![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Melodies of Life Information Post
Oct. 14th, 2014 05:18 pmName: Jade Banlong
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Canon: OC (Shadow City)
Canon Point: N/A
Link to Application: Link
Moogle Name: Sashalia
Moogle Gender: Female
Jobs:
1st: Dragoon
2nd: Thief
Limit Break: Hypnotic Mist: Jade exhales a rolling cloud of thick, greenish mist which quickly spreads. Any non-dragon organic creature that inhales or is exposed to the mist quickly finds their will sapped and any aggression fading away, replaced by an eagerness to listen to and obey the source of the hypnotic mist. This effect fades over the course of several hours, leaving no lasting ill effects.
Link to HMD: HMD
Link to Permission List: Still working on this.
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Canon: OC (Shadow City)
Canon Point: N/A
Link to Application: Link
Moogle Name: Sashalia
Moogle Gender: Female
Jobs:
1st: Dragoon
2nd: Thief
Limit Break: Hypnotic Mist: Jade exhales a rolling cloud of thick, greenish mist which quickly spreads. Any non-dragon organic creature that inhales or is exposed to the mist quickly finds their will sapped and any aggression fading away, replaced by an eagerness to listen to and obey the source of the hypnotic mist. This effect fades over the course of several hours, leaving no lasting ill effects.
Link to HMD: HMD
Link to Permission List: Still working on this.
Third Person sample
Oct. 11th, 2014 09:57 pmThree nights tracking the bastard to this city, three more spent watching the skies with care and far too much coffee to narrow it down to this block, and finally, some tricky work with a forged work order and a lot of careful phrasing to get access to this filthy old place.
Might as well give him a good show and a scare before bringing the wards out and dragging him back home.
In the darkness of the ancient, boarded-up attic, a match flared. Its small light illuminated nothing more than the cupped hand shielding it, until it was held to the bowl of a long-stemmed pipe, lighting the dried herbs packed neatly within.
The match shaken out, darkness returned, but a dim green-glowing smoke drifted from the pipe. Its holder took a slow draw, then exhaled, a great spreading cloud bringing dim light to the corners of the dusty room and the scent of burnt mint to the stagnant air.
As the mist billowed, sinking and creeping along the floor, so too did its light, until it illuminated a slim figure in an immaculately tailored suit, sitting easily on a pile of rubbish as though he had nowhere better to be and could wait there all night. One hand rested easily in a pocket, the other occupied with the stem of the long, gently smoldering pipe.
He also sat, as though by coincidence, directly in front of the boarded-over but, several careful moments' investigation had earlier shown, unlocked window, just where he could easily block the way of any creature attempting to leave the attic by that route.
A new attack almost every night. That's not just hunger; he's doing this because he wants his prey alive and terrified. Here's hoping he doesn't get to learn how dragon tastes. Just keep him distracted. Let the mist do its work.
The chrome-and-plastic license felt cool and familiar to Jade's touch, but he left it in his pocket for now. Bounty hunters who walked around flashing their badge before their prey was technically caught tended to provoke a strong response. They also tended to decorate the obituary section before too long.
On the positive side, unlike Jade, most hunters tended to look obviously inhuman on the job; that might help keep the quarry at ease until the mist took inescapable effect. On the negative side, he was hunting a maneater, and tap-dancing into a wolf den while wearing a suit composed entirely of beef was frowned upon as an effective wolf-hunting method for several good reasons.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and that silence had been dragged out long enough for dramatic purposes. Time to start talking.
"You know, that color combination just does not work for you at all. Did you take it off one of the girls? That cocktail waitress, maybe? I'm sorry, but chartreuse wool and glowing red eyes... It just doesn't bear thinking of."
Might as well give him a good show and a scare before bringing the wards out and dragging him back home.
In the darkness of the ancient, boarded-up attic, a match flared. Its small light illuminated nothing more than the cupped hand shielding it, until it was held to the bowl of a long-stemmed pipe, lighting the dried herbs packed neatly within.
The match shaken out, darkness returned, but a dim green-glowing smoke drifted from the pipe. Its holder took a slow draw, then exhaled, a great spreading cloud bringing dim light to the corners of the dusty room and the scent of burnt mint to the stagnant air.
As the mist billowed, sinking and creeping along the floor, so too did its light, until it illuminated a slim figure in an immaculately tailored suit, sitting easily on a pile of rubbish as though he had nowhere better to be and could wait there all night. One hand rested easily in a pocket, the other occupied with the stem of the long, gently smoldering pipe.
