Shrieky

Shrieky rarely stirred from the bottom of the tank anymore. The pet shop owner had looked at the bits and pieces of decoration which the other fish liked to play around, and decided to install an enlarged version for his benefit. A few planks of wood propped against the side of the tank, some reeds, a makeshift cave, and suddenly Shrieky was gone. Vanished into the best hiding place he could find amongst the gifts left for him.

The shopkeeper gladly told people how elusive and mysterious he was, and decreased the frequency of his feeding times to ensure that he emerged whenever they came, and while neither of them was happy with this arrangement, they were both, at least, able to endure it.

For most days, unless he was tempted or tugged out to show a prospective customer, Shrieky stayed curled up in the small, ceramic cave in his tank. His fat, orange tail poking out, and his massive fins wafting lightly through the water.

They don't call themselves mermaids. Among themselves, they don't even speak in a tongue that could form the words. The closest translation that could be given for how they refer to their species, would be the word alike. They are Alike. Of a kind. Of a shared form and nature which unites them.

Their kind lives exclusively in salt water. Their bodies are designed to survive in the lowest depths of the ocean without needing to ever rise for air. They aren't shape shifters, and it is rare for them to ever feel dry land beneath their scales. If beached, they can live for perhaps a day out of the water, before they grow weak. Within four or five days, unless cared for, they will die of dehydration. The reason most understand for their ability to survive above water, is for the purposes of hunting. they lure down sea birds with their voices, so they can snatch them from the sky and taste hot meat.

Their communities tend to be tribal and shifting, children are treated as a communal responsibility, and have many nurturers. They hunt together for ocean food, pursuing and coralling schools of fish like a pack of wolves would, but alone when coaxing the birds from the sky. They hunt and fight bare handed, with strong, bony fingers and hard teeth. Against humans they rely either on their voices, or on retreat.

Most communities have certain routes through the oceans which they follow as the seasons change, pursuing food and favorable climates. They never settle, but there are places they'll return to, year after year. A certain coral reef, the carcass of a whale, a sunken ship. Anywhere there's life.

Where they came from is uncertain. There are as many myths among their kind as there are among ours. Some say they're the souls of those lost at sea, some say they're what becomes of those cast out of heaven, those who are Alike tend to believe that they once were a kind which lived in the air, but who (for whatever reason) took to the water instead. What is certain is that they have the trace of some ancient magic left in them. Their blood is warm in all conditions, heated by some mythic inner glow, and their voices are able to sway the hearts and minds of human beings, to rage, to sorrow, to desperate desire.

Among themselves, they have old songs which they sing to denote the passing of their lives. There are songs for birth and death, songs for summer and winter, and for the beginning and end of journeys. They sing to their children, they sing as they travel, and they sing to their elders. Music is as deeply rooted a part of their language as any other sound is, and communication bleeds into and out of song, as naturally as ocean currents join and part.

Their names are sighs, sounds, intonations, and snippets of songs, and they tie their hair into intricate knots, to keep it from flowing too loosely and tangling with things. They are a close knit kind, and communities often have many generations of families living together. When one is lost, all mourn.

Shrieky remembers none of this.

Out of Character Information
Name: Catherine
Username: N/A
Are you over the age of eighteen? y
Current characters in Baedal: Nope!

In Character Information
Basics
Character Name: Shrieky
Username: wontturntofoam
Fandom: OC
Played By: Ioan Gruffudd
Icon: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/1475120/1374884

4. Original Character Section (disregard if applying for a fandom character)

Physical Description: Shrieky, is physically almost identical to an ordinary human. He's a bit short, coming in at five foot eight, and looks to be in his late twenties to his early thirties. He has dark, curly hair, and expressive features. The only notable differences between him and your average human, is that he doesn't have a belly button (having been born in a cloud of eggs and genetic material floating freely on the waves, and therefore not requiring an umbilical cord) and he has no body hair at all from the waist down (since all of that is relatively new and hair hasn't had a chance to grow yet.)

Additionally, he has three thin, curved scars on either side of his neck, where his gills have been sealed shut.

Sexuality: Shrieky would probably be most easily defined as being somewhere between asexual and bisexual. He's not incapable of being sexually attracted too or infatuated with people, but neither is it something that he's particularly conscious of most of the time. Shrieky is very consumed by his resentments, and isn't necessarily self aware or socialized enough to recognize feelings of attraction or arousal when they do arise in him.

He doesn't have particularly strong feelings about gender. It's not that he's 'gender blind', it's just that he doesn't have a strong preference. The things that he's attracted too tend to be physical or behavioral qualities which aren't gender specific (For example, he finds muscular people very attractive, and people who try to initiate conversations about feelings? Creepy.)

