(no subject)
Player Information
Name: Catherine
Contact: stoptheworld26
Characters: none
Character Information
Name: Ethan Rayne
Journal Name: stayandgloat
Fandom / Series: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
From When: When he's getting hauled off to the rehabilitation center at the end of the last episode he's in.
Function: Weapons Development Officer / Saboteur - The kind of magic Ethan does in Buffy tends to be area effect kind of stuff, he can and does target individuals at times, but usually he'll go for mass distribution. He's hidden spells in chocolate bars, in clothes, and in beer. He tends to go in under the radar, and does damage on a wide scale. I figured in a real war the equivalent would be either selling faulty weapons/damaged parts or developing chemical weaponry, hence the two positions, sorta.
Preferred Side: Civilians, but it doesn't really matter. Ethan wouldn't do well under particularly strenuous regulations, and his general Ethos fits more comfortably with that of the Civilian side, but he's never going to be actively loyal, and it's really just a question of how much of a pain in the neck he'll be.
Abilities / Powers: Ethan does a whole lot of scheming and a whole lot of magic. He’s big on the demon summoning and manipulation based magicks. He sometimes works by appealing to gods and making offerings to idols, but he's also capable of making potions to transmogrify, incense and generally cause as much chaos as possible.
Normally these spells aren't enormously hard to break, some just run out of their own accord, and others are powered by some kind of icon or talisman which needs to be destroyed to break the spell. They also tend to require rituals and incantations to make them work at all, Ethan can't do much magic 'on the fly' as it were.
(Also obvs none of this would go down without mod and/or player permission <3)
Personality: [Please provide four to five paragraphs detailing your character’s personality. You may include how they will behave within the world of Gray War.]
If you were to choose the single best word to describe Ethan Rayne, it would probably have to be “Sneaky”. Several more words to describe him might be “Egotistical”, “Vicious”, “Cowardly” and if you wanted to open it up to more than single word descriptions, “Not particularly farsighted” might also fit. Ethan is a Chaos worshiper and a long time practitioner of black magic, he tends to create circumstances where something as innocuous as eating chocolate, or dressing up for Halloween, ends in disaster, transforming minds and bodies to cause destruction and chaos. He tends to keep a certain amount of distance from the damage he does, remaining on the sidelines as he architects a descent into panic, then watching as whatever he’s created does the damage for him. While things can always be traced back to him eventually, he tends to keep himself out of the thick of it when things get messy.
Ethan's motives for what he do seem at first to be quite simple, he revels in the trouble he can cause, enjoys the chaos of it. There’s more to it than that though, often the trouble he causes is a subversion of what people would actually enjoy - to live out their fantasies to be young again are both dreams that Ethan manipulated into realities - only to have them end with a considerable deal of harm being done. There's almost an element of the trickster guide archetype to him. Ethan doesn't just want to cause meaningless trouble, he wants it to be pointed, to hold a mirror up to his victims and let them see their own foolishness or hubris reflected there.
Ethan himself has a consistent interest in the idea of duality, reflected by his devotion to the Roman god Janus. As a character he's presented almost as the polar opposite to Giles (The heroic occult scholar and watcher), he seems like a representation of what Giles could have become if he'd chosen to stay on a dark path when he was young. In a way, this is also how Ethan sees himself, to a degree, as a man who rejected the paths which he was expected to follow, and the life of stability and happiness that came with them. This is also part of what makes it so easy for him to hurt people. He views himself as a product of that path, a reactionary force rather than an individual. To Ethan, the world is mad, wonderful, infinitely cruel, and completely indiscriminate, so he should be the same.
He sometimes works for money and sometimes just for the joy of it, but his plans never seem to extend as far as actually getting away with his crimes, as he considers on his last encounter in the series: “It’s the stay and gloat that gets me every time.” Once the damage is done he always sticks around long enough to be beaten up and forced to undo whatever he’s done. It is possible that his reason for this is actually a desire to get caught rather than anything else, as he seems to outwardly relish attention, whether positive or negative, and he seems just as invested in goading his victims than in actually triumphing over them.
