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[sullenstallion]

PLAYER

NAME: Rune
CONTACT: ForestTemple
OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE PINES: No.

CHARACTER

NAME: Gaius Worzel
CANON: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
CANON-POINT: Before reuniting with Rean in Trails of Cold Steel II

DOSSIER

HISTORY:
References: Here, here, here.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S STRENGTHS?:

Gaius’ biggest emotional and mental strengths are that he’s a rock. Throughout the second game, Rean often refers to Gaius as someone who is strong and supportive in the background, even going so far as to call Gaius “cool” and admit that he wished he could be more like him. It’s not a lie. Gaius is an extremely hard worker and a dependable person. He’s patient almost to a fault, and he’s never heard complaining. To him, extra effort just means extra reward, and he can put up with even the most ornery characters with ease. Clara, the president of the art club, is so eccentric and hard to deal with that Rean is often at a loss. But Gaius? He’s happy to be in her club and finds wonder in the things she’s able to produce.

Another big emotional strength for him is his family and his connection the the Nord Highlands. Gaius is a very traditional person. In nearly every communication event with him, he’ll thank the winds for their guidance or ask for the wind’s blessing. In that sense, he’s religious, adhering to the lifestyle of the other Nord nomads. His homeland is just that important to him. There’s nothing more beautiful than the lands he knows and loves, even if he’s far removed from the rest of society. He has an extremely tight connection with his family. All three of his siblings look up to him, and he’s extremely protective of his father and mother. In Nord, he often rose up early as the sun rose to do his chores and tend to livestock. All of these things are extremely important to him.

Gaius is also an extremely neutral observer. During the first game, a major point to his character is that he’s a stranger to the caste system present in the Kingdom of Erebonia. While technically a commoner himself, there’s no such distinction among the nomads, so attending Theors military school is something of a shock to him. While other people regard him as a barbarian despite technically being a citizen of the nation, Gaius is so calm and reserved that he’s able to react to situations as a third point of view. This comes to a head when some of the noble classmates start to insult his entire class after a loss—while other people are used to the system, Gaius steps up and delivers piercing question and observations, basically asking the noble classmates why they think they have a right to treat others that way while not backing down himself.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S WEAKNESSES?:

One of Gaius’ big weaknesses is that he’s so traditional that everything is foreign to him. Though this will have improved by his canon point, a lot of the first game has Gaius adjusting to life in the town of Trista after having lived in a nomadic settlement all his life. He’s a man who wants for nothing, but he can readily admit that being away from clear skies and blue waters and grassy plains leaves him feeling melancholy and out of place. A lot of orbal technology is foreign to him (but not completely), and how the nobles and the commoner students interact leaves him at a loss at times. He’s a calm person so he usually only ends up confused or politely asks questions, but even at his current canon point there’s a lot of life left for him to experience and he has more growing to do to become more worldly and less naive.

As with his strengths, Nord is a big part of life for him. When his family is threatened or Nord is invaded by tanks, he loses his temper and can lose his resolve. When his homeland is facing the threat of being razed, he loses his cool in the biggest way for the first time in the game. There’s a short even in the second game as well where the player can find an optional area in Nord that wasn’t there in the first playthrough, leading to a shrine. Gaius is audibly shaken and disturbed to find a pathway he’s never seen for himself before.

Being a nomad, Gaius has never had a formal education outside of what’s been taught to him in his village. In Thors Military Academy, even though he’s a good student, his grades fall to the middle of the pack because he has no knowledge of the history of the country outside of his own and because he has a lot of studying to do. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that matters of science, math, or orbments are things he can pick up as well as the next person, but he has a lot of catching up to do and has to work hard to get there.

WHAT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR CHARACTER'S PAST HAVE IMPACTED THEM THE MOST?:

Aside from being born in Nord alone, one of the biggest moments of his life was when he rescued Sechs Vander, an Erebonian military leader, while riding on horseback near the military base at the edge of the Nord Highlands. Because of this moment, he was recommended to Thors Military Academy on scholarship; it wasn’t because he saved a man’s life, but rather that his strength impressed him. Another big event was that the faculty decided that he’d be placed in Class VII—the first class consisting of both nobles and commoners. These events would drastically change his history forever.

Meeting Rean Schwarzer (alongside Elliot Craig and the other VII students, but him in particular) was another important moment of Gaius’ life. Throughout the first game, Gaius learns a lot from Rean and comes to depend on him. Having such close friends is not something that Gaius is familiar with—he’s not exactly a loner, he’s just from a very sparsely populated area. Because of Rean’s kindness and determination, they form a tight bond and Gaius has someone he can rely on for the first time. He becomes close to all of his classmates, but the ones he ends up closest to are all important in their own way. Elliot Craig is one of his first friends at the academy, and they partner up with Rean during the first investigation. Alisa Reinford and Millium Orion both flee with him to Nord after the events of the first game to help defend his homeland. He gets along well with Laura Arseid because of their history as fighters. He grows close to Emma Millstein and Jusis Albarea during a shared trip to Nord as well.

