Post by The Mysterious Mr. Jameson Q. on Feb 3, 2010 10:39:20 GMT -5
A Place Once Existed, Shrouded in Light
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Username: brezzen
Is This Character Canon?: N/ALink to Audition Thread: N/A
But Those Who Lived Within It Coveted The Light, And Darkness Was Born
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Name: Gloria Creeden Lunavice, "Cree"
Race: Human
Age: 12
Gender: Male
Homeworld: Radiant Garden
The New Age of Life Began Where Hearts Had Been Fractured, Not Knowing True Light
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Appearance: Gloria is young. There are no words that can be said that'd convince you otherwise. He is about five and a half feet tall, which is considerably shorter than most warriors nowadays. His facial features are soft, and still hold the impermanent structure of youth, proof that he is not done growing into his body. His jaw is soft and not fully settled yet, his eyes are large and round, his skin is unmarred by experience. His physical build is as you should expect any healthy mid-teen to look. Not particularly muscular, but by no means does he look as if he's out of shape in one direction or another.
He is blonde and his eyes are a dull-brown that seem to have a sparkle of color if you look at them in the right light. His hair hangs down to his shoulders, and is cut simply. Usually it is tucked behind his ears to keep it out of his face. He is only just beginning to become aware of his appearance, and as such is somewhat awkward as far as his general appearance while he tries to find himself.
His clothing is that of an ordinary, typical lower-class child. A collared, cotton tunic for warmth with a tight undershirt beneath it as an added layer. A drawstring is cinched around his waist to act as a belt. His pants are cotton as well, and his lower calves are typically wrapped with a pair of leg-warmers. His shoes are handmade leather, and are without any sort of zipper or shoelace to secure them.
Three references were used in building this character:
AliTheBandit's Never Trust the Wizard, for Gloria's youth, as he is currently.
kissai's boy magician, for Gloria's ascension into higher learning, to be used upon 2nd and 3rd Tier.
Yue-Iceseal's Ice Wizard, for Gloria's full maturity, to be used upon the Epic and Legendary Tiers.
Personality:•General Persona:
Gloria is a child, mature far beyond his years. He is very cool and rational, and although not as learned as someone older than he, the boy has a surprising ability of making things make sense. If put into words he can understand, Gloria can make sense of some of the most complicated philosophies and intellectual concepts with little difficulty. In this way he is an impressive thinker. He is often very withdrawn and shy, although this does not mean he is distanced from one situation or another at all times.
He is by no means a simple boy, and can display both an incredible amount of strength and an incredible amount of weakness at the same time. Some would consider him bookwormy, while others would consider him stupid. Some would call him brilliant, while others would call him exceptionally dull.
All Gloria can do is be as friendly as possible and follow the light to the best of his ability.
And, of course, he's young and his emotions are all over the place. It's not a surprise to watch him go from excitable to disappointed, to nervous, to happy within the course of a few hours. He's especially sensitive to the emotions of others, and often leeches from them.
•Inner Thought Process:
Although Gloria can be very intelligent in some ways, people are where he has the most interesting (and in some cases, flat out wrong) thoughts.
Gloria is impressionable and easily manipulated in some instances, as long as he can be convinced that something is being done for the 'greater good'. Happiness, goodness, and life are things that he values above all others, and as such anyone who looks as if they have noble intentions instantly becomes Gloria's role model.
While oppositely, anyone who seems like they have a selfish intention, he immediately dismisses them as bad people without any room for understanding. In this way he is very judgmental and does not spend much time considering the depth of other people's personalities.
And yet he has an iron will and resolve. If exposed to the negativity or positivity of someone's actions, he can instantly change his mind, without doubt or regret for previous interactions. Even when he is manipulated, he never loses sight of his belief that following the path of Light is the sole way of the heart.
Perhaps, the greatest feature of his mind is that it is still subject to naivety and illusion. Innocence to a certain measure.
•Fears:
The Darkness, purely and simply, is his only fear. In the way that some doctors utterly fear death, or some soldiers fear other soldiers, the child who reveres and walks in the light is utterly afraid of what he opposes. In some ways, this is what drives him to struggle against it so valiantly, while in others it is his Achilles's heel.
•Pleasures:
The Light, and oddly enough for a child who is so introverted, the presence of other people. To him, both provide a certain measure of comfort and safety, and those are the only two things in this world that could afford him happiness.
•Quirks:
Due to lacking any formal education, there are a few basic knowledges Gloria does not have: Writing, Anything above Multiplication, Basic knowledge of History/Science, Computer operation.
Although he can't write, he loves to read.
He really likes nicknames and crayons.
He night terrors about the darkness and loneliness. He can't daydream either.
