phantasmods | APPLICATIONS

APPLICATIONS

Applications are currently closed and will open at 12:01 AM PST on February 22nd.

Post your applications to this entry in the following format: First comment should contain the OOC information section only. Successive comments should be posted in reply to that comment, as many as you need. Moderator responses will be appended to the last comment of the application.

A reserve is not required to app! Please note that while the total cap for characters per player is four, you can apply a maximum of two characters per application cycle.

APPLICATION TEMPLATE:

OOC Information

Player name

Player age and gender

Player Contact

Any other characters in game?

IC Information

Character name

Character canon

Canon point

Physical Description

About the Character

Character abilities

Inventory

Samples

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IMPORTANT: Be sure to post your app with the journal you intend to use for the game!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OOC Information

Player name: Nai
Player age and gender: 25 and [train whizzes by], he/him
Player Contact: starcrossedsky @ plurk, starcrossedsky#0506 @ the disco
Any other characters in game?: Izunia Lucis Caelum + also various NPCs those don't count

IC Information

Character name: Asch ~~the Bloody~~ - he's really rather redacted that last bit
Character canon: Tales of the Abyss + LifeAftr CRAU
Canon point: DEAD + after all his LifeAftr adventures
Physical Description: A somewhat short (by JRPG protagonist standards) boy in his late teens, with green eyes, generally European features, and brilliant crimson hair hanging to his waist. He usually secures the hair up these days with an assortment of Very Long cactus spines, and prefers to dress in loose clothes (tunics and the like) over tights and boots. Muscular of the strength over speed variety, actually has a six pack, fat chance of you seeing it since he rarely uncovers anything but his hands and head. Yuri Lowenthal/English voice, tending to be a bit rough; headcanon for accent is "vaguely musical, drawls things out when stressed/relaxed enough that his Kimlascan accent comes out."
About the Character: Original LA app - LA thread tracker + CR chart - please note that I didn't bother updating his last round of inventory stuff.

To summarize the canonical bits: Asch is a teenage not!prince who was born because a prophecy some lady made two thousand years before he was born said that if he was born, his kingdom would reach 'unprecedented prosperity.' As a part of that prophecy, he "inherits the power of Lorelei" aka has the power of the only god-being of the setting that actually appears in the game. Also, he's supposed to use that power to destroy himself and a city at the age of seventeen.

Understandably, his family doesn't tell him this.

Instead, Asch finds out the whole thing from his swordmanship instructor in the aftermath of a horribly traumatic kidnapping in which he was hooked to a magitech machine in order to create a perfect living replica of him - a perfect replica aside from thoughts and memories, anyway. This replica would be sent back to the royal family in place of the real "Luke," who Van wanted unrestricted access to for his own plots and purposes. Given the name Asch at that time, the traumatized 9-10 year old was taken to the religious city of Daath, and Various Forms of Isolating Psychological Abuse happened over the next approximately seven years.

Cut to game start, where Asch, now seventeen, the Commander of Oracle Knights Special Operations (under Van's thumb), has his first encounter with the replica now called Luke. Who... doesn't exactly leave a good impression, but this isn't about Luke's character arc. Suffice it to say that he's a total brat and Asch tries multiple times to kill him out of misdirected anger and need to avenge the life that was stolen from him by Van.

And then there's Akzeriuth - where Van uses Luke to fulfill the prophecy re: destroying the town and kickstarting the war that follows - and I'm not summarizing the whole of the rest of Tales of the Abyss here because we'll be here all day. If you want all the dirty details I've got seven thousand words about it on my journal, so we'll boil it down to this:

After dueling Luke a final time in the final dungeon in order to decide which of them has control over their collective identities (and losing), Asch dies, his character development painfully neglected by the bit of a clusterfuck that the characterization of pretty much everyone at the end of Abyss turned into. Aside from growing more intensely stressed and, as a result, more aggressive, Asch does not much change from the beginning of Abyss to the end; every time he seems to be on the cusp of growth, he self-sabotages himself with one of his other myriad of issues.

Aaaaand then he wakes up on a tropical island jamjar surrounded by strangers from other worlds, and has to figure out where the fuck to go from there.

Over his time at LA, and in particular due to the nature of Storytelling and the memory sharing event, Asch began to find commonalities with people from other worlds (most notably Ardyn and Akechi), and, as a result, began the slow process of opening up and learning to trust people again, in a way he never bothered to in canon. Ardyn, in particular, was unintentionally an extremely validating force simply by doing what he does best (getting angry); while to him, the expression of the one emotion he could normally feel wasn't particularly noteworthy, for Asch it was the first time anyone had really gotten angry about the whole thing on his behalf, rather than on Luke's or their own.

