Brave New World app
Jan. 31st, 2015 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schmott_guyPLAYER INFO
Name: Eric
Contact Information:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
overbring
Time Zone: PST (GMT-8)
Characters Played: None
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Gilgamesh Wulfenbach
Character Canon: Girl Genius
History: The Girl Genius Wiki and Gil's character page in it
AU History: Wulfenbach was a relatively minor family of Union's nobility until one generation ago. Gil's father, after a lifetime of compromise, left the city entirely on mysterious errands of his own for several years. When he returned, he had an infant son and a burning desire to cure all of Union's factional fighting. In the years since, he's built up a sizable following in the city council and is generally considered one of the movers and shakers of Union's politics. His son, however, was sent off to distant relatives and hasn't been seen since.
Meanwhile, Gilgamesh Holzfaller grew up believing himself to be the son of nobody important. Because he was enlightened, he was sent to the best schools, but with no rich family to support him and with his enlightened powers manifesting entirely in his mind (they developed at the young age of 8, when he built an semi-sentient automaton that became his friend. He still keeps it around to this day. It is named Zoing.), he found he had to prove himself day by day as being worthy of working side by side with the city's elite families. He managed it, too, and even made friends, but was generally considered to be the low man on the totem pole.
He didn't find out he was actually Gilgamesh Wulfenbach until he was sixteen. Now he is seventeen, studying in a university and publicly acknowledged as his father's heir. His occasionally accompanies his father on business, who tests him by asking for advice on his work. Mainly, though, he takes on a course load at Union's University that would completely overwhelm someone who didn't have superhuman intelligence, and spends a lot of his spare time working on various mysterious projects of his own in his workshop. Much of Union's upper crust is watching this mysterious heir to the Wulfenbach family who appeared out of nowhere. Watching, and judging, as they learn what kind of man he is going to become.
Canon Personality: The most important thing to understanding Gilgamesh is understanding the Spark. The Spark is a genetic trait that causes those who have it to have unstable sanity. Most of the time they're fine, but when they get inspired by something (and it can be just about anything), they enter "The Madness Place", where they gain unparalleled technical brilliance, an intuitive grasp of the physical sciences, a voice that can compel the weak minded to become their minions (temporarily), and a desire to laugh like a madman and shout defiance at the world from the tallest tower. In short, Sparks are otherwise normal people who become mad scientists, with all the brilliance and insanity that goes with it.
Gil is a spark, and a strong one. Even when not in the madness place, he is a brilliant inventor. When he's off the deep end he's built mechanical orchestras, redesigned non-functional flying machines in free fall, melted armies with lightning bolt attractors, and even threatened to boil England for a thousand years. He can be very very scary.
That said, when everything is running smoothly, Gil is actually a quite calm and friendly fellow, inclined to making friends and giving people second chances. He knows what it's like to be at the bottom of the pecking order, and now that he's at the TOP of the pecking order, he's keeping his past in mind when dealing with others. While many sparks tend to idly build death rays and other weapons of mass destruction when bored, most of Gil's inventions are relatively benign. The aforementioned falling machine and mechanical orchestra come to mind as examples. He generally doesn't see much point in building doomsday weapons unless he actually NEEDS them.
Calm waters hide roiling depths, though. Gil has a lot of unresolved anger. A lot of it is directed at his father. His father has made Gil's life an endless serious of tests to forge him into a worthy successor to his position. On top of that, all of his father's associates treat Gil as a child (at least in his eyes.), and tend to assume he is incompetent. The entire world is watching him and no one believes that he'll be able to make the cut. The only reason he doesn't have a full blown hatred for his father is that the tests and lessons he's endured for now are the only reason he's still alive. The Wulfenbach family has lots of enemies, and only the harshness drilled into him by his father have kept him from getting caught up in some plot and killed. He was also taught mental exercises that let him stay awake for days on end, and although doing so probably isn't very healthy in the long term, he makes use of this talent fairly regularly.
His biggest weakness, much to the aggravation of his father, is that he's a huge romantic. For mysterious reasons (Involving an elaborate plot of mysterious spider riders and the political machinations of the Sturmvolten family, who ruled more of Europe than any other group before Wulfenbach took over.), there aren't very many female sparks. Gil didn't meet a girl who he could talk to about his work without her eyes glazing over (He didn't meet very many boys he could talk to about his work without their eyes glazing over either, but that's besides the point.) until well into his adulthood, and promptly fell head over heels for the first one that could keep up with him. He proposed to her in two weeks (it went exactly as terrible as you might expect.), and even after being thoroughly rejected he's still holding the torch. Outside of the physical sciences, Gil can be something of a dweeb.