It is possible that some of his continuous returns to Sunnydale are related to a certain level of residual affection he feels towards Giles. whenever they meet Ethan alludes to their former friendship and how his one time friend has changed, often evoking a strange mix of nostalgia and hatred between the two. Certainly Ethan rarely seems angry, or really even very upset about his plans being failed. The first time he saw Giles in twenty years, despite the fact that Ethan was on the receiving end of a fairly savage beating, he continued to egg Giles on into kicking his ass a little more before telling him what he wanted to know. This slightly unhealthy urge to bring out the worst in his old friend might be a parallel to what Ethan is really looking for in all things. He doesn’t want to create darkness so much as to bring it out of people, in his own words, “I believe that Chaos is the natural order”. He may not think it’s nice, but Ethan clearly views what he does as restoring something inherent to the universe.
He’s also pretty sexually promiscuous, handing out his number to random women in bars with the promise of a good time, and admitting that he first got into magic in order to pick up women. It has been mentioned by one of the writers that Ethan and Giles have likely had some kind of sexual history, and implied that when he was a younger man he may have participated in orgies, Ethan’s comfort around his sexuality and complete lack of shame would not make it difficult to believe that the aspect of his nature which encouraged this remains cheerfully unchanged.
History:
Ethan’s history is mostly unknown before his appearances in the Series. It is known that he is English and growing up in London in the 1970’s, where he was part of the worst group that it was possible for Rupert Giles to fall in with. There were five of them, four men and one woman, and they made magic, only simple things for pleasure and gain. That was until he and Rupert found something bigger. Their group began summoning a demon which would inhabit one of their bodies and give them all a fantastic high. It was mentioned in the episode that The demon they summoned “Ehygon” was originally invoked while his followers had orgies from the pleasure of him being there, whether Ethan and his friends did this was never specified.
We do know that at some point one of their group “Randall” was killed during an attempted exorcism of the demon. It was at some point after this that Giles retreated to his studies to become a watcher, and that Ethan veered off in the other direction and began worshiping Chaos wholeheartedly.
For a long time after this nothing is known of Ethan until he comes to Sunnydale on Halloween, creating a spell to make people become whatever costume they buy from him. He shows off a charming nature as he sells the costumes, and slight masochistic streak as he cheerfully taunts his old friend while being severely beaten. He makes no move to even defend himself or fight back, instead ending the contact with a slight air of smugness as he comments that the brutal side in Giles, “Ripper” isn’t so long gone after all.
The next time he’s seen in Sunnydale is when Ehygon is coming to kill his former followers! Ethan tracks Giles down and explains that he’s still in town merely because the Lease on his shop hasn’t expired yet, so he’s sticking around. After some taunting and a slight escape attempt, Buffy decides to come and Protect him, so that she can Protect Giles. Ethan takes advantage of this happy coincidence by knocking her out and tattooing her with the “mark of Ehygon” which is a tattoo he, Giles and their friends all had, to replace his own, which he burns off with acid.
In Ethan’s Next visit, he’s subcontracting. Cursing boxes of “band candy” chocolate being circulated by the local school, so that anyone who eats it reverts to their teenage selves. It came out in this episode just how willing Teenage Giles would have been to shoot Ethan were he given the opportunity.
In Ethan’s fourth and final visit to Sunnydale, Ethan and Giles go out and get drunk together, reminisce, and Ethan turns his old mate into a Fyarl Demon. He gets stopped by Buffy, and arrested by the military and shipped off to a 'rehabilitation facility' in the middle of the desert.
