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ABILITIES PERMISSION
Nov. 13th, 2021 01:20 pmSo Daniel has "abilities" that he hates! And there's nothing more I love than actually dunking on my characters. SO....here's a post.
Daniel is able to sense threats before they happen. This can be an event or a person. It usually only happens a few seconds beforehand and will cause his vision to distort (which seems counterproductive to avoiding a threat, but I don’t make the rules). The distortion lasts as long as the threat does and gets worse if he looks at the cause of the threat. This is only if the person is actually a threat to Daniel! It doesn't have to be an immediate threat, or only a physical threat. This is totally up to you!
Daniel can also recall memories that aren’t his in places of extreme importance to that person. Usually, he can only hear conversations that take place, but they can occasionally be visions.
If you'd like for Daniel to inflict some of his weirdness on your character, please fill this out! I'll screen comments for spoilers!
Daniel is able to sense threats before they happen. This can be an event or a person. It usually only happens a few seconds beforehand and will cause his vision to distort (which seems counterproductive to avoiding a threat, but I don’t make the rules). The distortion lasts as long as the threat does and gets worse if he looks at the cause of the threat. This is only if the person is actually a threat to Daniel! It doesn't have to be an immediate threat, or only a physical threat. This is totally up to you!
Daniel can also recall memories that aren’t his in places of extreme importance to that person. Usually, he can only hear conversations that take place, but they can occasionally be visions.
If you'd like for Daniel to inflict some of his weirdness on your character, please fill this out! I'll screen comments for spoilers!
User Name/Nick: Kota
User DW: None
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM/to a character journal/alternate method of contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
waningsunflower or Discord: Kota#4814
Other Characters Currently In-Game: John Seed, Daniel Jacobi, Rags, Godric
Character Name: Daniel (No last name known)
Series: Amnesia
Age: 21-22
From When?: At the end of the game. Daniel fails to meet Alexander in the chamber and is consumed by the Shadow in the cell.
Inmate Justification: Though Daniel will say that he has already redeemed himself, it’s a shallow redemption. Feeling bad about what he did and feeling guilty for it don’t mean that he’s actually faced these things that he’s done. In fact, he actively refuses to acknowledge what he did because it’s too hard and would absolutely do it all over again. He tortured people and, even before he was corrupted, did it because he thought they were criminals and to save his own skin. He even wrote that there was no arguing about it. Alexander told him that it needed to be done, so he did it. A warden can help him find a goddamn backbone, to stand up for himself and force him to face what he did head on.
Arrival: Agreed to come. He doesn’t think he requires redemption, but Daniel will agree to anything to get away from the Shadow.
Abilities/Powers: Daniel’s contact with the Orb gave him vaguely psychic powers, though he has no control over these abilities and they come and go at will.
- Daniel is able to sense threats before they happen. This can be an event or a person. It usually only happens a few seconds beforehand and will cause his vision to distort (which seems counterproductive to avoiding a threat, but I don’t make the rules). The distortion lasts as long as the threat does and gets worse if he looks at the cause of the threat.
- Daniel can also recall memories that aren’t his in places of extreme importance to that person. Usually, he can only hear conversations that take place, but they can occasionally be visions.
- Daniel can see a blue aura around important items that he’s looking for or needs, just like the one that was around the Orb. This usually is just small things, like tinderboxes or vials or machine parts, but can theoretically be anything as far out as he can see.
Other than that, Daniel is a standard human. He has absolutely no fighting ability (see above inability to even look at a threat). He's clever and a good problem solver. He does speak and read German and Latin, at the very least. He's got good working knowledge of machinery and anatomy.
He also knows how to find the best hiding places.
Inmate Information:
Daniel and his sister Hazel, who suffered from a debilitating illness, were often the objects of their father’s physical abuse. Daniel would often hide away from him, eventually developing nyctophobia, a fear of the darkness. And while he’s not afraid of what might be inside the darkness, he is intensely terrified of the darkness swallowing him up. If he’s trapped in the darkness for too long (we’re talking seconds here), he will start to slowly, and silently, lose himself. It starts off with shallow breaths, moving to grinding teeth. He will eventually start to hallucinate and, if he’s trapped for too long, the fear will be so overwhelming that he will be unable to move and will eventually lose consciousness. Facing his fear really doesn’t do much of anything, as he spends most of his time at the castle facing that fear. It only becomes worse.
