♦ ᴀᴘᴘʟɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
May. 9th, 2015 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enervatesOOC INFO
_NAME: Flurry
_PLURK: tahdis @ plurk
_AGE: 23
_CONCURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
IC INFO
_CHARACTER'S NAME: Vales
_CHARACTER'S (ACTUAL) AGE: 120
_CHARACTER'S (APPARENT) AGE: Probably early twenties-ish, 19 at the youngest
_CHARACTER'S HAIR COLOR: White
_TANAGURA (elite) OR MIDAS (mongrel)?: Mongrel!
_HOUSING PREFERENCE: Anywhere, though Lioriley's apartment would be nice.
_HISTORY: As with all stories of great heroes, one must first know how that hero originated. Since Vales is not a great hero, we'll start with where dark elf babies come from first.
Baby dark elves aren't born like humans are, or even conceived like humans are. There's a complex and dangerous ritual that very powerful dark elves must undergo in order to create a new generation of dark elves, and it typically ends in death for the couple that performs it. Of course, dark elves live for a very long time, so this is typically only done every few hundred years, by a chosen few. Once the ritual is complete, a litter of small glowing orbs are produced, and the babies inside soak in the magic from these orbs until they are living, breathing infants. This is where Vales came from, just like every other dark elf. However, he's essentially the runt of the litter - Vales only got enough magical energy from his orb to sustain himself, to live.
Born with the typical shock-white hair and pitch-black skin, amber eyes and bright red lines that define his race, Vales was definitely the weakest magically of his litter. This didn't stop Lioriley, the celebrated war hero of Maligrae, from adopting him and naming him after her mentor. Vales grew up in what he perceived as Lioriley's shadow, and often tried to pick fights with his mother over that fact. Tried, being the word, since Lioriley often didn't indulge him. Vales is not devoid of magic - that wouldn't be possible, considering his race is pretty much made up of magic - but he does only have a small amount, enough to keep him running with just a little extra bit of fuel.
Vales instead concentrated on his swordsmanship. He was determined to become a great warrior and to prove that he was worthy of being Lioriley's son, despite the fact that nobody else really pressured him to do so. Most, if not all, of Vales' pushing came from something internal, from a sense of being the magic-inept son of a great Archmage. Sure, he was teased at times, and sure, he got into a lot of fights (most of them because he picked the fight in the first place) but for the most part, Maligrae was a good place for him to grow. He worked hard, most likely pushed himself far too much, and eventually become somewhat decent at swinging a sword.
And then he met Enfaren. And boy, did that change things.
Enfaren, it seemed, was just naturally better at everything. He had more magic, he was better at swinging a sword, the other dark elves even seemed to like him better, and it infuriated Vales to no end. He had to get in on this, he had to figure out what it was that Enfaren had that made him so good. So Vales pretty much threw himself at the other dark elf - demanded to know his name and started to essentially just become his shadow. Enfaren was now his rival, only... Enfaren didn't exactly know that. Consistently bemused, Enfaren allowed Vales to hang around him, and eventually, they became sort of grudging friends. It was sort of nice, to have a friend, considering he'd never really had any - but Vales tried not to let that distract him. He wanted to prove himself. Needed to.
One day, Vales met a dwarf woman named Isolde in the commons of Maligrae, where most businesses and shops thrived. She'd spent a day or so looking for someone to help her and was about to give up on Maligrae entirely when she literally ran into Vales. After thoroughly berating him about not paying attention where he was walking, she made mention of not being able to find help - and Vales pretty much jumped on the chance. Essentially, Isolde needed someone who knew how to handle a sword and could use magic, so she'd come to Maligrae to enlist. Vales wasn't exactly what she was looking for, considering he couldn't really cast anything that amounted to more than a fart noise and a splutter of flame, but hey. Vales lied to get out of the city, to do something Important, and came up with some bull about how good at magic and swordsmanship he was.
Isolde explained that her city was plagued by unexplained, brutal murders. It'd been assumed that the deaths were related to animals by the city officials, but there were far too many of them for that to be an acceptable explanation for Isolde. She explained to Vales that she wanted someone to help her investigate, because the city officials sure as hell weren't. Vales agreed, and they were to leave at dawn - Vales left Lioriley a note about stepping out of her shadow and aimed to leave without telling her.