Infrequently, Gloria will wear an eyepatch.And Yet, There Were Those With Hearts... Who Still Chose To Seek Out The Light. To Fight For It.
Character Class: Initiate, First Tier
Stats:
•Strength: 1
•Cunning: 33
•Agility: 1
Abilities: Linky Linky.
Weapons:
Weapons:
Primary Weapon Name: Apollo's Ladder
Primary Weapon Type: Blunt/Sharp Shield
Primary Weapon Description:
A golden shield designed to look like the sun. Its edges are sharpened, and deeply serrated, causing it to be less circle-shaped and look more sun-like.
Items:
• Ether (2)
• Light Spell Book I
• Light Spell Book II
• Ice Spell Book I
• Ice Spell Book II
• Support Spell Book I
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And There Were Those Who Were Chosen By The Light.
[/b][/size][/center][/u]History:
The tale of Gloria's birth is one of too many unfortunate children.
Our tale begins in Radiant Garden. A child is conceived, a father disappears, and a mother is left on her own. Desperately she does her best to provide the young boy a chance.
She did not last long, but long enough. When he was just a baby, he was sent to an orphanage to live, and his mother disappeared. It was there that he grew up, surrounded by children in the same predicament as he, displaced and alone and sad.
Or that's what you would expect: That his history would be tragic and piteous. No. There are those, even children, who can refuse to be defeated by situation or circumstance. To Gloria, a weird kid with a weird name, his life was normal and natural. For the most part he was happy growing up, and lived life in a simple manner. Of course, there were those who tried to bully him, but their efforts failed in the face of the light of Gloria's heart. From his attitudes he cultivated light in the hearts of others, and the orphanage became less a group of lost souls, and more of a family.
But not all romances last.
There were those who had seen Gloria's light, and as just a blooming young child he was removed from the only permanent home he'd come to know. Even so, he waved goodbye, and wished everyone happiness before he left. He did his best to conceal his fears and hesitation. He felt the way that any child in his position ought to have felt.
And perhaps the fear and hesitation should have been more acknowledged, because his world was about to come to the greatest fork in the road there would be. No, no greater choice would be made in all of his life, than this one he was faced with at such a young age.
He was taken to a meager and disorganized holding where his new 'father' would formally introduce himself as Vane. And Vane became that single most important event. Because he was a treasure hunter, a thief, and above all, extremely curious. He always had a way of acquiring small tidbits of trivial information and causing them to explode into new worlds of thought; a way of finding things he shouldn't have been able to get at and nosing around without care; a way of upsetting the natural balance of people's worlds.
For a time, Gloria knew none of this, nor would have known what to make of these facts if he had. But slowly, pieces of Vane's life came into their small family unit. Vane would ask Gloria to read a curious passage from a book to him, or he'd ask him to watch a potion he was brewing, and after a year, Vane and Gloria had an understanding.
But Vane was not the type to settle, nor to accept boundaries. Such was his way, and one day he asked Gloria the question his life would hinge upon.
"Do you want to learn something neat?"
In this case, that 'something' would be magic. Of course, Gloria readily accepted, having little clue of what he was getting himself into, but before we continue our story, let me tell you a little of magic. It is a strange substance to be sure, and often surrounded by myth and legend. Few people learn magic in their lifetimes and even fewer go very far with it. This is because the hardest part of magic is the first step. Magic is something alive and present within everyone, but to awaken it is to completely destroy one's preconceptions. Doing this alone is typically thought of as impossible; which is where the teacher comes in. A teacher of magic opens the door and makes taking that first step much easier on the burgeoning mage.
So once someone learns magic, why not open that 'door' in everyone's heart? You may ask. Because, Magic is alive and existent within all people, and it is also aware. To come close to that door, to twist that handle, to throw it open; these are all things that will cause the heart to falter because magic itself. But chosens exist among all the world, who are born to bare magic on their shoulder in one amount or another.
Gloria said, "Yes."
His training began that afternoon, yet it was not so exciting as one might think. Gloria spent the majority of his time reading. And when he asked exactly what he was reading, Vane would dismissively say "Oh, it's my friend Ansem's" or, "That's just something I borrowed". Neither of which were honest in the slightest. But the boy wouldn't question the statements; he didn't have any reason to.
At around this same time Gloria was learning of the existences of Light and Dark, and their origins. He shared many talks with Vane and learned many things he might otherwise not have known. He learned that the darkness was something which hated and feared the light, and that there had once been a time without darkness, but now light could no longer exist without the shadow.
"Think of all the people in the world, as having candles in their chests." Vane said, "Alone their light is surrounded by the dark. But as they huddle together, and bring their lights to unity, the shadows are cast further and further away. This is the safety of the heart, only in numbers, and your greatest strength. Alone... Alone they are doomed."
