Elhaym van Houten (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reborn_love) wrote2014-01-11 10:55 pm
reborn_love) wrote2014-01-11 10:55 pm
Entry tags:
Application for Brave New World (rev2)
PLAYER INFO
Name: Tex
Contact Information: texside @ Plurk
Time Zone: Central, U.S.
Characters Played: Cecilia Adlehyde (Wild Arms).
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Elhaym "Elly" van Houten
Character Canon: Xenogears
History: A full plot outline for Xenogears.
AU History: During the apocalyptic war that the Savior ended, two of the Savior's contemporaries were a man named Lacan and Sophia. Sophia was a high-ranking noblewoman, who was disgusted by what mankind had done to the world and creatures within it. She failed to curb their excesses, though. During this time, she met Lacan, a painter, and fell in love with him. The two worked together, first to try to stop the path that mankind set out on, and when that failed, they tried to protect people as best they could.
They fought in the final battles against the Pokémon; while both Lacan and Sophia were horrified by the excesses that mankind went to, they did not want to surrender mankind's right to existence. They fought at the Savior's side, but regretfully. In the end, Sophia perished shortly before the Savior appealed to the Pokémon, trying to protect a few people escaping into the final holdout.
She never lived to see the peace that her and Lacan hoped for. However, some greater force intervened; she reincarnated eighteen years ago as Elhaym van Houten.
The van Houtens are an upper class, but non-noble family living in Union. There is a strong suspicion that Elly's real mother is their family's non-Enlightened maid. Her parents have blonde hair and blue eyes, whereas Elly has red hair and blue-violet eyes. She is an Enlightened like her father, but developed entirely different types than him, which is considered a further sign of her questionable birth. Despite this question hovering over her, though, her childhood was a happy one.
Erich van Houten works in Union's Agricultural Tower as a senior technician, after he had a successful tenure with the Rangers. This instilled a sense of duty and patriotism in Elly from a young age; despite being worried about her parentage, she does look up to her dad and took after his values.
Her father was wealthy enough to hire a tutor for her when she was younger, which gave her an advantage during her studies. Elly was near the top of her class in school and largely matched exactly what people expected of a young, promsiing Enlightened. She also made a number of friends. When she came of age, Elly decided to enter the Rangers, like her father had for awhile.
Shortly after she joined the Rangers, some of the higher-ranking officers decided to test a combat drug that had been developed by one of Union's engineers. The drug, called Drive, was hoped to heighten their abilities and make them more durable. Elly was one of the participants in the experiment; Drive interacted especially poorly with her abilities as an Enlightened, and she lost control of her powers. The ensuing incident severely injured several Rangers and damaged the facility the test occurred in.
Elly was wracked with guilt for her involvement. She was given a short furlough to sort it out; she didn't quite manage that, and has not made sense of what happened yet. When she came back, her otherwise excellent (if short) service record and abilities as an Enlightened put her in the elite Survey Corps. Elly joined very recently, and is one of their newest members.
Canon Personality: Elly is a kind, sweet person at heart. This is no surprise; she is meant to be a mother figure to literally the entire world in Xenogears canon, and this motherly drives the way that she treats people well and cares about their well-being. She tries to fill needs and make the people around her happy, but this can turn into putting others' needs before her own. Elly is the sort of friend to put off studying for her test to help another student study for their test.
She is usually a cheerful, approachable type of person. She doesn't quite come across as literally everyone's mom, but she does have that mother hen way of trying to mind people's business and help them out. This can be a little overbearing, like telling Fei to not eat fish he catches, but sometimes for their own good (because it made him sick). After someone gets to know her, she will become exceptionally loyal and caring, and it doesn't take a lot to earn that level of regard.
The downside to this is that Elly can also meddle. Sometimes she sticks her nose in peoples' business when it isn't invited, and sometimes caring means she voices opinions that others don't want to hear -- or, worse, a conclusion Elly jumped to because she was worried. This was part of why she called Fei a coward after he ran away from Lahan, after it was destroyed; she felt close to him and leaped in to try to correct his behavior.