Of course, as they were leaving at dawn, Enfaren happened to be out - and in order to avoid ending up with Enfaren telling Lioriley where he was going, Vales insisted that Enfaren come with them. It took a lot of persuasion and probably downright guilt trips, but Enfaren eventually agreed to go along.
The trip to the dwarven city took a little over a week. The three of them ended up becoming friends over that week - Isolde's dry sense of humor resonated well with Vales, and Enfaren simply existing got Vales to try much harder at being cool than he might have without. By the time they reached the city, Vales was ready for action, was ready to figure out this murder mystery with the help of his two friends. Two friends, he'd marveled at the time - that was an all time high for him.
The investigation was not what Vales thought it would be. It was slow, frustrating, and nobody seemed to think there was anything wrong. But Isolde was insistent - they needed to figure it out, because she feared that there would be an escalation. One night, after a long day of fruitless searching, Vales, Enfaren and Isolde were discussing what they knew (not much) in the tavern they were staying at. In the middle of their meal, they were approached by a man in a cloak who essentially just sat down next to them and started discussing the problem without any preamble whatsoever. After a little scene of Vales squawking a little about humans being rude and Enfaren shushing him hurriedly, the man introduced himself as Ardan. It turned out that Ardan knew exactly what it was that was murdering the dwarves - he'd seen them with his own eyes. They'd decimated his village years ago, killed his husband and daughter, and now they were after the dwarves. These creatures, Ardan explained, had no name that he knew of; all he knew is that they came from the mountains, and that they took their victims for their own ranks.
Isolde stopped him, mentioning that all of the victims so far had just been killed, hadn't been taken, but Ardan merely shrugged, telling her that this was their version of a game. They were playing, seeing how far they could go before retaliation came. The city officials were content to ignore it, and so they were pressing harder, pushing buttons until they got something back. What they had to do, Ardan explained, was destroy their ranks before they could overwhelm the city. How they were going to do that when the officials, and in turn, the militia, were inactive, he had no idea, but it wasn't his problem anymore. And with that, Ardan got up to leave - only, Vales grabbed him before he could.
Vales insisted that if Ardan wasn't lying through his teeth (come on, guys, what if he's the murderer trying to cover his tracks?) that Ardan needed to tell the dwarven officials his story. It ended in a fight, as things usually did with Vales, and all four of them were kicked out of the tavern. Annoyed but determined, Vales ignored any sort of protests that Ardan gave and physically dragged the human off to see the dwarves. With a vaguely amused Isolde and a thoroughly embarrassed Enfaren in tow, Vales brought Ardan to the dwarven council and made him explain everything. Of course, they didn't believe him - who ever believed humans, especially after the wars?
But they had to do something. Vales wasn't sure that Ardan was telling the truth, but there was something genuine about what he was hearing. He trusted his gut feeling, and asked Ardan what to do. Ardan suggested that they scout ahead to see if they could provide proof of the oncoming army of creatures, and so they did, quietly and in the dark of night. They split up in order to find where the creatures were hiding, and resolved to meet up again in the next hour whether they found something or not. In that hour, Vales found nothing - but when they were all supposed to meet up again, Ardan did not show. Typical human, Isolde scoffed, but Vales wasn't so sure. He insisted that they look for Ardan, just in case, refusing to just believe that the human had ditched them.
He turned out to be right. As they wandered further into the forest, they found Ardan unconscious and horribly wounded in the bushes, and upon trying to wake him, they were ambushed. Monsters that Vales had never seen before burst from the bushes, twisted things that looked like humans, elves and dwarves that had been left to rot underwater. They hissed and shrieked and were incredibly well coordinated - the little team of ragtag misfits managed to make short work of the creatures, but they left Vales injured and Enfaren and Isolde worn from a battle that lasted far too long. Of course, with Vales injured and healing very, very slowly in contrast to Enfaren, Isolde caught on pretty fast that Vales didn't have the magic he'd advertised. Angry, Isolde stalked back to town with one of the dead creatures in tow to make sure that the dwarven city would be prepared.
