night app

[evulsed]

PLAYER INFO

Player Name: king
Player Contact: pm evulsed
Character(s) In-Game: n/a

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Vanitas
Age: timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly he looks about 16/17
Canon: Kingdom Hearts

World Description: have fun with this one.

History: Vanitas specific story points.

CRAU:

Death: To cut a very long and complex story short, Vanitas faces Ventus and Sora before the Final Battle and is defeated by them both. I think technically he isn't dead (it's complicated) but for the purposes of this, we're just gonna say that he is.

What are your plans for this character in-game? I'm interested in taking Vanitas down a trauma healing path. When he was split from Ventus, Ventus got all the 'light' and Vanitas inherited all the 'dark', and in the context of KH this means he embodies all negative emotion. Once he was created he was isolated, abused, and manipulated into doing the bidding of the main antagonist, Xehanort, and had literally no other input for the whole of his existence. He feels nothing but pain and his main motivation had been to recomplete his broken heart by forging the x-Blade. In Beacon, he'll have essentially been defeated without ever achieving that goal. It's one thing for him to have died in the process, but here he'll still be alive in a sense. To that end he'll need to find a new purpose and forge new bonds, so he has a lot of room to grow into a contributing member of society instead of being an angry little gremlin trying to ruin everybody's fun.

What aspects of this game and/or its setting are you most interested in having this character engage with? I really like the atmosphere that's been set up and the flexibility this allows for a wide range of characters. An intriguing plot is one of the chief factors that draws me to a game, so I'm pretty interested in being involved with it and how it will shape my character's experience within the story. This whole mystery of what the dark is, and the idea that the only light exists as the characters and as the finite resource of the bonfire, that they're trying to fix it in some way— all of this is especially intriguing for a character like Vanitas, whose entire canon revolves around Light vs Dark and everything in between.

Also if I have the option, I'd be REALLY interested in exploring how Vanitas can actually interact with this world's darkness. It obviously isn't the same as what he knows, but I think it'd be a lot of fun if there's any way I could potentially work with the mods over how Vanitas might react to it, or it might react to him. He is literally made from darkness, so I think (and hope!) there could be some potential there.

How does your character generally get along with other people? Vanitas doesn't get along with anyone. He spends every game he appears in being Evil(tm), harrassing people and insulting them. That said, while Vanitas is 100% antagonistic, this is pretty entirely because he's focused on achieving his own goal at the expense of everyone around him. In Beacon, he's not going to have a directive to work toward, which will leave him in the interesting position of figuring out how to interact with people outside this strict Mine and Yours narrative. As a being made entirely out of negative emotion his only teachers have been his own pain and Xehanort, who wanted to literally end existence, and this message has become so deeply ingrained that Vanitas literally can't see any other way to exist. That said, he's more provocative than actively sadistic. He doesn't glory in things like torture, and he doesn't go around threatening death on everyone he meets. He's more of a misery loves company type guy.

What is your character's mental state upon entering the game? What we see of him in his last moments is an acceptance of his role as a being of darkness. This isn't to say he's satisfied with what he is, but more that he has this idea that he literally can't be anything but darkness. Other characters explain to him that, actually, he could choose something else, but Vanitas continues to stick by his I Am The Night!! shtick, insisting that darkness is what he's chosen to be. Unlike almost every other opponent the protagonist defeats, he doesn't try to repent for what he's done either, or express regret or sadness over his choices. Coming to Beacon his struggle will be with a: not being connected to the darkness here and b: facing an existence where he can't 'fix' his hurt in the way he'd been taught to do it.

Personality: Vanitas embodies everything that we would consider a bad feeling: sadness, jealousy, rage, hate. All of these were things Vanitas was conditioned to use as his source of power by his creator, Master Xehanort, in the most literal way. After he was split from Ventus, the prolonged suffering he experienced at the hands of Xehanort exacerbated his anguish until he could feel nothing but that pain and the desperate desire for some form of salvation. Seizing this moment of weakness, Xehanort convinced Vanitas the only way to escape his miserable existence would be to forge the x-Blade with Ventus and thus recomplete his heart. This became Vanitas' sole motivation.

