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The Semi-Quick Details
Jul. 23rd, 2017 06:55 pmBecause it's nice to have a quick rundown on an OC without having to go through a billion words of worldbuilding. So I'll try to keep it somewhere under a million! (No promises.)
The Setting:
Cramming magical boys/girls into a dystopian hellscape, because I'm wild like that.
Think if a vaguely Shadowrun-esque dystopia got flipped upside down by the sudden re-discovery of magic and a mad scheme to use controlled portals to an alternate universe where everything is an endless series of explosions as a form of energy generation to solve an energy crisis. Surly nothing could go wrong with that, right? And then came monsters called Nightmares (not the most original name, but fancy names weren't really the first thing on their mind when they encountered them) who didn't much care for all these little holes being poked in spacetime and decided to come say hi and chill and maybe devour humanity while they're at it.
That's bad!
So the mega-corporations racked their brains, came to the conclusion that getting devoured would be pretty bad for their bottom line and decided to try shooting them with a whole lot of different guns which worked for a little while until bigger, nastier monsters that didn't give a shit about bullets started appearing. So they tried harnessing magical guns, which worked better! Except magic is clunky and difficult to wield, therefore the production of magical weapons and munitions is time consuming and complicated. That's a problem! And then things got a little bit strange when somebody suddenly turned up with incredible magical powers and the ability to fight Nightmares on equal footing. It was some crazy anime shit, you had to be there.
This marked the rise of the first Mahou, individuals granted the gift of being able to wield magic as naturally as most people breathe and also the ability to do cool things like flip through the air and shoot magic at monsters and be worryingly hard to kill by most conventional methods. And it's all fueled by the power of hope! (No literally, that's what makes magic be more better good.) It's a pretty sweet deal! They're basically magical girls (And boys too). In fact, that's literally what they are, fancy outfits and all. Let's be real, this is a pretty sweet gig in a world where everything is controlled with an iron fist by the impossibly wealthy and powerful hyper-elite. Which brings me to the one small problem with this.
See, nobody actually knows what's granting people this power and whatever it is really doesn't seem to be too picky either, there aren't any rules saying a Mahou has to fight for justice or love or any of that good stuff. "Hope" is a fairly nebulous thing, "I want to make the world a better place where people don't live in constant fear and oppression" is obviously pretty legit but "I want to swim in a pool of money and have my own thirty person harem" will do just as well. And with that kind of power, rising up in society isn't nearly as difficult as it is for people who still have to worry about pesky things like 'mortal limits'.
Even for the ones fighting for what they see as justice, there's nothing saying they need to be polite about it, if they wanted to alternate between using their powers to stop monsters and go about blowing up skyscrapers there really isn't a whole lot stopping them except other people powerful enough to put a stop to that, which has created an entirely new power dynamic for society to deal with. Having a handful of crazy powerful superpeople running around fighting monsters but also each other certainly ramps up the tension, some Mahou fight for the system, some fight against it, others still simply don't give a crap and try to stay out of the way. What one actually does with their power is really more or less up to them.
Nobody's burned down a city yet, for what that's worth, so they're collectively doing something right at least!
The Character - Background:
Which brings us to Our Hero(TM) right here, a boy from an almost well off military family who's parents were employed in one of the many mega-corps private security forces with a largely unremarkable childhood. Also one of the first Mahou to awaken, so I guess that's not quite so unremarkable. Keeping something of a lower profile than the others who'd call themselves Mahou, the boy who became known as Reverie preferred to keep himself out of the high-flying monster-slaying spotlight as well as reasonably distant from the ongoing politics, instead electing to focus his talents on simply helping those who'd fallen through the cracks, the ones unnoticed and insignificant in the bigger picture, gifted with the magical ability to mend wounds and heal the sick. Something not as well suited for a direct battle, but perfect for what he felt strongly about, helping those who had nobody else to turn to.
The Character - Personality:
Growing up, Reverie always knew he wanted to help people, even if exactly how to do that eluded him. His parents knew the corporations were anything but helpful, anything but caring about those beneath them and yet they'd both signed up for the various security organizations in hopes of doing what little they could to help others and maybe make the world a slightly less terrible place. If they got lucky, maybe they could even try to do something from within the system, change it from within yanno? A fools wish to some, but something they hoped for nonetheless. So when these powers awoke within him there was no real question as to what he wanted to do with them.
