusely before ordering a glass of salted water, and it becomes apparent that he's more than a little clumsy and doesn't think entirely the way everybody thinks. Indeed, his nature as an 'alien' itself leads to strange ways of thinking ('it's okay to let somebody seduce your prepubescent little brother if she's going to turn into a beautiful woman at night', for example), and his sheltered upbringing has given him something of a skewed perspective on the world. He trusts strangers too easily for his own good---oh, he's wary of them because he's not used to people, but earning his trust is pathetically easy---and interpret social cues wrong in odd ways (he did get most of it right, but the parts that he got wrong probably would raise eyebrows), and can be suicidally reckless when he has his mind made up about something. While Seth generally is forgiving and will turn a blind eye to anything people say to him, he can be pushed to the edge, and in that state would have the mental fortitude to take on the entire security forces of Chernobyl by himself and Force Choke people. It helps that he's in his female form at the time, but in these kinds of things, it's the thought that counts.
Lastly, but perhaps rather importantly for this setting---Seth considers himself female, biologically, and defines nearly all of his relationships and life goals in those terms. Socially, however, he talks, behaves, and generally seems to be more comfortable with others interacting with him as a male. It's actually one his selling points...he plays the roles of the kind mother, the supportive brother, the frustrated young man, the girl in love. All of this bled in and out of each other depending on the person he's talking to and the situation at hand, and it's difficult to tell where one role ends and another begins, in the end Seth is Seth. This is very fine in canon, considering his hermaphrodite biology, but as he's going to turn into a highly confused intersexed young man (as in, he is more masculine than feminine, the English language clearly could use more words), it will likely become a significant part of his fish-out-of-the-water confusion.
As he's going to be pulled in exactly one day before the event that starts a countdown to 'the ecological end of the Earth as we know it' according to prophecy, Seth will wake up being very, very shaken. At first, he'll believe that it's either his foreseeing dream or a future he has been sent to as a punishment for having caused and not being able to prevent, but will eventually come to terms with it. His memories are fairly compatible with the myths of the War, and he'll think that all of it was just that---lies, made of people he knew from real life and his own desires to dream of a happy ending. Whether he would do well or not is another story. The Wasteland is a harsh mistress, after all, for innocence.
Appearance: Seth is a young man of slight build with delicate features, blonde hair, and eyes the color of the deep blue sea. If it's sufficiently dark out, Seth's androgynous enough to be taken for a girl, but will otherwise clearly look like a young man, albeit a somewhat delicate one. There's a slightly aristocratic air to his looks---his father was a prince and his mother was the most beautiful mermaid who ever lived---but his general demeanor will give off vibes of being quite down-to-earth, and unless with his older twin, Seth tends to blend pretty well into the background. He is often seen in an all-white formal suit in canon, although this is less of a fashion statement than removable scales for sexually immature mermaids. He's medium height.
Abilities:
Seth is, essentially, a shapeshifting hermaphrodite psychic space fish, so some adjustments are in order to preserve the atmosphere of the setting. He rarely ever used any of these in canon due to his frailness, but they all seem to be constant among merfolk in the series regardless of power level.
Powers He Won't Be Using In Project Purity
1. Ability to turn into a spacefaring fish : Duh.
2. Ability to survive in vacuum : Duh.
3. Ability to turn into a gorgeous woman with greatly enhanced psionics if all his siblings die : again, he's turning from hermaphrodite mermaid into intersexed human, so this will make no sense. Not that, you know, I expect anyone to app his siblings.
Powers Available to Seth in Project Purity
Aside from the above, Seth is capable of using a number of psionic powers. Most of these are already fairly limited due to his frail constitution, however, so I see no reason to nerf them even further, except for one. Explanations as follows :
1. Low-level telekinesis : Seth's telekinesis is probably his most useful self-defense ability, but that's really all it's good for. He's capable of lifting objects that he himself could lift physically, although he can do it to a number of items at a time, and cause glass or other brittle objects to break. This occasionally happens when he's distressed. It is implied in the series that he can use it to break critical bones in a human body or burst someone's eyes right in their sockets, or break small devices like guns and cameras, but it'll require more stamina than he can safely supply and will be used very, very sparingly.