Daniel does have a caring nature in him, despite what his father did to try and beat it out of him. Before he was manipulated and corrupted, he was a man who wouldn’t think twice about helping another person. He believes very deeply in people helping each other in order to get what they need. He’s very social and tries to get along with anyone and everyone, if only because he knows that they might need a friend or someone to talk to. His first instinct is always to help another person, even if that person has nothing to offer him. But he has a problem with trust. He will trust almost anyone with little to no evidence of their true intentions. This is how he landed with Alexander later. And he’s quite prone to following the crowd, to peer pressure.
The first instance of Daniel simply following the crowd to an extreme is when he harmed his schoolyard bully, Henry. The boy had laid hands on him time after time and, eventually, Daniel got tired of it. After all of the beatings and tauntings, Daniel fought back. But he didn’t just hit him or kick him. He took a rock and beat him in the head, taking all of that to an extreme. Daniel never forgot that day and the abuse he suffered after.
Eventually, Daniel became a research assistant for the British Museum and was able to put his naturally inquisitive nature to work. Daniel generally enjoyed his work and was delighted to go on trips. His first expedition to Algeria, however, ended in disaster and he was locked in a tomb with a magical glowing Orb. He was set upon by visions, including one of a giant, glowing Orb. Because he simply had to know the truth, because he simply had to understand, he touched it and that’s’ what set the Shadow upon him. He enjoys knowing the truth and so he set about his quest on finding out the answers behind the Orb. Unfortunately, that quest led to the deaths of his colleagues. Of course, none of them were by his hand, but were by the Shadow’s doing, but Daniel became afraid for his own life. He became desperate not only for answers, but for survival. He felt guilty about the men who were dead because of him. He began to have unceasing nightmares about them, about the Shadow, but whether that was from the guilt or the Shadow is unknown. Daniel soon developed a near laudanum dependency in order to help him sleep. The one thing he does know is that he would do anything not to join his colleagues in death, in the Shadow. That’s what led him to Alexander’s home.
Alexander promised what no one else could - relief from the Shadow. An actual way out. Daniel was so glad to have some real answers, so dazzled by the machinery and technology at Alexander’s home, that he forgot to ask the real questions. He didn’t want to know the price of what he was doing. If Alexander could give him a true shelter from the Shadow, then Daniel was going to take it. Alexander told him that he would have to harness the Vitae, a cosmic sort of energy, from people. It would involve torturing them, but Alexander assured him that the people were bad people. Murderers and criminals. (spoiler: they obviously weren’t) Daniel didn’t ask any questions after that. He wanted it to be true because it would be easier on his conscience if they were bad people.
So, in just a couple of weeks, Daniel changed from being that hyper inquisitive man to a monster, getting caught up on the thrill of torturing and murdering people for his own survival. He showed no remorse for what he had to do and would even taunt the men in his head. He did it so often that he grew bored with the rituals and would repeat the mantra over and over in his head, as if he had to recite schoolwork. “Paint the man, cut the lines. Cut the flesh, watch the blood spill. Let it come.” It gets to the point where even Alexander becomes surprised and disturbed by Daniel's brutality.
It was only after he chased down and killed a little girl for trying to escape that he realized the mistakes he had made. (Never mind that he had spent time going out to the little girl's farmhouse, watched Alexander kill her father, and then dragged her and her mother to the prison.) Overcome by disgust and grief and horror and guilt at what he had done, Daniel drinks the amnesia potion himself because he can’t stand to think about the awful things that he’s done. But therein lies the problem. By doing that, Daniel feels as if he has absolved himself of it. He goes through this quest to kill Alexander, to “redeem” himself, but killing Alexander is in no way redeeming because it has nothing to do with his own choices. Killing Alexander, blaming Alexander, doesn’t do anything to wash his own hands of his part in what he did. Daniel writes himself "It's not fair. I'm not to blame. I've been manipulated by that demon. He played my guilty conscious [...] you made me a murderer, a monster!" He doesn't just not accept the blame, he actively rejects it and doubles down.