The month and a half that followed on the island of Monsun, which brought out characters' best traits on one half of the island and their worst traits on the other, cemented the development of Asch trying to overcome the barriers to trust that Van left him with on a conscious level - because at his best, he didn't have those issues, and at his worst he was downright paranoid and aggressive and generally a danger to be around other people. Though Asch kept up a relatively nomadic lifestyle in the name of gathering supplies and just having an intense wanderlust born of "I ran around the entire planet and now you expect me to stay here?," he kept in close contact with the desert camp on the positive traits side of Monsun. This period solidified his weird, Asch-is-afraid-of-paternal-attachment relationship with Ardyn (who was... considerably changed by having his daemonic side suppressed on the island) as well as his friendships with Ignis and Muffet.

The other notable bit of CR from this time period was Xion/Aster and, eventually, Shion - themselves CRAUs from Tower of Animus, where they had known a different version of Asch and been very close with him. In a callback to Animus Asch himself deciding to trust Luke because his future self had (because I also played Asch at Animus and I love callbacks), the Asch on the islands made the decision to trust in his other self's judgement and started up a (somewhat awkward, a bit hesitant) friendship with the two.

The last event that Asch participated in at LA was a sort of wish-granting event that granted a character's subconscious desires - in Asch's case, the desire to see what happened to Auldrant after his death. This was ultimately a bit of a Madoka Wish for him (if the shoe fits, call it a duck), as while it did reveal that Van had been defeated, it also revealed that Asch's family erected a grave for him under the name of 'Luke,' even as they held out hope for his replica's impossible return from death. Feeling thus that his family had neglected his own identity as Asch, and generally scorned overall, Asch cut ties with his blood family in terms of his own regard for them. Ironically, where he once considered Luke an imposter and nuisance at best, as things stand now, Luke is likely the only person Asch would acknowledge as any sort of blood family (though that is, of course, tenuous based on whatever might happen should he actually ever encounter his replica again).

The lack of save-the-world pressure hanging over his head at LA gave Asch a chance to mellow a bit; additionally, the fact that his own death on Auldrant is come and gone has allowed him to finally let go of the need to carry duty to the world on his shoulders. Or, at least, try, as it's hard to let go of something that's been ingrained in you since birth, as first a royal heir, then as Van's chosen tool for saving the world, and then finally as one of the only people who could stop that 'salvation.' Asch finally has the freedom to work some of his shit out as a result, and he's been... trying, mostly out of a resolve to get closer to that 'best self' he had on Monsun, the one capable of laughing and having friends. But that doesn't leave him without many, many issues (in particular, the father-figure issues that he refused to confront in his relationship with Ardyn, and his inability to accept that most people are kind simply because they want to help, not because they're out to take advantage of you), but... Well, he's a work in progress.

Good luck, kid.

Character abilities:Modified slightly from C/P of his LA app; I am so sorry about this wall of text.

PREFACE/GLOSSARY/the-app-won’t-make-sense-if-you-don’t-read-this: The Seventh Fonon is a magical particle affiliated with sound, memory, and healing. Generally only a small percentage of Auldrant’s population is capable of using it (these people are called Seventh Fonists). Abilities in the Tales series in general are called artes - strike and arcane artes are physical attacks with an element of magic to them (eg lighting your sword on fire before hitting something), while fonic artes are traditional spells (all with incantations in the game, but they often get skipped in the anime).

CHUNK #1: PASSIVE THINGS. Asch is, on a purely human level, an excellent swordsman and athlete, and a fully trained soldier. While the Abyss "normal" seems to be different from that in our world, he's strong enough to literally punch people into the air and jump ten feet up from a standstill. While it's implied that the ridiculous strength of the Abyss cast is from infusing their own bodies with fonons (evidence: how much weaker Jade gets when his fon slots are sealed), it's still a "passive" ability. Also, fonists have the ability to sense the elemental particles of fonons, especially when they're in high concentration (basically: low-key elementally based magic sense).

CHUNK #2: ARTES. Asch has a full list of strike artes (including Luke's sidequest artes) and a short list of casting artes, which I'm not going to list out in full because there's a better list at the wiki and anyway we'd be here all day. Suffice it to say that he's very capable in combat - the major notable gap in his abilities is that he can't heal with anything other than the lame "10% to allies" of Guardian Field. I also tend to assume that there are generic abilities shared among fonists, such as heating water, that go without mention in the game simply because there's no need to talk about them.

A SPECIAL SIDE NOTE ON MYSTIC ARTES: AKA, limit breaks, but Tales Edition. Asch has one, Rending Saber, which is unusual because most characters have two but they apparently never finished programming his second one so whatever. They can only be used in Overlimit, which is a heightened state from your usual build-a-gauge system that prevents staggering and can basically be treated similarly to any other low-level super-mode. Rending Saber doesn't have any special requirements to use beyond landing a higher-tier arte on an enemy.

