App for Tu Shanshu

[ruinsprofessor]

Player Information:
Name: Makari
Age: 21
Contact: makari.crow@gmail.com; plurk is makaricrow; aim is ceryu.
Game Cast: n/a

Character Information:
Name: Raine Sage
Canon: the video game Tales of Symphonia
Canon Point: Directly after the first game: the worlds have been re-united, and the Great Tree has sprouted, but only just.
Age: 23
Reference: Raine's wiki page and the game's wiki page. For bonus points, the game script.

Setting:

Background

Four thousand years ago, there was a war so long and so terrible that the tree of life itself withered. The stories say that a hero’s life was sacrificed in order to take its place, and that the goddess who grieved his loss disappeared from the world, waiting for the Chosen One to wake her again, lest the world be destroyed.

Mana is the source of all life: it composes all things. When mana fades from the world, plants wither, animals sicken, and the old evil credited with causing the Kharlan War reappears as if it had always been there. Therefore the Chosen One undertakes a journey to seal away that evil and to restore the mana of the world by waking the goddess Martel from her slumber.

Those that are said to have caused the Kharlan War are called Desians. They are, to a one, half-elves, wanted and accepted by no one. To the elves, the long-lived scholars skilled with magic, half-elves are short-lived, impetuous, and impure. To the humans, who live short, often violent lives and have no touch for magic, half-elves are strange, alien, and often inexplicably frightening. Thus perhaps it was no surprise that many half-elves gave up on the better nature of people from either side, and simply began to do what it took to get by.

Sylvarant was dying, its mana leaching away, and the Desians had re-emerged. Countless people were taken to the human ranches for no understandable reason. Suffering began to spread across the land. It was then that the oracle descended from the heavens and gave to the Chosen One the power of the angels, that she might travel to the center of the world, and the tower that touched the heavens, to awaken the goddess Martel and to restore mana to Sylvarant.

Even though the journey would require the sacrifice of the Chosen One’s existence as a human being, it should have been simple.

In truth, however, it was not the Desians who caused the war, and waking the goddess would not restore mana to the world in the way anyone hoped.

The war had been started by two great countries, Sylvarant and Tethe’alla, who fought each other long and bitterly with little regard for the state of the land. They say the war stretched on for a thousand years, consuming mana and lives in equal measure. Race had little to do with it-- save that then, as now, half-elves were marginalized and dismissed. And as the war wore on, the tree of life began to fade.

A half-elf woman and her younger brother, Martel and Mithos Yggdrasill, seemed to be the only ones who were initially aware of the danger to the tree of life. Though their race made it improbable anyone would listen to them, they had to try, and so they journeyed to find some kind of solution, or at the least someone who would hear their warning about the withering of the tree. Though they found two allies, Yuan Ka-Fai and Kratos Aurion, who became as close to them as family, no one in power would yet listen, and the war raged on.

Soon enough, Sylvaranti and Tethe’allan forces caught up with the ragtag group. All four were greatly skilled, but all their fighting and striving was for naught, and before her brother’s eyes, Martel was struck down. Mithos knew then that no peace could truly be reached, for it was in the nature of people to fear that which was different and war would always, always happen. So Mithos made a pact with the spirit Origin, who was known as the Spirit of All Things, and with the power gained thusly Mithos split the kingdoms into two separate worlds that would never again be able to war with one another.

This came too late, and the tree of life had already died. Its seed lay in limbo, tied inextricably to the soul of Martel by Mithos’ hand. While the seed persisted, Martel could not die, but should the seed germinate, she would be lost forever. So Mithos began a long-term project to find a way to resurrect Martel, and that, in the end, was the goal of the Chosen One: to create a viable host for the soul of Martel. To wake the goddess.

In the absence of the tree of life, mana became significantly more limited. Mithos used the power of Origin to force the mana to flow between worlds. The journey of the Chosen One would reverse the flow, bringing life to the dying world and causing the flourishing world to wane. By the time the first Chosen, Spiritua, undertook her journey, Mithos had already managed to establish the Church of Martel, and the angels and the goddess were accepted as truth. As a side operation he established the Desians, to ensure that there would always be a reason for the world to need saving.