Of course, part of that was also Elly running away from her own problems. She also told Fei that to turn away from her own role in Lahan's destruction. Elly finds it hard to confront her own responsibility and role in events when she has done something wrong. She doesn't want to hurt innocent people, especially people she cares about, but she doesn't process guilt very well. This is one area where she can fall apart and retreat in on herself.
She is, however, not a quickly collapsing or weak-willed person. She is surprisingly tough (and to quote a much later game: "Moms are tough," so worldmothers are really tough), able to keep it together while the world starts falling apart around her, and finding out just how complex her life is. The same bonds that she cares deeply about, and sometimes meddles in, hold her together. While her bond with Fei is maybe not the best example -- a ten thousand year love story is the furthest thing from typical -- with him, she could ultimately stand up to a god-computer trying to use her to end the world, the death of her parents, the Drive incident, and the loss of her home. Life can knock Elly down, but because of the people around her, she can always get back on her feet.
Of course, she is protective of those bonds. They keep her going and she can be self-sacrificing, which means that she will go to great and not always very smart lengths to protect the people she cares about. A fine example is when Fei is imprisoned because he turned into Id, and she decides they should blow that popsicle stand, despite his protests. When it comes to the people she cares about, Elly is impulsive.
In the end, Elly thinks with her heart more than her head. This isn't always obvious; after all, she tends to present herself as a serious-minded young woman. When it comes to the people she cares about, though, she is a hothead at heart, who can act without thinking, like helping Fei, Bart, and Margie escape during the rescue -- despite being their enemy. This can get her in trouble, but she comes through because she cares.
While she is impulsive about those close to her, though, she is normally a collected and calm-headed sort. She takes her duty very seriously, and she wants to be respected. She continued to be loyal to Solaris, and it took time and troubles to overcome her loyalty to Solaris (in short, it required a reunion with her reincarnated fated lover, combat drug problems, and Solaris's excesses to finally convince her to defect).
She takes herself and her duty seriously; this is an extension of her caring personality. She wants to protect her people in a general sense, and she wants to be taken seriously, too. When soldiers assigned to her command make a few jokes about her appearance, she is quick to correct them. Elly can be charming and friendly, but she also can be fierce and businness-like.
She will also turn that on as a defense mechanism, to deal with strangers and difficult situations. When Elly first met Fei, she fell back on her military bearing and station (and Solarian prejudices) to deal with him and threaten to shoot him. When this runs headlong into a conflict over who she cares about, Elly tends to go with the latter, as she did towards Fei when they first met in the forest.
AU Deviation: The obvious big change is that Elly is not central to a god-computer's plan to make humanity as part of a millennia-long plan. Deus does not exist, and she has had one reincarnation: Sophia, a contemporary of the Savior, who died shortly before everything came to an end. Besides very faint impressions, she has no memories of her past life for the time being, and doesn't get more than fleeting gimpses.
The impact of her past life is that Elly feels a kinship with Pokémon born of the specter of memories she has of these events. Her sense of duty to Union is heightened; in a sense, she is subconsciously trying to pay off debts from her previous life. This didn't exactly manifest with Enlightened abilities and is, in no way, a psychic bond -- it just means Elly actually values the Pokémon and natural world a lot, and can't always explain why.
Also, Solaris is not a thing here. She is not taught to view a large class of people as base and borderline subhuman. Elly has similarly patriotic, dutybound feelings for Union, but the culture there is different, and Elly is a lot more open-minded about other humans (and was already pretty open-minded).
The Drive Incident also played out differently. This was not a terrible thing that everyone was made to do, but an experiment that a handful of Rangers took part in that went wrong. This changes its emotional and moral tenor; she sees it as a tragedy, and most agree that trying to use Drive was a mistake. Elly is horrified that it hurt other soldiers and made Rangers look bad. In that sense, the incident is worse for Elly in some ways: she feels like she failed the Rangers and Union, and she wants to make up for that perception of failure.