He also sat, as though by coincidence, directly in front of the boarded-over but, several careful moments' investigation had earlier shown, unlocked window, just where he could easily block the way of any creature attempting to leave the attic by that route.
A new attack almost every night. That's not just hunger; he's doing this because he wants his prey alive and terrified. Here's hoping he doesn't get to learn how dragon tastes. Just keep him distracted. Let the mist do its work.
The chrome-and-plastic license felt cool and familiar to Jade's touch, but he left it in his pocket for now. Bounty hunters who walked around flashing their badge before their prey was technically caught tended to provoke a strong response. They also tended to decorate the obituary section before too long.
On the positive side, unlike Jade, most hunters tended to look obviously inhuman on the job; that might help keep the quarry at ease until the mist took inescapable effect. On the negative side, he was hunting a maneater, and tap-dancing into a wolf den while wearing a suit composed entirely of beef was frowned upon as an effective wolf-hunting method for several good reasons.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and that silence had been dragged out long enough for dramatic purposes. Time to start talking.
"You know, that color combination just does not work for you at all. Did you take it off one of the girls? That cocktail waitress, maybe? I'm sorry, but chartreuse wool and glowing red eyes... It just doesn't bear thinking of."
Shadow City, New York's mirror, the sixth borough; accessible only via certain underground paths, it is a near-perfect physical copy of New York City and its environs, and the semi-willing home of most of America's supernatural population, forcibly relocated there by the government. Largely lawless and heavily dependent on shipments of food (for various definitions of "food") and supplies from the daylight world, pure humans are rarely seen in Shadow City, and even part-humans like witches and shapeshifters need to be on their guard.
For millenia, the Great Veil prevented humanity as a whole from realizing the existence of supernatural beings among them. Vampires preyed in peace, ghouls haunted graveyards, witches passed as ordinary or plied their trade in plain sight; even stranger beasts like centaurs and dragons hid their true nature when necessary to trade with ordinary people. Then, in the 1970s, the Crash came.
Afterward, esoteric physicists hypothesized that a drifting pocket universe had collided with our own; the ripple effects on the fabric of reality disrupted much existing magic, including the ancient Great Veil, as well as creating - or perhaps only granting access to - Shadow City itself. The world found itself suddenly dealing with surprised, exposed supernatural creatures, many of whom were strange, dangerous, or even outright predators on humanity - and completely outnumbered and outgunned by mortal numbers and technology.
There were calls for extermination from some, for peaceful coexistence with others, but in the end the most workable compromise was almost total exile. Those mythological beings who could claim human status - witches, minor talents, even many shapeshifters - were allowed to stay, though they faced prejudice and fear. Those beings who were decidedly inhuman or required the flesh or blood of intelligent creatures to survive were, when not exterminated outright by fearful humans, forced to relocate - with the promise of government-provided food from the daylight world. For creatures that preyed on humans by choice, however, the medical waste and animal blood provided proved a poor replacement - akin to a human surviving on dog food.
Some nations reached more accommodating arrangements with their native supernatural residents, most notably China, Japan and India, where demigods and demons walk freely and dragons keep their palaces on the seabed in exchange for weather assistance; by and large, however, the mortal response was nowhere near so positive, and many supernaturals accepted exile for their own safety, even when not legally compelled.
The largest passage between Shadow City and the daylight world, a tunnel beneath Grand Central Station, was fortified and set up to serve as a depot; several times a day, trains carrying food, medical supplies, anything the inhabitants of Shadow City cannot make themselves, pass through and bring back the exotic or esoteric items the monsters themselves can produce.
The only semblance of law beyond the Grand Central soldiers and "don't mess with anyone who will eat you" comes in the form of the licensed bounty hunters, or just Hunters for short; some of the most powerful supernatural creatures in Shadow City, they are able to travel between it and the daylight world as needed, tracking down those creatures that escape from the shadows and returning them by any means necessary, to protect the human masses.
The farther reaches of Shadow, farther from the established cities, bear less resemblance to the daylight world, and are infested with strange and hostile beings of frightening power; only the daring and the mad venture far into the wilderness. The merfolk report that even stranger and more terrifying creatures make their homes in the deep of the Shadowed world's oceans, strange twisted parodies of whales and dragons with an alien intelligence of their own, down in the abyssal dark.
