[tu shanshu] app

[leviathaned]

Player Information:
Name: Kaji
Age: Still Over 18
Contact: dovahpuff @ aim
Game Cast: Asbel Lhant
AC Thread: Bam!

Character Information:
Name: Wakahisa Seiryuu, ‘Sei’.
Canon: Original
Age: appears to be in his early 20s, actually 70...ish.
Reference:
Storyline
Setting
Taken from near the end of Act II, in Paris the January of 1927.

Setting:
There’s a bubble at the edge of the sea of realities called the Verdigris Bubble, and shit’s pretty fucking cray.

Inside that bubble, it looks much the same as our world, but there are some pretty key differences. With the gods of the Outer Ring so close, that bubble is both a point of contention and something a neutral zone in the endless battle between Heaven and Hell. Those Gods, too, have their own agendas, but are in general content not to take a side, or at least not one that’s comprehensible for humans. And so the factions shake out as follows;

The Host, the army of Heaven, the great legions of programmed ranks. Angels have not had souls or free will of their own since the fall, and the more powerful their ranks, the less autonomy they have. While the Archangels and their underlings have an illusion of autonomy, the Seraphim are little more than living puppets, all controlled by the Demiurge through Metatron. Yezua, the demigurge, is equal parts an ill-tempered child and sentient computer server, carrying out Its will through the programmed actors it controls. It has a Script. It won’t tolerate deviation. It claims as many as the bubbled universes, known as shards, as it possibly can, for the more shards there are that even some people believe in it as a supreme being, the more powerful it becomes.

Among the host, there are some key players themselves. For the sake of this setting section, only those players involved in the New Orleans Incident are listed.

Zephon, an angel working with Ithuriel to discover where Lucifer is hiding after his fall, and an extremely prideful and violent warrior, even among the host. Currently, he and Ithuriel are in different shards, leaving Zephon without any sort of voice of reason, thus leading to his murder of a young man connected to the End of Days and subsequent death.

Opposed to the Host is, as one might expect, the forces of Hell. Well, some of them. Chaotic and wide-ranging in their desires and reasons for battle, demons and fallen angels alike gather under Lucifer’s banner, all with one goal; destroy the Demiurge, forming the largest faction of Hell’s power. They have little care for what shards get destroyed in the course of their war, and have no problem destroying them in their wake.

Lucifer himself remains moving throughout the shards to avoid being found and recaptured. As a former Seraphim, it is Lucifer’s rebellion and fall that caused what little autonomy angels had to be stripped from them, but it is unclear whether or not he is in the least bit sympathetic towards them. Known for making deals with humans, Lucifer goes from identity to identity, and the level he fraternizes with humans he tricks is best evidenced by the fact his son is said to be destined to end time.

Belphegor, named as a Prince of Hell, is more accurately termed a princess but hey, the titles don’t shift for gender. Belphegor is fond of humans in about the same way cats are fond of a mouse they’re playing with, and spends most of her time hopping through shards looking for new playthings. A cult in New Orleans attempts to summon her lieutenant, Lahash , using a young man named Rahas’ strange abilities, to end the world in a flare of decadence and sin. This didn’t end well for anybody.

In the neutral area of the conflict are a collection of humans, gods, and the Old Ones. Those with a part in this story are as follows;

Rahas, a young man who came to New Orleans to find his father’s mistress. He is possessing of a strange power to open Doors to other shards, at great cost to his own health. He is intended to be used as the key to the cult of Lahash’s ritual, but is instead killed by Zephon after becoming involved with Sei.

Anna-Marie Lafayette is the daughter of the head of the cult, but cares little for her father’s designs. Her dreams of being an actress are quietly shattered by the progression of tuberculosis, which she keeps hidden from those around her. She eventually steps in front of a train when it progresses far enough to affect her voice, rather than allowing Sei to cure her.

Wakahisa Seiryuu, the End of Days, the Antichrist, That Asshole...Sei goes by many names, but is indeed the half-human son of Lucifer. Out of spite and defiance for his role, Sei has been working to keep the reality of the Farthest Shard from unraveling, and travels to Paris to prevent Lahash’s cult from destroying it. This only technically succeeds and ends badly for nearly everyone involved.

