[karteria] app

OOC INFORMATION

Name: Lex
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: cerebrah | positronica @ discord | PM
Other characters: Jamil Viper
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IC INFORMATION

Name: Elan Ceres (Enhanced Person No. 4)
Canon: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury
Age: 17/18-ish (presumably)
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Appearance: the same as all the other elans
Canon point: Ep. 6, immediately post-death

History: Well, here's his wiki page, but it kind of sucks so I'll try my own summary:

Enhanced Person No. 4 was born ?????, into apparent poverty, and at some point "agreed" (allegedly) to become Peil's test pilot in their secret Gundam development project. Because Gundams (the bestest kind of mobile suit around) are so complicated to operate, doing so causes the human pilot immense strain. In order to develop the best war machines, Peil Technologies decided to try solving the problem by surgically modifying their pilots' nervous systems to better withstand permet (magic brain-computer interface particles) feedback. Piloting Gundams still sucks a lot, however, and is gradually wearing down Four's body. At some point before the start of the series, he was also converted into a body double for Elan Ceres so that he could fight duels at Asticassia on the real Elan's behalf, a process which seems to have completely wiped his memory. He's called "Ice Prince" by the rest of the student body and is infamous for never smiling or really showing any emotion at all. When Suletta the show's hero arrives with her magically nontoxic Gundam, Four first tries to reach out to her in the hope she can understand his suffering (on the basis of also being a Gundam pilot) and then utterly rejects her when it turns out she can't. Despite this, she still tries to befriend him and eventually reawakens his memory of having once had a mother. After Four fails to take Suletta's Gundam in their climactic duel (ordered by Peil so they can study it), he's completely obliterated for failing to perform to expectations. Sucks A Lot To Be Him.

Personality answers:

Who in your character's canon influenced the most growth in your character? What do they think about this character?

Easy one--Suletta Mercury, protagonist of The Witch from Mercury and the only person to ever reach him just by not giving up on him even after he was a huge bitch to her. Her persistence in Getting To Know Him after he showed a baseline level of kindness to her one time ultimately helps him recover a core memory--that of the existence of his mother--which brings him some comfort while he's executed. The tragedy of Elan-4 is that he couldn't have been saved anyway--the permet feedback has been gradually breaking down his body, and it's implied his final duel with Suletta fatally fried his system regardless--but at least he got to remember that he was a person once beforehand.

Four's relationship with Suletta is all over the place: he shows interest in her on the basis of also being a Gundam pilot (which he assumes means she must also be sentenced to an existence of eternal torment and whatnot and thus might relate to him), which she reciprocates on the basis of she's a good bean who just wants to make friends. When Four discovers that piloting her Gundam does not actually cause Suletta any pain or distress, however, he completely reverses his behavior and treats her very rudely, seemingly taking it as a huge betrayal that she apparently can't relate to him after all. She still tries to reach him in spite of this, and in the end he seems to appreciate the efforts she made to try and make friends with an already-dead guy, if the appearance of his space ghost at the end of the show is anything to go by. Too little, too late, but more than Four had before he met her. So it goes.

What is your character most afraid of?

It's a point of Four's character that he's almost completely unflappable--it's remarkable that Suletta piques his interest at all, let alone makes him mad, so he never directly expresses fear at any point. However, it's a very consistent trait of his to be shown reading The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer in the background, from which we can extrapolate a lot about his mindset. This is a 19th century philosophy work that admittedly goes over my head a little bit, but its central thesis seems to be that human suffering comes from desire and the inability to truly satisfy it, and so the way to transcend suffering is to absolve oneself of desire. This speaks a lot to why Four seems uninterested in engaging in his surroundings even when he has the opportunity to: he believes that invoking or indulging desire is a source of suffering. From this, my interpretation is essentially that he avoids feeling or desiring anything at all for fear of making his current circumstances even more unbearable. (Further on this, I feel he to some degree embraces death as the only way his misery can truly end, hence his distress at being alive again in Karteria.)

In short... dude's afraid of living. A lovely inversion of No. 5's driving fear of dying!