History faded into myth; myth faded into legend into religious doctrine. For four thousand years the hourglass turned end over end, relentless.

Colette Brunel, the seventh of Sylvarant’s Chosen, was a perfect match for Martel, in nature and in mana signature, and had she had less loyal friends, events might have unfolded very differently. As it was, her companions objected strenuously to the idea that she should be no more than a host for the soul of Martel, and moved heaven and earth to oppose her fate.

Mithos Yggdrasill was finally sent to his rest. The great tree sprouted anew. The worlds became one.

It’s a little too soon to tell whether or not he was right.

Current Affairs

Exspheres:

Exspheres are considered non-sentient parasitic life forms. They begin as dormant gems, and, when attached to a living being, begin to awaken and consume that being’s mana to evolve. This process is expedited by high levels of stress and suffering. Further, if the exsphere is removed from the host before death but proper care is not taken with the removal, the host will mutate into a berserk monster. If events proceed ‘properly,’ finally the exsphere consumes the host and becomes a usable power source. They can be used in items such as weapons or bridges, or attached directly to a person to enhance and bolster their skills significantly beyond their natural limits. As exspheres are still parasitic organisms, however, the person who chooses to attach one must obtain a key crest, a charm carved from a particular substance known as inhibitor ore, which will normalize their mana and prevent the exsphere from consuming them. In this manner, exspheres can be safely used for great power. A very small percentage of people have a highly negative reaction to this, unfortunately, resulting in a disease that slowly begins to crystallize their body from the outside in. It can be cured, but the process is difficult.

The advanced form of an exsphere is called a Cruxis crystal. There are very few of these, and they grant those who use them a variety of powers that would certainly look holy to the uninformed. These include wings made of light, immortality, preternatural levels of perception, enhanced strength, and special magic skills above and beyond that which normal light magic can achieve.

It is unclear how to create a Cruxis crystal from an exsphere.

Society in Tethe’alla relies significantly more on exspheres than Sylvarant. Because Tethe’alla is the flourishing world at the time of Colette’s journey, their society has grown to embrace the freedom of magitechnology that the surplus mana allows, and a certain amount of opulence has become commonplace in the capital. One notable piece of magitechnology is the Grand Tethe’alla Bridge, which connects two continents and is a functioning drawbridge powered by in excess of three thousand exspheres.

-Desians and half-elves:

Modernly, the term Desian has become synonymous with half-elf. It’s rare to find a half-elf living in a human city. Some serve as researchers in the university town Sybak, in Tethe’alla, but most commonly if a half-elf lives openly, they are targeted with the worst humanity has to offer. There is a secret city, called Exire, created by the hero long ago, where half-elves can live in peace, but it’s difficult to get to, and it’s often easier for a half-elf alone to simply fall in with the Desians. There’s only one half-elf living publicly in Sylvarant, and he’s shunned by the vast majority of the city he lives in.

Desians keep their bases of operations in the diminishing world. Because exspheres are such valuable and useful tools, they set up facilities to streamline their production, known as human ranches. These are every bit as terrible as the name implies, as they are built mainly for causing pointless suffering to encourage the quick creation of functional exspheres.

Some cities in Sylvarant made treaties with the Desians, to preserve what they could. The city of Palmacosta, for instance, allowed a certain quota of people to be taken or killed each year, in exchange for accepting Desian rule and not fighting back. Iselia, the home of the Chosen One, kept a non-interference treaty. For some time, the city of Luin did something similar, but when their treaty was voided by sheltering fugitives from human ranches, the entire city was razed.

Perhaps the best-kept secret of the Desians is that they are, in fact, a sub-section of the organization Cruxis, which also backs the Church of Martel. The conflict they create in the worlds is for the purpose of driving the Chosen One ever onward in their journey toward reversing the mana flow.

There is a rebellious subset of the Desians known as Renegades, organized in secret by Yuan, who was the first of Mithos’ companions to begin to disagree with his methods and goal. However, they resemble Desians in uniform, technology, and race, and the Chosen One’s group, who found themselves the target of Renegades aiming to prevent the reversal of the mana flow, were not initially aware of the difference.