AU Deviation: Gil's father is not the ruler of half the civilized world this time around, but merely a influential politician. As such, Gil has a bit less weight on his shoulders. He's also a few years younger than he was when you meet him in canon. He's not quite so confident with the idea of command or used to the idea that he's going to be someone important. All of this adds up to Gil being a bit more irresponsible and a day dreamer than he is in canon.
Canon Abilities: As mentioned, Gil is a Spark. That means he is genetically predisposed to being a mad scientist. As such, he is given to bouts of megalomania combined with levels of technical brilliance that normal people cannot hope to understand without (sometimes) years of careful study of his work. Given a machine shop, or even just a pile of junk and a few tools, Gil can relatively quickly put together robots, weapons, tools, or whatever the situation calls for.
Additionally, his body has been upgraded to have enhanced strength and speed and to be resistant to most poisons. He's also been taught mental exercises that let him stay awake for days on end, and is a skilled martial artist, both unarmed and with a sword.
Enlightened Abilities: Steel/Electric Engineer. As per canon, he has no special powers that help him fight, but his mind is infused with enlightened power that allows him to understand most physical sciences intuitively and build devices that exploit them to perform many and myriad tasks. His areas of speciality seem to be robots and machines that control lightning, but he's shown skill in making all manner of things. While he's in the Madness Place, his voice has a mild compulsion effect, although most PCs would have no trouble resisting it.
He won't get any NEW powers, per se, as his enlightened abilities develop, but he'll be able to construct more elaborate and powerful machines, and build them faster. He won't be getting his biological upgrades. He still has martial arts training, but he wouldn't be able to stand against most enlightened who actually have combat abilities and training.
Starter Pokémon: Gil has bonded with a scyther, which he fences with on a regular basis. He also has a scatterbug, but while it's technically bound to him, it acts more like it is Zoing's pokemon.
Notes/Special Considerations: Gil has a small army of automatons, which he calls "clanks". His clanks aren't any good at fighting, but make passably decent lab assistants. The most notable of his clank army is Zoing, his first creation. Zoing is actually intelligent enough to carry on a conversation (sort of), about two feet tall and vaguely beetle themed, and mainly fetches tools for Gil or makes him tea.
Also, Gil's father is an enlightened with nearly identical abilities to Gil himself.
SAMPLES
First-Person: Testdrive thread
Third-Person: (This is written in prose from an independent narrator’s perspective. Here we want to see an insight into your character’s unspoken behavior -- actions, thoughts, their view of their world, etc. The minimum here is two paragraphs. If we do not get a good sense of your character’s behavior, we will ask for more. If you link an outside entry or thread, the minimum is 20 comments from your character in two threads/with two characters.)
If desired, you may answer some of the following questions in lieu of samples. The questions must be answered in-character, as if they are being asked by a teacher, mentor, or superior. If your character is lying in their answer, please identify it as a lie. The purpose of these is to get an idea of how you will play your character in lieu of the other sample options. 4 questions answered can be used as a substitute for a first-person sample, and 6 questions answered can be used as a substitute for a third-person sample. Both samples may be replaced in this manner. If the character doesn't say enough in their answer, we may request a few more answers for an acceptable sample.
-To what lengths would you go to rescue your allies if they were lost in the wilderness?
Obviously I couldn't devote ALL my attention to helping them. I have many projects that are very delicate and can't be abandoned. But I could send out various agents, or set up signals that they could use to navigate back. There are options.
And anyways most of my friends are not so incompetent that they would be doomed if they got a bit lost.
-What would you say the most important occupation is within your city?
Is that even a question? It's scientists, obviously. Or would you rather we spent the rest of our lives living in caves wondering if rocks are good to eat?
-What does the story of the Savior mean to you?
A parable. Whether or not it really happened is largely unimportant compared to the lesson behind it: One underestimates the forces of nature at their own peril. I'm not sure I agree with the lesson, but I can at least appreciate the spirit in which it is given
-What aspects and traits do you respect most in your individual fellow man?
Intelligence. You barely count as my "fellow" man if I can't hold a decent conversation with you about magnetic monopoles.
-What do you think your Pokémon respect most about you?
I leave no doubt who is the master and who is the minion, and lesser minds, be they human or Pokémon, eventually come to appreciate that.
Technology. By understanding the methods of the ancients, we can stand on their shoulders and reach new heights!
We must understand exactly what happened. What we did that angered them. What they did to bring us low. HOW they did it. What they thought of us. Where they are now. Knowledge has always been humanity's greatest power that lets us compete with Pokémon. However we ultimately decide to deal with the "gods", we cannot make any wise decision without first knowing what happened.
-No Enlightened chooses their abilities - and not all are Enlightened. What type abilities would you most desire to manifest and why?
Some enlightened can shoot lightning from their eyes or lift houses, and I guess that's nice, but I've yet to see anything they can do that I can't replicate with my mind, a good workshop, and some time. I'm fine with what I have.