What is your character's biggest ambition at their current canon point? To what lengths would they go to see it to fruition?

Point blank: he doesn't have any, as a bit of a defining attribute. Throughout his limited screentime, Four mostly goes where he's directed by his superiors and seems pretty resigned to his impending death; he hardly shows any interest when Elan Prime offers him his old life back. Most guys in his position would jump at the chance, you'd think, or at least show some interest in the idea--not Four, who merely expresses the same impassivity that he does with everything that happens to him. He spends his free time reading stuffy philosophy books so he doesn't have to hold conversations with people or literally just lying around in his completely featureless room (he's not asleep btw he's just doing that). His interest in Suletta as a potential counterpart is possibly the first independent inclination he's ever shown in the (albeit short) memory of his life. He seems content to simply float through his life and then die.

There is an exception: he does seem to take some pride in his skill as a pilot, which is notable if only because he doesn't exhibit many personality traits otherwise. He confidently fights (and wins!) a 3-on-1 duel, he relishes in not just defeating but humiliating Guel, and he shows real drive to defeat Suletta--as well as anger and frustration when he can't--despite the fact that the outcome is death for him either way. There's something in there that can be stoked, it's just very rare for it to show itself.

What would it take to truly upset your character, enough that they would act upon their feelings? Are they the sort to forgive?

Once again the round goes to our girl Suletta Mercury, the only person to ruffle Elan-4's feathers in any capacity. More than anything, Four is desperate for someone to understand him; he thinks he finds that person in Suletta, and when it turns out she isn't what he thought she was, he reacts with surprising and uncharacteristic anger, like he resents her for getting his hopes up in the first place (obviously not something she did on purpose, since she knows jack shit about his baggage). Then, he gets angry at her for not leaving him alone, and finally he has a complete meltdown during their duel (while also in the throes of a permet overload-induced physical breakdown) when he can't shut her down in battle either.

I feel this reflects on my conclusion to the fear question--again, he seems to be angry at Suletta for getting his hopes up at all, for giving him a reason to believe there might be a purpose in life and then taking that away again. One of his lines of dialogue implies he feels his "curse" extends beyond simply having to pilot Gundams and possibly really describes his conviction of being eternally alone. Suletta's existence not being what he hoped for made the pain of that loneliness even worse, and so he finally, catastrophically erupts at the very end of his life. Ironically, certain revelations toward the end of the series mean he and Suletta actually have plenty in common in that regard... but he's already dead by then. Oops!

Inventory: Good Ol' Schopenhauer's WWR, his preferred comfort read. Karteria's elite will love him and his rare philosophy book!
Powers/Abilities: No actual superpowers, but as an Enhanced Person(TM) Elan-4 has been augmented with what seem to be permet implants, which help him withstand the rigors of permet feedback and the resulting data storms. (Five in the dub says something about the entire central nervous system being replaced.) Not entirely, since it's implied his body was starting to break down even if he hadn't been summarily incinerated, but he probably lasted a lot longer in the Gundam microwave than he would have otherwise! These enhancements will follow him to Karteria, though they'll obviously have limited application here, but I think it would be interesting to explore how permet (a mineral that rapidly disperses information among itself and thus functions as a medium for brain-computer interfacing) might interact with Natural Souls or other Patho-Gen tech 👈👈

Also less relevant to Karteria, but Four displays significant skill as a mobile suit pilot. He's considered the best pilot in his house and, until Suletta, had an undefeated duel record. In addition, it's implied he has some weapons training, as his successor 5 knows his way around a handgun and 4 himself uses a sniper rifle while operating the Pharact.

Samples: Here & Here
Player Goals: On god we gon get him some will to live bro!!! I want to use the general circumstances of Karteria plus the influence of a Natural Soul to push Mr. Ice Prince into Having Experiences. Good ones, bad ones, ugly ones, all of em, this guy has spent his entire life being doomed trying not to feel anything and well, he's not doomed anymore so it's time to feel everything babey!! He's going to have a miserable time with it which is of course the whole point.
Soul Choice: Glire :)