-Spirits:

The eight elements are represented by summon spirits. They are, essentially, beings of pure mana. Certain people have the ability to make pacts with these spirits, and use their power so long as the vow on which they base the pact remains intact. There are two variant summon spirits: Origin, the Spirit of All Things, who is considered their king, and Maxwell, the Spirit of Birth. When the worlds were split apart, so too were the summon spirits. Undine, Efreet, Sylph, and Luna (water, fire, wind, and light) were tethered to Sylvarant, and Volt, Celsius, Gnome, and Shadow (lightning, ice, earth, and darkness) were tethered to Tethe’alla. Maxwell remained with the half-elf city Exire, above Tethe’alla.

The Chosen’s journey in each world would take them to each of the four spirits’ seals: a temple of that element, rich in their respective mana. As the Chosen activated each seal, the spirits would wake. The culmination of the journey at the Tower of Salvation would put the opposing spirits to sleep, thus fully reversing the mana flow.

By the time of Colette’s journey, very few people with the capability to make pacts still existed, as the bloodline had nearly died out. In fact, the only one known was Sheena Fujibayashi, who came from Tethe’alla. When she went to the spirits to make pacts, it came to light that the last person they had all made a pact with was Mithos, the hero. However, at some point in the last four thousand years, Mithos had broken the vow on which he’d based that pact, and one by one the spirits abandoned him for the new summoner.

-The seventh Chosen of Sylvarant:

Colette Brunel grew up in Iselia, aware of her destiny and the responsibility that lay on her from a young age. Unfortunately for Mithos’ plans, Colette also grew up side by side with Lloyd Irving, an orphan boy with more idealism than sense, who had been adopted by the local dwarven craftsman. Around the time she was ten, Raine and Genis Sage moved to Iselia, where Raine became their teacher and Genis quickly became fast friends with Colette and Lloyd.

At 16, Colette embarked on her journey. She was initially accompanied by Raine and a mercenary who had shown up at the last moment, Kratos Aurion. Shortly after, upon their banishment from Iselia, Lloyd and Genis caught up and joined the Chosen’s entourage. There was the second seed of Mithos’ inevitable death planted, for Kratos recognized Lloyd as the son he’d thought dead fifteen years before, and experienced a gradual crisis of loyalty.

The others who fell in with the motley crew were Sheena Fujibayashi, summoner and ninja of the hidden village Mizuho; Zelos Wilder, Chosen of Tethe’alla and triple agent extraordinaire; Presea Combatir, an exsphere test subject who spent sixteen years being twelve and lost all her family while she was unaware; and Regal Bryant, a disgraced nobleman with a strong sense of justice. All were eventually indispensable to the re-uniting of the two worlds.

But that, as they say, was in another country.

Personality:

From an early age, Raine possessed exceptional reasoning skills and aptitude for learning. In addition to those natural qualities, she had a certain thirst for knowledge that simply would not be denied. Over the years she has cultivated and honed these, learning anything and everything that came her way, from ancient languages to advanced math to the operation and theory of magitechnology.

When she was eleven, she and her then-infant brother were abandoned by their parents. Alone in a strange place with nothing but her wits, Raine managed somehow to survive. She told people she and Genis were elves, not half-elves, to avoid the inevitable persecution; she learned healing spells to help keep them safe. Some days she got by on pure determination. During the next five or six years, Raine either forgot or repressed a significant portion of her early years, to the point that she no longer remembered that she and Genis had been born in Tethe’alla, not Sylvarant. All she retained were vague impressions, a severe phobia of large bodies of water, and her passion for learning.

While they traveled, Raine simultaneously raised and taught her brother and continued to learn herself, visiting many of the ruins and other historical locations scattered across Sylvarant. Later she would surmise she had always been looking for the ruins where they were abandoned as children, but by that time her love of the past was more than just an excuse to find one place. She enthuses honestly and loudly about the remnants of history, at length, to anyone who will listen, and is apt to unleash fury on those who disrespect it.