2. Hypnosis/Telepathy : He can Jedi Mind Trick people in canon and make them temporarily believe they've seen things that aren't really there and/or didn't really happen, or forget certain details of what actually *did* happened. Which is ironic, considering his situation here. He can't use it to force people to do things they won't otherwise do, however, and it is limited to 'camouflaging' the true shape of things and events. Think of it as a squid's ink cloud/color-changing in psionic form.
3. Illusions : Related to the above. In canon, he could create images of giant, prehistoric fish swimming through towns. I'd like him to keep this, but the scale of things he could create would be greatly diminished. It'd be more like a nice party trick than Godzilla Impersonation. It's stated in canon that he could create images of other things, it's just that he prefers fish.
4. Underwater Breathing : Waffled quite a bit about this, since you generally don't want to go into water in Fallout and it could break things, but it's such an integral part of his identity that I don't want to mess with it. A-at least it fits with the mutation theme? And he will at least lose the ability to move effortlessly in water, and has to deal with pressure, drag and radiation like everybody else since his body is now for all intents and purposes a human one?
5. Opening Locks : An extension of his telekinesis, Seth is able to open any lock, any, if he thinks about it hard enough. In context of this setting I'll reduce it to all mechanical locks and simple electronic locks, to make up for changes in technology, and he won't be able to avoid triggering booby-traps, if there are any.
6. Tracking. As long as he meets someone within a certain distance of a place they usually frequent, Seth can find that place by tracing the currents of the air. Canon doesn't give an approximation of what this distance is, so I'll call it 'two-mile radius'.
Corollary A : This is not an ability, but as long as we're on the subject of traits...Seth is canonically very, very susceptible to pollution. He died from it once, after all. In the context of the game, this will mean he's going to have weaker constitution than most people due to everything being slightly contaminated, and he will be able to withstand far less radiation than everybody else. This probably won't stop him from being an idiot once he puts his mind to it, but he's going to be spending a fortune on medicine if he does.
Items/Weapons:
- a set of extra clothing consisting of a suit, bowtie, trousers and leather shoes, all completely white. They looked like they might have been in good condition once, but are now more than a little frayed around the edges. (This is a memento of his family life, so to speak.) Should this exceed the three items limit, I'll keep the suit and the tie.
- a matchbook from an unspecified bar whose logo has already faded beyond recognition. (This is a memento of his love interest.)
☣ Samples
First Person Sample:
[the camera started showing an empty corner of a room. From another corner, there's a series of clattering sounds, like someone has just tripped over an entire broom closet at once, and something that sounds a little bit like fluttering fabric. After a few minutes someone (presumably the one who tripped over the broom closet) said something that sounds like 'oops', and the camera turned to a very, very makeshift Christmas Tree in the middle of the room. Seth is not in the camera's view, but he was speaking quite close to where the PipBoy was.]
There. Now that's a proper angle to show the fruits of hard labor.
[he sighs. It's hard to tell whether it's from satisfaction in a job well done or if it's from exasperation at himself, but the shape of the Christmas tree does not suggest the former. It's made out of planks, sheets, dirty strips of plastic, rusted metal spokes and balls of twine. At the top, there's a tin can with a picture of a star drawn on it with a marker.]
It's a pretty good Christmas tree, isn't it? One of the street children told me how to make one, or I wouldn't know. To think that I spent my last Christmas in New York and never got around to observing the festivities....it seemed like just a human custom then, and there were so many things going on. How strange it is to be doing this now.
...it was really hard to get all those things here without tripping over something, and I had to resort to a little bit of, ah, cheating, just to get that can up there. Do you really do this every year? That's...amazing. It's always amazing to hear about what everyone is capable of, here.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I wish you all a nice evening, and that you find whatever you seek in the upcoming year.
Third Person Sample:
Seth had always loved the sea. He loved it from the first time Miralda told him the stories, six hundred years ago (six hundred years? Was it really?), of the times when mermaids still wore tails and the oceans were alive with fish. He loved hearing of the great swarms of translucent jellyfish, floating their way up to the sunlit surface, of the great whales singing songs that nobody on land ever heard. Home. It was home. It was where Mother laid her eggs, where he slept between the yolk and the warm currents and breathed in the sweet, salty water, where he first heard the lullabies of currents and sea foam. It was where he was born. It was where he expected to die.
This sea was a little bit different.
