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Application (Folkmore)
Character Age: 17
Character Species: Human
Current Health: Healthy
Outfit: His standard clothes from the game
Character Canon: Tales of Zestiria
Link to History: Fandom wiki here!
Canon Point: Post-game, pre-credits scene
Canon Iteration: Original canon
Canon Iteration Explanation: n/a
Skills:
- Swordplay: Sorey has a kind of wild and reckless style of swordplay that is self-taught. He uses non-lethal ceremonial blades only and relies on blunt damage to incapacitate foes
- Survival Skills: He's good at foraging, building shelter and fires, navigating in the wilderness, hunting with a bow, and traversing rough terrain.
- Academics: Sorey is surprisingly learned despite having no formal education, and self-teaches himself history and languages. He also memorizes complex passages with only one look.
Canon Abilities: I'll be keeping track of some of Sorey's powers here; specifically, the ones that can interact/interfere with other characters.
- Resonance: Sorey has an incredible sixth sense, referred to as 'resonance' in his canon. He can not only see spirits and the true forms of people hiding behind glamours and other magical/spiritual obfuscation, but he can also see a manifestation of an individual's doubts, trauma, and malicious intent in the form of 'malevolence,' or a dark shroud around the person in question. His spiritual intuitiveness
- Shepherd/Seraphim Pacts: Every other extraordinary ability other than Sorey's resonance (listed above) is due to Sorey having a Shepherd's pact with an exceedingly powerful seraph. This pact allows him to not only act as a vessel for the spirits he's bonded with (the seraphim can literally dissolve into light and go inside his body/soul), but he can merge with them to make like a super magical girl being of incredible strength, resilience, elemental mastery and healing ability. Sorey cannot form pacts on his own; the seraph who serves as his main connection (called the Prime Lord) is the only one who can make them.
- Enhanced Strength & Durability: Sorey can take a lot more abuse and dish out a lot more damage than the average human. Not to the point where he's unkillable or he can't be bested, but he can put up much more of a fight than he looks like he could. He also recovers more quickly from grievous wounds, though not from fatal ones without any intervention.
- Elemental Manipulation: Sorey can manipulate the following four elements: fire, water, wind, and earth. The degree to which he can manipulate these elements varies on whether or not the elemental seraph with whom he has a pact is with him. For example, without his fire seraph he can maybe create a small ball of flame in his hand, but with his seraph nearby he can rely on their power and make a fire tornado that could burn down a city block.
- Protective Domain: As a powerful Shepherd, Sorey passively generates a purifying domain. While it isn't strong enough to purify any entities that enter it, he can feel when powerful people or creatures are nearby. On the other end, creatures or people within his domain can probably sense the gentle, calm aura of a benevolent holy creature. For those seraphim that Sorey forms a pact, this domain protects them from contamination by malevolence or other evil forces.
- Maotelus Pact: This isn't exactly an ability or power, but Sorey also has a pact with a massively powerful seraph that is essentially a god back home (called an Empyrean, or one of the five pillars of the world). Maotelus was polluted by malevolence to the point of transforming into a wicked entity called a 'hellion,' which caused all sorts of natural disasters such as storms, earthquakes, plagues, and honestly just made people and seraphim feel like shit and likewise turn into monsters. Sorey agreed to serve as a vessel for Maotelus and be put into essentially a coma in order to help purify him and the continent he commands. I've played this in other games as Sorey being able to feel that the pact is still there, but he can in no way interact or feel any changes/differences as far as what's going on back home.
Role Qualities/Attributes: Sorey's going to have those standard color-changing eyes that fit his mood, but all other Legend attributes will need to be purposefully and consciously manifested by Sorey. Attributes will include huge white-feathered and gold-tipped wings that span at least twice his height when fully opened. He'll also have a general glow/aura about him, but most concentrated around his head like the traditional holy halo from religious paintings, a near blinding silver-white light. It's all very on-the-nose Messianic Figure.
Role Reasoning: The 'Legend' description describes Sorey to a T; there is literally no other Role I could even consider for him, because Legend fits way too good. When he decided to be a Shepherd back home it was a very abrupt decision made under duress, and he had to learn how to balance his own personal ideals with what a Shepherd can and should do (IE: Shepherds cannot get involved in human wars even to save personal friends, but to deny their desires to save their friends can result in an idealistic dissonance that breeds malevolence, etc etc etc). It's a constant struggle he would have had to continue back in canon, and I love playing with that balance wherever I take him, of duty versus ideal. I don't have specific plans just yet, but I don't intend to have him change so drastically as to alter the Role he has, ever.
❥ What experience challenged your character's core beliefs? How did they handle this or change from it?
Through his entire journey, Sorey manages not to take the life of another person (human or seraph) with only three very specific exceptions, all towards the end of his journey. Sorey was adamant through the vast majority of the game that the only way to help hellions (and people) was to purify them and help them through their problems. It's a noble pursuit and falls in line with his pure and kind heart, but he started running into snags in this ideology when he had to come to terms with the fact that not only is he the only person capable of purification at that point in time, but that some beings either couldn't be purified, or didn't even want to be. He was then faced with the choice of whether or not to leave them as they were, or kill them. The greater good was supposed to come before his own personal ideals.