This left Vales and Enfaren to look after Ardan. They dragged him back to the city and Vales insisted on looking after him. It wasn't right to just leave anybody, Vales reasoned - everybody was important. Everybody had their part to play. And besides, Vales told Enfaren firmly, Ardan had to be alive to see the creatures get wiped out.
Isolde had managed to convince the dwarves to act, finally, and it was good timing. With the death of the ambush team of creatures from earlier, the rest of the small army was thrown into a frenzy. By dawn, the creatures were already trying to swarm, but the dwarves were ready. Lead by Isolde, and with the help of Vales, Enfaren and a weakened but still alive Ardan, the dwarves defeated the creatures in a battle that lead to many losses.
Less loss, however, than if they had not been warned, the dwarven city council announced later, in the aftermath. While it was not exactly in their nature to lavish gratitude on the people who saved them, the dwarven council did reward Vales and his friends with finely dwarven crafted weapons, ones that would not break. Isolde, having refused the offer of becoming a captain of the militia, found Vales after the battle and told him that she was looking to make coin further out east if Vales wanted to join her. He accepted the offer.
Enfaren agreed to continue on with Vales and Isolde as well. Ardan was nowhere to be found - at first. Vales found him among the wreckage of the battle, sitting near the remains of one of the humanlike creatures. Ardan told Vales that the corpse beside him was what was left of his husband and that he wasn't sure what to do next. Vales offered him a hand, and told him to come along. Maybe your daughter is still alive, maybe we should just go destroy all of the creatures that are left - just come with us.
Ardan agreed. The four of them left the city, and headed east. A year passed, and Vales and his group of friends made names for themselves as for-hire heroes, though many times Vales refused payment. It's after that year has passed that Vales will be taken from.
_ABILITIES:
» MAGIC: Like the rest of his kind, magic is very important to Vales' general makeup; dark elves have blood and magical energy constantly cycling through them, in the lines along their skin. Vales is capable of actually using some magic, though it's typically very slow and doesn't always work well. He's been known to try and start fires with his hands and it kind of just... splutters out, like a lighter without any fluid. He's generally awful at most spells and any successful ones take a lot out of him.
» AUTOREGENERATION: To go along with the magic, Vales does self-heal. It takes a lot out of him physically, which is unfortunate because it's an automatic process. It's a lot slower than Lioriley's healing, but it does happen. It's very hard for him to bleed to death, though he is capable of heavy blood loss and the symptoms that come with it, especially if one of his lines is cut.
» COMBAT: Here is where Vales excels. In order to make up for his crappy magic ability, Vales is a proficient swordsman. He trains hard and has trained hard for years and years, since he was able to hold a sword some odd 90 years prior. He's skilled with a sword and shield, greatswords/two-handed swords, maces, and staffs, as well as hand-to-hand combat, though not quite as much as with a weapon.
» WEAKNESSES: His lines, definitely. Cut one of those, and it's like cutting a human's veins. He can very easily die from too many of those being sliced, so he has to be careful, as do most of his kind.
_PERSONALITY: As the runt of the litter, so to speak, Vales has a lot of issues with feeling as though he's not taken seriously. This is not the case, generally, but it does give some sort of insight into how Vales acts.
Because he's the son of a famous war hero, because he doesn't have a lot of magic in him and because he's so goddamn stubborn, Vales tends to overcompensate. He's insistent and determined in everything he does, and indignant when people try to tell him he can't do something. He tends to make rivals without the other person exactly knowing that they're rivals - take Enfaren, for instance. Vales perceives Enfaren as better than him, and strives to do everything he can to win against the one-sided rivalry that he has with Enfaren. Enfaren, on the other hand, is either confused, amused, or both when Vales pulls the whole stupid shonen hero deal trying to surpass Enfaren's abilities. This happens constantly with Vales - he tends to assume that most people are more powerful than him, and so he has to puff himself up, has to train endlessly in order to beat them.
