OOC: Empatheias Application

[boredalready]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Mako
Contact: makotos
Age: Over 30
Current Characters: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Lloyd Irving
Age: 17
Canon: Tales of Symphonia
Canon Point: Before entering the Tower of Salvation through the secret entrance

Background: Lloyd on the Tales of Wiki

Personality: Lloyd is your basic shounen hero. He’s kind, nice, not too bright, brave, and a little naïve. He is loyal to his friends to a fault. He tries to find the solution to every problem so that it benefits as many people as possible involved. He takes full responsibility for his actions, despite the consequences. He isn’t afraid to speak his mind about a situation, even if he comes off as foolish or ill-informed after doing so.

When Lloyd was a small child, his mother died because of the local Desians (half-elves that ran a “human ranch” which made Exspheres (basically they are human soul-powered spheres that allow its user to pull mana and power from the world for various reasons) using humans as host bodies for the devices) and he was found by a dwarf named Dirk. Dirk raised him outside the village of Iselia as his own child, teaching him what dwarven skills he could and how to live a good life with vows that would shape his life. This act by Dirk taught Lloyd that family can be made by affection just as easily by blood and it’s the feelings the matter in the end.

Growing up, he went to school in the nearby village. He liked to go to meet the rest of the kids, but mostly because he could hang out with his two friends, Genis Sage and Colette Brunel. Genis is the younger brother of the elven teacher, Raine Sage, and is super smart for his age, often excelling in every subject taught by his big sister. Colette is the Chosen, marking her out as different from the rest of the schoolchildren. These three should have been loners, but because Lloyd didn’t see any reason not to befriend the smart kid and the local priestess, they are all thick as thieves.

Lloyd actually serves as the group’s cheering section. When anyone is down or upset, it’s Lloyd who talks to them about what’s wrong, who tells them that it’s okay to cry if things hurt. He acknowledges everyone’s skills and additions to the group. He even recognizes how best to use people in situations that call for the group to spilt up. He doesn’t press Regal for the reason why he avoids Altamira until he’s ready to tell his story. He listens to everyone and offers what little bit of wisdom he’s managed to gather to help those around him. Though their mission is dark and unhappy, there’s no reason they shouldn’t smile and make friends, right?

Everyone in this game (except Presea) lies about something at one point or another. Colette lies about how the journey is stealing her humanity and will inevitably kill her. Genis and Raine lie about the fact that they are really half-elves, not full-blooded elves. Kratos lies about both being Lloyd’s birth father and the fact that he’s working with Cruxis. Zelos lies about…basically everything. Regal doesn’t lie, so much as he conceals a good portion of his backstory until he’s forced to tell the group about it due to circumstances. Sheena is another concealer. Lloyd tells little lies, but nothing quite as major as the rest of the group. However, despite all the deception and lack of communication of important things, Lloyd has full trust in every single one of these people. Well, except Kratos after it’s revealed that he’s their enemy, and even then he follows Kratos’s advice about how to save Colette and lets him back into their group to save both worlds.

He doesn’t particularly like to study. He’d rather be out playing or helping his friends. He remembers stuff from lessons that interest him, such as he learned all of Dirk’s smithing lessons quickly and loves to do it. The rest, he half-remembers. There is a skit that later talks about how Lloyd managed to remember all of the Dwarven Vows from Dirk—because his adopted father withheld food from him until he could recite them backwards and forwards some days. However, on the journey, he learns more about the two worlds in a quick amount of time, mostly so that he can catch on to some of the more complicated things that the others are talking about and he then break it down into way more basic words, even if his explanation loses some of the drama and finer nuances that the situation calls for.

He comes off as slow, when that’s not the case. He does rely a lot on his own intuition, which is usually very good and useful in most situations. Genis relates it to animal cunning and that might be the closest to truth than anyone else has every gotten when explaining Lloyd’s flashes of brilliance. Although, then you get gems like when he was asked why he carries two swords and he replies that two are better than one, right? As such, he does miss a lot of the innuendo and reasoning behind Zelos’s actions and words. (A good example is when the group is traveling through the Temple of Darkness and Zelos is talking about how great the dark is for making moves on girls. Lloyd doesn’t really get why, but he knows enough about Zelos that he tells Sheena that it’s Zelos touching her butt in the dark.)

However, he doesn’t understand his own motivations for half of the things he does. Why did he follow Colette on her journey? Because he and Genis were banished from Iselia and had nowhere else to go, but that’s not the full story. He went with her because he wanted some adventure that he wouldn’t find back in the quiet village they grew up in. Also, he really wanted to protect his friend, even if he didn’t fully understand that the journey would kill her. Why does he trust Kratos, though he’s shown to be a traitor and their enemy? He later tells the group that he just knew that he could trust Kratos somehow.

He’s got a horrible temper and intense hatred of the Desians that he lets get the better of him more than once. The most notable incidences usually involve the human ranches on Sylverant. He brashly decides that blowing up the ranches is the only solution, along with Raine’s help and knowledge of some of the systems. This in turn leads to a few villages being counter-attacked by the Desians in search of him. Another instance that makes him almost irrationally angry is the way that half-elves, not Desians, are treated as slaves on Tethe’alla. The Pope of the Church of Martel in Meltokio has a half-elf daughter that he uses and abuses for whatever purposes he wants, and yet Kate would do anything for his love, including die for her father. The fact that the Pope doesn’t care brings out the ugliness of Lloyd’s temper and makes it easier for him to help depose him from his position.