In the end, he came to the conclusion that if the only way to 'save' someone was to end their life, then he would be willing to do so. It meant forcing his own judgment and ideology onto the person or being he was 'saving,' but with his limited human lifespan and their limited resources, it was the best solution he could come up with. To this end, he and his friends killed the big brother of one of the party members to save him from a lifetime of suffering as a dragon/hellion, he and his childhood friend/soulmate Mikleo mercy-killed their grandfather when he was abducted and used by the enemy, and then Sorey by himself killed the man who was at the heart of all the tragedy of their current age.
❥ What is the most important and defining relationship(s) in your character's life and why?
Hands down, the most important relationship in Sorey's life is his friendship/kindship/soulmate-ship/whatever-ship with Mikleo. They were raised together, two members of very different species; Sorey a human, Mikleo a seraph. Seraphim generally don't 'grow up' like humans do, but Mikleo's circumstances were unique, and he instinctually mimicked Sorey's growing patterns as closely as a seraph could. As the only two children in a village of immortal beings, the two were raised side-by-side and became inseparable to the point of seeming like two halves of the same whole to many other characters in the game. Mikleo is the person who knows Sorey the best in the entire world; they communicate without speaking, they know what the other is thinking, and they trust each other implicitly. Mikleo is the only person with whom Sorey allows himself to be a little weak, a little bratty or selfish or childish. Mikleo is the person Sorey goes to first for comfort. They have their own insecurities regarding their different species, but it's never grown to the point where their mutual affection fades. If Sorey was reincarnated as a seraph with no memories of his past life, it is absolutely one thousand percent certain that even if he didn't remember him, he would still love Mikleo with every inch of his soul.
❥ What is your character's moral code? Do they have one? Why or why not?
As mentioned in the first question, Sorey is very staunchly anti-murder (and violence in general), though he doesn't shy from it. The epitome of kind-hearted and caring, Sorey would rather resolve issues with negotiation and mutual understanding, though he will put evil-doers to the (non-lethal) sword if they insist upon preying on the weak or perpetuating evil acts. Sorey isn't particularly meek or timid; he's in fact pretty damn stubborn, to the point of becoming a headache for the rest of the party when the easier path would be to avoid confrontation or to take care of things more discreetly. Sorey believes in giving people the chance to do better, believes that just about everybody in the world wants to live their lives peacefully and only need the means to do so, and will give just about anybody second or third chances to mend their ways, especially if he's the one who's been wronged.
While he's had to revise some of his moral code to be a little less of a pushover, Sorey still despises taking lives if it at all can be avoided. So long as he's the only one getting hurt, he'll try appealing to a person's conscience a thousand times before giving up. If he's not the only one at risk though, all bets are off.
❥ Is your character capable of forgiveness or will they hold a grudge until they die? Would anything ever make them change their mind?
Sorey will forgive anyone if he believes the apology and willingness to change is genuine. He's the type to even go against his instincts in an effort to give someone a second chance. Because of the way he was raised, surrounded by love and adoration and encouraged to be honest and true to himself, Sorey has difficulty understanding why someone would ever lie to ask for forgiveness. He's not as naive as he once was, but the habit to trust is a difficult one to break, and one he doesn't want to besides.
Trying to determine the circumstances under which Sorey wouldn't be willing to forgive someone honestly asking for it is extremely difficult. It would change his character fundamentally, and likely not in a good way. If someone was cruel to the point of tormenting Sorey's friends and family for years and years, of their own volition because they enjoyed being cruel, maybe then Sorey would be unwilling to offer forgiveness (though he'd manage a cease-fire, mutual avoidance situation). His own Squire is the leader of an assassin's guild who had a contract out on his life, after all, and one who holds that she'll put a knife in his throat if he looks like he's going to make this Shepherd thing turn into a net loss for humanity. If he can forgive her to the point of calling her one of his closest human friends, then the threshold is pretty damn high.
❥ What would your character sacrifice to get what they want or to reach their potential? What have they sacrificed already?
One of the key sticking points of the game is sacrifice, the manner in which it can and should be offered, and what it means to individual characters. As the Shepherd, Sorey chose to sacrifice a normal life of his own selfish pursuits in favor of dedicating himself to the purification of the world. While he could have given up on his journey of purification, as he journeyed Sorey came to the realization that his world was in much rougher shape than he thought, and that to abandon his journey would mean leaving the world and its inhabitants (both seraphim and humans) in grave danger. Sorey is the type of person who is unable to ignore people in need so, for better or worse, he committed himself to his new cause alongside his companions.
While Sorey hardly hesitates to put himself in harm's way and sacrifice his own health and happiness, up to his own life, he's very reluctant to sacrifice anything of anyone else's. He's struggled in the past with the difference between trying to protect those he cares about and denying them their own right to decide what they want to sacrifice. His noble heart can sometimes manifest as being controlling, preferring to take a full burden onto himself rather than allow even his friends and family to help shoulder it with him. At the end Sorey was able to respect the wishes of his companions and allow them their own sacrifices, before executing his own final sacrifice of his ideals, his future, and potentially his life. While none of these sacrifices were to better himself and reach his potential, becoming a strong and true Shepherd is almost one in the same for him now due to the extreme ego-death necessary to fulfill a greater duty.
OOC opt-outs: I'm ok to monitor content and determine when to leave!
IC opt-outs: Ditto! I don't have specific topics in mind for this. I'll monitor and bow out as needed.
Content warnings related to the character: This canon doesn't have many sensitive topics. Depression and murder/death will come up, but not in a particularly visceral way.
Sensitive subjects related to the character: Sorey doesn't like cruelty for the sake of it and murder will be a touchy subject, but I would enjoy playing them out regardless.
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