Vales is rude and abrasive - appropriate, considering his namesake, the racist dragon Veles that Lioriley mentored under for years. Thing is, he doesn't always mean to be. Half the time he either doesn't realize that what he's saying can be taken in the wrong way, or he tries for the tough guy routine and ends up feeling bad that he hurt someone's feelings. In the case of the latter, he tends to apologize in the most tsundere way possible, with a huff and a "whatever, it's not like I really meant that," speech. He blows up at little things, kind of Edward Elric-esque, and he gets huffy a lot, but when he does mean it, though, it can be scary. Vales is in a constant state of low burn fury, which people tend to get used to quickly, but when he's really actually furious at someone? He's calm, icy, and refuses to even look at the person in question.
A lot of his anger and indignant attitude comes from insecurity. Vales feels like he constantly has to prove himself to everybody, and his impossibly high standards for himself means that about half the time, he thinks he's failed at the task. Really, all he wants to do is help people. He wants to be the Robin Hood of Kilarria, basically, saving poor villages from bandit invasions and doing great, heroic things that will get him renown. The fact that it's impossible to save everybody is hard for Vales to grasp. There have been a lot of times in which his little band of misfits he travels around with have to drag him forcibly away from a fight because he's going to end up getting himself killed if they don't. He hates backing down from a fight and he hates losing a fight even more. And he picks a lot of fights. Like. A lot.
But still, he wants to save people. He wants, more than anything, to make sure that people are okay, and that they live good lives. He doesn't want special treatment, which means being in Tanagura as an elite is going to drive him nuts. He gets to have money because he has white hair, and all of the people in Midas just have to suffer? That's not going to fly with him.
He's picked up a lot of traits from his adoptive mother, Lioriley. He's always ready to throw himself in front of a sword for someone else if it means they're going to live, doesn't matter who they are. This especially includes Lioriley herself. Vales is fiercely protective of his mother and he constantly lashes out at anybody who breathes in her general direction. This, as you can probably imagine, gets super annoying super quickly, because having Vales bite the face off of people who are actually just being nice to Lioriley tends to be overboard. However, he does ease up on people eventually, typically once he's figured out that the person in question doesn't mean Lioriley any harm.
The poor people who end up sleeping with Lioriley may get a few WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS WITH MY MOTHER interrogations, provided the information ever makes it to him.
Past that, Vales gets his sense of justice from his mother, and his unrelenting desire to keep the conversation away from himself and his own feelings. He's less stubborn than his mother in the latter, though - he doesn't like talking about himself but he won't reroute the conversation until the other person gives in. Mostly, he feels like he's had a boring life so far, so he doesn't feel as though it's interesting topic material. He also doesn't much enjoy talking about magic, since he feels like he was given the short end of the stick on that end. In a more silly vein, Vales also inherited (in a sense) his mother's quick-to-blush tendency. Any sort of dirty talk or innuendo takes him a second to pick up on, but when he does get it, his normally subdued glow kicks up to a million in intensity.
Vales trusts people easily, despite not acting like it. This is not exactly all his mother's influence - Maligrae doesn't exactly breed paranoid people, so a lot of the stuff that people say is taken at face value. Betrayal is something that Vales does not take well, and he will not easily forgive it. While he is a little more experienced in the way things work outside of Maligrae, Vales is still young. He can pick up on sarcasm and he's decent at figuring out facial cues, but he still misses a lot. Slang from modern worlds will definitely throw him off. He has no idea what a 'dude' is, stop calling him that.
_ITEMS:
» his armor, which he's wearing
» his sword, dwarven made
» his shield, with a glyph of protection on it
» his coin purse, full of money that will be useless in Tanagura
» a pack that contains: rations, a blanket roll, a little wood carving of a bird from Ardan, a knife, and a hairbrush with jewels on it.