Violent fury, at that. Raine is no close-quarters combatant, but on those very few occasions when her temper gets the best of her, she has a tendency to slap the object of her ire upside the head. As a healer she can easily fix any problems she inadvertently causes, but on those rare occasions when passion overrules the rational mind, she can lash out. Those occasions in the past have mostly had to do with the desecration of ancient relics.

Apart from those temporary lapses in judgment, Raine is an eminently calm and logical individual. Among the party she will always be the one who advocates stopping to think things through rather than acting on pure emotional impulse, no matter how good-hearted the intent. She doesn’t panic, but rather assesses, always pushing for a solution rather than worrying over how bad the problem at hand is. To her mind, that’s a waste of time. She can keep her emotions separate from her reasoning, and this has on multiple occasions made her seem cold when she lays out a situation and the most effective solutions to her students. This is a hard-won trait, one she learned in the raising of her brother; it’s not something she was naturally born to. That still occasionally shows when she’s startled enough or passionate enough to lose her composure.

She’s not quite a mama bear, but she does possess a strong protective instinct. Initially this was solely toward her younger brother, but once she settled in Iselia and began to teach at the school, that quickly expanded to include all those under her care. There are certain people she judges the sacrifice of her life to be worth, and her precious students, most specifically Lloyd, Genis, and Colette, definitely fall under that heading.

It’s telling, then, that on the initial journey, Raine set out in full willingness, with full knowledge of what awaited Colette. She knew the Chosen would have to give up her soul if not her life to save the world, and she intended to see that journey through anyway. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made for the greater good, and Raine knows this. Not only is she fully conscious of the nature of the world, that sometimes to achieve sacrifices must be made, but also she has the heart and mind to be able to make them. She has a working grasp of the bigger picture, and while this does not always sit well with her compatriots, it is often useful.

That’s not to say that she likes or relishes such things. In all truth, she’d often rather it was herself in harm’s way. But she has the determination not to falter, if necessary. She is a healer and it is in her nature to be kind; however, kind does not always coincide with nice. She will do what is best for her brother and her students, without fail.

She doesn’t think herself capable of the sort of idealism that defines her pupil Lloyd. She’s seen rather too much of people being terrible to each other for the thinnest of reasons for that. All the same, though, she finds it hard to ignore someone obviously injured or in need. This often wars with her cool head, and she is more easily swayed by her students than she’d like.

Even so, that’s not always a bad thing.

Raine is slow to trust. It’s a side effect of being naturally suspicious and hiding a basic fact of her identity for the better part of her life. In finding a group of people who were at ease with the fact she was a half-elf, some of that eased, but a lifetime’s habits are not so easily unlearned. Raine watches and waits and observes and finally comes to a conclusion, and only then does she trust. When she does, however, she puts her entire self into it: there is no sense in doing something halfway. If Lloyd believes there can be a world where no one has to be sacrificed, she will certainly do her best to make that come about-- even if she can’t quite believe it herself.

In the same vein, she bears great reluctance to betray any weakness. When she was young, she fell off a ship into the ocean, and though she does not now remember the event beyond vague impressions, the fear remains. Every time she’s found crossing water to be a necessity, though, she has faced up to it and done her utmost to pretend nothing is wrong. She does not do this gracefully or well, and the effort at pretending is fairly transparent, but in this case it really is the principle of the thing that matters. She is not afraid, will not be afraid, cannot afford to be afraid, and if she cannot exert that level of control over herself, she will put on the best show she can.

Overall, Raine is a highly cerebral person. She rarely acts before thinking through all the options, she assesses and compiles data rather than voice her suspicions before she’s sure, and even in battle she is usually the one pointing out the enemy’s weaknesses and staying at the rear to support rather than charging in. The downside to this, of course, is that she tends to get fairly caught up in her own head and her thoughts, occasionally to the detriment of other things.

This is most evident when it comes to history. On one notable occasion she spent over twenty-four hours translating ancient script, and the need for sleep, food, or indeed keeping track of her companions completely fell by the wayside. When she gets caught up in her work, her passion, sometimes it’s as if she’s in another place entirely. The two easiest ways to snap her abruptly into the present moment are danger to precious historical relics, and danger to her brother.