Where we Stand
In 1860, a child was born to a penniless Japanese emmigrant in a back alleyway in London, and that child was named Wakahisa Seiryuu. With his mother understandably bitter about being tricked and dumped halfway across the planet, and the voices of angels driving her to attempt to kill him, Sei did not have a happy childhood, and did not find out the truth of his parentage until he was 21. He took the news that he was half-human, and the Antichrist no less, not entirely well, and reacted to the cry that he was meant to destroy the world and lead war on God with a resounding “Go fuck yourself”. Sei instead turned to doing his best to use powers he hadn’t known about a month before to keeping the reality of his home shard from unravelling around it, defying in equal parts the forces of Heaven, Hell, and several of the Outer Gods. He continued to travel around the world for decades, foiling various cults and not doing much to bother hiding his identity from any angry agent on either side.

In December, 1926 he came to New Orleans to foil a cult to Lahash, but was unable to immediately find the source. Sei was forced to work more subtly, and in doing so became caught up in the decadence of the French Quater, in no small part due to Belphegor’s influence. He meets a young man name Rahas, also newly arrived, and the the two of them end up staying in a manor belonging to the Lafayette family after a party no one really clearly remembers. He convinces Rahas to help him try and figure out who among the other guests in the house is really driving the cult, and at the same time grows closer to Anna-Marie, the daughter of the manor’s owner. One of the guests, a man called Lucky by everyone there, reveals himself to Sei as his father, Lucifer, and continually taunts him with his inability to change the fate of human beings. After Sei attacks him, Lucifer asks him what his purpose is in life, and what makes his actions have any meaning at all.. Sei eventually discovers that the cult leader is Anna’s father, who had Rahas lured to New Orleans due to his strange ability to open ‘doors’. Anna has no interest in her father’s cult or the end of the world, stating that the only thing she cares about is being able to sing.

Shortly afterwards, Sei begins to have nightmares, and Rahas’ powers begin to work outside his control. In an argument with Anna’s father, he accidentally summons shades, killing much of the cult and forcing Sei to reveal his inhumanity to both Rahas and Anna. While Anna withdraws from Sei, Rahas is intrigued by it, sticking closer to Sei. Unfortunately, due to the increased use of Sei’s power, the archangel Zephon arrives in New Orleans a few days later, and tortures and kills Rahas in an attempt to draw Sei out. It works, and Sei promptly beats Zephon to death with his bare hands before returning to the manor to find a letter from Anna-Marie, explaining that she will be dead on the train tracks by the time he reads it. She writes that because Sei is immortal, he can’t understand the pain humans feel, struggling to achieve something before she died, and so she didn’t tell him she had TB. If he had cured it, she writes, it would have made all her struggles cease to have meaning. Grieving, Sei allows the cult to finish summoning Lahash and kills him, only for Belphegor to tell him that a god’s death at his hands won’t ever be permanent. Sei leaves New Orleans on New Year’s Eve, intending to wander until he found some answer to the questions posed by Anna’s death and his father’s taunts.

And then he accidentally ended up on a turtle. Ooops.

Personality:
Sei has not led a happy life, in any stretch of the imagination, and it shows. Outwardly sarcastic and cynical, Sei keeps most people at arm's length. He’s happy to mock, prod and tease, although he doesn’t go as far as aiming to hurt unless he has a reason to dislike someone, and generally stays aloof around other people, especially just after his recent experiences with emotional intimacy. He is used to being disliked, and as such doesn’t particularly take insults or abuse particularly personally but simply returns them with a bitter counterpart to a devil-may-care attitude. He strives to appear as though he doesn’t care, and closely guards both his deep mourning and intense loneliness, not out of any sense of protection, but because he doesn’t feel it’s anyone’s business but his.

Sei is, despite his bitterness, fairly easygoing about all kinds of mistreatment and abuse, so long as they’re aimed at him. While he doesn’t stand for any one person trying to curtail someone's personal autonomy, he’ll rarely raise any more argument than a sharp tongue if he’s on the receiving end of that treatment. In truth, Sei only barely recognizes himself as an actual person, from a combination of his mother’s abuse and his own identity as the Antichrist. He doesn’t believe himself to be a good person, either, and while he doesn't feel particularly guilty about a good two thirds of the things he’s done, he still recognizes that they were not particularly on the ‘moral’ side of the spectrum. Combined with his mother’s insistence he shouldn’t have been born, and the fact Heaven has orders to kill him on sight, Sei assumes most people won’t like him and sees no reason to expect otherwise.