His phobia doesn’t make him a coward. His fear of monsters and strangeness and things that go bump in the night - that doesn’t make him a coward. His tendency to hide in closets and under desks and anywhere he can find doesn’t make him a coward. The choice he made to cut himself off from the guilt, ensuring that he doesn’t have to think about what he did anymore - that makes him a coward.
Path to Redemption: Daniel’s going to seem like an easy case on paper but will be a difficult case in person. He is absolutely and totally convinced that he has already redeemed himself for his sins. He’s so consumed by guilt for what he did that he truly believes that’s enough to absolve himself of his sins. However, he hasn’t faced those sins and won’t because of the amnesia potion. Those sins belong to another person, to the other Daniel, to the torturer who he believes he killed when he drank the potion.
He needs to sit with the choices that he’s made. He needs to face the fact that he is the torturer and that he made the choice to hurt people over and over again to save his own skin. That Alexander might have talked him into it, but Alexander didn’t pick up the knife and force him to do it. Daniel wanted to survive and escape a horrible fate, but, in doing so, he condemned innocent people to horrible fates.
Wardens may find him frustrating if they try and jump straight into accusing him of tormenting people or trying to tell him that what he’s done is wrong. He’ll likely respond by agreeing in order to deflect, but that’s not the real truth. He needs a rapport-based warden who also isn’t afraid to hold him to consequences if he doesn’t take responsibility for what he’s done. He might need intervention to regain his memories in creative ways and deal with those memories directly since he only has second hand knowledge of his memories through journal entries and visions/flashbacks, and I’m willing to work with a warden player on what that could look like. But either way, he needs to want his memories back at the very least in order to graduate. And he very much does not want those memories returned.
What’s going to trigger change in Daniel is backsliding. He’s going to have to fuck up on the Barge somehow, or he’s going to have to slip, or he’s going to have to go back to his old ways or fall in with bad people and see that he hasn’t changed and that he is capable of doing bad things. A warden is going to have to be flexible enough to let him fail because hovering over him to try and “help” him will only ensure that he continues his pattern of thinking that he’s redeemed and everything’s alright!
His reaction to the Barge will be mixed. He is a fearful creature at heart, and most of the new people are going to frighten him at first until he gets used to them. He'll perceive most things as a threat and will avoid anyone who isn't human for a while. He will be terrified of any place that is not completely lit, including the deck at "night," and will have a hard time navigating. Still, he's always curious and will always ask questions, so he will be determined to get the answers he seeks. It will take him a while to settle, but he will, with time.
History: His history is here. For purposes of the story, he went with what the wiki calls choice 4, where he was unable to escape from the cells. The Shadow overtook him and killed him. Post-graduation would include him being able to escape and finally face Alexander.
Sample Journal Entry: TDM thread - I just switched journals
Sample RP: TDM thread - I just switched journals
Special Notes: I'd like for him to keep his other powers as they are because he hates them and they mostly have no real purpose other than to be really annoying to him so serves him right for touching magical objects that he shouldn't touch. But, I am totally open to nerfing them at mod discretion if they need to be nerfed!
User DW: None
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM/to a character journal/alternate method of contact:
Other Characters Currently In-Game: John Seed, Daniel Jacobi, Rags, Godric
Character Name: Daniel (No last name known)
Series: Amnesia
Age: 21-22
From When?: At the end of the game. Daniel fails to meet Alexander in the chamber and is consumed by the Shadow in the cell.
Inmate Justification: Though Daniel will say that he has already redeemed himself, it’s a shallow redemption. Feeling bad about what he did and feeling guilty for it don’t mean that he’s actually faced these things that he’s done. In fact, he actively refuses to acknowledge what he did because it’s too hard and would absolutely do it all over again. He tortured people and, even before he was corrupted, did it because he thought they were criminals and to save his own skin. He even wrote that there was no arguing about it. Alexander told him that it needed to be done, so he did it. A warden can help him find a goddamn backbone, to stand up for himself and force him to face what he did head on.
Arrival: Agreed to come. He doesn’t think he requires redemption, but Daniel will agree to anything to get away from the Shadow.
Abilities/Powers: Daniel’s contact with the Orb gave him vaguely psychic powers, though he has no control over these abilities and they come and go at will.
- Daniel is able to sense threats before they happen. This can be an event or a person. It usually only happens a few seconds beforehand and will cause his vision to distort (which seems counterproductive to avoiding a threat, but I don’t make the rules). The distortion lasts as long as the threat does and gets worse if he looks at the cause of the threat.