Of course it's often not that simple and the fact is? It's kind of a shitty world. People can and will be awful to each other for incredibly petty reasons, many of those with power simply don't care about those beneath them (or even really anybody other than themselves) and this isn't a world that lends itself well to such an idealistic approach. As a result, Reverie's worldview is decidedly a bit more jaded than your average wide-eyed "I'm going to be a hero" sort, even if he tries to cling to his ideals regardless. Still driven to help people, still a firm believer that he's doing the right thing but always expecting the worse. The way he sees it people aren't inherently good and in fact, most people can really kind of suck. Still, that makes a crappy excuse to not at least try, many of these people have reasons for acting the way they do after all and if he simply stood by and did nothing that wouldn't exactly be helping. And maybe one guy can't save the world, but if you save the life of a person, didn't you save their world? And at the end of the day, that's something he can still be proud of.
That realization that the world is anything but a friendly and happy place doesn't stop him from being a bit too curious for his own good either, even in an era as tragic and complicated as this there's still fantastic things out there, to say nothing of the mysteries surrounding magic and the origin of their own powers, something many Mahou don't seem to regard as especially important. It's his hope that in keeping a lower profile he might just be able to focus more on discovering the truth rather than battling his way through the byzantine politics of the world he lives in.
Besides, there's more to the world than just this, and it isn't going to be discovered by just sitting around waiting for it, right?
The Character - Abilities:
So! Let's talk about magic for a moment shall we? All Mahou have a few basic tricks up their sleeves, they tend to generally be tougher than your average grade human for one thing and most notably, can wield magic about as easily as most people can breath or move a limb. This is notable given magic usually involves complicated, arcane rituals, exotic materials and the occasional blood sacrifice or two, so simply being able to wave his hand and make magic happen is kind of the big reason Mahou are equally looked up to and feared. And while it's entirely possible to develop new abilities with time, practice and the occasional moment of intoxicated inspiration most Mahou usually get some kind of unique gift based on what drives them in the first place, though it isn't always based on that and a creative mind can often wield powers in unusual ways.
Let's take Reverie's main trick for example here, the ability to heal people. On the surface it's pretty simple, wave his hands, make some glowy lights appear and he can do things like mend bones and knit flesh back together and make you feel just like you did before you drove that hovercycle through a store window while on a drunken bender! Fantastic stuff, really. It's also a hell of a lot meaner than that under the surface because healing isn't really the best way of describing his natural gift, it'd be far more proper to call it by its true name, Biomancy.
It's far more than merely the ability to make people feel good after they've felt bad, it's the ability to empower people, to make people stronger, tougher, faster. To generate redundant organs that sit idle until needed, a secondary heart in case your first one fails, an entire extra cardiovascular system waiting to kick in when something happens to your last one, an extra liver because you thought twelve glasses of hyper-proof liquor was a good idea at that party last night (it wasn't, and he's going to charge you for that brand new liver because that was dumb). And that's just the benevolent stuff.
It's equally useful on people he doesn't like because he's fully capable of switching the life-granting power into reverse, energy that commands biological matter and cells to start dying left right and center, literal lasers of pure rot, the power to create super-viruses that are nigh-untreatable with conventional methods that spread as aggressively as any other, or to simply boost his own physical capabilities so he can punch an SOB out that much better than he normally could, because for all the complexities of the world he might live in Mr. Haymaker knows how to put an end to an argument quite like no other. Most of which are powers he doesn't especially feel good about using, but nonetheless remain up his sleeve just in case, because the most useful weapon is the one your enemy doesn't know you have or something equally deep and wise sounding. He's not really a fighter by nature, but knowing how to fuck someone up when they don't know you can do that seems handy, right?
Beyond that he's also not a bad fighter in general, being raised by military parents meant having half an idea how to defend himself from a pretty young age just in case, and being raised by military parents who were actually really good at their jobs meant having a decent sense of awareness about dangerous situations and how to be creative to gain the upper hand, because at the end of the day all your ideals don't mean a whole hell of a lot if you're dead, a simple truth he's taken to heart even with his quiet distaste for a lot of the pointless fighting going on in the world.
So You Wanna Know More:
Like what you see and wanna know more? For the sake of having everything accessible from a single post that I can just link people to, have two more links to the setting history and the full character details!