Because Sei doesn’t fully recognize himself as a person, however, and because he doesn’t feel particularly bad about his past line of work as a hooker because he was the worst victorian, Sei has no particular shame in talking very openly about all kinds of hedonism and past deeds. The only things Sei avoids speaking about are his own feelings, which he continues to steadfastly pretend he doesn’t have, no, please piss off, thank you. He responds to nearly any name he's called, minus his full name which he hates with a bright burning passion, and gives absolutely no fucks as to anything else he's referred to, in no small part due to his lack of personhood.

If one manages to get past all that, at the very core of Sei is a very bitterly lonely man. Getting Sei to recognize friendship is a nearly impossible task, as he is cynical and slow to trust. He distrusts most human-shaped beings and a great deal of non-human ones, as his experiences with others have fallen into largely three categories: either they try to kill him, try to use him, or ignore him. Sei grasps the concept that, in theory, his experiences with people are a limited sample and do not speak for the whole spectrum of human experience, but as he assumes most people will hate him for some reason or another, be it his identity or the things he's done, he sees no reason to allow people that close. While he keeps them at arm's length, Sei can be convinced to be tolerant or at least superficially polite to those who treat him decently, but it is politeness tinged with the understanding that that kindness will inevitably end, if it were even genuine to begin with. To make matters worse, even if by some miracle Sei is made to understood that the kindness shown to him is meant as such, and not a ploy to use him, he has very recently had it made clear by Rahas' and Anna-Marie's deaths that he will outlive anyone he dares get close to. He may even find himself the cause of their deaths, and with those wounds freshly haunting his mind, Sei retreats even farther into his shell. As desperately, bitterly starved for companionship as he is, Sei is coming to the conclusion that being close to others causes more pain than it was ever worth, but he struggles to completely close himself off in the face of an almost crushing sense of being completely alone in the world.

Compounding Sei’s sense of being lost is the fact that he is basically driven to save the world solely to spite the expectations of him being the End of Days. Sei has and has never had any intention of ending the world, and responded to the expectation that he would with a resounding ‘no’, followed shortly thereafter with ‘go fuck yourself’. His spite and anger are driven by both his intense hatred of Lucifer, and the idea that he’s never had any say in the matter whatsoever. While Sei is bad at recognizing his personhood, he is a big believer in making your own (absolutely terrible) life choices, (which also feeds into his him generally assuming and accepting hatred and abuse towards him, as an aside) making the fact that his ending the world is taking as an absolute given deeply infuriating for him. On top of that, he despises his father, not entirely unreasonably, stemming largely from Lucifer’s abandonment of both him and his mother. As Sei sees it, he wasn’t even aware who his father was until he was twenty-two; he owes him absolutely nothing, much less aiding him in a war against the Demiurge. But as time's gone on, spite itself is less a compelling reason, and while Sei finds he rather begrudgingly sympathizes with the outcasts of humanity, he finds the very notion of fighting for 'justice' hypocritical. To make matters worse, his isolation from others has left him distrusful and distant from other people, even the same outcasts of society he feels a vague sense of understand towards. Without any clear way for him to reconcile any these factors with his desire to not destroy the world, Sei resorts to at best, polite apathy, and more commonly cynical, bitterly sarcastic commentary on the whole affair.

There is one, and exactly one topic that Sei doesn't hide his adoration of, and that is music. Sei is an avid and indiscriminate fan of anything with a rhythm and melody, and takes to new styles or genres like a duck to water. While for most of his life he could not safely sing without risking accidentally ending the world, his control over his power in adulthood means he can sing safely, meaning it's rare for any silence to go long without him at least humming. Although his singing is linked to his role as the End of Days, for Sei, it has been the only consistent source of comfort throughout his childhood, having been introduced to it young alongside other buskers and street performers. While he discovered quickly that trying to sing along tended to attract the attention of the Outer Gods and whatever other nearby detriments to sanity happened to be passing by, use of an instrument did not initially cause the same reality-warping effect, and Sei was eager for anything that was genuinely enjoyable. Discovering his natural talent for it only endeared it to him further, as Sei took it as the one thing he was genuinely good for. Even his mother’s abuses could, for a time, be tempered by a pretty tune on a snitched guitar or violin, although this did not, of course, end up working well for too long.