For millenia, the Great Veil prevented humanity as a whole from realizing the existence of supernatural beings among them. Vampires preyed in peace, ghouls haunted graveyards, witches passed as ordinary or plied their trade in plain sight; even stranger beasts like centaurs and dragons hid their true nature when necessary to trade with ordinary people. Then, in the 1970s, the Crash came.
Afterward, esoteric physicists hypothesized that a drifting pocket universe had collided with our own; the ripple effects on the fabric of reality disrupted much existing magic, including the ancient Great Veil, as well as creating - or perhaps only granting access to - Shadow City itself. The world found itself suddenly dealing with surprised, exposed supernatural creatures, many of whom were strange, dangerous, or even outright predators on humanity - and completely outnumbered and outgunned by mortal numbers and technology.
There were calls for extermination from some, for peaceful coexistence with others, but in the end the most workable compromise was almost total exile. Those mythological beings who could claim human status - witches, minor talents, even many shapeshifters - were allowed to stay, though they faced prejudice and fear. Those beings who were decidedly inhuman or required the flesh or blood of intelligent creatures to survive were, when not exterminated outright by fearful humans, forced to relocate - with the promise of government-provided food from the daylight world. For creatures that preyed on humans by choice, however, the medical waste and animal blood provided proved a poor replacement - akin to a human surviving on dog food.
Some nations reached more accommodating arrangements with their native supernatural residents, most notably China, Japan and India, where demigods and demons walk freely and dragons keep their palaces on the seabed in exchange for weather assistance; by and large, however, the mortal response was nowhere near so positive, and many supernaturals accepted exile for their own safety, even when not legally compelled.
The largest passage between Shadow City and the daylight world, a tunnel beneath Grand Central Station, was fortified and set up to serve as a depot; several times a day, trains carrying food, medical supplies, anything the inhabitants of Shadow City cannot make themselves, pass through and bring back the exotic or esoteric items the monsters themselves can produce.
The only semblance of law beyond the Grand Central soldiers and "don't mess with anyone who will eat you" comes in the form of the licensed bounty hunters, or just Hunters for short; some of the most powerful supernatural creatures in Shadow City, they are able to travel between it and the daylight world as needed, tracking down those creatures that escape from the shadows and returning them by any means necessary, to protect the human masses.
The farther reaches of Shadow, farther from the established cities, bear less resemblance to the daylight world, and are infested with strange and hostile beings of frightening power; only the daring and the mad venture far into the wilderness. The merfolk report that even stranger and more terrifying creatures make their homes in the deep of the Shadowed world's oceans, strange twisted parodies of whales and dragons with an alien intelligence of their own, down in the abyssal dark.
Melodies of Life app
Sep. 3rd, 2014 12:31 amPlayer
Name: Merle
Age: 30
Personal Journal: merleblue
Contact: greymav (plurk)
Other In-Game Characters: N/A
Character (Original Character)
Name: Jade Banlong
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Canon: OC (Shadow City)
Canon Point: N/A
World History: Excerpt from A Brief History of Shadow City and its Environs, B. Hennessen-Harpur Press.
Character History: Jade was born to luxury. His parents - a storm dragon of the Chinese celestial bureaucracy and a human painter - provided him with all the funds he reasonably could have desired, but as his maturing personality showed signs of dissolution, they forced him out to make his own way and prove his worth. For the next ten years or so, Jade wandered the world, passing for human and working at what jobs caught his interest.
Jade traveled widely, had dalliances on multiple continents, but never more than a casual fling. His childhood was luxurious, but without true friends, and while his parents were loving, neither was particularly adept at showing it to their frivolous son. Jade took readily to the playboy persona - smoothing paths with his soporific mist where his father's riches could not - until the lifting of the Veil.
His father's undeniable power and China's more lenient stance towards certain supernatural creatures extended to Jade as well, but he had fallen in love with American culture. With the creation of Shadow City in New York, the legal options for a supernatural creature in America were sharply curtailed, and Jade found his free existence both legally threatened and a source of tension for the American and Chinese governments.
Jade's suggestion that he be granted a bounty hunter's license started as a pretext; under the new American laws, a supernatural with a bounty license could walk freely in the daylight world without issue. In that, it succeeded in mollifying both sets of diplomats, and he took to it slowly at first. With his family's wealth, Jade had no real need for more funds, and there was not yet any actual requirement that he hint successfully to keep his license.
