Asch the Bloody (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodyashes) wrote2017-10-24 07:42 am
bloodyashes) wrote2017-10-24 07:42 am
Entry tags:
lifeafter app
Player Information
Name: Nai
Age: 24 and change, 25 in Jan
Contact: plurk @ starcrossedsky, discord @starcrossedsky#0506
Current characters: N/A
Character Information
Name: Asch the Bloody
Series: Tales of the Abyss
Appearance: Asch is a boy in his late teens somewhat on the short side for a JRPG protagonist (~5'7/171cm) with exceptionally long red hair. (And I do mean red - true ridiculous anime blood red.) Under his significant layers of clothes, he's very muscular, a good balance between stocky and lean. More info here at his permissions.
Age: 17; approximately 1 month shy of 18
Canon Point: DEAD.gif
Canon History: terrifying 7K monster, with wiki for comparison (and artes list for ability section).
Personality: Outwardly, Asch is all business - impatient, rough business. He perpetually gives off an aura of having no time for anything other than whatever mission he's focused in on at the time, and has a hot temper that despises teasing or wasting time. Act responsibly and professionally, and he'll give you the same in return; anything less isn't worthy of his time or respect.
His trust, on the other hand, is much harder to earn; in large part due to Van's manipulations, Asch doesn't trust [i]anyone[/i]. Not even just on the level of not letting anyone get close to him - Asch doesn't trust other people to be competent, so he feels the need to do everything himself. The only people in-game that he trusts at all are Luke's party (who he can spy on over his connection to Luke at any time) and the Dark Wings, who he trusts to do their jobs because he's paying them. The same deep-set paranoia is what sends him to the Radiation Gate [i]just in case[/i] when the party goes to take down Van at the Absorption Gate.
That isn't to say that he lacks emotional bonds; if anything, Asch is the sort to get attached to a frightening degree. The trouble is that he has no idea how to form new bonds, or how to deal with the ones he still has from the part of his life as Luke. Natalia, Guy, and his mother in particular are extremely precious to him; he just expresses it poorly, mostly with vaguely supportive emotional gestures towards Natalia. And when new people try to form bonds with him, he's prone to rejecting it, with anger, almost by reflex.
Anger is, in fact, Asch's primary response to stress. Upset by something? Get angry at it. Confused? Get angry and call it stupid. Grieving? Lash out at anything that steps wrong. It isn't so much that Asch is short-tempered as that he doesn't know how to process his own emotions correctly, and so he manifests them in the only way he does know how to express himself. The constant stress that colored his last year of life on Auldrant - the potential death of everyone on the planet, his own impending death, dealing with Luke, dealing with Van - only made that worse.
Because ultimately, Asch is a kid who has been hurt and is afraid of getting hurt again. He just won't ever admit it, even to himself, because it's a weakness he can't stand in himself. If he doesn't let anyone close, he doesn't have to fear losing them, or being betrayed by them. If he assumes the worst of people, then he doesn't have to fear disappointment. If he doesn't entrust the job to anyone else, he won't have to deal with them failing.
And yet, bizarrely, impossibly, buried beneath all of this is a spark of the idealistic child he once was that won't be snuffed out. Ultimately, for all that it's hurt him, personally, Asch loves the world, wants to help people, wants to see no one else have to suffer. It is this love of the world that is Van's ultimate failure, because nothing the man did to Asch, no evil he exposed the boy to, could put it out. Unlike Van, Asch did not despair, and still believes the world can be made better.
And perhaps more to the point, that he can make it better. Even without the kind of pressure he's used to working under, Asch is intensely driven; in fact, you could easily say he doesn't know what to do with himself without a goal in mind. A childhood of being told he would be king, and training for that, followed by his adolescence in the Oracle Knights, left Asch with a pathological need to be doing something at all times. And it only got worse when he found out that his time remaining in the world was rapidly approaching an end.
It is also worth noting, that for all his buried idealism, Asch is not exactly kind, or even a good person. While he will help out where he can, he is very aware of exactly where the lines of his morality are - and where they aren't. He has no compunction against killing, and if the person is someone he classes as an enemy, he won't feel any guilt or remorse. (Even if the person is close to him - in that case, he'll use the fact that they were an enemy to actively talk himself out of feeling anything about it.) He does feel some measure of guilt for killing innocents, but would likely never show it. He can't afford to hesitate.
