systemwide app

[roboticist]

UNPLUGGED

OOC

Name: Dana
Age: 28
Contact details: aim @ scientifLc pillbug
Characters already in Systemwide: N/A

BASIC PROFILE

Name: Saphir Wyon Gneiss (As a side note, while Saphir is his real name, he went by the alias Dist for the duration of Abyss. He took the name to help go into a kind of hiding and will abandon it upon being unplugged.)
Age: 35
Canon: Tales of the Abyss
Appearance:

Numbers
Height: 5'9" / 174cm
Weight: 137lb / 62kg
Hair: White
Eyes: Purple(really). Bright blue outside the Matrix.
Build: Weedy and pointy
Aesthetic: Flashy/Pink/Completely incompatible with the fashion in the Real
Extraction point: About three months "postgame"(not counting the two-year time skip at the very very end).

OVERVIEW

Personality: Saphir is exceedingly dramatic, to put things lightly. He considers himself an unrivaled genius, and in certain areas he's right -- although these areas are somewhat diminished by his being incompetent with everything else. He whines when he's not listened to, or taken seriously, or wordlessly obeyed, or given the kind of special treatment that an ultra-gorgeous technological prodigy like him deserves. Needless to say, he's completely egomaniacal and with a superiority complex one could get lost in; while he can be charming and charismatic when he puts his mind to it, it usually doesn't last very long.

He's finicky about everything, from the way he dresses to what he eats to the company he keeps, and has no tolerance for anything going any way besides perfectly. He's something of a hedonist when it comes to comfort, naturally placing his own "needs," real or perceived, above those of others; he can go out of his way to help those he cares about, and indeed will repay kindness with kindness, but he only rarely initiates friendships.

Saphir is incredibly headstrong. When he sets his mind on something he will get it done, even if it takes him a lifetime(see: his attempting to bring a teacher from his childhood back to life, a quest that he had been committed to for over twenty years with no loss of enthusiasm, at least until a clone of said teacher shot him in the face). While he is easy to manipulate, he's hard to dissuade, and if you stand in his way he will run you over without a second thought, old friend or no. Of course, he'll try to argue with you first, but that course of action rarely gets him anywhere.

As an aside, while it can't be said that Saphir avoids conflict, being quite grating, he does flee from it very quickly. He doesn't fight for himself; he much prefers to taunt from a distance and then turn tail once things start getting dangerous, or take refuge inside one of his Kaiser Dist mechs and engage from inside the safety of steel an inch thick all around him.

Given what we know about Saphir's history and how he interacts with various characters in his canon, I feel it's safe to say that he has a few abandonment issues; he's acknowledged as a very lonely person, and people's treatment of him over the course of the game reinforces this. He doesn't have any friends, and his allies are only his allies because they happen to be on the same side, not because they like being around him or working with him. He goes out of his way to repay what little kindness he's shown, and when he latches on to you he will not let go, ever. This, along with his vanity and his temper, makes him a very easy person to "persuade"(see: use) if anyone is of a mind to try.

Given that I'm pulling him from a little bit after canon, and that once he's arrested the game stops following him, the psychological effect of isolation on him is largely headcanon but in my opinion can't be overlooked. Saphir is a person who craves attention; given his status as a war criminal and his prior jailbreak during canon, he was placed in almost entirely solitary confinement, behind a glass wall in an empty, guarded room. The mania and impotent rage have only served to further unhinge him, and by the three-month mark he'd started climbing the walls and scratching holes in his arms. He began to dissociate from his perceived reality, dreams - when he could sleep - becoming patches of numbers and red fluid, and minutes occasionally stretching into hours during the day in which he would appear catatonic to the casual observer. It was then that he was presented with the choice to leave his world, from an operative named Halcyon disguised as one of the prison guards. Needless to say, Saphir seized the chance almost before the operative finished speaking. In general, he will not regret this decision.


Matrix: This is a (very) brief summary of Saphir's role in his canon, with a handy timeline. More details can be provided if necessary.

His home world is a bit more complicated to explain. The planet is called Auldrant, a world built of two components: matter and fonons. Fonons are particles of sound that can be split into six types: Dark, Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Light. These are referred to as the first through sixth fonons, in the above order. Each fonon has an aggregate sentience that forms when enough of the fonons come together; in order, they are Shadow, Gnome, Sylph, Undine, Efreet, and Rem. Eventually, a seventh type of fonon was discovered; the fonon of sound, whose sentience is called Lorelei. The Seventh Fonon could be used to read the future and soon after its discovery the planet fell into a brutal conflict for control over the power of prophesy. This was known as the Fonic War, and it raged over all the nations until a poisonous miasma from deep within seeped out to cover the land. Soon after a woman named Yulia Jue used the Seventh Fonon to see 2000 years into the future, a prophesy recorded on seventh fonstones and later called the Score, and discovered a way to save humanity from the miasma. This required the use of Sephiroth trees, spouts of fonons and memory particles that spew outward from below. Using these trees, Yulia Jue raised the crust of the world up above the miasma, leaving only a small settlement called Yulia City below, in the region that would come to be called the Qliphoth.