The sea in New York was different from what Miralda told them, too, of course. It was less alive, its songs were fainter. That sea, however, was still so beautiful that he couldn't stop himself from crying just from the sight. This. This was something else. There was something that felt...wrong in it, something he could not place. It was not as dead as the land outside of the city seemed to be, there was life. He might be human now, but Seth still felt like he could feel the movements of its fish and the breathing of its clams as well as any man could sense the coming rain. It was the sea, but it wasn't home (did home really exist?).
He took in a deep breath (the air was cold and stank of metal) and dip his foot into the waves (the water was cold, was this really a good idea?), forgetting to take off his shoes. It felt wetter than he thought, wetter than it used to be, for some reason, but Seth inhaled again and took another step, and another. And another. He tried to remember what happened when he tried to breathe in the water at the sink, the sensation of pain in his lungs, the shock of having to come up for air. Fear. Fear of being drowned.
He had to do it again. Here. Here in the sea, where he came from and where he expected to go, if he was to convince himself that his memories were lies and this was reality. They were right, he was not a mermaid anymore, not anything, he couldn't even breathe in the water, couldn't turn into a woman, couldn't see the future, couldn't save anyone. He was just a madman dreaming mad dreams. Dreams. He had to let go of those. Something in it was true, he'd like to believe some of it was real---that he had siblings named Teruto and Benjamin and once fell in love so strongly that he couldn't breathe---but the rest, the rest he had to forget.
If he drowned here, if he had to struggle just to save himself from the sea, perhaps he would be able to face the truth. If he drowned here, perhaps he could finally wake up.
(does he want to?)
Seth took another step. And another. And another.
☣ Character
Character Name: Seth
Character Age: 600+, but for all intents and purposes looks and acts 16-17.
Canon + Format: Moon Child, manga, published in English by CMX. Rather obscure, but.
Background: Seth belongs to a species of intergalactic salmon-mermaids who happen to have the sexual determination system of clownfish. They spawn on Earth, the young swim out to planets light-years away in order to mature and live their lives to the fullest. Once they mature, the mermaids become either male or female, return to Earth to spawn again and die. Mermaids who fail to lay eggs die faster. Seth happens to be one of the three children of the Seira, the Little Mermaid in Anderson's fairy tale, who in the 14th century fell in love with a prince and traded her voice to become human. She obtained a pair of legs, met with the 'Prince', and loved him so much that she'd happily sell her entire race to the Inquisition in order for the prince's family to gain status in Christendom. The prince, however, did not love her back---and so Seira did not become entirely human. She laid her mermaid eggs in the sea and then turned into sea foam, leaving behind a horrible legacy---the witch hunts continued until the 18th century, destroying all unknowing mermaids returning from space to mate and effectively putting the mermaid race to the brink of extinction. A fairly nasty prophecy began to spread among the mermaids still surviving on Earth : if the daughter of Seira and the Prince does not mate with the son of her intended mermaid betrothed, all the waters on Earth will be polluted, and all life, including the mermaids, would die. Seira's infertile sisters took her eggs to the moon, where they hatched into identical triplets---strong and clever Teruto; kind, fragile Seth and willful, ever-cheerful Benjamin.
For six centuries, the siblings lived on the moon with their foster mothers. Seth had always been the favourite of Teruto, who fussed over him and his well-being with a dedication that bordered on obsessive, and grew up to be delicate, kind and gentle, having received nothing else in his life, knowing neither ugliness nor cruelty. His precarious health, however, convinced Seth that he'll never mature into a full mermaid and fall in love, resigning himself to living and dying for the sake of whichever sibling does. He always thought this to be Teruto's role----Teruto's affections were fully returned, which left Benjamin in a somewhat lonely position---but unbeknowest to him, Teruto cannot turn female, as he lacked an ovary. Teruto also fervently hoped the one to mature would be Seth, so he could protect and live for Seth and Seth's children, but the one to turn into a woman was in fact Benjamin. This means that both Seth and Teruto were fated to live and die meaninglessly for Benjamin's sake, unless Benjamin happens to die first.
Seth was surprised, but accepted this with a smile like everything else. Teruto could not.