Canon Abilities: Elly has three sets of notable abilities in Xenogears.
First, she can pilot a giant robot called a Gear; hers is named Vierge. Vierge's trademark system is called the AERODs, which are drones that can fire magical attacks that Elly creates.
Secondly, she is an accomplished fighter with a collapsible rod (which she uses like a rapier); she does attacks called Deathblows, the latter of which are basically straight up magic, that shoot out lightning, fire, and the like when she hits someone with them. She is mobile and agile as a fighter, and she does a healthy amount of jumping and leaping around.
Third, she can use elemental attack spells called Ether. Elly is really, really good with these; she can do some of the best offensive magic in the entire game.
Enlightened Abilities: Elly has the God of War Enlightened Ability; she was known in Xenogears for being a scary good combatant and Gear pilot, which was why she lost control when she took Drive. Similarly, she is known for being an exceptional combatant, who is capable of manipulating elemental energies to great effect.
She is a Fire/Electric/Ice Enlightened. She is okay with hand-to-hand combat, but she really shines in projecting elemental energy. She can manipulate fire, ice, and electricity with precision and force. She can cast wide area spells and single target ones, and do some as close-ranged attacks when she needs to.
After the first evolution, Elly will do a lot more of what she does now, but with stronger spells and sometimes mixing the types she has together to create unique spells. In her second evolution, Elly will start actually rolling them together and summoning up insane things like shooting meteors down at people and other such crazy magical attacks. This will involve some ground-type attacks, too.
Elly's rod doesn't really count as an item, as it is mostly a way to parry blows and do some basic attacks. However, she may at some point get human-sized AERODs to do maximumbeam ability spam.
Starter Pokémon: Elly has a female Dratini that she bonded with when she was about twelve. Her Dratini is named Vierge and it is bossy. She loves it anyways.
Notes/Special Considerations: Obviously, Elly is the reincarnation of Sophia. She knew the Savior in that form, but has extremely indistinct memories, and most of what she remembers is Lacan.
SAMPLES
First-Person: [Elly's voice crackles over the network, a slight bit of static introduced to her voice via the Warp Band. She sounds slightly worried, but there's a plainly evident attempt to keep her voice calm over the network.]
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Ranger van Houten. I'm currently in the eastern part of the forest, and I've spotted a small herd coming down from the mountains. They appear to be tough.
[She hesitates, a moment, before she adds more. Her voice isn't quite scolding, but it's warning -- and a little warm, too.]
I know some of you would love the challenge, but please don't try your skill or your luck. These ones look tough. And if you insist...
[She sighs.]
Ask for help first, please!
Third-Person: Elhaym van Houten kept her cloak wrapped around her tightly. The walls around Union were high and she wasn't up here that often. As a Ranger, she usually was outside the city walls or she was inside the city, fulfilling the duties and expectations of an elite soldier. Of course, Elly still liked coming up to the top of the wall, sometimes. There was something about it that put things in perspective.
Part of it, she thought, was the height. From here, she could see the land she patrolled. She liked to see the trees instead of the forest, most of the time, but sometimes it was nice to see the forest as a whole. It reminded her of how much wilderness was there, of how small Union was compared to the rest of the world.
But it also felt familiar.
She couldn't quite place how, but even the first time she came to the top of the walls, she had a peculiar sense of familiarity -- not as if she had seen this sight before, but as if she looked over the edge of other walls before. That sense of familiarity remained on subsequent visits, and it ran deeper. It always ended the same way; a feeling that a man was standing beside her, looking out over the same wall, and smiling. Eventually, that feeling got too strong to shake, and Elly always had a sentimental side.