When something is brought to his attention that’s wrong, he wants to fix it. The best example of this is what starts his journey. He escorts Genis to the local Human Ranch, thinking that his friend is meeting up with a secret pet that Raine doesn’t know about. When he finds out that it’s a human on the ranch, he gets a little antsy, because he knows about the treaty the village has with the ranch to stay away from each other. However, his friend needs him so he goes along. He meets Marble and sees that she’s got an Exsphere on without a Key Crest, something that is highly dangerous and potentially lethal. He promises to get her one so she is safe. Unfortunately as they are leaving, they see the Desians mistreating the humans. He helps Genis shoot fire balls at them and when his friend falls as he tries to run away, Lloyd jumps down and takes on the guards, letting his face be shown by the video system, thus meaning that the treaty has been broken. When the Desians attack Iselia looking for him, he shows up and fights the trans–formed Marble and accepts the banishment by the villagers for his part in the tragedy that led to half the village being burnt down.

This comes back later when the group meets Cocoa and Chocolat, Marble’s granddaughter and daughter, in Palmacosta. Lloyd and Genis tell the story of what happened at Iselia. While Cocoa understands and doesn’t hold it against them, Chocolat does and she tells them that she doesn’t want to be saved by her grandmother’s murders when she’s captured by Desians. In fact, she goes so far as to go with the Desians to the Iselia ranch after the Asgard Ranch is destroyed to avoid going with Lloyd and his group. He doesn’t fault her, but he knows that she can’t stay with the Desians. When they ultimately save her at the Iselia Ranch, he tells her to not think of it as being rescued by him but by the Chosen. He accepts her hatred and doesn’t let it rule him or stop him from doing what he knows is the right thing, which is to get rid of all the Desians and their Human Ranches.

Not that he would ever describe himself as perfect or allow anyone else to do so. He’s got faults, aside from his dislike of studying. His mixes up idioms, but not too terribly. He doesn’t understand that older people don’t like to be reminded that they’re older, such as in a skit with Regal. He admits that his initial dislike of Kratos was because the older man was so dismissive of him and his abilities while being so talented himself. In other words, he was super jealous of Kratos, but it’s this knowledge of himself that allows him to grow.

Abilities:
Lloyd is a self-taught swordsman, utilizing two swords to fight and a gauntlet to block/add more damage, depending on what he has equipped at the time. Like any Tales of character, he comes with a set of artes, called Tech in Symphonia, which incorporate swift swings of his swords or usage of gauntlet and the mana in the world as he fights. He sacrifices extremely powerful hits for more frequent hits and higher combos with his nimble movements and lower miss rates. He uses Guardian (a bubble of mana that surrounds him) to block a lot of damage when needed, but his only ranged attacks involve Demon Fang—an attack that travels from the tip of the blade and along the ground to hit its target—and its derivatives.
List of Artes (Also recommending that he needs a full party of cast mates with corresponding spells to use any combo/union moves and that his Mystic Arte be unusable.)

Alignment: Elios – Since the motivating factors behind Lloyd’s actions in Tales of Symphonia all boil down to his hatred of Desians (and later everything Cruxis and the Church of Martel stand for) and the love of his friends and people in general, despite race, I think that Elios is a great fit for him. While Thras is a good option as well, everyone in his group expresses bravery and fear at one point or another, mainly in the face of Lloyd’s actions.
Other:
Inventory:

Weapon: Material Blade (A set of swords given to him by his fathers, one of ice and another of fire)
Body: Star Mail (Armor made of the strongest material available in both worlds
Head: Golden Helm (A helm made from a gold-like metal to distract as it protects its wearer)
Hand: Star Gauntlet (hand armor made of the strongest material available in both worlds)
Accessory 1: Diamond (An accessory that ups every stat and is made from an actual diamond)
Accessory 2: Warrior Symbol ( raises the wearer’s attack by 10% of his base stat)

(I'd also like for Lloyd be able to bring his pet, Noishe. Noishe is a green and white animal that resembles a mutated, large dog. Noishe is actually what is called a Protozoan, an organism that has five forms. Noishe is currently in his third form and used to belong to Kratos. It's believed that Noishe traveled with Kratos, Martel, Yuan and Mithos as they tried to stop the Kharlan War 4000 years before the main story. 
Noishe is very loyal to Lloyd, but he is afraid of monsters. Supposedly the reason is that Noishe and Lloyd were attacked by the morphed Exbula form of Lloyd's mother, Anna Irving, due to Kvar, Noishe was there when Dirk found Lloyd, Anna and the strange dog as Anna lay dying near the bloody three year-old Lloyd. The group actually uses Noishe as a good indicator of monster activity in a few cut-scenes and he also doubles as a way to travel over land, with the right landmarks tagged. More information about Noishe can be found here.)

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: Lloyd on the TDM