From then on, Gloria took to his studies ever more feverishly, fighting into the realm of magic with teeth bared, straining daily to cast but a single spell. And although it took him more effort than he had ever thought he could muster, Gloria eventually did cast a spell. A simple ball of blank energy shot across his hands, and burst against a wall.
Vane congratulated him heartily, clapping him on the back, and officially accepting him as a family member. He pointed to his family crest, what appeared to be a golden metal circle on one wall, and told Gloria, "I want you to bare that crest proudly. It's the symbol of our family, and of our unity. All the sun's rays work together to scatter the darkness." Vane seemed truly and utterly proud over his pupil for the moment. But deep, deep in his heart there was the smallest tinge of jealousy.
It was after this point, after this first real step into the realm of magic, that Gloria made legitimate progress. His daily practice produced considerable results, and eventually he was predicting the path of the small ball of energy, solidifying, even creating two and then three at a time. It took time, of course, as all things do. But Gloria was impatient and his steady progress was continual. He looked to Vane for encouragement, and felt pride in what he was doing.
But across the aisle, Vane was being driven mad by his pupil's progress. All his expectations had been shattered, and it was not sitting well with him. The darkness in his heart had taken root, and began to expand and consume what little he had to give, until he was blind to the light. Vane's jealousy turned his heart black. Why? Why did this boy advance so quickly, when he himself was still so undeveloped? Why?
Gloria thought that things were as they had always been, although Vane had been a bit distant lately. He stayed up late at night, and slept during the day often now, and said that he was working on something special, and that Gloria would soon find out when it was ready to be unveiled.
On the day that it would be unveiled, Gloria would ask a question anyone in his position would have asked.
"What is it?" Was the phrase he uttered, and although anyone would have asked it, Vane's darkness surged beneath his skin as his anger boiled. This boy was mocking him with every sidelong glance.
"Isn't it obvious?" Vane scoffed, walking around the large gray capsule. It had a door on one side. "It's a training device to strengthen your heart. All Creeden have gone through it at your age. The stronger the sun shines, the farther the darkness goes."
Gloria's hesitance remembered from long ago returned, but back then it had turned out well hadn't it? So was there a reason to truly fear this time? It was this logic that convinced Gloria to trust Vane. The door was opened, Gloria closed his eyes and stepped in.
And inside was nothing. No light entered, no darkness left, etc. And at first, things were fine, normal even. Even though he was in this empty space, there was nothing exactly threatening about it. But the longer he stayed, the stranger it seemed. It was as if his heart was cut off from everything. And then he remembered something Vane had said,
"Alone their light is surrounded by the dark."
That's when the doubt really set in. Alone. He felt so alone. All by himself in this gray landscape, it was if there were no other people in the world. Where had Vane gone? He did his best to get the other's attention from inside, but it was if the other couldn't hear him no matter what he did. Panic set in, Gloria shook and threw himself against the walls of the capsule, shouting, screaming Vane's name, but there was no response. When he tired, exhausted and still very much alone, he sank down inside the capsule and cried.
And as the light in his heart dimmed, darkness surrounded him inside that capsule. He pushed and struggled to get it away, but the darkness hung over him, surrounded in suffocating presence the young boy. New waves of panic and desperation overcame his exhaustion, but again his struggles only built his loneliness, and the darkness grew.
His loneliness grew and grew, and the darkness did its frightful purpose, chipping away at the corners of his heart, seeking to consume it all. At first Gloria did nothing to hinder the darkness that had overcome him, and things grew worse and worse for his prospects.
But as each consecutive layer of his heart was shaved away, he did not grow weaker. His heart, despite his mind which had given up, grew brighter. His will to live became stronger and stronger, until he had surpassed the threat of the shadows that lurked in his heart.
Willing himself forward, Gloria found the door, and his fist thumped against it repeatedly, aided by the concentrated light inside the capsule. The door unhinged and was thrown off. He looked upon the room for a moment, seeing it empty, only to pass out. Gloria's body smacked against the ground with a fleshy thud.
The young boy woke up several days later, in the middle of the night, and weakly found himself some food inside the empty house. Vane was nowhere to be found, and left to his own devices, Gloria decided that he had plenty of mysteries to solve. He figured he had passed Vane's test, and as the only heir to the Creeden legacy aside from Vane, he had to figure out exactly what he was supposed to do now.
Mission 1: Find Vane, while also learning more about the Light and the Dark, and managing to make a life for himself.
Arming himself with the Creeden family crest, which turned out to make a mighty fine shield, Gloria set off.
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