She turned her head to the left and looked, but once again, there was no one standing next to her, and the walls were the ones she grew up with -- not the ones she almost remembered. Elly looked forward, smiled, and sighed.
"Just superstition," she murmured.
Name: Tex
Contact Information: texside @ Plurk
Time Zone: Central, U.S.
Characters Played: Cecilia Adlehyde (Wild Arms).
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Elhaym "Elly" van Houten
Character Canon: Xenogears
History: A full plot outline for Xenogears.
AU History: During the apocalyptic war that the Savior ended, two of the Savior's contemporaries were a man named Lacan and Sophia. Sophia was a high-ranking noblewoman, who was disgusted by what mankind had done to the world and creatures within it. She failed to curb their excesses, though. During this time, she met Lacan, a painter, and fell in love with him. The two worked together, first to try to stop the path that mankind set out on, and when that failed, they tried to protect people as best they could.
They fought in the final battles against the Pokémon; while both Lacan and Sophia were horrified by the excesses that mankind went to, they did not want to surrender mankind's right to existence. They fought at the Savior's side, but regretfully. In the end, Sophia perished shortly before the Savior appealed to the Pokémon, trying to protect a few people escaping into the final holdout.
She never lived to see the peace that her and Lacan hoped for. However, some greater force intervened; she reincarnated eighteen years ago as Elhaym van Houten.
The van Houtens are an upper class, but non-noble family living in Union. There is a strong suspicion that Elly's real mother is their family's non-Enlightened maid. Her parents have blonde hair and blue eyes, whereas Elly has red hair and blue-violet eyes. She is an Enlightened like her father, but developed entirely different types than him, which is considered a further sign of her questionable birth. Despite this question hovering over her, though, her childhood was a happy one.
Erich van Houten works in Union's Agricultural Tower as a senior technician, after he had a successful tenure with the Rangers. This instilled a sense of duty and patriotism in Elly from a young age; despite being worried about her parentage, she does look up to her dad and took after his values.
Her father was wealthy enough to hire a tutor for her when she was younger, which gave her an advantage during her studies. Elly was near the top of her class in school and largely matched exactly what people expected of a young, promsiing Enlightened. She also made a number of friends. When she came of age, Elly decided to enter the Rangers, like her father had for awhile.
Shortly after she joined the Rangers, some of the higher-ranking officers decided to test a combat drug that had been developed by one of Union's engineers. The drug, called Drive, was hoped to heighten their abilities and make them more durable. Elly was one of the participants in the experiment; Drive interacted especially poorly with her abilities as an Enlightened, and she lost control of her powers. The ensuing incident severely injured several Rangers and damaged the facility the test occurred in.
Elly was wracked with guilt for her involvement. She was given a short furlough to sort it out; she didn't quite manage that, and has not made sense of what happened yet. When she came back, her otherwise excellent (if short) service record and abilities as an Enlightened put her in the elite Survey Corps. Elly joined very recently, and is one of their newest members.
Canon Personality: Elly is a kind, sweet person at heart. This is no surprise; she is meant to be a mother figure to literally the entire world in Xenogears canon, and this motherly drives the way that she treats people well and cares about their well-being. She tries to fill needs and make the people around her happy, but this can turn into putting others' needs before her own. Elly is the sort of friend to put off studying for her test to help another student study for their test.
She is usually a cheerful, approachable type of person. She doesn't quite come across as literally everyone's mom, but she does have that mother hen way of trying to mind people's business and help them out. This can be a little overbearing, like telling Fei to not eat fish he catches, but sometimes for their own good (because it made him sick). After someone gets to know her, she will become exceptionally loyal and caring, and it doesn't take a lot to earn that level of regard.
The downside to this is that Elly can also meddle. Sometimes she sticks her nose in peoples' business when it isn't invited, and sometimes caring means she voices opinions that others don't want to hear -- or, worse, a conclusion Elly jumped to because she was worried. This was part of why she called Fei a coward after he ran away from Lahan, after it was destroyed; she felt close to him and leaped in to try to correct his behavior.