In the summer of 1985, the foster mothers died and the three siblings returned to Earth. Benjamin, to fall in love and lay eggs. Seth and Teruto, to protect 'her' until she does, and the eggs until they hatch. Things seemed to be progressing smoothly until Benjamin disappeared one day, lost her memory and fell in love with a ballet dancer named Art. By the time Seth and Teruto found Benjamin, she had already refused to turn into a full female mermaid, instead switching back and forth between the form of the radiantly beautiful woman she was supposed to become and a 12-year-old boy (because Art liked him like a little brother, and refused to believe she was the woman). This cemented Teruto's hatred of Benjamin's 'ungratefulness', believing that Seth is more deserving of the chance. Seth disagreed and thought they should do what they were supposed to do all along---support Benjamin as her spares, as her siblings, until the very end. He was growing more sickly by the day, however, due to the polluted air of New York and his refusal to let Teruto go to the sea witch's lair to get medicinal seaweeds. He needed more and more rest, and began to cough more often.
And one day, Seth died.
Teruto, beside himself with grief, took his body and went to the sea witch's lair, willing to do anything in order to return Seth back to life. He promised to give away himself, everything he was, everything he could become---but then, what would happen to Seth in a world without him? How would Seth be happy? The answer, obviously, lies in another contract : in exchange for reviving Seth and allowing him to bear the eggs of the mermaid prince instead of Benjamin, Teruto would destroy all life on Earth for the witch.
When Seth woke up again, he was back in his bed and Teruto was gone. Having no knowledge about how to survive and feeling helpless, hopeless, and desperate, he spent most of his time looking for Teruto until the day he walked too long under the summer rain and fell unconscious. When he woke up again, he discovered that he has been carried back to his apartment by a merman who seemed to be a bit of a jerk. This was Shonach, the son of the original mermaid prince---the one in Teruto's contract. Despite knowing that Shonach has been in love with Benjamin's image for centuries and knowing that this is a piece of destiny he is not meant to tamper with, he can't help falling slowly in love. This has began to awaken in Seth a sense of selfishness that he never had before, despite his attempts to properly set the prophecy right and ensure everybody's happiness, and matters get even more complicated when he and Benjamin both started to have dreams of horrible disasters that always came true. Volcanoes, airplane crashes, international incidents---and lastly, a vision of a great explosion, a lifeless wasteland, a chain of ecologically cataclysmic events that finally turned Earth into a dead planet.
Seth, Benjamin and Shonach began to try and figure out the connection between these disasters, the dreams and the mermaids' prophecy, and their path eventually led them to Kiev, USSR, where the enigmatic multi-billionaire Gill Owen is holding a grand ballet in which Art was going to perform. Benjamin was led to to believe that she would be the cause of the final disaster and tried to convince Art to kill her, leaving Seth and Shonach to figure out the mystery. They stayed in the USSR for some time, trying to find out what was going to happen and if the the they were responsible for the disasters in their dreams. Seth, on one hand, was also preparing to turn into sea foam and die, and on the other hand was started to hope otherwise. It was the beginning of the end of the mermaids' mating season---the end of Seth's supposed lifespan, but he had been told by Gill Owen, who is heavily involved in the USSR's science programs, that something would happen before the end of spring that would turn him into a mature mermaid. He knew that it was probably going to be something terrible, but found himself reluctant to stop it despite the horrific dreams he kept seeing. And then it was the week before April 25th, 1986, when the name of the disaster finally becomes clear : the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl.
(Due to the nature of the Chernobyl disaster in canon being dissimilar from the disaster in our world, its destruction is suggested to eventually lead into a great war that turns into a nuclear apocalypse.)
Canon Point: Near the end of volume 12, the day before the scene where Shonach originally planned to leave for Chernobyl. At this point Seth hasn't turnd into his mature form, they know Chernobyl's going to explode and the day it's going to explode, they just don't know what to do. Seth himself has more or less decided that Chernobyl exploding is a Bad Thing, but he's still not sure if they should try to stop it.