Character Information over here!
Setting Information over here!
The Setting:
Cramming magical boys/girls into a dystopian hellscape, because I'm wild like that.
Think if a vaguely Shadowrun-esque dystopia got flipped upside down by the sudden re-discovery of magic and a mad scheme to use controlled portals to an alternate universe where everything is an endless series of explosions as a form of energy generation to solve an energy crisis. Surly nothing could go wrong with that, right? And then came monsters called Nightmares (not the most original name, but fancy names weren't really the first thing on their mind when they encountered them) who didn't much care for all these little holes being poked in spacetime and decided to come say hi and chill and maybe devour humanity while they're at it.
That's bad!
So the mega-corporations racked their brains, came to the conclusion that getting devoured would be pretty bad for their bottom line and decided to try shooting them with a whole lot of different guns which worked for a little while until bigger, nastier monsters that didn't give a shit about bullets started appearing. So they tried harnessing magical guns, which worked better! Except magic is clunky and difficult to wield, therefore the production of magical weapons and munitions is time consuming and complicated. That's a problem! And then things got a little bit strange when somebody suddenly turned up with incredible magical powers and the ability to fight Nightmares on equal footing. It was some crazy anime shit, you had to be there.
This marked the rise of the first Mahou, individuals granted the gift of being able to wield magic as naturally as most people breathe and also the ability to do cool things like flip through the air and shoot magic at monsters and be worryingly hard to kill by most conventional methods. And it's all fueled by the power of hope! (No literally, that's what makes magic be more better good.) It's a pretty sweet deal! They're basically magical girls (And boys too). In fact, that's literally what they are, fancy outfits and all. Let's be real, this is a pretty sweet gig in a world where everything is controlled with an iron fist by the impossibly wealthy and powerful hyper-elite. Which brings me to the one small problem with this.
See, nobody actually knows what's granting people this power and whatever it is really doesn't seem to be too picky either, there aren't any rules saying a Mahou has to fight for justice or love or any of that good stuff. "Hope" is a fairly nebulous thing, "I want to make the world a better place where people don't live in constant fear and oppression" is obviously pretty legit but "I want to swim in a pool of money and have my own thirty person harem" will do just as well. And with that kind of power, rising up in society isn't nearly as difficult as it is for people who still have to worry about pesky things like 'mortal limits'.
Even for the ones fighting for what they see as justice, there's nothing saying they need to be polite about it, if they wanted to alternate between using their powers to stop monsters and go about blowing up skyscrapers there really isn't a whole lot stopping them except other people powerful enough to put a stop to that, which has created an entirely new power dynamic for society to deal with. Having a handful of crazy powerful superpeople running around fighting monsters but also each other certainly ramps up the tension, some Mahou fight for the system, some fight against it, others still simply don't give a crap and try to stay out of the way. What one actually does with their power is really more or less up to them.
Nobody's burned down a city yet, for what that's worth, so they're collectively doing something right at least!
The Character - Background:
Which brings us to Our Hero(TM) right here, a boy from an almost well off military family who's parents were employed in one of the many mega-corps private security forces with a largely unremarkable childhood. Also one of the first Mahou to awaken, so I guess that's not quite so unremarkable. Keeping something of a lower profile than the others who'd call themselves Mahou, the boy who became known as Reverie preferred to keep himself out of the high-flying monster-slaying spotlight as well as reasonably distant from the ongoing politics, instead electing to focus his talents on simply helping those who'd fallen through the cracks, the ones unnoticed and insignificant in the bigger picture, gifted with the magical ability to mend wounds and heal the sick. Something not as well suited for a direct battle, but perfect for what he felt strongly about, helping those who had nobody else to turn to.
The Character - Personality:
Growing up, Reverie always knew he wanted to help people, even if exactly how to do that eluded him. His parents knew the corporations were anything but helpful, anything but caring about those beneath them and yet they'd both signed up for the various security organizations in hopes of doing what little they could to help others and maybe make the world a slightly less terrible place. If they got lucky, maybe they could even try to do something from within the system, change it from within yanno? A fools wish to some, but something they hoped for nonetheless. So when these powers awoke within him there was no real question as to what he wanted to do with them.