The revelation that music and singing were the easiest key to his destructive abilities caused that sense of incredibly petty spiteful stubborness to flare up again, and as Sei gained control over his power, he worked out that singing was also the easiest way to repair damage done to reality and the Sea of Shards. As such, he has doggedly pursued being able to shift and warp reality back into it’s natural state and patch holes, refusing to allow his one interest to be taken from him. For his entire childhood and most of his adult life, music has been the only consistently enjoyable thing, and Sei genuinely seeks out new forms of instruments and music. Although he remains somewhat wary of singing publicly, age and control over his power eventually makes him completely shameless in abusing his talent.

As of 1927, in the thrall of the Jazz era, while Sei rarely sings publically unless he deliberately attempts to use his power, he will happily seek out new styles of instruments and instrumental music. He can allow himself to be bullied into singing, but will enact some form of recompense for being made to do so. He rarely similarly demands retribution or payment for playing an instrument, but will not in any way argue being paid for it, and has sold his talents before, in an attempt to keep a roof over his head and food on the table. His enthusiasm for learning new styles is often ill-hidden, and while it affords him some kind of superficial camaraderie with other people, he doesn’t extend that geniality any further, and as soon as the topic changes, he shuts everythng out once more, returning to cynicism and comfortable sarcasm as his method for interacting with other sentient beings.

On arrival to Keeliai, Sei will find himself concerned about the method use to bring him here, but being unable to warp reality, and unwilling to be involved in combat situations without some very convincing reasons, he will settle into simply observing the war against Malicant as it progresses. As a method to fill his time (and pay for food) , he will begin to offer his musical talents for money, as necessary and in limited doses. A second, direct appearance of Malicant, or an overt attack on Keeliai may motivate Sei, assuming the damage and toll is significantly visible, to begin offering his services as a healer in a very limited fashion, as Malicant himself would remind him far too much of things he very much dislikes, but he still shies away from healing illness. He will remain what amounts to an overly-talkative sarcastic hermit until given a reason he deems concrete to fight.

Appearance: Sei’s current PB is the Vocaloid Kaito, with some hand-drawn icons added in as time and my eternal distractedness permits me to make them. Drawn icons will be marked as such in his keywords.

Sei is a ridiculously tall man, at 6’8, with bright blue eyes and darker blue hair that comes to the nape of his neck at the longest. He is lean, partially from athletic build, and partially from childhood malnourishment that lingers. In his face and nose, particularly, there are the signs of him being a half-blood: a stronger, sharper jawline and higher cheekbones than his mother, giving him just exotic enough an appearance that even without his odd-colored hair (and the fact he’s apparently part giraffe), he stands out among nearly any crowd.

On his shoulder blades are a pair of stylized wing tattoos that come down to mid-back at the very tips, and a rose thorn tattoo spirals up his left hip over the pelvic bone. Similarly, his left hand has a rose patterned mark on the back, although it appears more like a faded brand than a tattoo. He has scars across his stomach and lower back; both appear to be from slashing wounds.

With his wings uncased, Sei’s pupils become cat slit and his eyes and tattoos glow in the dark. Arcane glyphs appear across his forehead, spelling out his identity to anyone who can read them. Inconspicuous is something that happens to other people.

Abilities:
Because Sei is the Antichrist, and furthermore because some of his original abilities act as a kind of plot fiat, some of them will be restricted or removed entirely in the interests of making him playable. Restricted abilities will be written in green as they will function in Tu Vishan (assuming no further plot restrictions), while abilities removed will be listed in red for completeness.

Healing: Primary among Sei’s powers is his ability to recover from almost any injury or illness. He is not immune to poisons or disease, but instead recovers from them at an extraordinary rate. Furthermore, with the exception of electrical burns or damage from a celestial or holy source, such as Amaterasu or Castiel, nothing short of decapitation or removal of his heart will kill him. Electrical burns and shocks take much longer than other kinds of energy to recover and causes him greater pain, but still heal faster than most wounds. Holy damage does not heal at an accelerated rate. Furthermore, Sei absorbs cold-based damage and attacks, proving effectively immune to frostbite and hypothermia. Sei’s healing powers do not in any way lessen the pain he suffers from an attack. Rip open his rib cage and start breaking things, and he will probably pass out from sheer pain. He can, however, regenerate his own limbs, although it takes him longer than lesser wounds and is excruciatingly painful. It is possible, were he kept alive some how, that he could reattach his own head, but it would take upwards of a week of somehow keeping his decapitated body alive, so let's not.