- Daniel can also recall memories that aren’t his in places of extreme importance to that person. Usually, he can only hear conversations that take place, but they can occasionally be visions.
- Daniel can see a blue aura around important items that he’s looking for or needs, just like the one that was around the Orb. This usually is just small things, like tinderboxes or vials or machine parts, but can theoretically be anything as far out as he can see.
Other than that, Daniel is a standard human. He has absolutely no fighting ability (see above inability to even look at a threat). He's clever and a good problem solver. He does speak and read German and Latin, at the very least. He's got good working knowledge of machinery and anatomy.
He also knows how to find the best hiding places.
Inmate Information:
Daniel and his sister Hazel, who suffered from a debilitating illness, were often the objects of their father’s physical abuse. Daniel would often hide away from him, eventually developing nyctophobia, a fear of the darkness. And while he’s not afraid of what might be inside the darkness, he is intensely terrified of the darkness swallowing him up. If he’s trapped in the darkness for too long (we’re talking seconds here), he will start to slowly, and silently, lose himself. It starts off with shallow breaths, moving to grinding teeth. He will eventually start to hallucinate and, if he’s trapped for too long, the fear will be so overwhelming that he will be unable to move and will eventually lose consciousness. Facing his fear really doesn’t do much of anything, as he spends most of his time at the castle facing that fear. It only becomes worse.
Daniel does have a caring nature in him, despite what his father did to try and beat it out of him. Before he was manipulated and corrupted, he was a man who wouldn’t think twice about helping another person. He believes very deeply in people helping each other in order to get what they need. He’s very social and tries to get along with anyone and everyone, if only because he knows that they might need a friend or someone to talk to. His first instinct is always to help another person, even if that person has nothing to offer him. But he has a problem with trust. He will trust almost anyone with little to no evidence of their true intentions. This is how he landed with Alexander later. And he’s quite prone to following the crowd, to peer pressure.
The first instance of Daniel simply following the crowd to an extreme is when he harmed his schoolyard bully, Henry. The boy had laid hands on him time after time and, eventually, Daniel got tired of it. After all of the beatings and tauntings, Daniel fought back. But he didn’t just hit him or kick him. He took a rock and beat him in the head, taking all of that to an extreme. Daniel never forgot that day and the abuse he suffered after.
Eventually, Daniel became a research assistant for the British Museum and was able to put his naturally inquisitive nature to work. Daniel generally enjoyed his work and was delighted to go on trips. His first expedition to Algeria, however, ended in disaster and he was locked in a tomb with a magical glowing Orb. He was set upon by visions, including one of a giant, glowing Orb. Because he simply had to know the truth, because he simply had to understand, he touched it and that’s’ what set the Shadow upon him. He enjoys knowing the truth and so he set about his quest on finding out the answers behind the Orb. Unfortunately, that quest led to the deaths of his colleagues. Of course, none of them were by his hand, but were by the Shadow’s doing, but Daniel became afraid for his own life. He became desperate not only for answers, but for survival. He felt guilty about the men who were dead because of him. He began to have unceasing nightmares about them, about the Shadow, but whether that was from the guilt or the Shadow is unknown. Daniel soon developed a near laudanum dependency in order to help him sleep. The one thing he does know is that he would do anything not to join his colleagues in death, in the Shadow. That’s what led him to Alexander’s home.
Alexander promised what no one else could - relief from the Shadow. An actual way out. Daniel was so glad to have some real answers, so dazzled by the machinery and technology at Alexander’s home, that he forgot to ask the real questions. He didn’t want to know the price of what he was doing. If Alexander could give him a true shelter from the Shadow, then Daniel was going to take it. Alexander told him that he would have to harness the Vitae, a cosmic sort of energy, from people. It would involve torturing them, but Alexander assured him that the people were bad people. Murderers and criminals. (spoiler: they obviously weren’t) Daniel didn’t ask any questions after that. He wanted it to be true because it would be easier on his conscience if they were bad people.