[Optional] Previous RP History: N/A
Personality: Seth is, in general, a total sweetheart. Growing up under the zealous devotion of his brother, he was allowed to possess a completely pristine way of thinking, unmarred by even the slightest hint of negativity towards anyone. His weak constitution leads into an empathy for all things living. The constant teachings of his foster mothers that he (and his other siblings) needs selflessly devote their lives to whoever among them became female gives him a tendency to put others before himself, regardless of the personal cost, as Seth never expected to become female in the first place. He hoped, but never expected, never claimed anything as his own. Perfectly willing to live a meaningless life as somebody else's spare and call it happiness that he could do that for someone, although it's motivated by love as much as expectation. He loves his siblings, does everything in his power to make Benjamin happy, and in his dying moments tried to ensure that Teruto wouldn't do anything that endangers himself. But in general, this is a person whose primary driving force to be good is neither 'because it's right' nor 'because it feels nice to help others', but 'because someone would've wanted me to', even if it means handing something he desires most to somebody else. Especially if it meant that.
Seth hated himself that way.
Although he is still sweet and gentle and has a heart made of gold, that's precisely what he dislikes most about himself. Seth has always had a resentment against the world that he only very occasionally thinks about, but is highly implied to always lurk at the back of his mind. He resents the world for denying him a happy ending. He resents the people who takes him for granted. He resents his own destiny for giving him no option but to die meaninglessly. Most of all, he's jealous of the world that his siblings see, that Teruto is clever and strong and will always be a 'better' person than he is, that Benjamin is beautiful and lucky and that she won't die for his sake the way he has to live for hers. And most of all he resents himself---gentle Seth, kind Seth, Seth who is unable to raise a voice to anybody, who is unable to say what he really wants, who is incapable of anything but smiling and waiting for everyone else to be happy. Through falling in love, he has started to begin to change. He despises the act of waiting more and more, and began to do things even if he expected nothing from the outcome. He has learned what it is like to be selfish, to want something desperately that he would consider leaving thousands to die, to want his sister dead, just to have it. He is very horrified with this. It's still not going away, and it's this mixture of selflessness and selfishness, inertia and action, love and hate, that drives much of Seth's development in canon.
To give you an idea : What he wanted was really simple. He didn't want a happy ending. He didn't expect to be loved back, being a 'number two, or three or four' is fine. What he wanted was just the right to spend his last moments with the person he loves, and not to die alone, forgotten and unmourned. He doesn't really allow himself to fight for it, but he wants it, and wants it badly. And it's implied that he himself wouldn't mind doing nothing about Chernobyl and let thousands of people die, ignoring signs and portents that Earth would turn into an ecological wasteland if it happens, if it means he has that right. Even if he does wind up doing the right thing, it's quite unclear whether that was truly his intention or just fate intervening at just the right time (or the wrong time, depending on the interpretation).
On meeting him for the first time, Seth would look like a quiet, polite young man who is a little shy of strangers. Quietly determined and accommodating, he would seem like the embodiment of calm and grace itself. Then he trips on something, apologizes profusely before ordering a glass of salted water, and it becomes apparent that he's more than a little clumsy and doesn't think entirely the way everybody thinks. Indeed, his nature as an 'alien' itself leads to strange ways of thinking ('it's okay to let somebody seduce your prepubescent little brother if she's going to turn into a beautiful woman at night', for example), and his sheltered upbringing has given him something of a skewed perspective on the world. He trusts strangers too easily for his own good---oh, he's wary of them because he's not used to people, but earning his trust is pathetically easy---and interpret social cues wrong in odd ways (he did get most of it right, but the parts that he got wrong probably would raise eyebrows), and can be suicidally reckless when he has his mind made up about something. While Seth generally is forgiving and will turn a blind eye to anything people say to him, he can be pushed to the edge, and in that state would have the mental fortitude to take on the entire security forces of Chernobyl by himself and Force Choke people. It helps that he's in his female form at the time, but in these kinds of things, it's the thought that counts.
Lastly, but perhaps rather importantly for this setting---Seth considers himself female, biologically, and defines nearly all of his relationships and life goals in those terms. Socially, however, he talks, behaves, and generally seems to be more comfortable with others interacting with him as a male. It's actually one his selling points...he plays the roles of the kind mother, the supportive brother, the frustrated young man, the girl in love. All of this bled in and out of each other depending on the person he's talking to and the situation at hand, and it's difficult to tell where one role ends and another begins, in the end Seth is Seth. This is very fine in canon, considering his hermaphrodite biology, but as he's going to turn into a highly confused intersexed young man (as in, he is more masculine than feminine, the English language clearly could use more words), it will likely become a significant part of his fish-out-of-the-water confusion.