WRITING SAMPLES
_GEN SAMPLE: a) here
_SMUT SAMPLE: here - this one has Vales AU'd as sylvari from GW2, but I figure the concept is the same down to the glow. I'll gladly write something else if need be.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY CHARACTER IS THE FOLLOWING:
_SENTIENT: yes
_MENTALLY ADULT: yes
_CAPABLE OF CONSENT: yes
_CAPABLE OF SEXUAL AROUSAL: yes
_NAME: Flurry
_PLURK: tahdis @ plurk
_AGE: 23
_CONCURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
IC INFO
_CHARACTER'S NAME: Vales
_CHARACTER'S (ACTUAL) AGE: 120
_CHARACTER'S (APPARENT) AGE: Probably early twenties-ish, 19 at the youngest
_CHARACTER'S HAIR COLOR: White
_TANAGURA (elite) OR MIDAS (mongrel)?: Mongrel!
_HOUSING PREFERENCE: Anywhere, though Lioriley's apartment would be nice.
_HISTORY: As with all stories of great heroes, one must first know how that hero originated. Since Vales is not a great hero, we'll start with where dark elf babies come from first.
Baby dark elves aren't born like humans are, or even conceived like humans are. There's a complex and dangerous ritual that very powerful dark elves must undergo in order to create a new generation of dark elves, and it typically ends in death for the couple that performs it. Of course, dark elves live for a very long time, so this is typically only done every few hundred years, by a chosen few. Once the ritual is complete, a litter of small glowing orbs are produced, and the babies inside soak in the magic from these orbs until they are living, breathing infants. This is where Vales came from, just like every other dark elf. However, he's essentially the runt of the litter - Vales only got enough magical energy from his orb to sustain himself, to live.
Born with the typical shock-white hair and pitch-black skin, amber eyes and bright red lines that define his race, Vales was definitely the weakest magically of his litter. This didn't stop Lioriley, the celebrated war hero of Maligrae, from adopting him and naming him after her mentor. Vales grew up in what he perceived as Lioriley's shadow, and often tried to pick fights with his mother over that fact. Tried, being the word, since Lioriley often didn't indulge him. Vales is not devoid of magic - that wouldn't be possible, considering his race is pretty much made up of magic - but he does only have a small amount, enough to keep him running with just a little extra bit of fuel.
Vales instead concentrated on his swordsmanship. He was determined to become a great warrior and to prove that he was worthy of being Lioriley's son, despite the fact that nobody else really pressured him to do so. Most, if not all, of Vales' pushing came from something internal, from a sense of being the magic-inept son of a great Archmage. Sure, he was teased at times, and sure, he got into a lot of fights (most of them because he picked the fight in the first place) but for the most part, Maligrae was a good place for him to grow. He worked hard, most likely pushed himself far too much, and eventually become somewhat decent at swinging a sword.
And then he met Enfaren. And boy, did that change things.
Enfaren, it seemed, was just naturally better at everything. He had more magic, he was better at swinging a sword, the other dark elves even seemed to like him better, and it infuriated Vales to no end. He had to get in on this, he had to figure out what it was that Enfaren had that made him so good. So Vales pretty much threw himself at the other dark elf - demanded to know his name and started to essentially just become his shadow. Enfaren was now his rival, only... Enfaren didn't exactly know that. Consistently bemused, Enfaren allowed Vales to hang around him, and eventually, they became sort of grudging friends. It was sort of nice, to have a friend, considering he'd never really had any - but Vales tried not to let that distract him. He wanted to prove himself. Needed to.
One day, Vales met a dwarf woman named Isolde in the commons of Maligrae, where most businesses and shops thrived. She'd spent a day or so looking for someone to help her and was about to give up on Maligrae entirely when she literally ran into Vales. After thoroughly berating him about not paying attention where he was walking, she made mention of not being able to find help - and Vales pretty much jumped on the chance. Essentially, Isolde needed someone who knew how to handle a sword and could use magic, so she'd come to Maligrae to enlist. Vales wasn't exactly what she was looking for, considering he couldn't really cast anything that amounted to more than a fart noise and a splutter of flame, but hey. Vales lied to get out of the city, to do something Important, and came up with some bull about how good at magic and swordsmanship he was.
Isolde explained that her city was plagued by unexplained, brutal murders. It'd been assumed that the deaths were related to animals by the city officials, but there were far too many of them for that to be an acceptable explanation for Isolde. She explained to Vales that she wanted someone to help her investigate, because the city officials sure as hell weren't. Vales agreed, and they were to leave at dawn - Vales left Lioriley a note about stepping out of her shadow and aimed to leave without telling her.