Name: Eric
Contact Information:
Time Zone: PST (GMT-8)
Characters Played: None
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Gilgamesh Wulfenbach
Character Canon: Girl Genius
History: The Girl Genius Wiki and Gil's character page in it
AU History: Wulfenbach was a relatively minor family of Union's nobility until one generation ago. Gil's father, after a lifetime of compromise, left the city entirely on mysterious errands of his own for several years. When he returned, he had an infant son and a burning desire to cure all of Union's factional fighting. In the years since, he's built up a sizable following in the city council and is generally considered one of the movers and shakers of Union's politics. His son, however, was sent off to distant relatives and hasn't been seen since.
Meanwhile, Gilgamesh Holzfaller grew up believing himself to be the son of nobody important. Because he was enlightened, he was sent to the best schools, but with no rich family to support him and with his enlightened powers manifesting entirely in his mind (they developed at the young age of 8, when he built an semi-sentient automaton that became his friend. He still keeps it around to this day. It is named Zoing.), he found he had to prove himself day by day as being worthy of working side by side with the city's elite families. He managed it, too, and even made friends, but was generally considered to be the low man on the totem pole.
He didn't find out he was actually Gilgamesh Wulfenbach until he was sixteen. Now he is seventeen, studying in a university and publicly acknowledged as his father's heir. His occasionally accompanies his father on business, who tests him by asking for advice on his work. Mainly, though, he takes on a course load at Union's University that would completely overwhelm someone who didn't have superhuman intelligence, and spends a lot of his spare time working on various mysterious projects of his own in his workshop. Much of Union's upper crust is watching this mysterious heir to the Wulfenbach family who appeared out of nowhere. Watching, and judging, as they learn what kind of man he is going to become.
Canon Personality: The most important thing to understanding Gilgamesh is understanding the Spark. The Spark is a genetic trait that causes those who have it to have unstable sanity. Most of the time they're fine, but when they get inspired by something (and it can be just about anything), they enter "The Madness Place", where they gain unparalleled technical brilliance, an intuitive grasp of the physical sciences, a voice that can compel the weak minded to become their minions (temporarily), and a desire to laugh like a madman and shout defiance at the world from the tallest tower. In short, Sparks are otherwise normal people who become mad scientists, with all the brilliance and insanity that goes with it.
Gil is a spark, and a strong one. Even when not in the madness place, he is a brilliant inventor. When he's off the deep end he's built mechanical orchestras, redesigned non-functional flying machines in free fall, melted armies with lightning bolt attractors, and even threatened to boil England for a thousand years. He can be very very scary.
That said, when everything is running smoothly, Gil is actually a quite calm and friendly fellow, inclined to making friends and giving people second chances. He knows what it's like to be at the bottom of the pecking order, and now that he's at the TOP of the pecking order, he's keeping his past in mind when dealing with others. While many sparks tend to idly build death rays and other weapons of mass destruction when bored, most of Gil's inventions are relatively benign. The aforementioned falling machine and mechanical orchestra come to mind as examples. He generally doesn't see much point in building doomsday weapons unless he actually NEEDS them.
Calm waters hide roiling depths, though. Gil has a lot of unresolved anger. A lot of it is directed at his father. His father has made Gil's life an endless serious of tests to forge him into a worthy successor to his position. On top of that, all of his father's associates treat Gil as a child (at least in his eyes.), and tend to assume he is incompetent. The entire world is watching him and no one believes that he'll be able to make the cut. The only reason he doesn't have a full blown hatred for his father is that the tests and lessons he's endured for now are the only reason he's still alive. The Wulfenbach family has lots of enemies, and only the harshness drilled into him by his father have kept him from getting caught up in some plot and killed. He was also taught mental exercises that let him stay awake for days on end, and although doing so probably isn't very healthy in the long term, he makes use of this talent fairly regularly.
His biggest weakness, much to the aggravation of his father, is that he's a huge romantic. For mysterious reasons (Involving an elaborate plot of mysterious spider riders and the political machinations of the Sturmvolten family, who ruled more of Europe than any other group before Wulfenbach took over.), there aren't very many female sparks. Gil didn't meet a girl who he could talk to about his work without her eyes glazing over (He didn't meet very many boys he could talk to about his work without their eyes glazing over either, but that's besides the point.) until well into his adulthood, and promptly fell head over heels for the first one that could keep up with him. He proposed to her in two weeks (it went exactly as terrible as you might expect.), and even after being thoroughly rejected he's still holding the torch. Outside of the physical sciences, Gil can be something of a dweeb.
