Player

 

Your Name: Katsu

Your Email and/or IM Nicks:

            Email – zeithaftigkeit@gmail.com

            AIM – bringagolfclub

            Plurk  - bringagolfclub

Other Criminals Played: N/A

Also apping Asch | Tales of the Abyss this round

Is this a reap? Is the character canon-updated or keeping Marina memories?: N/A

 

Character

Character Name: Raven [born Damuron Atomais, alias Schwann Oltorain]

Fandom: Tales of Vesperia

Timeline: Post-Zaude

Crimes: 

Murder, theft, breaking and entering, assault, assault of a military personnel and law enforcement official, escaping imprisonment, evading capture, treason, conspiracy to commit treason, espionage, falsifying official records, operating under an assumed identity, insubordination, desertion

 

Personality:

 

Nobody knows Raven, not even himself.

 

Every action, every behavioral tick and sigh and interaction, is all a carefully constructed façade designed by a man who has spent many, many years perfecting the persona. This is a man who has lived three lives – once a spoiled princeling who became a noble knight, once an honored captain of the guard living by puppet strings, the last the shady sneak-thief and the right-hand man of the leader of the largest guild in Dahngrest.

 

And though he’ll tell you those first two men are dead and gone, that there’s only Raven the cheat, the liar, the flirt, and the lousy old man left, the truth of the matter is that he’s a combination of the three of them – of Damuron the noble, Schwann the honorable, and Raven the shady.

 

What you see of Raven first is a man in prison, full of mysteries and suspicion and answers he’ll only give out with a price. He appears out of nowhere, disappears just as fast, and is far too friendly for his own good – especially to women. He’s unshaven and weathered, speaks with heavy slang and wise cracks, belting melodramatically about his age and lack of respect amongst the party members. Nobody can take him seriously. After all, he’s the kind of folk bouncers throw out of bars at closing time.

 

But then you notice how he pays attention closely whenever people are talking. That for as much as he flirts, the second a woman shows him interest, he backs down. That he’s there with a comforting word when situations get bad, when nerves are frayed. That when he thinks nobody’s listening, he drops his accent, and that, when there’s a need, he’s a self-sacrificing fool.

 

For more than ten years, Raven lived life as a man known as Schwann Oltorain, after dying in war as Damuron. He was the respected, serious, model soldier in the imperial army, the captain of a troupe of loyal knights who would follow him to the ends of the earth. But he was also the puppet of Alexei, the man who had brought him back to life and could, at any moment, kill him again. As such, for more than a decade, his life had no meaning whatsoever. He was living on borrowed time with the sword of Damocles hanging over his head; why bother putting up a fight when you already knew you were a corpse?

 

But that changed when he was sent by Alexei to spy on the guilds, in preparation for the rebellion and war Alexei needed. There, he became Raven, the figure nobody would take seriously, to get the information he needed. And, ironically, that’s just what the guilds had him do too.

 

Even more ironically, he found the most freedom acting in the fakest role.

 

He was able to forget himself – his death, the deaths of everyone he knew, the years of servitude and military rank-and-file – in the guilds. There was a superior he could look to with pride again, instead of the twisted thing that Alexei had become; there were people he could call friends for the first time in ten years. And he was forced to betray them again.

 

After that, he decided to let Schwann die. He was not going to live as a servant anymore – he let himself be bested in battle, and from that moment on, fully embraced the identity of the come-and-go jokester. 

 

And while he’ll deny that, there is still some of Schwann in him. He’s observant and understanding. He knows when to stay serious and keeps the party on track, but he’ll do so with a joke. He’ll drop the act to e an example for the younger members of the party – in particular, to Karol, treating him almost as a father would.

 

But his is a personality in flux. The easy-going joker that he will introduce himself as isn’t the man he is, deep down. But after years of oppression, he’s re-learning what it means to have freedom and a lust for life again; instead of forcing them, he’s finally letting the smiles come for real again.

 
Abilities;

 

Jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

 

-Raven has, more or less, spent the last twenty years in some form of military service. Despite his age and complaints, he’s in excellent fighting condition, skilled in the use of a transformation bow (capable of both long and short range attacks), short sword, and long sword. In addition, he has a number of elemental spells – the bulk of them wind-based – and a healing spell. He’s a versatile party member, filling no particular niche because of it.

 

-His Artes and his Skills

 

-Very, very skilled in manipulation and acting. He knows how people work and can work them over, and despite walking around as the epitome of shadiness, he can still get people to trust him enough to tell him things. A double agent for years, he knows when and where to give out information – and at what price knowledge comes.

 

-Dead man walking is a good way to describe him. He thinks that his ticket’s come up long ago and just never been called, and as such, doesn’t particularly value his life and what he does with it. While he’s certainly changed a lot in this respect over the course of the game, he’s more likely to throw himself into dangerous circumstances than others, whose lives would be worth a damn. Thus, reckless abandon can be counted among his list of skills.  

 

-A surprisingly good cook, especially for desserts. as long as you don’t expect him to eat them afterwards. As delicious as his crepes are, as deep as his hate runs for them.
 

Multifandom Test:

 

Raven would love to get to know Oerba Yun Fang. She’s tall, attractive, flirty, with a sense of humor – rather like Judith, in that regard. Not to mention drop dead gorgeous. What red-blooded man wouldn’t want to? However, all his dramatic pledges of love and perverted jokes would, more likely than not, annoy her, even if he’d be a gentleman when push comes to shove (just, an exaggerated caricature of a gentleman). Though she’d go along with the games with a laugh, she’d start to get sick of it after a while.

 

After time though, as each learned more about each other, they’d make pretty good drinking partners. Raven, for his part, would be intrigued by her, deeper than just on the surface level – her claim to amnesiac, with this power and claims to inhumanity, and as a credible fighter, she’s worth keeping an eye on for the moment. They each have enough skeletons in their closet to fill a graveyard – and were both forced into a fight for other people without their express consent. Once they reach that understanding, they’d playfully interact with each other, but, alas, nothing will ever become of it.

 

Action post sample:

 

His jacket was too thin to wear out on a night like this, but out he was, and there was no use complaining about it. Not that there was anyone around to listen to him now. Raven pressed his body up against the wall, in between the frame of the door and the window, an ear to the wood and the conversation on the other side. His ear is catching every word, and his mind is etching them into memory.

 

Tonight he’ll have to write it all down, sign and seal the letter, and see it off to a messenger. All before dawn, when Yuri’s up and training. Repede’s with Karol for the night, in another room, so he doesn’t have to worry about the dog catching him when he slides in through the window.

 

…good. He’s heard the information he needed. Raven blinks his tired eyes and inhales a deep breath through his nose to stifle a yawn. If there was ever a night he needed sleep, it would have been tonight, but the noble on Alexei’s watch list happened to be in Dahngrest tonight and damn if he could risk pissing Alexei off again.

 

He was tired, and he was cold, and all Raven wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep for a week. Maybe dream of Casey again.

 

Network post sample:

 

…how do’yah work this damn…

 

[The feed turns on and you’re greeting with the sight of the rapidly approaching floor. Crash and the screen flickers with static for a moment or two before stabilizing. Crooked, it shows a man approaching middle age, balancing on the balls of his feet and cocking his head at the screen.]

 

Hello? [He picks it up, still crouched over, and grins wickedly into the camera.] Think this is how these things work. Where’s lil’ Rita when yah need her to explain things…Hello there, whoever-you-are! I’m ‘fraid I’ll need yer lovely assistance in figurin’ out where the heck ‘ve found myself. Ol’ Raven must’ve had too much to drink again – c’mon, help a guy out, answerin’ a few questions? Please~