However, almost despite himself, Jade found that bounty hunting suited him well. Despite his spoiled upbringing and playboy ways, his heart was still that of a predator; chasing down fugitive monsters, outwitting and trapping them, manipulating them into falling prey to his mists, proved more of a thrill than any debauchery. He found himself leaving his old acquaintances behind, spending more and more time challenging himself at his new career.
Jade's only true rival was the vampire Sasha Loloches, whose more brutal style clashed with his own. The two often found themselves in direct competition over bounties, but despite their one-upmanship and even, at times, direct confrontation, Jade found himself enjoying the persistence of his rival. Without ever consciously meaning to, he found himself considering her something not entirely unlike a friend - for the first time in his life, someone who could match him and actually challenge him.
Personality: Jade is the only son of an ancient ocean dragon and a high-society human woman. Raised in a palace at the bottom of the sea, attended by inhuman servants, it is no wonder he grew into a spoiled, vain and frivolous young man. Used to luxury, and not averse to using his will-sapping abilities to get his way with mortals, he is devoted to creature comforts and quite unused to being gainsaid. Though he would say he has many friends, in truth, he tends to surround himself with sycophants and fellow dilettantes without ever making a true friend.
Those few individuals who can stand up to his whims, though infuriating, tend to become objects of fascination for Jade. Part of him simply cannot comprehend someone saying "no" to one of his ideas, and he will fixate on any such resister, not losing interest until they are cowed, or more often will-fogged, into acquiescence. He doesn't really understand how much he depends on his supernatural abilities to ease his way past difficulties, to the point of gross overconfidence while bounty-hunting.
That's not to say that Jade is a coward. He is not at all fond of fighting, but even he isn't arrogant enough to assume that every creature he ever faces will be vulnerable to his charms, and knows some basic self-defense techniques - though he is self-aware enough to use them mostly as a means of expediting escape. Jade is no great martial artist, and he knows it.
Jade considers himself somewhat more straight-inclined than anything else, though he's had his share of male liasons in the past. Beautiful women are a weakness of his, and he has not had much cause yet to consider the less savory implications of his seductions, having taken up his father's views of relationships between mortals and immortals. His mother being an enthusiastic and willing wife, Jade himself doesn't generally stop to think that the women he dates might disapprove of his use of draconic presence to sway them.
On the whole, Jade takes each day as it comes, without much in the way of planning for the future - taking his father's immortal mindset, he's content to let history sweep interesting new things and people towards him, rather than aiming for any particular goal. He has become fascinated with electronics and computers, however, as their potency has become evident over the past few decades, and as they pose a challenge that his supernatural gifts cannot even begin to address, a challenge purely to his intellect.
Third-Person Sample: Writing sample
Mognet Sample:
LOST: My patience. Reward if found. Answers to 'Here, have a nice drink' or 'Care to share this wine with me?' Honestly, people, there has to be somewhere in this benighted world where a decent evening of debauchery can be found.
First round is on me, even. Just point me towards some bar worthy of the name.
-Jade
Crystallis
Moogle Name: Sashalia
Moogle Gender: Female.
First Job: Dragoon
Second Job: Thief
Limit Break: Hypnotic Mist: Jade exhales a rolling cloud of thick, greenish mist which quickly spreads. Any non-dragon organic creature that inhales or is exposed to the mist quickly finds their will sapped and any aggression fading away, replaced by an eagerness to listen to and obey the source of the hypnotic mist. This effect fades over the course of several hours, leaving no lasting ill effects.
Name: Merle
Age: 30
Personal Journal: merleblue
Contact: greymav (plurk)
Other In-Game Characters: N/A
Character (Original Character)
Name: Jade Banlong
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Canon: OC (Shadow City)
Canon Point: N/A
World History: Excerpt from A Brief History of Shadow City and its Environs, B. Hennessen-Harpur Press.
Character History: Jade was born to luxury. His parents - a storm dragon of the Chinese celestial bureaucracy and a human painter - provided him with all the funds he reasonably could have desired, but as his maturing personality showed signs of dissolution, they forced him out to make his own way and prove his worth. For the next ten years or so, Jade wandered the world, passing for human and working at what jobs caught his interest.