Of course, as they were leaving at dawn, Enfaren happened to be out - and in order to avoid ending up with Enfaren telling Lioriley where he was going, Vales insisted that Enfaren come with them. It took a lot of persuasion and probably downright guilt trips, but Enfaren eventually agreed to go along.
The trip to the dwarven city took a little over a week. The three of them ended up becoming friends over that week - Isolde's dry sense of humor resonated well with Vales, and Enfaren simply existing got Vales to try much harder at being cool than he might have without. By the time they reached the city, Vales was ready for action, was ready to figure out this murder mystery with the help of his two friends. Two friends, he'd marveled at the time - that was an all time high for him.
The investigation was not what Vales thought it would be. It was slow, frustrating, and nobody seemed to think there was anything wrong. But Isolde was insistent - they needed to figure it out, because she feared that there would be an escalation. One night, after a long day of fruitless searching, Vales, Enfaren and Isolde were discussing what they knew (not much) in the tavern they were staying at. In the middle of their meal, they were approached by a man in a cloak who essentially just sat down next to them and started discussing the problem without any preamble whatsoever. After a little scene of Vales squawking a little about humans being rude and Enfaren shushing him hurriedly, the man introduced himself as Ardan. It turned out that Ardan knew exactly what it was that was murdering the dwarves - he'd seen them with his own eyes. They'd decimated his village years ago, killed his husband and daughter, and now they were after the dwarves. These creatures, Ardan explained, had no name that he knew of; all he knew is that they came from the mountains, and that they took their victims for their own ranks.
Isolde stopped him, mentioning that all of the victims so far had just been killed, hadn't been taken, but Ardan merely shrugged, telling her that this was their version of a game. They were playing, seeing how far they could go before retaliation came. The city officials were content to ignore it, and so they were pressing harder, pushing buttons until they got something back. What they had to do, Ardan explained, was destroy their ranks before they could overwhelm the city. How they were going to do that when the officials, and in turn, the militia, were inactive, he had no idea, but it wasn't his problem anymore. And with that, Ardan got up to leave - only, Vales grabbed him before he could.
Vales insisted that if Ardan wasn't lying through his teeth (come on, guys, what if he's the murderer trying to cover his tracks?) that Ardan needed to tell the dwarven officials his story. It ended in a fight, as things usually did with Vales, and all four of them were kicked out of the tavern. Annoyed but determined, Vales ignored any sort of protests that Ardan gave and physically dragged the human off to see the dwarves. With a vaguely amused Isolde and a thoroughly embarrassed Enfaren in tow, Vales brought Ardan to the dwarven council and made him explain everything. Of course, they didn't believe him - who ever believed humans, especially after the wars?
But they had to do something. Vales wasn't sure that Ardan was telling the truth, but there was something genuine about what he was hearing. He trusted his gut feeling, and asked Ardan what to do. Ardan suggested that they scout ahead to see if they could provide proof of the oncoming army of creatures, and so they did, quietly and in the dark of night. They split up in order to find where the creatures were hiding, and resolved to meet up again in the next hour whether they found something or not. In that hour, Vales found nothing - but when they were all supposed to meet up again, Ardan did not show. Typical human, Isolde scoffed, but Vales wasn't so sure. He insisted that they look for Ardan, just in case, refusing to just believe that the human had ditched them.
He turned out to be right. As they wandered further into the forest, they found Ardan unconscious and horribly wounded in the bushes, and upon trying to wake him, they were ambushed. Monsters that Vales had never seen before burst from the bushes, twisted things that looked like humans, elves and dwarves that had been left to rot underwater. They hissed and shrieked and were incredibly well coordinated - the little team of ragtag misfits managed to make short work of the creatures, but they left Vales injured and Enfaren and Isolde worn from a battle that lasted far too long. Of course, with Vales injured and healing very, very slowly in contrast to Enfaren, Isolde caught on pretty fast that Vales didn't have the magic he'd advertised. Angry, Isolde stalked back to town with one of the dead creatures in tow to make sure that the dwarven city would be prepared.