The first game consists of field studies/excursions that have the students of Class VII split up and visit different areas of the empire. In chapter 3, he’s asked to lead his group to Nord which is a fair distance away from anything else in the chapter. The party for that chapter consists of Rean, Alisa, Jusis, Emma, and himself. Sharing his homeland and his customs with his classmates is obviously something of huge importance to him, and during the chapter he ends up investigating an attack on the watchtower in his region. The sight of airships circling the Highlands he called home was ominous and chilling, but he was able to solve the incident with his classmates.

The next big event for Gaius comes at the end of the game. In each chapter, they visited the ruins of an old schoolhouse, moving deeper and deeper, floor by floor. No one knew why the ruins were there or why, but before the school festival the school lit up and emitted light to the sky and he investigated with the other students. At the bottom of the ruins, he and the others were teleported to a strange otherworld where they battled and defeated a giant shadow monster. He didn’t know it at the time, but he became a secondary contractor to Valimar, the Ashen Knight, in the process, while Rean became the pilot of Valimar himself.

A week later, the President was assassinated by his former classmate, Crow, who had in actuality been the leader of the terrorist organization that had interfered with his class before. As the faculty defended the academy town of Trista to the west, Gaius and the other students defended the exit to the east. There, Crow defeated Rean and Valimar in combat using his own ancient robot knight, Ondine. As Crow prepared to finish Rean off for good, Gaius and the other students put themselves in the way of Ondine, and Rean was forced against his will to retreat from the battle.

A month later, Gaius waited in Nord with Alisa and Millium (his canonpoint as of this app). His beautiful country and homeland was being invaded by tanks, and Jaegers (mercenaries) roamed the land, using military monsters to try and get the upper hand. His family was forced to relocate farther north. This, too, bothered and worried Gaius—he could no longer look at Nord as being separate from the entire world but as a part of it that he needed to defend at all costs.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CHARACTER?:

Gaius is motivated by his desire to have an understanding of the world outside of his own. At the end of the first game, he tells Rean and the others that he thinks of Erebonia as his second home, no longer a place he’s only visiting as a student. His arc in the first game revolves around him both introducing Nord to his classmates and also learning about the world outside of his own for the first time. In some ways, it’s simple. He joins the painting club because he’s never been in an art club before, and that experience challenges him to come up with the best art he can create. In other ways, it’s more complex, as dealing with a classist society is disappointing and difficult. He’s calm enough to handle it, but being likened to a barbarian isn’t exactly something he needs to hear, either.

This interest in the outside world shifts into how to view Nord from a global perspective as time goes on. How can he best protect his country? How can he get more involved in the world at large and embrace both Nord and the world outside of it? He’s still incredibly motivated by his family and his homeland and they’ll always be important to him.

WHAT IMPRESSION DO OTHERS TEND TO HAVE OF YOUR CHARACTER?:

IN WHAT WAYS DOES THAT IMPRESSION DIFFER FROM WHO YOUR CHARACTER REALLY IS?:

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER HANDLE CRISIS OR ADVERSITY?:

WHICH 5 THINGS WILL YOUR CHARACTER REMEMBER UPON ARRIVAL, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?: Upon arrival, characters remember five distinct things about themselves. Those five things carry them through until their memories begin to return on their second or third day back. (See our FAQ for more info.)

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER?:


SKILLS, ABILITIES, & PHYSICAL WEAKNESSES: Include such things as supernatural/superhuman abilities, regular-human skills (ranging anywhere from combat to 'highly skilled at the lute'), and weaknesses along both spectrums ('weakened by kryptonite', 'has a bad knee').

INVENTORY: What items does your character come in with? Generally, this is a list of everything on your character's person, though we will allow UP TO THREE ITEMS not on your character's person at their canonpoint, but which are small enough to carry and which belong to them - as an example, their weapon even if their canonpoint has them unarmed. (Keep in mind that they won't wake up with these and will have to retrieve them later.)

On his person, he will have:
-the clothes on his back
-his spear
-his ARCUS, a communicator/device that allows him to use combat arts in battle using various quartzes and sepiths.
-a few healing balms, but nothing too fancy

Not on his person:
-His casual clothes (DLC for the second game)
-His fishing pole
-His swimsuit???

SAMPLES

PROSE-HEAVY: This can be brackets or actual prose, as long as it's heavily action or introspection.
DIALOGUE-HEAVY: This can be an example network post, a texting meme, or arguably just a prose thread with a heavy dialogue bent. Be careful with that last option, as we may ask for a new one if it doesn't fit the bill.