Though she would eventually find out the truth of her parents, and meet her mother, Raine would never quite be able to forgive the way she and Genis had been abandoned. She considers her mother weak, someone so completely unable to deal with the reality of having half-elven children that she retreated within her own mind. That relationship will likely always remain unresolved: her mother isn’t lucid enough to recognize her daughter, and Raine herself, though she has the diary her mother kept, can’t bring herself to understand that point of view.

That in itself speaks to the fact that Raine has more optimism to her than she’d like to admit. She’s spent years and years constantly afraid, constantly worrying, constantly expecting the worst out of people and rarely being disappointed in that. But even for all that she would never have abandoned Genis, even when it would have been easier to go it alone.

In the new world it’ll be doubly hard. Not only will there be racial tensions, but political problems as well. And even in the midst of all that, despite it not being perhaps the smartest thing to do, Raine plans to journey in order to teach and to heal and to spread understanding. Danger is implied, hardship probable.

And yet, for the sake of her precious students, won’t it be worth it?

Appearance: Best visual reference here.

Abilities: Raine primarily fills the role of white mage. Her offensive capabilities are limited to the light element, and she knows a grand total of two spells: photon, a low-level blast of light centralized to one enemy, and holy lance, a high-level spell whose spears of light cause severe damage to anyone within a certain radius. Raine’s true strength is in healing. She has a wide range of spells to heal with varying intensity. First aid is the simplest, good for all manner of bruises and cuts. Heal, the next level up, can handle broken bones and fractures with no trouble, while cure, her most powerful unaided healing spell, can fix all injuries short of fatal. [This is mild speculation based on the percentage of HP each spell restores.] If in possession of the unicorn horn, a catalyst for healing magic, Raine can also cast the spell resurrection, which while not suitable for actually raising the dead, can instantly pick up knocked out people, and is implied to reset any mana irregularities within a person’s body. The spell has been used to help fix dead trees, to restore people who have been transformed into monsters to their original form, and to cure a mana-based sickness with no apparent cure.

She also has access to some support skills, to bolster an ally’s strength or defense: the spells sharpness and keenness for strength, barrier and permaguard for defense. She can cure most physical and magical ailments with recover and dispel, and with the upper-tier versions of those techniques, restore and anti-magic, can temporarily bestow immunity to those ailments.

If she works in concert with other people, she is capable of greater offense, especially when simulcasting with her brother. Prism stars is not a spell that anyone wants to be in front of. Fortunately or unfortunately, that sort of unison work requires a certain level of trust, and Raine is slow to that.

On the less-than-magical side, Raine has very sharp observation skills. On multiple occasions she has put details together into a cohesive whole before the inevitable villainous monologue provides the relevant exposition, simply by virtue of a handful of scraps she’s witnessed over the past few days or weeks. Unfortunately, her tendency is to not share with the group until she is absolutely certain of her hypothesis, which can take significantly longer than optimal.

Suitability: Though Raine is a JRPG protagonist, and keeps company with a full complement of idealistic teenagers with more power than logic skills, she has a dark streak to her practicality that would suit her well in much more serious and hopeless situations. She wouldn’t necessarily like having to choose what sacrifices are necessary, but the important part is that she would be able to make that choice. Kind, after all, does not always mean nice, and sometimes, the infected part must be cut off to save the whole.

Raine is, in truth, not much of a combatant herself, as she’s used to working in a group, with solid melee fighters between her and the enemies. However, she swings a mean staff, and practice has gotten her casting of photon down to only a few seconds’ necessary focus. Further, if she can get any breathing room at all, she can completely mend herself relatively quickly. If caught alone, she might be in trouble, but at the very least she knows when to run, and she’s as self-sufficient as a mage can be. And, of course, in a group she'll ensure everyone else stays standing until she herself hits the floor.