As he's going to be pulled in exactly one day before the event that starts a countdown to 'the ecological end of the Earth as we know it' according to prophecy, Seth will wake up being very, very shaken. At first, he'll believe that it's either his foreseeing dream or a future he has been sent to as a punishment for having caused and not being able to prevent, but will eventually come to terms with it. His memories are fairly compatible with the myths of the War, and he'll think that all of it was just that---lies, made of people he knew from real life and his own desires to dream of a happy ending. Whether he would do well or not is another story. The Wasteland is a harsh mistress, after all, for innocence.
Appearance: Seth is a young man of slight build with delicate features, blonde hair, and eyes the color of the deep blue sea. If it's sufficiently dark out, Seth's androgynous enough to be taken for a girl, but will otherwise clearly look like a young man, albeit a somewhat delicate one. There's a slightly aristocratic air to his looks---his father was a prince and his mother was the most beautiful mermaid who ever lived---but his general demeanor will give off vibes of being quite down-to-earth, and unless with his older twin, Seth tends to blend pretty well into the background. He is often seen in an all-white formal suit in canon, although this is less of a fashion statement than removable scales for sexually immature mermaids. He's medium height.
Abilities:
Seth is, essentially, a shapeshifting hermaphrodite psychic space fish, so some adjustments are in order to preserve the atmosphere of the setting. He rarely ever used any of these in canon due to his frailness, but they all seem to be constant among merfolk in the series regardless of power level.
Powers He Won't Be Using In Project Purity
1. Ability to turn into a spacefaring fish : Duh.
2. Ability to survive in vacuum : Duh.
3. Ability to turn into a gorgeous woman with greatly enhanced psionics if all his siblings die : again, he's turning from hermaphrodite mermaid into intersexed human, so this will make no sense. Not that, you know, I expect anyone to app his siblings.
Powers Available to Seth in Project Purity
Aside from the above, Seth is capable of using a number of psionic powers. Most of these are already fairly limited due to his frail constitution, however, so I see no reason to nerf them even further, except for one. Explanations as follows :
1. Low-level telekinesis : Seth's telekinesis is probably his most useful self-defense ability, but that's really all it's good for. He's capable of lifting objects that he himself could lift physically, although he can do it to a number of items at a time, and cause glass or other brittle objects to break. This occasionally happens when he's distressed. It is implied in the series that he can use it to break critical bones in a human body or burst someone's eyes right in their sockets, or break small devices like guns and cameras, but it'll require more stamina than he can safely supply and will be used very, very sparingly.
2. Hypnosis/Telepathy : He can Jedi Mind Trick people in canon and make them temporarily believe they've seen things that aren't really there and/or didn't really happen, or forget certain details of what actually *did* happened. Which is ironic, considering his situation here. He can't use it to force people to do things they won't otherwise do, however, and it is limited to 'camouflaging' the true shape of things and events. Think of it as a squid's ink cloud/color-changing in psionic form.
3. Illusions : Related to the above. In canon, he could create images of giant, prehistoric fish swimming through towns. I'd like him to keep this, but the scale of things he could create would be greatly diminished. It'd be more like a nice party trick than Godzilla Impersonation. It's stated in canon that he could create images of other things, it's just that he prefers fish.
4. Underwater Breathing : Waffled quite a bit about this, since you generally don't want to go into water in Fallout and it could break things, but it's such an integral part of his identity that I don't want to mess with it. A-at least it fits with the mutation theme? And he will at least lose the ability to move effortlessly in water, and has to deal with pressure, drag and radiation like everybody else since his body is now for all intents and purposes a human one?
5. Opening Locks : An extension of his telekinesis, Seth is able to open any lock, any, if he thinks about it hard enough. In context of this setting I'll reduce it to all mechanical locks and simple electronic locks, to make up for changes in technology, and he won't be able to avoid triggering booby-traps, if there are any.
6. Tracking. As long as he meets someone within a certain distance of a place they usually frequent, Seth can find that place by tracing the currents of the air. Canon doesn't give an approximation of what this distance is, so I'll call it 'two-mile radius'.