It's a mantra that's practically built into him at this point; no hesitation, no diverting from the path he's set his mind to, no distractions, always forward. In some ways, Asch has survived everything he's been through on willpower alone, and that is the thing that makes him most frightening. He devotes his entire being to achieving his ends, be they good or ill, and as a result he strangles success out of situations where most could not. The unfortunate other side of this, however, is that when he fails - when the rope onto which he's invested his all gives out - he collapses utterly.
He can put himself back together, given time. After all, it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to him. But that rebuilding is shaky and destined to collapse again, some other failure, some future day, until he stops and takes the time to examine himself from the ground up. Self-reflection is the furthest thing from Asch's mind and as a result he can seem extremely hypocritical to someone who doesn't follow his thought processes, which can range from bizarrely convoluted to almost childishly simple. His patterns of thought just aren't quite right with the rest of the world, and he avoids thinking about either himself or the world enough to realize it.
Finally, Asch is fiercely, almost violently independent, as you might well expect from a teenager who has been betrayed on some level by everyone who has ever claimed some measure of authority over him. He fights orders and parental affection both as though they were chains and considers making his own judgements to be practically a moral imperative. He likes things to be clear-cut, and detests lies and deceptions. Considering the high standard of both he holds himself to, this can make him difficult to deal with, especially in any situation where tact is called for. It's probably for the better that he has the reputation of being angry and anti-social; it makes people less likely to take it personally.
Abilities: Let's take this in chunks.
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).
Suggested nerf: Recovering from DEAD.gif doesn't mean that the symptoms of severe fonon degeneration (see section 5) have gone away. Enjoy building your strength back up from like, level 15, kiddo. (I realize that compared to the nerfs on other apps, this probably isn't required, but I kind of want to play with it anyway because I'm a terrible person.)
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.
SELECTED LIST: Fang Blade (don't leave home without it), Raging Blast (gotta keep your one unarmed combat arte right), Thunder Blade (and one casting arte), Guardian Field (useless! 10%! area heal!), Light Spear Cannon. The only passive arte he has is Steel, which is a small crit buff.
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.
Suggested Nerfs: Honestly I'm in the habit from my last game of rolling dice at the start of any fight to determine overlimit progress (specifically, a d100) and only having the gauge full on the full 100, with 90-99 being "you have the potential to fill it enough to use within the space of the fight if it goes on that long." I've never once actually gotten to use it by this method. :D If mods are cool, I'll just keep... doing that...?
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.
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.
Suggested nerf: Outside of special circumstances, there's just not enough Seventh Fonons to use it. On Auldrant, there's two thousand years of the Planet Storm being basically a nuclear fusion engine for fonons to create a really high ambient level of the things. On the islands... Not so much. Regular fonons could also be harder to come by, but the Seventh in particular is going to be rough to get.
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.
Note to mods: Pretty much none of the above is relevant unless a Luke happens to the game. At which point I'll probably show up in your inboxes screaming about it? So we'll talk then.
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. No building skills to speak of, though - he's the type who stays on the move.
Inventory: -> Clothes (tabard w/ reinforced shoulders, tunic, undershirt, leggings, high boots, leather gloves, over-gloves, sword belt + scabbard; all the torso pieces have large rents in them, though most of the blood came out in the sea)
-> 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.
-> Handful of basic personal travelling supplies (pocketknife, hairbrush, whetstone, small sewing kit, canteen, 2 cord hair ties, cloth sack) in a belt pack that you probably couldn't cram much more into if you tried
Sample
Thread Sample: TDM stuff here.
Q&A: What would you rather have: powerful but uneasy allies or weaker but loyal friends?
Loyalty. If you trust someone, you can work with them to patch up weak spots or become stronger. If you don't... It doesn't really matter how powerful they are. You're not going to get anything done if you have to be constantly watching your back.
Are you proud of where you are now in life?
Only as much as I'm proud of having survived as long as I did. [Grimace.] The things I've done? No, I'm not proud of them. I just did what I had to. And where I ended up... Having to leave the ob to someone else isn't something to be proud of, either.
To you, what would be considered an unforgivable action by someone else?
...Aside from everything Van did? [That resentment isn't just simmering, it's boiling oil, occasionally throwing off scalding drops. He has to take a breath to calm down again.] Don't make me think we have a common ideal when we don't. Don't abuse a position of power to get things that you couldn't get otherwise. Don't try to force me to do soemthing when I've already made up my mind.