World Information: Shrieky lives in a relatively generic Medieval Fantasy world.

Around eighty years ago, the nation he inhabits had a vast British Empire style situation going on, where it had gone out and colonized/stolen massive quantities of land, and was generally feeling pretty pleased with itself. The King at the time was a headstrong young ruffian who basically spent his time going on completely pointless quests to make himself look awesome, and gathering random trophies and oddities from around the world.

Mystical creatures exist in this world, but thanks to their intelligence and physical traits which are so specialized to living within the environments they inhabit, they tend to be hard for humans to find and harder still to get one over on. Trying to pin down a Satyr in a forest or a nymph in a river, for instance, would be akin to trying to fight a guerrilla war on enemy turf. If you had a noble duel with them in an open field, you might do okay, but unless you have an exceptionally good sense of smell or the ability to breathe under water or some such, then they're simply better adapted to the conditions than you.

Most species aren't on particularly bad terms with humans, and while most species aren't intrinsically magical (they're just physiologically different to humans) there's still a lot of superstition surrounding them. They have their own cultures, their own folktales and traditions, and generally humans consider the wisest course of action surrounding them being to leave well enough alone what you don't understand.

However, this exceptionally sensible suggestion clearly doesn't apply to countries which basically own everything they merrily waltz over and claim. Or to kings.

Which is why - much like a smug Victorian man who decides that it's a good idea to add an alligator to his menagerie and keep it in the duckpond in the grounds of his estate - the King decided that he simply could not settle for anything less than to have one of the proud and warlike Merfolk of the oceans guarding his castle moat. So with a handful of his strongest men he went out to the ocean, to try and make this happen, and... failed. He failed a lot.

First of all, the King simply couldn't find any Merfolk, the ocean is a pretty big place, and (as mentioned above) Merfolk kind of had the advantage when it came to not wanting to be found. Eventually he gave up on playing fair, and resorted to using his royal navy to cast huge drag nets into the ocean to try and catch one. This tactic actually proved enormously successful, and the King managed to catch around seven Merfolk this way. Three died on the voyage back to the castle, two had to be killed because their violence wasn't safely containable and two died when the King inadvertently tried to home them in a freshwater moat. Eventually, the stars aligned, and a juvenile Merman was successfully re-housed into the castle moat (which the king had re-filled with sea water especially for this purpose).

The king went on other quests, and fought other battles, but he mellowed considerably as he aged. Through wars of independence, and a general political relaxing around the idea of empire, the country reduced in ambition and power. It settled comfortably into the role of an old nation, rich enough in history and culture to be content with what it had. The king and his wife had a strong and noble son, and after sixty years or so of rule, he seceded the throne to his child.

His son, whether due to nature, nurture or just good fortune, was a more wise and balanced ruler than his father had ever been. He led the kingdom into an age of peace and enlightenment. Political attention moved away from conquest and glory, and the new king focused on more practical concerns, and on the quality of life of his citizens. One of the more interesting cultural innovations which he pioneered was the attempt to normalize human magic users, while witches and wizards had always existed, they were often regarded with suspicion. While people did turn to them for guidance and aid, their gifts were thought to be double sided, as likely to hard as to help. The new king was the first to have a centralized school of mages within his kingdom, and to accept the guidance of several magic users as permanent royal advisers.

The kingdom was prosperous, trade flourished, and with a strong guiding hand (and impressive, organized magical arsenal) they never feared invasion. The king married, and had two young sons, who grew as he had done to be strong and smart... right up until their early teens, when they were both drowned in the castle moat, by an extremely embittered Merman.

By this point, the king who had actually captured him was well into his nineties and suffering from dementia. He was barely aware of the fact that there was a Merman in the moat anymore.

The political consequences of this act are more or less irrelevant to this application, since the Merman (who, in case it's not obvious at this point, is the character which I'm applying) would be put down shortly after.

History: Shrieky's earliest memories are of seemingly endless walls of pink coral, and of not being alone.

But only his very very earliest memories involve this world, little more than blurry strings of images which his imagination has clung too to try and retain some sense of identity which doesn't involve living alone in a moat.

Every clear, solid memory Shrieky has involves living alone in a moat.

He was brought to the moat while he was still too young to have any real comprehension of who he was and why he was being brought there, he had no grasp of language, and out of the water his voice took on a reedy, high pitched quality, which descended into shrieking when he was afraid or confused. For the first several years of his life, he had handlers who would come to the moat and feed him, while it wasn't deemed safe to introduce any other kind of wild life into the moat in case it proved dangerous to him. Eventually he was deemed large and healthy enough to catch his own food, and a number of colonies of fish were released into the moat, with the intention of creating a self sustaining ecosystem which he could live in. Shrieky was around ten years old at this point, and it marked the end of any officially sanctioned human interaction he would have until the very end of his life.

