Application - Drift Fleet

[monolike]

OUT OF CHARACTER:
Name/Handle: Egg
Contact: plurk: gonewithouta || email: manicalpha@gmail.com
Reference: Akai (Kirito player)
Other characters: N/A

IN-CHARACTER:
Character name: Sorey
Character journal: monolike
Series name: Tales of Zestiria
Canon notes: OU - man idefk
Species: Human


History:

Here is a very vague rundown of the main plot.

Since the link above is just a barebones summary of what happens I’ll highlight the major plot points below:

-Sorey and Mikleo meet Alisha in the ruins near their home, and through her eventually end up leaving home for the first time to attend the Shepard festival in Ladylake. Sorey becomes the new Shepard to save everyone when a riot breaks out at the church due to hellions attacking.

-Sorey learns that his purpose as Shepard is to cleanse the world of malevolence and eliminate the Lord of Calamity to end the Age of Chaos. Lots of capitalized fantasy terms in there, so you know that shit’s important.

-Sorey takes Alisha on as his Squire with Lailah’s help, and together they search for a way to restore a seraph’s blessing to the land to make cleanup go a lot more smoothly. Mikleo, after some resistance from Sorey, becomes a sublord to Lailah and can now be used similarly by Sorey for his powers.

-After restoring the blessing to Ladylake Sorey gets invited to the castle to talk to the corrupt Council. They try to threaten him into helping them and he’s like ‘lol bye’ and escapes the castle with the help of the Scattered Bones assassins.

-The party meets up with Edna the Earth spirit and she signs on after Sorey promises to find a way to save her brother, who has turned into a dragon hellion. They head on to Marlind and investigate the cause of the plague over the city, then waste no time curing that shit and move on. Alisha leaves the party when she realizes that her pact as a Squire is causing pain to Sorey due to her lack of resonance.

-The party tools around doing stuff for a while but upon departure they find out that the Rolance Empire is moving to attack the Kingdom of Hyland. Sorey wants to help but as Shepard is not permitted to get caught in political affairs. The party agrees that it’s neutral to help the citizens evacuate and assist with that.

-Upon departure, Sorey is approached by Hyland troops and is informed that if he refuses to assist the Kingdom of Hyland, the Council will find Alisha guilty of treason. Sorey reluctantly agrees to assist Hyland in the upcoming skirmish to keep Alisha safe. Sorey lays waste to the Rolance Empire and they scatter, but because of the malevolence seething on the battlefield the Lord of Calamity pops up for a visit. He kicks the gosh darn jellybeans out of Sorey and then vanishes for some tropey “you aren’t ready yet” reason. Sorey is rescued from the battlefield by a Scattered Bones assassin when he collapses, but she screws that up kinda and they fall into a river.

-Sorey wakes up at the outskirts of the Rolance Empire with his assassin friend Rose and brings her along. They agree to join up, Sorey meets a new seraph friend in Dezel (Rose’s silent stalker, what’s up) and they find in some nearby ruins a stone relief that shows the location of four temples at which he can become spiritually swole.

-The party heads through Lastonbell and finds out there’s some serious business going down between the Knights and the Church, all the way up to the capital of Rolance. The party departs for Pendrago and finds it in the midst of a perpetual storm, which has destroyed crops for the past year and is threatening famine across the Empire. They find out that the Pope had gone missing years ago and that Cardinal Forton, the current highest power in the church with the Pope missing, is a hellion.

-The party works to restore the seraph blessing in Lastonbell and speak with Sergei, one of the knights of the kingdom, regarding the Pope’s disappearance and the Cardinal. They head to Gododdin to locate the missing Pope on a rumor and find out he’s been scamming fake Elixers to the Church in secret to help keep this crappy little village afloat. In exchange for not ratting him out to the Church, he shows the Shepard to the Fire Trial gate and gives him a brief rundown of it.

-Back in Pendrago, the party heads for the Shrinechurch and Rose kills Cardinal Forton, since Sorey isn’t strong enough to purify her. The rain stops and the Knights blame the murder on the Scattered Bones. The party moves on to locate and purity a nearby hellion so the seraph can lay a blessing over Pendrago.