Of course, part of that was also Elly running away from her own problems. She also told Fei that to turn away from her own role in Lahan's destruction. Elly finds it hard to confront her own responsibility and role in events when she has done something wrong. She doesn't want to hurt innocent people, especially people she cares about, but she doesn't process guilt very well. This is one area where she can fall apart and retreat in on herself.
She is, however, not a quickly collapsing or weak-willed person. She is surprisingly tough (and to quote a much later game: "Moms are tough," so worldmothers are really tough), able to keep it together while the world starts falling apart around her, and finding out just how complex her life is. The same bonds that she cares deeply about, and sometimes meddles in, hold her together. While her bond with Fei is maybe not the best example -- a ten thousand year love story is the furthest thing from typical -- with him, she could ultimately stand up to a god-computer trying to use her to end the world, the death of her parents, the Drive incident, and the loss of her home. Life can knock Elly down, but because of the people around her, she can always get back on her feet.
Of course, she is protective of those bonds. They keep her going and she can be self-sacrificing, which means that she will go to great and not always very smart lengths to protect the people she cares about. A fine example is when Fei is imprisoned because he turned into Id, and she decides they should blow that popsicle stand, despite his protests. When it comes to the people she cares about, Elly is impulsive.
In the end, Elly thinks with her heart more than her head. This isn't always obvious; after all, she tends to present herself as a serious-minded young woman. When it comes to the people she cares about, though, she is a hothead at heart, who can act without thinking, like helping Fei, Bart, and Margie escape during the rescue -- despite being their enemy. This can get her in trouble, but she comes through because she cares.
While she is impulsive about those close to her, though, she is normally a collected and calm-headed sort. She takes her duty very seriously, and she wants to be respected. She continued to be loyal to Solaris, and it took time and troubles to overcome her loyalty to Solaris (in short, it required a reunion with her reincarnated fated lover, combat drug problems, and Solaris's excesses to finally convince her to defect).
She takes herself and her duty seriously; this is an extension of her caring personality. She wants to protect her people in a general sense, and she wants to be taken seriously, too. When soldiers assigned to her command make a few jokes about her appearance, she is quick to correct them. Elly can be charming and friendly, but she also can be fierce and businness-like.
She will also turn that on as a defense mechanism, to deal with strangers and difficult situations. When Elly first met Fei, she fell back on her military bearing and station (and Solarian prejudices) to deal with him and threaten to shoot him. When this runs headlong into a conflict over who she cares about, Elly tends to go with the latter, as she did towards Fei when they first met in the forest.
AU Deviation: The obvious big change is that Elly is not central to a god-computer's plan to make humanity as part of a millennia-long plan. Deus does not exist, and she has had one reincarnation: Sophia, a contemporary of the Savior, who died shortly before everything came to an end. Besides very faint impressions, she has no memories of her past life for the time being, and doesn't get more than fleeting gimpses.
The impact of her past life is that Elly feels a kinship with Pokémon born of the specter of memories she has of these events. Her sense of duty to Union is heightened; in a sense, she is subconsciously trying to pay off debts from her previous life. This didn't exactly manifest with Enlightened abilities and is, in no way, a psychic bond -- it just means Elly actually values the Pokémon and natural world a lot, and can't always explain why.
Also, Solaris is not a thing here. She is not taught to view a large class of people as base and borderline subhuman. Elly has similarly patriotic, dutybound feelings for Union, but the culture there is different, and Elly is a lot more open-minded about other humans (and was already pretty open-minded).
The Drive Incident also played out differently. This was not a terrible thing that everyone was made to do, but an experiment that a handful of Rangers took part in that went wrong. This changes its emotional and moral tenor; she sees it as a tragedy, and most agree that trying to use Drive was a mistake. Elly is horrified that it hurt other soldiers and made Rangers look bad. In that sense, the incident is worse for Elly in some ways: she feels like she failed the Rangers and Union, and she wants to make up for that perception of failure.