CHUNK #3: GENERIC SEVENTH FONIST ABILITIES. Although Asch is in theory a very capable Seventh Fonist, in practice... not so much. It's unknown if he can read the Score and known that he can't use healing artes, but logic declares that he has the potential to do so and be really good at it. He just didn't ever learn. Dingbat. Also, he has naturally perfect pitch and a good, if unpracticed, singing ability.

He can probably also test others for the ability to use the Seventh Fonon - on Auldrant the ability to use it safely is possessed by roughly 10% of the population (if you try to use it and don't have this ability, Things Go Bad Fast), but if that ever comes up ~~I'll yell for mods before doing anything with it~~ fuck this I am a mod I do what I like.

CHUNK #4: SCION OF LORELEI BULLSHIT, AKA HYPERRESONANCE. Possessing the fonon frequency of the Seventh fonon itself allows Asch to cause a single-person hyperresonance (that is, make seventh fonons vibrate together a lot). There's several instances of hyperresonance doing weird things in canon, but the most important is that it can be used to dissolve matter by vibrating it apart at subatomic levels. Asch can do so at will, but it takes a lot of concentration and isn't exactly stealthy, because it makes him glow and hyperresonance makes a weird humming noise. And comes with the risk of just blowing up if he screws it up, so he doesn't usually like to use it, either.

CHUNK #5: PERFECT ISOFON PROBLEMS. Not only is Asch a perfect isofon of Lorelei, but his replica is in turn a perfect isofon of him. Thus, the three of them can utilize a mental fon slot connection to speak telepathically (although, in practice, it's mostly Asch yelling at Luke). Said connection usually causes an awful headache for the receiving party, for unknown reasons. Asch can also spy on Luke through this connection (seemingly by looking through Luke's own senses, although canon isn't exactly clear) without Luke being aware of it. (It presumably could be used the other way around, but... Luke is not precisely skilled at his world's magic-type skills.)

Also, since that connection was opened, Asch spent the last several months slowly dying as his fonons fucked off to go hang out with Luke instead (just like everyone else in his life) (thanks, replica). The result was something very like a degenerative illness - decreased strength both physically and magically, lowered endurance, occasional bouts of disturbing numbness and/or pain, etc. If this had run to its conclusion, Asch would have "died" and then woken up in Luke's body with Luke's memories as an appendix on his own. Fun times for everyone.

CHUNK #6: NON-COMBAT ABILITIES. Outside of combat and other fonon related abilities, Asch has a decent grasp of court manners, geography, and a few other more academic subjects. He's an excellent cook, especially of Japanese and American foods (by Earth standards). He knows his way around religious doctrine and is passable at infiltration-type activities. Auldrant's technology level is below ours, but selectively; Asch has some basic computer skills, but would probably be more at home with command prompts than touchscreens. His wilderness survival skills are not quite top-notch, for a setting with Earth-based florafauna; he'd be unfamiliar with most of them except in the most general way, but has the basic skills required for hunting, starting a fire, clean water, etc, etc.
Inventory:
-> Clothes worn (tunic, undershirt, leggings, high boots, sword belt + scabbard) + 18 cactus spikes in hair
-> Two swords (they were in him); technically replica weapons and thus 100% Seventh Fonon, but unless you poke them with a "is this magic?" sense of some sort they're just normal swords. (one in sword belt, the other strapped to his pack without sheath)
-> Handful of basic personal travelling supplies (pocketknife, hairbrush, whetstone, small sewing kit, small canteen, 2 cord hair ties, cloth sack) in a belt pack that you probably couldn't cram much more into if you tried
-> Waterproof large travelling pack, with a 1.5 liter canteen hooked onto it, containing the below; strapped onto the pack is a cloak/blanket of light purple spidersilk (a gift from Muffet)
-> Additional clothes (two pairs of jeans, two pairs of long underwear, two teeshirts, some extra socks)
-> Food (several mangos and other tropical fruits, smoked fish, cabbage rolls)
-> An extra knife, a toothbrush, a bit of fishing line, a couple of red feather charms (from the aftermath of the sun-going-out event party) and a couple of black chocobo feathers (from Ardyn's Hraesvelgr)

Samples: top-level tag-out

Thank you and welcome to Phantasmal Rift! The mods will handle all the behind the scenes stuff for you - all you need to do is join

phantasmalrift,

phonetasmal and

phantasmemes, and then head over to the OOC Intro post! You may also wish to join the Discord server if you haven't already! Everything you need to know immediately upon game entry is here at the Welcome Post!

Additionally, if you use a secondary journal for icon space or other purposes, please respond to this comment with it so that we can get it included!

For your participation in the Test Drive, your character also receives the following items of loot;

Garnet Studs: A pair of garnet stud earrings of middling quality. Set in gold, with gold backs; the gems are approximately one carat each and a dark wine red.
Snek?: This critter appears to be a snake, though at second glance its 'scales' are actually soft feathers, and it's warm to the touch. It's quite friendly and inquisitive.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

APPLICATIONS

Asch [Tales of the Abyss/CRAU] | Reserved

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