-Roughly a jillion sidequests later, Sorey and the party continue on and hit up the other three elemental trials. Each time the seraph learns some kind of life lesson or something, blah blah, tropes galore. You run into Alisha and find out she’s having it bad as ever in Ladylake, find out her teacher Maltran is a hellion, find out that people have been throwing themselves from the top of the wind shrine to try and sacrifice themselves to appease the seraphim…shit’s fucked up yo.

-After heading back over to Pendrago, the group runs across some new chick Symonne and Dezel loses his mind because vendetta etc etc. He takes over Rose’s body and almost gets them both killed, then gets himself FULLY killed to try and save her. The party stays in Pendrago to mourn his death and then leave. Zaveid jumps the party on their way out and joins up to complete the Captain Planet elemental lineup once more.

-News of Heldalf chilling out in the Aifread Hunting Grounds reaches the party and they skedaddle over there. Heldalf again kicks them around like a tin can, but stops and asks Sorey if like, r u feelin’ it right now man? Like I’m not feeling the showdown, maybe we should just hang out. Sorey is like “nah man I gotta go” and they part ways. Sorey decides to find out more about Heldalf because he can’t purify the guy so he’s instead going to just kill him dead, and he prefers to keep his murdering personal. They surmise SOMEHOW that Maotelus, the big daddy of seraphim, is corrupted and Heldalf is acting as his vessel so now they gotta find a way to purify that guy also. It’s not good news.

Personality:

Sorey’s often described as very pure-hearted and devoid of malevolence. While in the general sense that would mean he’s innocent and free of any negativity, what this means in terms of Zestiria is that he understands himself fully and won’t allow himself to be swayed one way or the other away from his convictions. Using ‘purity’ in this case is more or less saying that he’s true to his own heart. He listens to himself, to his desires and he allows himself to follow his heart freely.

It’s pretty fortunate that he’s a remarkably good kid, then. If he was some kind of harbinger of doom, following his heart would mean laying waste to scores of cities (which is more the M.O. of some of the other characters in the game). Sorey was raised in a very caring village and was never lied to about his origin or how he was different from his family, so he’s very accustomed to honesty and sincerity to the point where when Alisha tried to explain to him the troubles of the world, he couldn’t quite understand. War? Famine??? Police brutality, what, abuse of power what, none of that makes any sense!

Sorey has come a very long way from that innocence, but the roots of it are still deeply entrenched in his personality. He’s caring to a fault, preferring to listen to people’s troubles to the inconvenience of himself rather than to pretend like he doesn’t care. He cares way, way too much, saying that if he sees someone in trouble he can’t just not help them. It ends up getting him into heaps of his own trouble since he also has a hard time telling people in need ‘no.’ It’s not out of any desire to be liked or out of a fear for confrontation so much as it is just his nature.

This nature of his conflicts sharply with his duties as a Shepard, a title he takes very, very seriously. The Shepard’s purpose is to purify hellions and quell malevolence to return the world to its most peaceful state, but the Shepard absolutely is not to involve himself in the affairs of human society. It’s not that he can’t interact with people, but more that he’s not allowed to take a side, even passively. If there’s a political conflict, even if it will end in bloodshed, he has to bow out of it. The idea is that the Shepard can only help people help themselves; create an environment in which humans can thrive on their own. In this way, the Shepard is socially set very far apart from people, taking an outsider’s role instead of one active in society and the community. The role is very much big picture.

Sorey has trouble with that. While he’s good at looking forward to the future, he’s also a human and as such is very rooted in the now. He had to work on denying himself the ability to solve the immediate problems and instead focus on the root of the matter. He still has a lot of trouble with it, and has to rely on his seraphim companions (most notably, Lailah) to steer him back onto the correct path. Following one’s heart is all well and good provided one’s heart doesn’t have philanthropic ADHD.