Corollary A : This is not an ability, but as long as we're on the subject of traits...Seth is canonically very, very susceptible to pollution. He died from it once, after all. In the context of the game, this will mean he's going to have weaker constitution than most people due to everything being slightly contaminated, and he will be able to withstand far less radiation than everybody else. This probably won't stop him from being an idiot once he puts his mind to it, but he's going to be spending a fortune on medicine if he does.
Items/Weapons:
- a set of extra clothing consisting of a suit, bowtie, trousers and leather shoes, all completely white. They looked like they might have been in good condition once, but are now more than a little frayed around the edges. (This is a memento of his family life, so to speak.) Should this exceed the three items limit, I'll keep the suit and the tie.
- a matchbook from an unspecified bar whose logo has already faded beyond recognition. (This is a memento of his love interest.)
☣ Samples
First Person Sample:
[the camera started showing an empty corner of a room. From another corner, there's a series of clattering sounds, like someone has just tripped over an entire broom closet at once, and something that sounds a little bit like fluttering fabric. After a few minutes someone (presumably the one who tripped over the broom closet) said something that sounds like 'oops', and the camera turned to a very, very makeshift Christmas Tree in the middle of the room. Seth is not in the camera's view, but he was speaking quite close to where the PipBoy was.]
There. Now that's a proper angle to show the fruits of hard labor.
[he sighs. It's hard to tell whether it's from satisfaction in a job well done or if it's from exasperation at himself, but the shape of the Christmas tree does not suggest the former. It's made out of planks, sheets, dirty strips of plastic, rusted metal spokes and balls of twine. At the top, there's a tin can with a picture of a star drawn on it with a marker.]
It's a pretty good Christmas tree, isn't it? One of the street children told me how to make one, or I wouldn't know. To think that I spent my last Christmas in New York and never got around to observing the festivities....it seemed like just a human custom then, and there were so many things going on. How strange it is to be doing this now.
...it was really hard to get all those things here without tripping over something, and I had to resort to a little bit of, ah, cheating, just to get that can up there. Do you really do this every year? That's...amazing. It's always amazing to hear about what everyone is capable of, here.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I wish you all a nice evening, and that you find whatever you seek in the upcoming year.
Third Person Sample:
Seth had always loved the sea. He loved it from the first time Miralda told him the stories, six hundred years ago (six hundred years? Was it really?), of the times when mermaids still wore tails and the oceans were alive with fish. He loved hearing of the great swarms of translucent jellyfish, floating their way up to the sunlit surface, of the great whales singing songs that nobody on land ever heard. Home. It was home. It was where Mother laid her eggs, where he slept between the yolk and the warm currents and breathed in the sweet, salty water, where he first heard the lullabies of currents and sea foam. It was where he was born. It was where he expected to die.
This sea was a little bit different.
The sea in New York was different from what Miralda told them, too, of course. It was less alive, its songs were fainter. That sea, however, was still so beautiful that he couldn't stop himself from crying just from the sight. This. This was something else. There was something that felt...wrong in it, something he could not place. It was not as dead as the land outside of the city seemed to be, there was life. He might be human now, but Seth still felt like he could feel the movements of its fish and the breathing of its clams as well as any man could sense the coming rain. It was the sea, but it wasn't home (did home really exist?).
He took in a deep breath (the air was cold and stank of metal) and dip his foot into the waves (the water was cold, was this really a good idea?), forgetting to take off his shoes. It felt wetter than he thought, wetter than it used to be, for some reason, but Seth inhaled again and took another step, and another. And another. He tried to remember what happened when he tried to breathe in the water at the sink, the sensation of pain in his lungs, the shock of having to come up for air. Fear. Fear of being drowned.
He had to do it again. Here. Here in the sea, where he came from and where he expected to go, if he was to convince himself that his memories were lies and this was reality. They were right, he was not a mermaid anymore, not anything, he couldn't even breathe in the water, couldn't turn into a woman, couldn't see the future, couldn't save anyone. He was just a madman dreaming mad dreams. Dreams. He had to let go of those. Something in it was true, he'd like to believe some of it was real---that he had siblings named Teruto and Benjamin and once fell in love so strongly that he couldn't breathe---but the rest, the rest he had to forget.
If he drowned here, if he had to struggle just to save himself from the sea, perhaps he would be able to face the truth. If he drowned here, perhaps he could finally wake up.
(does he want to?)
Seth took another step. And another. And another.