Raine has lived in a dying world since she was eleven, and in the face of monsters, Desians, and the never-ending threat of persecution, she not only successfully raised her infant brother but carved them out a home. If she did it once, she can do it again, and it’ll be several times easier without a dependent. In theory.

Inventory:
Rune Staff- one of the best weapons available for her, eminently suited for channeling magic. A sleek wooden staff a little shorter than she is tall, engraved with runes and capped with a set of concentric gold circles that rotate slowly.
Moonstone- a small charm made of moonstone. Boosts the wearer’s spiritual energy. [In game terms, raises TP, which fuels spells, by 30%]
Pineapple Gel- Raine keeps a few of these in her pockets for insurance. They replenish the user's spiritual enemy. [In game terms, they restore 60% TP. This is an item I can take or leave, but it makes sense for Raine to carry 3 or so as emergency backup.]
Unicorn Horn- the graceful, spiraling horn that belonged to a mythical animal long since dead. Somehow, it seems more than just keratin. This serves as an important catalyst to some of Raine’s healing magics.
Virginia’s Diary- the diary Raine’s mother kept. Raine rarely reads through it, but it’s something better kept close.
Exsphere and Key Crest- affixed at the base of her throat, hidden from view if her shirt and jacket are fastened. The exsphere amplifies all of her abilities; the key crest prevents it from killing her.

Suite: Raine would likely feel most at home in the Earth Sector. The solidity of the place would suit her, and she can appreciate good stonework. A single-floor suite would be more than fine; she’s not used to fancy, she doesn’t need fancy, and quite honestly, if there’s enough storage space for books and whatever artifacts she comes across, she’ll be content. She should probably be in the same building as someone with culinary skills, though, as her own are almost completely non-existent.

(Water Sector might suit her temperament as well, but that was out of the question from the beginning. Swimming pools? What are these people thinking?)

In-Character Samples:
Third Person:

There was something wrong with Genis' new friend.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, per se. Mithos was cheerful, good-hearted in most matters, and an excellent cook. Even better, he was a companion to Genis, a friend of his own age and race. What sister could ask more for her brother?

And yet... and yet.

His story wasn’t even that which was concerning her, not really. It had holes in it, surely, but it didn’t ring false. Impossible to fake that kind of loss, the sincere melancholy in the brief moments when he mentioned his dead sister. No, the problem was, she concluded, that the massive chunks which Mithos had not seen fit to relay were hiding something significant.

There were moments, too, when it seemed like he didn’t think anyone was looking, when his open, friendly expression dropped into something flatter, less kind. It was only ever momentary, and Raine was beginning to notice that it happened most often around Lloyd.

Maybe jealousy. Maybe Mithos feared his new friend would side with Lloyd over him and leave him alone once more. That only barely fit, though, and Raine was unsatisfied with the theory. If it was only jealousy, the child wouldn’t make the back of her neck prickle in his less-guarded moments.

She had no proof that anything was wrong. There was no real reason to think it anything more, no evidence, nothing concrete. Even Kratos, careful as he was, had given her more reason than this to doubt him.

But still Raine found herself ill at ease when the two boys went out alone together, and resolved to keep a very close eye on Mithos, friend of Genis’ or no.

She would wish, later, that she hadn’t been quite so right.

Network:

[She’s as blasé about this as she knows how to be, considering the circumstances. It’s not like other worlds are entirely a new idea to her, anyway.]

My name is Raine Sage. I suppose I should start this out by saying that I’m a skilled healer, and if anyone here has need of one such, you should seek me out. [The ghost of a rueful smile. What can you do? Teenagers especially don’t care to be convenient about when they get injured.] Yes, even if it’s in the middle of the night. As I understand it, danger is becoming more and more prominent, and sleep is easier to reclaim than life. [This is old, old news.]

And, of course, if there's anyone out there who traveled with us, or knew of Colette, I would welcome a familiar face. [That’s an understatement. She’s still not sure whether or not it’s a good thing Genis is safe where she left him with Lloyd and the others, but it’s been a long time since she was this alone.]

...now, what was it I heard them saying about ruined villages... [She’s probably going to have to be dissuaded from mounting a full-scale expedition.]