Sample Journal Entry: Ethan being a wordy Bastard in a former game <3
Sample RP: If you need like, one longer post of prose, then I can totes do that, this was just a good sample thread of that kinda writing <3
Name: Catherine
Contact: stoptheworld26
Characters: none
Character Information
Name: Ethan Rayne
Journal Name: stayandgloat
Fandom / Series: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
From When: When he's getting hauled off to the rehabilitation center at the end of the last episode he's in.
Function: Weapons Development Officer / Saboteur - The kind of magic Ethan does in Buffy tends to be area effect kind of stuff, he can and does target individuals at times, but usually he'll go for mass distribution. He's hidden spells in chocolate bars, in clothes, and in beer. He tends to go in under the radar, and does damage on a wide scale. I figured in a real war the equivalent would be either selling faulty weapons/damaged parts or developing chemical weaponry, hence the two positions, sorta.
Preferred Side: Civilians, but it doesn't really matter. Ethan wouldn't do well under particularly strenuous regulations, and his general Ethos fits more comfortably with that of the Civilian side, but he's never going to be actively loyal, and it's really just a question of how much of a pain in the neck he'll be.
Abilities / Powers: Ethan does a whole lot of scheming and a whole lot of magic. He’s big on the demon summoning and manipulation based magicks. He sometimes works by appealing to gods and making offerings to idols, but he's also capable of making potions to transmogrify, incense and generally cause as much chaos as possible.
Normally these spells aren't enormously hard to break, some just run out of their own accord, and others are powered by some kind of icon or talisman which needs to be destroyed to break the spell. They also tend to require rituals and incantations to make them work at all, Ethan can't do much magic 'on the fly' as it were.
(Also obvs none of this would go down without mod and/or player permission <3)
Personality: [Please provide four to five paragraphs detailing your character’s personality. You may include how they will behave within the world of Gray War.]
If you were to choose the single best word to describe Ethan Rayne, it would probably have to be “Sneaky”. Several more words to describe him might be “Egotistical”, “Vicious”, “Cowardly” and if you wanted to open it up to more than single word descriptions, “Not particularly farsighted” might also fit. Ethan is a Chaos worshiper and a long time practitioner of black magic, he tends to create circumstances where something as innocuous as eating chocolate, or dressing up for Halloween, ends in disaster, transforming minds and bodies to cause destruction and chaos. He tends to keep a certain amount of distance from the damage he does, remaining on the sidelines as he architects a descent into panic, then watching as whatever he’s created does the damage for him. While things can always be traced back to him eventually, he tends to keep himself out of the thick of it when things get messy.
Ethan's motives for what he do seem at first to be quite simple, he revels in the trouble he can cause, enjoys the chaos of it. There’s more to it than that though, often the trouble he causes is a subversion of what people would actually enjoy - to live out their fantasies to be young again are both dreams that Ethan manipulated into realities - only to have them end with a considerable deal of harm being done. There's almost an element of the trickster guide archetype to him. Ethan doesn't just want to cause meaningless trouble, he wants it to be pointed, to hold a mirror up to his victims and let them see their own foolishness or hubris reflected there.
Ethan himself has a consistent interest in the idea of duality, reflected by his devotion to the Roman god Janus. As a character he's presented almost as the polar opposite to Giles (The heroic occult scholar and watcher), he seems like a representation of what Giles could have become if he'd chosen to stay on a dark path when he was young. In a way, this is also how Ethan sees himself, to a degree, as a man who rejected the paths which he was expected to follow, and the life of stability and happiness that came with them. This is also part of what makes it so easy for him to hurt people. He views himself as a product of that path, a reactionary force rather than an individual. To Ethan, the world is mad, wonderful, infinitely cruel, and completely indiscriminate, so he should be the same.
He sometimes works for money and sometimes just for the joy of it, but his plans never seem to extend as far as actually getting away with his crimes, as he considers on his last encounter in the series: “It’s the stay and gloat that gets me every time.” Once the damage is done he always sticks around long enough to be beaten up and forced to undo whatever he’s done. It is possible that his reason for this is actually a desire to get caught rather than anything else, as he seems to outwardly relish attention, whether positive or negative, and he seems just as invested in goading his victims than in actually triumphing over them.
