「 applications 」

[hyperpotamous]

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「 kenos 」

[hyperpotamous]

PLAYER INFO

NAME: Min
CONTACT: koutenko
OVER 18?: Yes

CHARACTER INFO

NAME: John Gaius, the Emperor of the Nine Houses
SERIES: The Locked Tomb series
CANON POINT: Harrow the Ninth (post-canon)
AGE: 10,000+

CHARACTER SUMMARY:

John Gaius is known by many names — the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the King Undying, the Necromancer Prime, and His Celestial Kindliness are but a few — but the most important of all is that John Gaius is God. This was not always the case. He was once a man who wanted desperately to save the dying Earth and all ten billion people living on it but couldn't defeat end-stage capitalism and the inhumane avarice of trillionaires. Desperation and a vicious hunger for vengeance eventually lead to a series of increasingly horrific choices culminating in his apotheosis.

He is a man who presents himself as a kind and gentle teacher with a humbleness you wouldn't expect from God; he likes to drink tea and eat biscuits and seems to regard everything with a detached weariness. He is awkward regarding affection, and his dishonest streak and willingness to manipulate the people closest to him eventually blow up in his face. John hates himself and does not expect forgiveness, but all the same, he is unwilling to face his grief, so he's remedied this by creating a world where he never has to look at it because no one can question him.

POWERS:

Obviously, it's necessary to nerf him significantly to avoid him being laughably OP. It's straightforward to say that the strange energies in the world are disruptive to his ability to consistently manipulate thanergy, which is the "death energy" that necromancers need to do anything.

John's powers are easiest to understand by dividing them into different tiers because it also clarifies how his power compares to the average necromantic adept.

GOD TIER;

• Fully immortal and capable of reconstituting his body in seconds even if fully destroyed.
• Capable of fully resurrecting the dead.
• His power keeps Dominicus (the Sun) burning.
• Access to the spirit realm known as the River.
• Capable of instantly healing someone else's wounds.

LIMITATIONS: He will technically be capable of instant healing, but the presence of the Shards will resist his power in action, meaning the overall efficacy of his healing can be adjusted to whatever works for the situation (mostly what's fun for everyone). He can heal living and dead bodies, but he cannot resurrect anyone. It might also be spicy to have his abilities be further affected by Harmonisation and Discord since it's already a disruptive force that will frustrate him lmao.

• Can puppet the living and dead bodies.

LIMITATIONS: Puppeting other PCs would obviously require explicit permission from other players and mod permission if NPCs are involved! How long he can keep in control would depend on the willingness of the person he's controlling and whether or not they're a Shard-Bearer. Again, the Shards will be tricky interference because having something slowly eroding the connection makes it more interesting. A living body with a dormant or willing mind could be controlled much longer than someone who was fighting him. Distance would also be taken into consideration.

LYCTOR TIER;

• Functionally immortal. Minor, partial damage to his body heals within seconds, but total destruction of his brain or body is fatal.

LIMITATIONS: Injuries will heal at an accelerated rate but not instantaneously. The more severe the damage, the slower it will take to repair itself. Enough non-fatal injuries will be debilitating enough to slow or stop him completely until he has time to deal with them.

• Capable of travelling in the River to teleport across huge physical distances.
• Able to sense thalergy (life energy), thanergy (death energy), and souls.

LIMITATIONS: Applies to this and the next couple of abilities. John has ten thousand years of experience knowing everything about the human body, but he has no experience with non-humans. I assume that to him, all non-human anatomy is kind of weird, and he needs time to figure it out. I will also have an opt-in post in case anyone wants him to sense anything interesting about their characters.

• He can use flesh magic to harm or heal anything as long as he can understand its body.
• Capable of sensing minute details about a person's anatomy.

NECROMANCER TIER;

• He can tweak his own biological functions.

  LIMITATIONS: Even in canon, he still needed to eat, sleep, etc. but could tweak the processes indefinitely. It wasn't ideal, but doable. This basically operates like drinking coffee to stay awake or taking an appetite suppressant. It works better than either of those things because he's messing with his actual body, but it's still just a stopgap. Eventually, he needs actual rest or sustenance, or he will just black out from exhaustion.

• He can create undead constructs from small bits of existing materials.
• He can puppet and reanimate dead bodies.
• He can manipulate souls and summon and bind ghosts.
• He can create wards from bone and blood.
• He can drain another person's energy or use them as a battery.
• He can create explosions using necromantic energy.
• He can share sensory input with someone else.
• He can use necromancy to learn more information about items.

The crossed-out abilities are being nerfed outright for being game-breaking, irrelevant in the setting, or just no fun.

It's also worth noting that John will likely try to keep the use of his visible powers contained to a minimum to avoid outing himself, i.e., it's okay for others to know that he's a necromancer, but he's not trying to give away that he's God, so in effect, he's also self-nerfing.

Necromancy works off of theorems in canon, so I have been operating under the assumption that being in Kenos has altered them to be a lot less "efficient" than they should be. It's another good excuse for him to want to dig into how it all works and be able to improve what he can do a little over time.

GAME INFO

ASPECTS:

THE ICONOCLAST. Vengefulness is one of John's core traits, and his need for vengeance caused the apocalypse. Being heard, whatever it takes might as well have been the slogan for his actions leading up to the end of everything. Basically, this Aspect has all of John's most problematic traits in a nutshell.

THE HARBINGER: This Aspect is suitable in two ways because you could look to John's determination to save the world as a fitting example or how he has been doggedly trying to eliminate his enemies for over ten thousand years. He is also guilty of manipulating people, and is there anything more arrogant than calling yourself God?

ANTICIPATED FACTION:

MERIDIAN. It is honestly highly tempting to John to call it a day and give up on the mess he left back home. He actually vibes with Zenith's ideal in a lot of ways and would feel more at home in the overtones of shadow and death that Zenith has going for it. Unfortunately, going off to the promised land would mean pledging loyalty to Yima, and John is too obsessed with control and being God and calling the shots that he'd never accept falling in line. It also sounds suspicious as hell, and he will take a hard "you can't bullshit a bullshitter" line about it. Besides, he still has unfinished business back home.

SUITABILITY:

I think John would be an excellent fit. The setting wouldn't be hard for him to adapt to, and having no powers for a while will probably be a novel experience that stops being charming for him fairly quickly. John likes to feel in control when he's afraid, and this situation is likely to make him feel especially afraid, which forces him into a vulnerable place. He has been fighting a war for ten thousand years, and he is exhausted. The only thing that kept him going was the promise of vengeance, and now all of a sudden, somebody turns his soul into a rock and steals all his kills. John is going to be arriving following the worst betrayal of his life and generally having a bad time, so he's probably going to make it everyone's problem once he gets his bearings.