What would you change about the world, if you were able?
Put an end to poverty - starvation, sickness, the whole lot. There's no reason for them to still exist, when there are more than enough resources for everyone. Except that most nobles and clergy think they know better or deserve better, when they're not any better than anyone else.
Fix some of the more blatant things wrong with the justice system. I'm not stupid enough to think we can get rid of corruption entirely - [Not anymore.] - but at least make it so that it's a little harder for rapists and their ilk to walk free by waving enough money in the face of the problem. Lighten or eliminate punishments on people who are barely scraping by.
Make information freely available to anyone who wants it. History, politics, fonology, all of it. [From the way his voice drops - just a little - and his expression, this is probably the point most important to him.] The Order and the monarchies have gotten away with too much just by keeping it secret, by being able to say it's better if you don't know and having people accept it. I can't force people to stop being stupid, but they at least deserve the chance to know what's going on.
Do you think things like politics and history are important to know about? Why or why not?
[From the brief look that crosses his face, Asch almost wants to laugh.] People who say politics aren't important are fools lucky enough to live untouched by war, poverty, or anything else. And people who say history isn't important don't understand politics. [A sigh. He pushes a few strands of his bangs back, idly, not even seeming to notice the gesture.] Even for people who aren't as wrapped up in them as I am, they matter. Unless you go live in a hut alone in the wilderness, I suppose.
Is there anyone whose example you try to follow?
No. [Blunt and sharp, like a book snapping closed or a door slamming.] Everyone I ever thought was worth admiring wasn't, in the end.
What is your greatest weakness?
[A sucked in breath, then a minute of silence. It's hard to tell if he's thinking about it or just doesn't want to answer.]
Probably impatience. It feeds into everything else - my temper, my... reckless tendencies. I don't like waiting. It never means anything good.
Name: Nai
Age: 24 and change, 25 in Jan
Contact: plurk @ starcrossedsky, discord @starcrossedsky#0506
Current characters: N/A
Character Information
Name: Asch the Bloody
Series: Tales of the Abyss
Appearance: Asch is a boy in his late teens somewhat on the short side for a JRPG protagonist (~5'7/171cm) with exceptionally long red hair. (And I do mean red - true ridiculous anime blood red.) Under his significant layers of clothes, he's very muscular, a good balance between stocky and lean. More info here at his permissions.
Age: 17; approximately 1 month shy of 18
Canon Point: DEAD.gif
Canon History: terrifying 7K monster, with wiki for comparison (and artes list for ability section).
Personality: Outwardly, Asch is all business - impatient, rough business. He perpetually gives off an aura of having no time for anything other than whatever mission he's focused in on at the time, and has a hot temper that despises teasing or wasting time. Act responsibly and professionally, and he'll give you the same in return; anything less isn't worthy of his time or respect.
His trust, on the other hand, is much harder to earn; in large part due to Van's manipulations, Asch doesn't trust [i]anyone[/i]. Not even just on the level of not letting anyone get close to him - Asch doesn't trust other people to be competent, so he feels the need to do everything himself. The only people in-game that he trusts at all are Luke's party (who he can spy on over his connection to Luke at any time) and the Dark Wings, who he trusts to do their jobs because he's paying them. The same deep-set paranoia is what sends him to the Radiation Gate [i]just in case[/i] when the party goes to take down Van at the Absorption Gate.
That isn't to say that he lacks emotional bonds; if anything, Asch is the sort to get attached to a frightening degree. The trouble is that he has no idea how to form new bonds, or how to deal with the ones he still has from the part of his life as Luke. Natalia, Guy, and his mother in particular are extremely precious to him; he just expresses it poorly, mostly with vaguely supportive emotional gestures towards Natalia. And when new people try to form bonds with him, he's prone to rejecting it, with anger, almost by reflex.
Anger is, in fact, Asch's primary response to stress. Upset by something? Get angry at it. Confused? Get angry and call it stupid. Grieving? Lash out at anything that steps wrong. It isn't so much that Asch is short-tempered as that he doesn't know how to process his own emotions correctly, and so he manifests them in the only way he does know how to express himself. The constant stress that colored his last year of life on Auldrant - the potential death of everyone on the planet, his own impending death, dealing with Luke, dealing with Van - only made that worse.