Canon Abilities: Elly has three sets of notable abilities in Xenogears.
First, she can pilot a giant robot called a Gear; hers is named Vierge. Vierge's trademark system is called the AERODs, which are drones that can fire magical attacks that Elly creates.
Secondly, she is an accomplished fighter with a collapsible rod (which she uses like a rapier); she does attacks called Deathblows, the latter of which are basically straight up magic, that shoot out lightning, fire, and the like when she hits someone with them. She is mobile and agile as a fighter, and she does a healthy amount of jumping and leaping around.
Third, she can use elemental attack spells called Ether. Elly is really, really good with these; she can do some of the best offensive magic in the entire game.
Enlightened Abilities: Elly has the God of War Enlightened Ability; she was known in Xenogears for being a scary good combatant and Gear pilot, which was why she lost control when she took Drive. Similarly, she is known for being an exceptional combatant, who is capable of manipulating elemental energies to great effect.
She is a Fire/Electric/Ice Enlightened. She is okay with hand-to-hand combat, but she really shines in projecting elemental energy. She can manipulate fire, ice, and electricity with precision and force. She can cast wide area spells and single target ones, and do some as close-ranged attacks when she needs to.
After the first evolution, Elly will do a lot more of what she does now, but with stronger spells and sometimes mixing the types she has together to create unique spells. In her second evolution, Elly will start actually rolling them together and summoning up insane things like shooting meteors down at people and other such crazy magical attacks. This will involve some ground-type attacks, too.
Elly's rod doesn't really count as an item, as it is mostly a way to parry blows and do some basic attacks. However, she may at some point get human-sized AERODs to do maximum
Starter Pokémon: Elly has a female Dratini that she bonded with when she was about twelve. Her Dratini is named Vierge and it is bossy. She loves it anyways.
Notes/Special Considerations: Obviously, Elly is the reincarnation of Sophia. She knew the Savior in that form, but has extremely indistinct memories, and most of what she remembers is Lacan.
SAMPLES
First-Person: [Elly's voice crackles over the network, a slight bit of static introduced to her voice via the Warp Band. She sounds slightly worried, but there's a plainly evident attempt to keep her voice calm over the network.]
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Ranger van Houten. I'm currently in the eastern part of the forest, and I've spotted a small herd coming down from the mountains. They appear to be tough.
[She hesitates, a moment, before she adds more. Her voice isn't quite scolding, but it's warning -- and a little warm, too.]
I know some of you would love the challenge, but please don't try your skill or your luck. These ones look tough. And if you insist...
[She sighs.]
Ask for help first, please!
Third-Person: Elhaym van Houten kept her cloak wrapped around her tightly. The walls around Union were high and she wasn't up here that often. As a Ranger, she usually was outside the city walls or she was inside the city, fulfilling the duties and expectations of an elite soldier. Of course, Elly still liked coming up to the top of the wall, sometimes. There was something about it that put things in perspective.
Part of it, she thought, was the height. From here, she could see the land she patrolled. She liked to see the trees instead of the forest, most of the time, but sometimes it was nice to see the forest as a whole. It reminded her of how much wilderness was there, of how small Union was compared to the rest of the world.
But it also felt familiar.
She couldn't quite place how, but even the first time she came to the top of the walls, she had a peculiar sense of familiarity -- not as if she had seen this sight before, but as if she looked over the edge of other walls before. That sense of familiarity remained on subsequent visits, and it ran deeper. It always ended the same way; a feeling that a man was standing beside her, looking out over the same wall, and smiling. Eventually, that feeling got too strong to shake, and Elly always had a sentimental side.
She turned her head to the left and looked, but once again, there was no one standing next to her, and the walls were the ones she grew up with -- not the ones she almost remembered. Elly looked forward, smiled, and sighed.
"Just superstition," she murmured.