By this point, Shrieky had managed to piece together the general pattern of his existence, but he still didn't fully understand why he was what he was, or why his life was what it was. Being surrounded by humans, but able to recognize his difference from them, he initially believed that his tail and his inability to understand English was the product of some kind of deformity, rather than the reality that he was a different species who had simply never been talked too.

This changed when he was eleven years old. A group of children were playing by the edge of the moat, and Shrieky swam to the edge to watch them. It did not take a particularly long time for one of them to notice him and react with predictable panic, which Shrieky responded too with a series of high pitched unintelligble shrieks. The children scattered, but after the initial shock had worn off, one boy returned. It would be a romantic exaggeration to claim that any kind of serious emotional bond was forged between the two, but none the less, this was to be the most important relationship of Shrieky's life.

The boy tried to talk to him, and Shrieky, recognizing that words were actually being said to him, instead of merely thrown around over his head, attempted to repeat the words back to the boy. It took a while, and at no point did Shrieky understand what it was he was saying, beyond the most rudimentary level. None the less, he managed to glean the words "Hello" and "Goodbye" from the series of encounters, and more importantly, it presented him with the idea that if he was capable of teaching himself to speak, it might eventually be possible for him to overcome his deformity and join human society. They met several times, the boy evidently curious enough to continue visiting, and Shrieky used every visit to work on mimicking the boys voice. Eventually the boys friends confessed to their parents where he was, and the visits stopped abruptly, but by this point, Shrieky had a small vocabulary of words which he didn't fully understand, and the belief that he was capable of eventually learning more.

(It is also worth noting at this point, that Shrieky doesn't actually think of himself as Shrieky, it's a name which was inadvertently assigned to him by the boy which he met at this point. The kid described him to his friends as "The Shrieky Boy", and the name circulated with the children in the town, and stuck as they grew into adults.)

For several years after this encounter, Shrieky lived primarily under the castle drawbridge, and focused his attentions upon listening to people talk. It was during this time that he managed to pick up enough language and information to gather that the thing that lived in the moat was called a 'Mermaid', although he still didn't really understand how this differentiated him from the rest of humanity. (This is generally how he'll identify himself publicly now. He won't change the term even if it's pointed out to him that technically he's a Merman, because when you're the only one of your species that you've ever encountered, it doesn't necessarily matter to you that the only title that you know can be accurately applied to yourself comes with a gender specific variance.)

At age seventeen, Shrieky had learned enough words and pieced them together with enough meanings for him to feel confident enough to initiate a conversation. He skulked in the moat for a considerable amount of time, waiting for the right person to approach for his first real conversation, and eventually selected a young man who would come and read daily at the edge of the moat. One day, without any forewarning, Shrieky chose to erupt from the water beside him, with an awkwardly accented cry of: "HELLO TALK TO ME!"

By some incredible good fortune, this terrifying greeting didn't drive the young man away permanently. On the Contary, despite his initial shock, the young man did talk to Shrieky. He was a young scholar named Everett, who had initially been highly doubtful of the story that the King kept a Merman in his moat. He was fascinated by Shrieky, and returned to the moat daily to talk to him for many years. It was through these meetings that Shrieky mastered conversational English, and through Everett's books and teaching that he learned what he really was. It was also the first time in his life that Shrieky had the opportunity to forge a strong emotional bond with someone.

In the first few years of their association Everett was extremely trusting of Shrieky. Throughout the process of teaching him about his species, Everett was very open about showing him their physical differences. Letting Shrieky touch his neck to feel the absence of gills there, joining him in the moat, either to show him how their bodies moved and reacted differently to water, or just to be in an environment where he knew that Shrieky was comfortable, and was comfortable with him being in. Shrieky was enamored with the closeness of their friendship, and returned the trust in kind, allowing Everett to inspect his tail, his absent belly button, and occasionally, very occasionally, hauling himself all the way out of the moat to sit on the bank with his friend. It was during this period that Everett actually began calling Shrieky something other than 'Shrieky' or 'Mermaid', because those both felt a little awkward as ways to address someone who he considered a close friend. He took to calling Shrieky 'Conway' which is what Shrieky would consider his name to be.

However, alongside this close friendship, grew Shrieky's self awareness, his understanding of what had been done to him, and his anger at the abandonment that he'd suffered.