AU Deviation: Gil's father is not the ruler of half the civilized world this time around, but merely a influential politician. As such, Gil has a bit less weight on his shoulders. He's also a few years younger than he was when you meet him in canon. He's not quite so confident with the idea of command or used to the idea that he's going to be someone important. All of this adds up to Gil being a bit more irresponsible and a day dreamer than he is in canon.
Canon Abilities: As mentioned, Gil is a Spark. That means he is genetically predisposed to being a mad scientist. As such, he is given to bouts of megalomania combined with levels of technical brilliance that normal people cannot hope to understand without (sometimes) years of careful study of his work. Given a machine shop, or even just a pile of junk and a few tools, Gil can relatively quickly put together robots, weapons, tools, or whatever the situation calls for.
Additionally, his body has been upgraded to have enhanced strength and speed and to be resistant to most poisons. He's also been taught mental exercises that let him stay awake for days on end, and is a skilled martial artist, both unarmed and with a sword.
Enlightened Abilities: Steel/Electric Engineer. As per canon, he has no special powers that help him fight, but his mind is infused with enlightened power that allows him to understand most physical sciences intuitively and build devices that exploit them to perform many and myriad tasks. His areas of speciality seem to be robots and machines that control lightning, but he's shown skill in making all manner of things. While he's in the Madness Place, his voice has a mild compulsion effect, although most PCs would have no trouble resisting it.
He won't get any NEW powers, per se, as his enlightened abilities develop, but he'll be able to construct more elaborate and powerful machines, and build them faster. He won't be getting his biological upgrades. He still has martial arts training, but he wouldn't be able to stand against most enlightened who actually have combat abilities and training.
Starter Pokémon: Gil has bonded with a scyther, which he fences with on a regular basis. He also has a scatterbug, but while it's technically bound to him, it acts more like it is Zoing's pokemon.
Notes/Special Considerations: Gil has a small army of automatons, which he calls "clanks". His clanks aren't any good at fighting, but make passably decent lab assistants. The most notable of his clank army is Zoing, his first creation. Zoing is actually intelligent enough to carry on a conversation (sort of), about two feet tall and vaguely beetle themed, and mainly fetches tools for Gil or makes him tea.
Also, Gil's father is an enlightened with nearly identical abilities to Gil himself.
SAMPLES
First-Person: Testdrive thread
Third-Person: (This is written in prose from an independent narrator’s perspective. Here we want to see an insight into your character’s unspoken behavior -- actions, thoughts, their view of their world, etc. The minimum here is two paragraphs. If we do not get a good sense of your character’s behavior, we will ask for more. If you link an outside entry or thread, the minimum is 20 comments from your character in two threads/with two characters.)
If desired, you may answer some of the following questions in lieu of samples. The questions must be answered in-character, as if they are being asked by a teacher, mentor, or superior. If your character is lying in their answer, please identify it as a lie. The purpose of these is to get an idea of how you will play your character in lieu of the other sample options. 4 questions answered can be used as a substitute for a first-person sample, and 6 questions answered can be used as a substitute for a third-person sample. Both samples may be replaced in this manner. If the character doesn't say enough in their answer, we may request a few more answers for an acceptable sample.
-To what lengths would you go to rescue your allies if they were lost in the wilderness?
Obviously I couldn't devote ALL my attention to helping them. I have many projects that are very delicate and can't be abandoned. But I could send out various agents, or set up signals that they could use to navigate back. There are options.
And anyways most of my friends are not so incompetent that they would be doomed if they got a bit lost.
-What would you say the most important occupation is within your city?
Is that even a question? It's scientists, obviously. Or would you rather we spent the rest of our lives living in caves wondering if rocks are good to eat?
-What does the story of the Savior mean to you?
A parable. Whether or not it really happened is largely unimportant compared to the lesson behind it: One underestimates the forces of nature at their own peril. I'm not sure I agree with the lesson, but I can at least appreciate the spirit in which it is given
-What aspects and traits do you respect most in your individual fellow man?
Intelligence. You barely count as my "fellow" man if I can't hold a decent conversation with you about magnetic monopoles.
-What do you think your Pokémon respect most about you?
I leave no doubt who is the master and who is the minion, and lesser minds, be they human or Pokémon, eventually come to appreciate that.
Technology. By understanding the methods of the ancients, we can stand on their shoulders and reach new heights!
We must understand exactly what happened. What we did that angered them. What they did to bring us low. HOW they did it. What they thought of us. Where they are now. Knowledge has always been humanity's greatest power that lets us compete with Pokémon. However we ultimately decide to deal with the "gods", we cannot make any wise decision without first knowing what happened.
-No Enlightened chooses their abilities - and not all are Enlightened. What type abilities would you most desire to manifest and why?
Some enlightened can shoot lightning from their eyes or lift houses, and I guess that's nice, but I've yet to see anything they can do that I can't replicate with my mind, a good workshop, and some time. I'm fine with what I have.