This left Vales and Enfaren to look after Ardan. They dragged him back to the city and Vales insisted on looking after him. It wasn't right to just leave anybody, Vales reasoned - everybody was important. Everybody had their part to play. And besides, Vales told Enfaren firmly, Ardan had to be alive to see the creatures get wiped out.
Isolde had managed to convince the dwarves to act, finally, and it was good timing. With the death of the ambush team of creatures from earlier, the rest of the small army was thrown into a frenzy. By dawn, the creatures were already trying to swarm, but the dwarves were ready. Lead by Isolde, and with the help of Vales, Enfaren and a weakened but still alive Ardan, the dwarves defeated the creatures in a battle that lead to many losses.
Less loss, however, than if they had not been warned, the dwarven city council announced later, in the aftermath. While it was not exactly in their nature to lavish gratitude on the people who saved them, the dwarven council did reward Vales and his friends with finely dwarven crafted weapons, ones that would not break. Isolde, having refused the offer of becoming a captain of the militia, found Vales after the battle and told him that she was looking to make coin further out east if Vales wanted to join her. He accepted the offer.
Enfaren agreed to continue on with Vales and Isolde as well. Ardan was nowhere to be found - at first. Vales found him among the wreckage of the battle, sitting near the remains of one of the humanlike creatures. Ardan told Vales that the corpse beside him was what was left of his husband and that he wasn't sure what to do next. Vales offered him a hand, and told him to come along. Maybe your daughter is still alive, maybe we should just go destroy all of the creatures that are left - just come with us.
Ardan agreed. The four of them left the city, and headed east. A year passed, and Vales and his group of friends made names for themselves as for-hire heroes, though many times Vales refused payment. It's after that year has passed that Vales will be taken from.
_ABILITIES:
» MAGIC: Like the rest of his kind, magic is very important to Vales' general makeup; dark elves have blood and magical energy constantly cycling through them, in the lines along their skin. Vales is capable of actually using some magic, though it's typically very slow and doesn't always work well. He's been known to try and start fires with his hands and it kind of just... splutters out, like a lighter without any fluid. He's generally awful at most spells and any successful ones take a lot out of him.
» AUTOREGENERATION: To go along with the magic, Vales does self-heal. It takes a lot out of him physically, which is unfortunate because it's an automatic process. It's a lot slower than Lioriley's healing, but it does happen. It's very hard for him to bleed to death, though he is capable of heavy blood loss and the symptoms that come with it, especially if one of his lines is cut.
» COMBAT: Here is where Vales excels. In order to make up for his crappy magic ability, Vales is a proficient swordsman. He trains hard and has trained hard for years and years, since he was able to hold a sword some odd 90 years prior. He's skilled with a sword and shield, greatswords/two-handed swords, maces, and staffs, as well as hand-to-hand combat, though not quite as much as with a weapon.
» WEAKNESSES: His lines, definitely. Cut one of those, and it's like cutting a human's veins. He can very easily die from too many of those being sliced, so he has to be careful, as do most of his kind.
_PERSONALITY: As the runt of the litter, so to speak, Vales has a lot of issues with feeling as though he's not taken seriously. This is not the case, generally, but it does give some sort of insight into how Vales acts.
Because he's the son of a famous war hero, because he doesn't have a lot of magic in him and because he's so goddamn stubborn, Vales tends to overcompensate. He's insistent and determined in everything he does, and indignant when people try to tell him he can't do something. He tends to make rivals without the other person exactly knowing that they're rivals - take Enfaren, for instance. Vales perceives Enfaren as better than him, and strives to do everything he can to win against the one-sided rivalry that he has with Enfaren. Enfaren, on the other hand, is either confused, amused, or both when Vales pulls the whole stupid shonen hero deal trying to surpass Enfaren's abilities. This happens constantly with Vales - he tends to assume that most people are more powerful than him, and so he has to puff himself up, has to train endlessly in order to beat them.