Under Xehanort's 'training' and without any other external input, Vanitas became a selfish, volatile person. He has no compassion or sympathy for anyone and places no value on the lives of others. Even with his apparent loyalty to the cause of starting a war, Vanitas is still more interested in his own goals than that of the greater machinations of his chosen side. For example, where he should probably respect Xehanort as his master and tutor, he actively makes the choice at one point to kill Ventus even though it would throw a wrench into Xehanort's plans, just because Vanitas decided in that moment that Ventus wasn't worth the time or effort. He's fairly impulsive, something that springboards off the arrogant idea that his suffering makes him strong, and this pride is something that he retains even though he's been defeated by his counterparts multiple times.

Vanitas is also relatively young and naive. Although he's half of Ventus, he doesn't apparently retain any memory from before the time he was split from Ventus' heart, so his whole understanding of the world has been shaped by isolation and Xehanort. The nature of his being is such that since the beginning, he's been in a state of constant hurt. He understood what he came from, and resented Ventus for it until he was told the way to end his suffering would be to join their hearts together. Even then, there's no evidence suggesting Vanitas ever really stops resenting him until we reach the end of KH3. By this point, he still has the idea that he's incomplete on his own, but that he's defined by Ventus and Sora. Perhaps even that he's a reflection of them, since he has 'chosen darkness' as what he is, and Ventus and Sora represent the light he doesn't have.


Items: one (1) set of edgelord armor
one (1) edgelord keyblade

Skills/Abilities: Vanitas was created when all the darkness was pulled out of Ventus' heart and given a form, so staying true to Squeenix he doesn't really obey the laws of physics. He wields a high level of Dark Magic which includes, but is not limited to: ranged dark fire/lightning attacks, teleportation, creating 'after images' of himself as a diversion, dark energy shockwaves, dark energy beams, etc. At one point, he literally steps inside Ventus to possess his body— though that was a bit of an extreme situation. He has inhuman speed and strength and is extremely proficient in the use of the Keyblade. These skills coupled with his completely lack of sympathy for others makes him incredibly dangerous.

Dark Corridors are something of a relocation spell, where he can create a portal out of darkness and step through it to any other place of his choosing. As an extension of this, Vanitas has also been seen to be able to traverse the darkness between worlds without the need for any external protection, something specifically pointed out to be a necessity by other characters, meaning he could literally go anywhere if he wanted.

Possibly the most unique thing about him, though, is his ability to create Unversed. These are creatures of darkness that manifest out of the negative emotions Vanitas feels. He can make literal hordes of these things. The catch is that when they're defeated, those negative feelings siphon back into him, meaning he is caught in a constant cycle of agony. However, he explains this as meaning that he can never be defeated, because even as his Unversed are destroyed he just gets their power back. This suggests that he 'feeds' off of, or is sustained by, negative emotion. In KH3 it's further explained that he's given a physical form when enough of it is gathered in one place, suggesting that despair and misery not only boost his strength but are part of his literal make up.

Obviously some of this will need to be nerfed because he's pretty overpowered even by KH standards. Most of his abilities will be toned down in extremity, especially that Dark Corridor ability. Possibly he can only use it to places he's been to before, and only within a certain radius? I'd like to defer to your modly decree in that area. Additionally, a Keyblade is supposed to be able to undo any lock, but clearly that won't work in game on anything someone couldn't physically pick without magic.

Flaws/Weaknesses: Arguably Vanitas' whole character design is one big fat flaw. His total self-interest makes him blind to the plight of others and careless of how his actions might effect the people around him, even if he knows what the outcome might be. He's incredibly arrogant, stubborn, and defiant and has never shown any real suggestion of swaying from his chosen position. Under all the boastful behaviour, Vanitas is also a host of fear and doubt and sadness and jealousy. He didn't understand why he had to exist or why he hurt so much in the beginning, so when he was given a task to work toward and a potential solution for his pain, he wrapped his whole identity around it. His understanding of things is very black and white in that regard, and pretty simplistic as a result. Vanitas understands himself to be 'darkness' and because of this he could be leveraged pretty easily by another villain, especially since he doesn't seem to know how— and has decided that he won't— deviate from this path he's been directed down. As far as physical weaknesses go, Vanitas doesn't really exhibit any blatant soft spots. That said, as a literal creature of darkness, he's very likely weak to light magic.

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