Because ultimately, Asch is a kid who has been hurt and is afraid of getting hurt again. He just won't ever admit it, even to himself, because it's a weakness he can't stand in himself. If he doesn't let anyone close, he doesn't have to fear losing them, or being betrayed by them. If he assumes the worst of people, then he doesn't have to fear disappointment. If he doesn't entrust the job to anyone else, he won't have to deal with them failing.
And yet, bizarrely, impossibly, buried beneath all of this is a spark of the idealistic child he once was that won't be snuffed out. Ultimately, for all that it's hurt him, personally, Asch loves the world, wants to help people, wants to see no one else have to suffer. It is this love of the world that is Van's ultimate failure, because nothing the man did to Asch, no evil he exposed the boy to, could put it out. Unlike Van, Asch did not despair, and still believes the world can be made better.
And perhaps more to the point, that he can make it better. Even without the kind of pressure he's used to working under, Asch is intensely driven; in fact, you could easily say he doesn't know what to do with himself without a goal in mind. A childhood of being told he would be king, and training for that, followed by his adolescence in the Oracle Knights, left Asch with a pathological need to be doing something at all times. And it only got worse when he found out that his time remaining in the world was rapidly approaching an end.
It is also worth noting, that for all his buried idealism, Asch is not exactly kind, or even a good person. While he will help out where he can, he is very aware of exactly where the lines of his morality are - and where they aren't. He has no compunction against killing, and if the person is someone he classes as an enemy, he won't feel any guilt or remorse. (Even if the person is close to him - in that case, he'll use the fact that they were an enemy to actively talk himself out of feeling anything about it.) He does feel some measure of guilt for killing innocents, but would likely never show it. He can't afford to hesitate.
It's a mantra that's practically built into him at this point; no hesitation, no diverting from the path he's set his mind to, no distractions, always forward. In some ways, Asch has survived everything he's been through on willpower alone, and that is the thing that makes him most frightening. He devotes his entire being to achieving his ends, be they good or ill, and as a result he strangles success out of situations where most could not. The unfortunate other side of this, however, is that when he fails - when the rope onto which he's invested his all gives out - he collapses utterly.
He can put himself back together, given time. After all, it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to him. But that rebuilding is shaky and destined to collapse again, some other failure, some future day, until he stops and takes the time to examine himself from the ground up. Self-reflection is the furthest thing from Asch's mind and as a result he can seem extremely hypocritical to someone who doesn't follow his thought processes, which can range from bizarrely convoluted to almost childishly simple. His patterns of thought just aren't quite right with the rest of the world, and he avoids thinking about either himself or the world enough to realize it.
Finally, Asch is fiercely, almost violently independent, as you might well expect from a teenager who has been betrayed on some level by everyone who has ever claimed some measure of authority over him. He fights orders and parental affection both as though they were chains and considers making his own judgements to be practically a moral imperative. He likes things to be clear-cut, and detests lies and deceptions. Considering the high standard of both he holds himself to, this can make him difficult to deal with, especially in any situation where tact is called for. It's probably for the better that he has the reputation of being angry and anti-social; it makes people less likely to take it personally.
Abilities: Let's take this in chunks.
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).
Suggested nerf: Recovering from DEAD.gif doesn't mean that the symptoms of severe fonon degeneration (see section 5) have gone away. Enjoy building your strength back up from like, level 15, kiddo. (I realize that compared to the nerfs on other apps, this probably isn't required, but I kind of want to play with it anyway because I'm a terrible person.)
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.
SELECTED LIST: Fang Blade (don't leave home without it), Raging Blast (gotta keep your one unarmed combat arte right), Thunder Blade (and one casting arte), Guardian Field (useless! 10%! area heal!), Light Spear Cannon. The only passive arte he has is Steel, which is a small crit buff.
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.
Suggested Nerfs: Honestly I'm in the habit from my last game of rolling dice at the start of any fight to determine overlimit progress (specifically, a d100) and only having the gauge full on the full 100, with 90-99 being "you have the potential to fill it enough to use within the space of the fight if it goes on that long." I've never once actually gotten to use it by this method. :D If mods are cool, I'll just keep... doing that...?
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.
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.
Suggested nerf: Outside of special circumstances, there's just not enough Seventh Fonons to use it. On Auldrant, there's two thousand years of the Planet Storm being basically a nuclear fusion engine for fonons to create a really high ambient level of the things. On the islands... Not so much. Regular fonons could also be harder to come by, but the Seventh in particular is going to be rough to get.