Jade traveled widely, had dalliances on multiple continents, but never more than a casual fling. His childhood was luxurious, but without true friends, and while his parents were loving, neither was particularly adept at showing it to their frivolous son. Jade took readily to the playboy persona - smoothing paths with his soporific mist where his father's riches could not - until the lifting of the Veil.
His father's undeniable power and China's more lenient stance towards certain supernatural creatures extended to Jade as well, but he had fallen in love with American culture. With the creation of Shadow City in New York, the legal options for a supernatural creature in America were sharply curtailed, and Jade found his free existence both legally threatened and a source of tension for the American and Chinese governments.
Jade's suggestion that he be granted a bounty hunter's license started as a pretext; under the new American laws, a supernatural with a bounty license could walk freely in the daylight world without issue. In that, it succeeded in mollifying both sets of diplomats, and he took to it slowly at first. With his family's wealth, Jade had no real need for more funds, and there was not yet any actual requirement that he hint successfully to keep his license.
However, almost despite himself, Jade found that bounty hunting suited him well. Despite his spoiled upbringing and playboy ways, his heart was still that of a predator; chasing down fugitive monsters, outwitting and trapping them, manipulating them into falling prey to his mists, proved more of a thrill than any debauchery. He found himself leaving his old acquaintances behind, spending more and more time challenging himself at his new career.
Jade's only true rival was the vampire Sasha Loloches, whose more brutal style clashed with his own. The two often found themselves in direct competition over bounties, but despite their one-upmanship and even, at times, direct confrontation, Jade found himself enjoying the persistence of his rival. Without ever consciously meaning to, he found himself considering her something not entirely unlike a friend - for the first time in his life, someone who could match him and actually challenge him.
Personality: Jade is the only son of an ancient ocean dragon and a high-society human woman. Raised in a palace at the bottom of the sea, attended by inhuman servants, it is no wonder he grew into a spoiled, vain and frivolous young man. Used to luxury, and not averse to using his will-sapping abilities to get his way with mortals, he is devoted to creature comforts and quite unused to being gainsaid. Though he would say he has many friends, in truth, he tends to surround himself with sycophants and fellow dilettantes without ever making a true friend.
Those few individuals who can stand up to his whims, though infuriating, tend to become objects of fascination for Jade. Part of him simply cannot comprehend someone saying "no" to one of his ideas, and he will fixate on any such resister, not losing interest until they are cowed, or more often will-fogged, into acquiescence. He doesn't really understand how much he depends on his supernatural abilities to ease his way past difficulties, to the point of gross overconfidence while bounty-hunting.
That's not to say that Jade is a coward. He is not at all fond of fighting, but even he isn't arrogant enough to assume that every creature he ever faces will be vulnerable to his charms, and knows some basic self-defense techniques - though he is self-aware enough to use them mostly as a means of expediting escape. Jade is no great martial artist, and he knows it.
Jade considers himself somewhat more straight-inclined than anything else, though he's had his share of male liasons in the past. Beautiful women are a weakness of his, and he has not had much cause yet to consider the less savory implications of his seductions, having taken up his father's views of relationships between mortals and immortals. His mother being an enthusiastic and willing wife, Jade himself doesn't generally stop to think that the women he dates might disapprove of his use of draconic presence to sway them.
On the whole, Jade takes each day as it comes, without much in the way of planning for the future - taking his father's immortal mindset, he's content to let history sweep interesting new things and people towards him, rather than aiming for any particular goal. He has become fascinated with electronics and computers, however, as their potency has become evident over the past few decades, and as they pose a challenge that his supernatural gifts cannot even begin to address, a challenge purely to his intellect.
Third-Person Sample: Writing sample
Mognet Sample:
LOST: My patience. Reward if found. Answers to 'Here, have a nice drink' or 'Care to share this wine with me?' Honestly, people, there has to be somewhere in this benighted world where a decent evening of debauchery can be found.
First round is on me, even. Just point me towards some bar worthy of the name.
-Jade
Crystallis
Moogle Name: Sashalia
Moogle Gender: Female.
First Job: Dragoon
Second Job: Thief
Limit Break: Hypnotic Mist: Jade exhales a rolling cloud of thick, greenish mist which quickly spreads. Any non-dragon organic creature that inhales or is exposed to the mist quickly finds their will sapped and any aggression fading away, replaced by an eagerness to listen to and obey the source of the hypnotic mist. This effect fades over the course of several hours, leaving no lasting ill effects.