Of course it's often not that simple and the fact is? It's kind of a shitty world. People can and will be awful to each other for incredibly petty reasons, many of those with power simply don't care about those beneath them (or even really anybody other than themselves) and this isn't a world that lends itself well to such an idealistic approach. As a result, Reverie's worldview is decidedly a bit more jaded than your average wide-eyed "I'm going to be a hero" sort, even if he tries to cling to his ideals regardless. Still driven to help people, still a firm believer that he's doing the right thing but always expecting the worse. The way he sees it people aren't inherently good and in fact, most people can really kind of suck. Still, that makes a crappy excuse to not at least try, many of these people have reasons for acting the way they do after all and if he simply stood by and did nothing that wouldn't exactly be helping. And maybe one guy can't save the world, but if you save the life of a person, didn't you save their world? And at the end of the day, that's something he can still be proud of.
That realization that the world is anything but a friendly and happy place doesn't stop him from being a bit too curious for his own good either, even in an era as tragic and complicated as this there's still fantastic things out there, to say nothing of the mysteries surrounding magic and the origin of their own powers, something many Mahou don't seem to regard as especially important. It's his hope that in keeping a lower profile he might just be able to focus more on discovering the truth rather than battling his way through the byzantine politics of the world he lives in.
Besides, there's more to the world than just this, and it isn't going to be discovered by just sitting around waiting for it, right?
The Character - Abilities:
So! Let's talk about magic for a moment shall we? All Mahou have a few basic tricks up their sleeves, they tend to generally be tougher than your average grade human for one thing and most notably, can wield magic about as easily as most people can breath or move a limb. This is notable given magic usually involves complicated, arcane rituals, exotic materials and the occasional blood sacrifice or two, so simply being able to wave his hand and make magic happen is kind of the big reason Mahou are equally looked up to and feared. And while it's entirely possible to develop new abilities with time, practice and the occasional moment of intoxicated inspiration most Mahou usually get some kind of unique gift based on what drives them in the first place, though it isn't always based on that and a creative mind can often wield powers in unusual ways.
Let's take Reverie's main trick for example here, the ability to heal people. On the surface it's pretty simple, wave his hands, make some glowy lights appear and he can do things like mend bones and knit flesh back together and make you feel just like you did before you drove that hovercycle through a store window while on a drunken bender! Fantastic stuff, really. It's also a hell of a lot meaner than that under the surface because healing isn't really the best way of describing his natural gift, it'd be far more proper to call it by its true name, Biomancy.
It's far more than merely the ability to make people feel good after they've felt bad, it's the ability to empower people, to make people stronger, tougher, faster. To generate redundant organs that sit idle until needed, a secondary heart in case your first one fails, an entire extra cardiovascular system waiting to kick in when something happens to your last one, an extra liver because you thought twelve glasses of hyper-proof liquor was a good idea at that party last night (it wasn't, and he's going to charge you for that brand new liver because that was dumb). And that's just the benevolent stuff.
It's equally useful on people he doesn't like because he's fully capable of switching the life-granting power into reverse, energy that commands biological matter and cells to start dying left right and center, literal lasers of pure rot, the power to create super-viruses that are nigh-untreatable with conventional methods that spread as aggressively as any other, or to simply boost his own physical capabilities so he can punch an SOB out that much better than he normally could, because for all the complexities of the world he might live in Mr. Haymaker knows how to put an end to an argument quite like no other. Most of which are powers he doesn't especially feel good about using, but nonetheless remain up his sleeve just in case, because the most useful weapon is the one your enemy doesn't know you have or something equally deep and wise sounding. He's not really a fighter by nature, but knowing how to fuck someone up when they don't know you can do that seems handy, right?
Beyond that he's also not a bad fighter in general, being raised by military parents meant having half an idea how to defend himself from a pretty young age just in case, and being raised by military parents who were actually really good at their jobs meant having a decent sense of awareness about dangerous situations and how to be creative to gain the upper hand, because at the end of the day all your ideals don't mean a whole hell of a lot if you're dead, a simple truth he's taken to heart even with his quiet distaste for a lot of the pointless fighting going on in the world.
So You Wanna Know More:
Like what you see and wanna know more? For the sake of having everything accessible from a single post that I can just link people to, have two more links to the setting history and the full character details!
Character Information over here!
Setting Information over here!