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.
Note to mods: Pretty much none of the above is relevant unless a Luke happens to the game. At which point I'll probably show up in your inboxes screaming about it? So we'll talk then.
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. No building skills to speak of, though - he's the type who stays on the move.
Inventory: -> Clothes (tabard w/ reinforced shoulders, tunic, undershirt, leggings, high boots, leather gloves, over-gloves, sword belt + scabbard; all the torso pieces have large rents in them, though most of the blood came out in the sea)
-> 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.
-> Handful of basic personal travelling supplies (pocketknife, hairbrush, whetstone, small sewing kit, canteen, 2 cord hair ties, cloth sack) in a belt pack that you probably couldn't cram much more into if you tried
Sample
Thread Sample: TDM stuff here.
Q&A: What would you rather have: powerful but uneasy allies or weaker but loyal friends?
Loyalty. If you trust someone, you can work with them to patch up weak spots or become stronger. If you don't... It doesn't really matter how powerful they are. You're not going to get anything done if you have to be constantly watching your back.
Are you proud of where you are now in life?
Only as much as I'm proud of having survived as long as I did. [Grimace.] The things I've done? No, I'm not proud of them. I just did what I had to. And where I ended up... Having to leave the ob to someone else isn't something to be proud of, either.
To you, what would be considered an unforgivable action by someone else?
...Aside from everything Van did? [That resentment isn't just simmering, it's boiling oil, occasionally throwing off scalding drops. He has to take a breath to calm down again.] Don't make me think we have a common ideal when we don't. Don't abuse a position of power to get things that you couldn't get otherwise. Don't try to force me to do soemthing when I've already made up my mind.
What would you change about the world, if you were able?
Put an end to poverty - starvation, sickness, the whole lot. There's no reason for them to still exist, when there are more than enough resources for everyone. Except that most nobles and clergy think they know better or deserve better, when they're not any better than anyone else.
Fix some of the more blatant things wrong with the justice system. I'm not stupid enough to think we can get rid of corruption entirely - [Not anymore.] - but at least make it so that it's a little harder for rapists and their ilk to walk free by waving enough money in the face of the problem. Lighten or eliminate punishments on people who are barely scraping by.
Make information freely available to anyone who wants it. History, politics, fonology, all of it. [From the way his voice drops - just a little - and his expression, this is probably the point most important to him.] The Order and the monarchies have gotten away with too much just by keeping it secret, by being able to say it's better if you don't know and having people accept it. I can't force people to stop being stupid, but they at least deserve the chance to know what's going on.
Do you think things like politics and history are important to know about? Why or why not?
[From the brief look that crosses his face, Asch almost wants to laugh.] People who say politics aren't important are fools lucky enough to live untouched by war, poverty, or anything else. And people who say history isn't important don't understand politics. [A sigh. He pushes a few strands of his bangs back, idly, not even seeming to notice the gesture.] Even for people who aren't as wrapped up in them as I am, they matter. Unless you go live in a hut alone in the wilderness, I suppose.
Is there anyone whose example you try to follow?
No. [Blunt and sharp, like a book snapping closed or a door slamming.] Everyone I ever thought was worth admiring wasn't, in the end.
What is your greatest weakness?
[A sucked in breath, then a minute of silence. It's hard to tell if he's thinking about it or just doesn't want to answer.]
Probably impatience. It feeds into everything else - my temper, my... reckless tendencies. I don't like waiting. It never means anything good.
INVO;;
Asch will arrive with a knapsack; on which he will find his name embossed with thread. Within, the following items have been supplied:
One knife
One jug of condensed milk
One fishing line
One toothbrush
Due to your participation in the Test Drive Meme, Asch has also been awarded a Dowsing Rod! It's more than just a nice-looking stick, honest.
Truthfully, the edges are too smooth and the angles too sharp for it to be nothing more than that. It's a dowsing rod, and one with quite a versatile use. One simply must concentrate very hard on what it is they're looking for - person, animal, place, or thing - and if it is on the island, the dowsing rod will lead you there with slow, gentle tugs, assuming it exists on a square that has already been explored. It will not, however, chart the least dangerous or even most plausible route to take. Upon each successful use of the rod, a little more of the stick's ends will crumble away until, at the maximum of five uses, the rod will be nothing more than dust.