On the subject of fonons, they are as much a part of life as the Score. They power electricity and computers, machinery as well as magic. Saphir was what's known as a fontechnician, or a person skilled with creating fonon-powered machinery. Because of this, the technology level on the planet varies wildly; they have hovering landships and eventually flying machines, but travel by coach and send letters and information by carrier pigeon. Telephones don't exist, but some devices have interfaces similar to computers. As such, some changes in the Real will make perfect sense while others will take a touch more effort to fully put together.

2000 years later, the Score has become integrated into the lives of everyone on the planet; it spells out life decisions, marriages, births, and deaths. It predicts wars and disasters. A religion called the Order of Lorelei has grown up around it, and it acts as the keeper of the Score and by association the world's guide. There's a section called the Closed Score that only the highest ranking clergy is permitted to see. Over the course of Tales of the Abyss, this changes, with the score eventually being removed as the driving force in the lives of the people, the lands being lowered into the Qliphoth, and the Miasma being dispersed to make life there safe. In doing so, the force that creates fonons in a quantity usable by the world's casters, called the Planet Storm, had to be halted, so by the time Saphir is unplugged the world is beginning to adjust to life without fonists(magicians) and healers, and learning to function independent of the Score.


Real World: Saphir has only been in the Real for a couple of weeks; he can get around and generally care for himself, but he is quickly exhausted and still has to go in for physical therapy and minor medical procedures. He's still very much adjusting to the fact that he's free, but simply being around others, especially others who are helping and interacting with him by choice, has begun repairing the mental damage done by prolonged isolation and, before that, rejection and abuse. He still has a very long way to go physically and mentally, but he's been shown the path and has begun taking halting steps forward.

ABILITIES AND SKILLS

Anomalies: He hasn't been shown to be able to do anything particularly special. Theoretically anybody with fonons would be able to manipulate them to some degree, and on Auldrant he's capable of it, but not really beyond the average untrained civilian.

Skillset: Saphir is a mechanical genius. This is not hyperbole; on his world he's created unprecedented technology, and while some of it is mechanical reproduction and enhancement of fonist abilities, others are completely new. His mecha have no analogues elsewhere on Auldrant, and he created a flying chair long before anybody else mastered flight - and he did it, presumably, without technology from the era before the modern day, which was required for the airships. He is a fast learner and will pick up skills in the real world relatively quickly.

As far as other traits, Saphir is incredibly determined, even (or especially) in the face of goals that seem impossible. He also has a weirdly uncanny ability to just not die; he would obviously not survive being crushed, decapitated, or dismembered, but he can recover from cuts, bruises, burns, and concussions shockingly well. It doesn't cross over into the supernatural technically... unless you talk to some of the people who have seen it. Tenacious as a cockroach indeed.

Upload Capabilities:

Anomalous Skills: 0
Martial Arts: 0
Projectile Weaponry: 3
Technical Skills: 5
Wild Card: 2

SAMPLES

1

Saphir's room is a mess. Like most people, he doesn't own very many things, but unlike some, claustrophobia, nightmares, and panic attacks like to combine into destructive impulses that, while they only rarely spill over into the rest of the ship, he is nevertheless embarrassed by when they're over. He's been incredibly lucky that he has some blank paper and a couple of books, both rare commodities, and this is at least the third time he's had to re-bind one of them. At least the pages are still in one piece.

Since sleep is off the table, Saphir spends a few minutes straightening his things, then pads barefoot out into the ship and towards the cockpit. Even if his copilot isn't interested in being relieved early - which Saphir doubts - being around the controls and watching out the window will be soothing. The... episodes, such as they are, are becoming less common, but he can tell it will be a long time before they disappear completely. Distraction, unfortunately, is the best medicine available to him.

2

Of course it has to happen when half the ship is jacked in. Even pushing the little hovercraft to its limits, Saphir knows he can't outrun a sentinel, and with their captain stuck in the Matrix... well, he can shout at the available members of his crew as well as anybody. "Get to the guns! And operator, strap them down." He gestures towards the reclining bodies of the jacked-in members of the crew, but doesn't wait for her to actually start doing it before he brings up the map, biting his lip. They're not far from a narrowing in the sewers... with a hard left, he shoots towards it.

The guns are giving it their all, but with so few of them it's not enough. Saphir grins when he hears the tell-tale clank and whine of the squiddies latching onto the outer hull; luckily, they're attached to the top and only one of the sides. "Wretched monsters... Get ready!" he shouts over his shoulder, then - leaving literally nobody any time to actually brace for anything - he banks roughly into the side pipe, wrenching the ship up and over to scrape the hull harshly against the metal walls. The craft shakes viciously, metal squealing against metal, and eventually drops out of the air, crashing to the bottom of the pipe and falling silent. Letting out a breath he hadn't realized he's been holding, Saphir flops back into his chair and takes shakily inhales.

"...Did that do it?"