So, in just a couple of weeks, Daniel changed from being that hyper inquisitive man to a monster, getting caught up on the thrill of torturing and murdering people for his own survival. He showed no remorse for what he had to do and would even taunt the men in his head. He did it so often that he grew bored with the rituals and would repeat the mantra over and over in his head, as if he had to recite schoolwork. “Paint the man, cut the lines. Cut the flesh, watch the blood spill. Let it come.” It gets to the point where even Alexander becomes surprised and disturbed by Daniel's brutality.
It was only after he chased down and killed a little girl for trying to escape that he realized the mistakes he had made. (Never mind that he had spent time going out to the little girl's farmhouse, watched Alexander kill her father, and then dragged her and her mother to the prison.) Overcome by disgust and grief and horror and guilt at what he had done, Daniel drinks the amnesia potion himself because he can’t stand to think about the awful things that he’s done. But therein lies the problem. By doing that, Daniel feels as if he has absolved himself of it. He goes through this quest to kill Alexander, to “redeem” himself, but killing Alexander is in no way redeeming because it has nothing to do with his own choices. Killing Alexander, blaming Alexander, doesn’t do anything to wash his own hands of his part in what he did. Daniel writes himself "It's not fair. I'm not to blame. I've been manipulated by that demon. He played my guilty conscious [...] you made me a murderer, a monster!" He doesn't just not accept the blame, he actively rejects it and doubles down.
His phobia doesn’t make him a coward. His fear of monsters and strangeness and things that go bump in the night - that doesn’t make him a coward. His tendency to hide in closets and under desks and anywhere he can find doesn’t make him a coward. The choice he made to cut himself off from the guilt, ensuring that he doesn’t have to think about what he did anymore - that makes him a coward.
Path to Redemption: Daniel’s going to seem like an easy case on paper but will be a difficult case in person. He is absolutely and totally convinced that he has already redeemed himself for his sins. He’s so consumed by guilt for what he did that he truly believes that’s enough to absolve himself of his sins. However, he hasn’t faced those sins and won’t because of the amnesia potion. Those sins belong to another person, to the other Daniel, to the torturer who he believes he killed when he drank the potion.
He needs to sit with the choices that he’s made. He needs to face the fact that he is the torturer and that he made the choice to hurt people over and over again to save his own skin. That Alexander might have talked him into it, but Alexander didn’t pick up the knife and force him to do it. Daniel wanted to survive and escape a horrible fate, but, in doing so, he condemned innocent people to horrible fates.
Wardens may find him frustrating if they try and jump straight into accusing him of tormenting people or trying to tell him that what he’s done is wrong. He’ll likely respond by agreeing in order to deflect, but that’s not the real truth. He needs a rapport-based warden who also isn’t afraid to hold him to consequences if he doesn’t take responsibility for what he’s done. He might need intervention to regain his memories in creative ways and deal with those memories directly since he only has second hand knowledge of his memories through journal entries and visions/flashbacks, and I’m willing to work with a warden player on what that could look like. But either way, he needs to want his memories back at the very least in order to graduate. And he very much does not want those memories returned.
What’s going to trigger change in Daniel is backsliding. He’s going to have to fuck up on the Barge somehow, or he’s going to have to slip, or he’s going to have to go back to his old ways or fall in with bad people and see that he hasn’t changed and that he is capable of doing bad things. A warden is going to have to be flexible enough to let him fail because hovering over him to try and “help” him will only ensure that he continues his pattern of thinking that he’s redeemed and everything’s alright!
His reaction to the Barge will be mixed. He is a fearful creature at heart, and most of the new people are going to frighten him at first until he gets used to them. He'll perceive most things as a threat and will avoid anyone who isn't human for a while. He will be terrified of any place that is not completely lit, including the deck at "night," and will have a hard time navigating. Still, he's always curious and will always ask questions, so he will be determined to get the answers he seeks. It will take him a while to settle, but he will, with time.
History: His history is here. For purposes of the story, he went with what the wiki calls choice 4, where he was unable to escape from the cells. The Shadow overtook him and killed him. Post-graduation would include him being able to escape and finally face Alexander.
Sample Journal Entry: TDM thread - I just switched journals
Sample RP: TDM thread - I just switched journals
Special Notes: I'd like for him to keep his other powers as they are because he hates them and they mostly have no real purpose other than to be really annoying to him so serves him right for touching magical objects that he shouldn't touch. But, I am totally open to nerfing them at mod discretion if they need to be nerfed!
