silverhands: (how YOU doin')
Simon Ashlock ([personal profile] silverhands) wrote in [community profile] restormania 2021-05-22 08:08 am (UTC)

rocks up to the EMP several days late with Starbucks

Player Info
Handle: Anna L
Contact: annalizabeth#7549 @ Discord, [plurk.com profile] layonmacduff @ Plurk, PM this journal

Character Info
Name: Simon Ashlock
Age: 33 (or 91, depending)
Species: Human (or, well, see below)

Setting: That's where I need help! I love AUing Simon and he's been in a million different settings, and now that there's a wonderful game where any of those versions of him would be viable, I can't decide which one would work best. I've got four options that I'm thinking of, three canon OCs and one from a more original setting. Please let me know if any version interests you in particular!

CANON

1. World of Warcraft. A ridiculous kitchen-sink fantasy setting wherein nuclear warheads and interdimensional starships coexist casually alongside medieval swords and wooden siege weapons, where sentient cows and pandas fight Victorian werewolves and giant purple elves, where one can expect to encounter demons, zombies, trolls, dragons, banshees, centaurs and aquatic snake people (but not vampires.) Interplanetary travel is a mundane occurrence for anyone who joins the military, and half the planet is trying to annihilate the other half over increasingly stupid crap at any given time.

2. Dragon Age. I think most people are probably familiar enough with Dragon Age to get the gist, and I don't want to try to distill the central conflicts into a few sentences, but, yeah. Those wacky dragons and their ages.

3. Avernum. The surface of the planet Ermarian, for as far as anyone has seen or explored, is ruled with an iron fist by The Empire. The punishment for most crime or defiance against the Empire is death, but for lesser crime or mere hints of insubordination, the penalty is simply exile to a vast system of barren underground caverns called Avernum. Generations of the Empire's outcasts have now lived and died in the caves, much to the chagrin of the native inhabitants thereof, and enough Avernites have tried to find their way back to the surface for revenge that the Empire has been obliged to send troops back down into the caves to quell the resistance. For RP purposes, I'm playing from Avernum 2.

NON-CANON

4. Urban fantasy. This incarnation of Simon was the original, created for an IJ game years and years ago, where the premise involved various mythological beings all making their presence known to humanity at once and then everyone dealing with the social implications. I don't want to take any of the original parts of the setting, since it wasn't my creation, but the general idea is that various vampire factions have existed for centuries and the world has recently become aware of this.

Background/History

1. World of Warcraft. Simon is a paladin from Lakeshire who's good at the whole poverty-and-service part of the gig, but otherwise does his best to avoid his fellow paladins as much as possible, because he's perpetually unconvinced of his own worthiness and finds self-discipline and performative holiness absolutely exhausting. He's not completely right that all the other paladins are smugly judging him behind his back, but, like, he's not 100% wrong either. (The ones with epithets like "Katherine the Pure" and "Arthur the Faithful" have nicknamed him "Sir Marcus," after the paladin protagonist of an infamous series of pornographic novels that have almost nothing to do with actual paladinhood.)

2. Dragon Age. Simon is a templar from Starkhaven who has spent most of his career stationed in the boring backwater of Ansburg. Before that, however, he had begun his career in Kirkwall as a zealot who thought it would be a good place to kickstart a lifetime of defending innocents from the menace of magic. Once he saw the kind of cruelty and abuse his fellow templars were capable of, he realized he wanted no part of it, but found himself too terrified of Knight-Commander Meredith to speak up or report the violations and simply requested a transfer instead. He has regretted that cowardice all his adult life, and longs to redeem himself somehow, whether with the Inquisition or some other way.

3. Avernum. Simon is a former Empire soldier who was born on the surface, but was exiled to Avernum in his early twenties after clashing with a superior officer. Rather than joining the army of Avernum and risk similar troubles, he made a living for himself as a mercenary and traveling preacher, hoping to use his skill in battle and healing to defend his new homeland against his former comrades-in-arms. Like most Avernites, he hopes that he might someday find a way back to the surface, but the idea terrifies him as much as it excites him after over a decade of living in a cave and thinking of surface-dwellers as deadly enemies.

4. Urban fantasy. Simon is a relatively young and recently-turned vampire, having grown up in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Earnestly religious but somewhat weak-willed about temptation, he grew infatuated with a female circus performer and became her lover, only for her to reveal herself as a vampire and turn him against his will to serve as a companion and bodyguard. Over the ensuing decades, Simon has attempted to disengage himself from vampire politics and to reintegrate into human society as best he can, hoping he might someday even be able to overcome the "being an unholy abomination" thing--but if he can't, then at least he doesn't have to hang out with other vampires. Because they suck.

The basic history of pretty much any Simon:

-- Born to a blue-collar family in a small town, always more religious than his parents and older brother
-- Left home at a young age to train for the military/the clergy/both, depending on what kinds of "armored holy person who smashes things" roles are available in-universe
----- (Vampire Simon was a coal miner, who smashed...coal)
-- Returned home periodically during said training, often enough to fall in love with and become engaged to a neighbor girl
-- Became more and more scarce around his hometown as training progressed
-- After taking final vows, returned home one last time to discover that his fiancee had taken up with and married his brother instead
-- Remains eternally unaware that this turn of events was, in fact, because he had unknowingly impregnated the poor woman and she needed a more stable childrearing partner than Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Village
-- Heartbroken, left his parents, brother, new sister-in-law and nephew-who-was-actually-his-son-but-shh-don't-tell-Simon behind to sign up for a tour of duty in a war as far away from his hometown as possible
----- (Vampire Simon would have done this had he not been busy getting vamped by his rebound girlfriend and then adjusting to vampire life)
-- Distinguished himself in battle and gradually worked his way up through the ranks of the army
-- Despite proving himself a good and effective commander, preferred to find ways to do freelance solo work in order to satisfy his wanderlust (and also to more easily avoid his fellow paladins/paladin-equivalents, never feeling like he fit in with them and always concerned about being judged)
-- Adventures Ensued
-- Restoria, here he comes

CR Wishes

-- Refined rich folk, to contrast his thorough disdain for all things fancy
-- Other religious people to talk God Shop with and compare and contrast deities
-- Non-humans and other people with whom he can have fascinated cultural exchange

Misc.

oh hi I heard we were doing character aesthetics?

(Also, please, please help me pick one of these Simons. I'm leaning towards Dragon Age or Avernum but I cannot choose.)

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