It is possible that some of his continuous returns to Sunnydale are related to a certain level of residual affection he feels towards Giles. whenever they meet Ethan alludes to their former friendship and how his one time friend has changed, often evoking a strange mix of nostalgia and hatred between the two. Certainly Ethan rarely seems angry, or really even very upset about his plans being failed. The first time he saw Giles in twenty years, despite the fact that Ethan was on the receiving end of a fairly savage beating, he continued to egg Giles on into kicking his ass a little more before telling him what he wanted to know. This slightly unhealthy urge to bring out the worst in his old friend might be a parallel to what Ethan is really looking for in all things. He doesn’t want to create darkness so much as to bring it out of people, in his own words, “I believe that Chaos is the natural order”. He may not think it’s nice, but Ethan clearly views what he does as restoring something inherent to the universe.
He’s also pretty sexually promiscuous, handing out his number to random women in bars with the promise of a good time, and admitting that he first got into magic in order to pick up women. It has been mentioned by one of the writers that Ethan and Giles have likely had some kind of sexual history, and implied that when he was a younger man he may have participated in orgies, Ethan’s comfort around his sexuality and complete lack of shame would not make it difficult to believe that the aspect of his nature which encouraged this remains cheerfully unchanged.
History:
Ethan’s history is mostly unknown before his appearances in the Series. It is known that he is English and growing up in London in the 1970’s, where he was part of the worst group that it was possible for Rupert Giles to fall in with. There were five of them, four men and one woman, and they made magic, only simple things for pleasure and gain. That was until he and Rupert found something bigger. Their group began summoning a demon which would inhabit one of their bodies and give them all a fantastic high. It was mentioned in the episode that The demon they summoned “Ehygon” was originally invoked while his followers had orgies from the pleasure of him being there, whether Ethan and his friends did this was never specified.
We do know that at some point one of their group “Randall” was killed during an attempted exorcism of the demon. It was at some point after this that Giles retreated to his studies to become a watcher, and that Ethan veered off in the other direction and began worshiping Chaos wholeheartedly.
For a long time after this nothing is known of Ethan until he comes to Sunnydale on Halloween, creating a spell to make people become whatever costume they buy from him. He shows off a charming nature as he sells the costumes, and slight masochistic streak as he cheerfully taunts his old friend while being severely beaten. He makes no move to even defend himself or fight back, instead ending the contact with a slight air of smugness as he comments that the brutal side in Giles, “Ripper” isn’t so long gone after all.
The next time he’s seen in Sunnydale is when Ehygon is coming to kill his former followers! Ethan tracks Giles down and explains that he’s still in town merely because the Lease on his shop hasn’t expired yet, so he’s sticking around. After some taunting and a slight escape attempt, Buffy decides to come and Protect him, so that she can Protect Giles. Ethan takes advantage of this happy coincidence by knocking her out and tattooing her with the “mark of Ehygon” which is a tattoo he, Giles and their friends all had, to replace his own, which he burns off with acid.
In Ethan’s Next visit, he’s subcontracting. Cursing boxes of “band candy” chocolate being circulated by the local school, so that anyone who eats it reverts to their teenage selves. It came out in this episode just how willing Teenage Giles would have been to shoot Ethan were he given the opportunity.
In Ethan’s fourth and final visit to Sunnydale, Ethan and Giles go out and get drunk together, reminisce, and Ethan turns his old mate into a Fyarl Demon. He gets stopped by Buffy, and arrested by the military and shipped off to a 'rehabilitation facility' in the middle of the desert.
Sample Journal Entry: Ethan being a wordy Bastard in a former game <3
Sample RP: If you need like, one longer post of prose, then I can totes do that, this was just a good sample thread of that kinda writing <3