Sei is capable of healing others as well as himself. On Asti, however, he will no longer be able to recreate missing pieces, instead only being able to speed up the natural course of healing. If the wound is one the body itself cannot recover from, Sei cannot heal it in others. Furthermore, while he is capable of empathic healing and taking wounds onto himself, it will be extremely draining on him to do so.

Elemental Magic: Sei mainly relies on his ability to use elemental magic to fight. He leans predominantly towards ice, with wind as a distant second, but is capable of using most elements (for our purposes, they are water, ice, wind, fire, electricity, wood, rock, dark, light, and holy). He is unable to use holy magic on his own, and takes damage from using fire, light or electricity. Sei is highly talented and has immense amounts of innate magical power to use as a source for his magic (read: he has bonus-boss MP levels), and tends to use it to create tricks and environmental obstacles such as frozen ground or heavy mists instead of direct attacks, but he is capable of using it more offensively. However, Sei's formal training was...slapdash and he's much likely to rely on instinct and shortcuts than anything structurally sound, magically-speaking, with a further bad habit of tending to Macgyver spells together on the fly. They usually don't blow up in his face and he can grow fingers back anyway!

Song Magic: The other common magical effect is Sei’s use of music, which is largely uncontrolled in his voice and pretty much all-capped in Tu Shanshu, woops. While normally used to tap resonant frequencies, his voice has the unintended effect of bending reality around it, allowing him to rewrite fundamental laws of reality. Sei’s ability to bend reality is entirely based on concentration in musical notes, and he can, in theory, read said laws like sheet music. Sei is also capable of using his music as a focus for elemental magic, and his attempts to cast complex spells on the fly work better if he whistles them. So about 30% less accidental explosions.

Also, his singing voice is really, really pretty. Angel blood cheats, y’all. It gives a calming effect as long as he sings, much like a giant tribble, which will be entirely opt-in.

Traveler: Sei is a natural Traveler, as noted in the setting document. As such, Sei is extremely sensitive to changes in reality, and spikes or drops in the basic magical level of Tu Vishan in general will be physically painful to him, resulting in migraines or illness at worse. Sei is not in full control at this canon point of his abilities, but is able to ‘read’ the rules of the universe and can rewrite them.

Other: Sei has wings! They are kept metaphysically sealed away as to not be constantly making life difficult, but there are six, in large ridiculous pairs that do in fact allow him to fly. While only one pair are traditional birdlike wings, a second pair that is largely ethereal and a third that can be seen in reflections and his shadow. Both appear when he uses too much magic and his power begins to leak.

The more Sei uses any kind of magic, the more his appearance grows inhuman, beginning with his eyes glowing and eventually leading to him with wings uncased and fiery glorious appearance, End of Days, yadda yadda. Conversely, he must use power sparingly if he wants to retain a semi-human appearance, as he still has trouble changing back.

As noted above, Sei is tuned like a radio to how reality shifts, but has to a lesser extent a sense for magical beings*. For example, while he would be able to place Castiel as an Angel, he would not be able to place his rank, nor could he recognize something like bending or gen X, which is not inherently magical in nature this continuity. He also reads as a walking power beacon to anyone with a sense for that, and hasn’t learned how to mask that he’s a walking ball of magic, even if he can hide that he’s, you know, the goddamn Antichrist.

Physical Fighting: Sei is a giraffe who grew up on the streets of London in the 1880s, and as such is a dextrous fighter in hand-to-hand, although he much prefers to book it than actually get in close combat. He has some skill with swords, although it is a rather bastardized hybrid style of western fencing and “beat the shit out of someone with a cane”. Physically, Sei is on the high end of normal human strength without the aid of magic, but has higher reflexes and agility on base.

*Sei’s ability to sense magic and how far he can sense are entirely on a permission basis! If there is no explicit permission given, he can't get anything, which will be handwaved with his other capped powers as his abilities not coming through entirely intact.

Sei grew up bilingual, fluent in Japanese and east-ender English, although his Japanese is rusty and very oddly accented from being years out of practice. He is furthermore fluent in French, and can ask for and understand being given directions to music venues in German, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

Inventory:

1 x violin and case, well loved
1 x walking stick with hidden sword
1 pack of playing cards
1 Leather Journal and Fountain Pen
A set of clothes (coat, shirt, scarf, hat, shoes, pants, gloves)