Vales is rude and abrasive - appropriate, considering his namesake, the racist dragon Veles that Lioriley mentored under for years. Thing is, he doesn't always mean to be. Half the time he either doesn't realize that what he's saying can be taken in the wrong way, or he tries for the tough guy routine and ends up feeling bad that he hurt someone's feelings. In the case of the latter, he tends to apologize in the most tsundere way possible, with a huff and a "whatever, it's not like I really meant that," speech. He blows up at little things, kind of Edward Elric-esque, and he gets huffy a lot, but when he does mean it, though, it can be scary. Vales is in a constant state of low burn fury, which people tend to get used to quickly, but when he's really actually furious at someone? He's calm, icy, and refuses to even look at the person in question.
A lot of his anger and indignant attitude comes from insecurity. Vales feels like he constantly has to prove himself to everybody, and his impossibly high standards for himself means that about half the time, he thinks he's failed at the task. Really, all he wants to do is help people. He wants to be the Robin Hood of Kilarria, basically, saving poor villages from bandit invasions and doing great, heroic things that will get him renown. The fact that it's impossible to save everybody is hard for Vales to grasp. There have been a lot of times in which his little band of misfits he travels around with have to drag him forcibly away from a fight because he's going to end up getting himself killed if they don't. He hates backing down from a fight and he hates losing a fight even more. And he picks a lot of fights. Like. A lot.
But still, he wants to save people. He wants, more than anything, to make sure that people are okay, and that they live good lives. He doesn't want special treatment, which means being in Tanagura as an elite is going to drive him nuts. He gets to have money because he has white hair, and all of the people in Midas just have to suffer? That's not going to fly with him.
He's picked up a lot of traits from his adoptive mother, Lioriley. He's always ready to throw himself in front of a sword for someone else if it means they're going to live, doesn't matter who they are. This especially includes Lioriley herself. Vales is fiercely protective of his mother and he constantly lashes out at anybody who breathes in her general direction. This, as you can probably imagine, gets super annoying super quickly, because having Vales bite the face off of people who are actually just being nice to Lioriley tends to be overboard. However, he does ease up on people eventually, typically once he's figured out that the person in question doesn't mean Lioriley any harm.
The poor people who end up sleeping with Lioriley may get a few WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS WITH MY MOTHER interrogations, provided the information ever makes it to him.
Past that, Vales gets his sense of justice from his mother, and his unrelenting desire to keep the conversation away from himself and his own feelings. He's less stubborn than his mother in the latter, though - he doesn't like talking about himself but he won't reroute the conversation until the other person gives in. Mostly, he feels like he's had a boring life so far, so he doesn't feel as though it's interesting topic material. He also doesn't much enjoy talking about magic, since he feels like he was given the short end of the stick on that end. In a more silly vein, Vales also inherited (in a sense) his mother's quick-to-blush tendency. Any sort of dirty talk or innuendo takes him a second to pick up on, but when he does get it, his normally subdued glow kicks up to a million in intensity.
Vales trusts people easily, despite not acting like it. This is not exactly all his mother's influence - Maligrae doesn't exactly breed paranoid people, so a lot of the stuff that people say is taken at face value. Betrayal is something that Vales does not take well, and he will not easily forgive it. While he is a little more experienced in the way things work outside of Maligrae, Vales is still young. He can pick up on sarcasm and he's decent at figuring out facial cues, but he still misses a lot. Slang from modern worlds will definitely throw him off. He has no idea what a 'dude' is, stop calling him that.
_ITEMS:
» his armor, which he's wearing
» his sword, dwarven made
» his shield, with a glyph of protection on it
» his coin purse, full of money that will be useless in Tanagura
» a pack that contains: rations, a blanket roll, a little wood carving of a bird from Ardan, a knife, and a hairbrush with jewels on it.
WRITING SAMPLES
_GEN SAMPLE: a) here
_SMUT SAMPLE: here - this one has Vales AU'd as sylvari from GW2, but I figure the concept is the same down to the glow. I'll gladly write something else if need be.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY CHARACTER IS THE FOLLOWING:
_SENTIENT: yes
_MENTALLY ADULT: yes
_CAPABLE OF CONSENT: yes
_CAPABLE OF SEXUAL AROUSAL: yes