Actually, the kid tends to get overeager about a lot of different things. He’ll wear himself out quickly because he doesn’t know how to limit himself (or really even take care of himself, at times). There are multiple occasions where he’s just plain forgotten to eat because he’s been so engrossed in whatever he’s doing. This focus and enthusiasm carries over to his passion for anthropology, legends, folklore and basically anything having to do with history. While Sorey does care very much about humans and seraphim and takes his responsibilities extremely seriously, he really only ever lights up when the topic of discussion is about archeology. Thankfully, his job as the Shepard takes him all over the world so he gets a lot of opportunities to explore.

There's a downside to the whole "strength in one's own convictions, too perfect too pure" schtick though. In fact there's quite a few downsides. The most obvious is that Sorey tends to shoulder a lot of burdens on his own, because he thinks it's duty or because he doesn't want to trouble other people. He's fine being hurt or tired or for his vision to slowly deteriorate if it means his friends are happy and achieving their dreams!!!! Also, nobody told him this but having unwavering belief in ones own convictions is very, very similar to being bullheaded. Almost indistinguishable, in fact. Sorey gets an idea in his head and it doesn't matter how many times people run up against it with opposing arguments; if he doesn't want to change his mind, he damn well won't. This can make him seem somewhat spoiled and stubborn when his viewpoints are conflicting with someone else's. He's still pretty young though, so he's still learning.

Being kind and sympathetic are great traits but when they swing too far in that direction they can quickly become 'gullible' and 'a doormat.' Sorey's a sharp tack so he doesn't usually get bought in by strangers or obvious con men, but someone he likes or trusts telling him a lie? If it holds even a bit of water, he'll buy it. He'll fuckin' preorder that shit. sorey doesn't know how to withhold trust from people, instead deciding to throw in whole hog if he's decided they seem like a good person. His lack of caution is a source of exasperation to everyone who travels with him, so his companions tend to become his handlers to make sure he doesn't do anything monumentally stupid and get involved in petty street disputes when there's more important things to be done.

Abilities:

A lot of Sorey’s powers are dependent on the nature of the world around him and the people he cooperates with, so lemme lay it out quick and dirty.

Resonance: Sorey’s lived his entire life with essentially elemental ghosts/spirits so he’s capable of seeing and hearing things involving that. In his world this means he can interact with seraphim, but also he can sense things like malevolence (which is honestly a kind of buildup typical to their world that turns people and seraphim with troubled hearts into hellions) but since that’s a canon-specific thing, he won’t be seeing any of that here. Mostly he can see ghost. That’s all.

Domain: In the game he generates a kind of area-effect aura that protects against malevolence and keeps the seraphim he has with him from turning into hellions. This thing is invisible, but basically it’s a sense of purity, safety and comfort that surrounds him. It’s passive so he doesn’t do it actively, and it’s only as strong as he is (IE if he’s sick/tired/weak-hearted it’ll waver). People with spiritual powers will probably be able to sense this aura, but people without won’t notice anything.

Assorted Junk: Sorey can do quite a few things as a Shepard, but most of them depend on his seraphim and will be locked as long as they are not present:

a) Purification (LOCKED: LAILAH) - flames of purification. Clean up impure junk because it nasty/cure hellions (world specific anyway). Remove obstacles impure or weak against fire.
b) Teleport (LOCKED: ZAVEID/DEZEL) - teleport short distances with the help of the wind.
c) Giant’s Strength (LOCKED: EDNA) - what it says on the tin! Mostly Sorey uses it to smack through obstacles.
d) Invisibility (MIKLEO) - Short period of invisibility that fools both eyes and visual sensors, works best when staying still or moving very slowly.

Armatization: Sorey can combine with any of his seraphim to give them special elemental abilities and battle strength but since it consumes a lot of energy and it means both seraph and human have to inhabit and control the same body, they really only use it for emergencies.

Squire Pact: (LOCKED: LAILAH) Sorey can also take people on as his Squires and they’ll be able to share all of his powers (Resonance, Domain, Armatization). If they have low spiritual power of their own though, it’ll cause strain on his body and he’ll slowly lose each of his five senses as long as the pact is in place.

Augment Skillset: Engineering!

Sample:
MUSEBOX LINK