There eventually came a turning point in their friendship. A subtle one, but significant. It came when Everett was called upon to fulfill his betrothal to the daughter of a Marquis in a neighboring continent. The journey to be with her for the wedding would take many months, and many more to return again with his wife, but Everett was excited by the news none the less.

Shrieky, upon receiving the happy news that his only friend (with whom he might have been slightly obsessed at this point) would be leaving for an indeterminate amount of time and returning with a new companion, whose bond with Everett would not only be more important than his was, but would also be legally recognized? Leaned out as far as he could across the bank of the moat, and tried as hard as he could to convince Everett to come get in the water with him. For the first time since they had first met, this seemed to Everett like it was not a very good idea. He said his goodbyes, ignored Shrieky's protestations, and left.

The pain of losing his only friend, combined with the realization that it had been made impossible for him to ever follow Everett, became impossible to reconcile with anything other than abject hate for those who Shrieky saw as being responsible for his predicament. At first he reserved his hatred for the King, but at length it extended to the entire Royal Family, and then to their servants, and their guards, and their soldiers, and their citizens (Because who had brought the salt water to the moat? Who had sailed the boats that cast the drag nets? Who had built the tank that housed him while he had been brought here?). Everyone was guilty, and every day another man, or woman, or child ran across the drawbridge and out into the countryside, perfectly capable of leaving under their own strength? Shrieky hated all of mankind a little more.

Everett did return with his wife, after a year, and while Shrieky did resent him (both for leaving, and for possessing the ability to leave) when he realised that his friend had returned, he couldn't bring himself to stay away.

Their friendship was changed. They still talked, Everett still shared his learning and interests with Shrieky, and Shrieky still listened and questioned, and as the initial awkwardness of Everett's absence passed, they were still extremely close. Everett never came within arms reach of the bank again though. He never brought his wife to the waters edge, and when his children were born, he warned them that they were not, under any circumstances, to go near to the moat.

Everett aged faster than Shrieky did, and his visits became more infrequent as other demands arose on his time. Shrieky came to the surface of the moat less and less, and over the years. He was more or less content to have no contact with humanity outside of that he had with Everett. With time, his presence in the moat became more the thing of rumor than certainty, and eventually the knowledge that the moat was rich with fish and sea-life became more widespread than the knowledge that there was anything more exciting in there.

Eventually, this lead to poaching. First just the odd line, or net cast under cover of darkness, but slowly more came. Poor men just looking for a safer meal than they could get going out to sea. Eventually, it became normal for nets and lines to be left loose in the moat overnight, only to be dragged in just before dawn, before the first castle watch became attentive to these clandestine activities. By and large, these didn't bother Shrieky, since he kept to the bottom of the moat at night, but you can only coexist with nets and fishhooks for so long before having some kind of encounter with them.

The poaching ended abruptly. There were a number of long fishing lines floated horizontally across the surface of the lake, with multiple hooks tied along the length of them, spaced out with a little under a foot between one hook and the next. the idea was that by covering more of the surface of the moat, the line was more likely to pick up at least the attention of some fish, without being as cumbersome to haul in as a net would be. It was one such line which Shrieky managed to catch his tail in, and which (with little more than a twist in the water to get a better look at what he was caught upon) was quickly wrapped around him, the line drawing a tight spiral up the length of his lower body, fish hooks dug deep into his scales. He struggled extremely briefly, since it became apparent quickly that struggling hurt. Eventually he resigned himself to spending the rest of the night floating on the surface of the moat, stewing in his own self indulgent misery, and slowly getting more and more worked up.

By the time morning approached, and the poachers came to drag the line into the bank, Shrieky was exhausted, irrational, and brimming with rage. As he was hauled onto land, he let out a series of unintelligible shrieks of pain and fury, and went to snatch mindlessly at the hand dragging the line in, fully intending to drag whoever was responsible into the moat and drown them. Unfortunately, in the instance, that hand happened to belong to the teenage son of one of the poachers. The ear splitting sounds which Shrieky was emitting drew the rest of the town from their beds, and by the time his brief struggle with the boy ended (a broken fishing line, and one of the older men pulling the boy back away from the edge of the moat, while another kicked at Shrieky until he lost his purchase on the bank and slipped back into the water.) it became clear that the official story being accepted was that some kind of oceanic monstrosity inhabiting the moat had reared up and attempted to drown an innocent youth.

Overnight, the poachers receded from the moat, and Shrieky resigned himself to the decision that ignoring humans simply wasn't good enough. He hated them, and any that came into his reach would drown.

It took a long, long time for any to be arrogant enough to come into his reach, but eventually, the two grandsons of the man who had imprisoned him in the moat were unlucky enough to go walking around the outskirts of their castle alone. Initially, Shrieky had only expected to be able to goad them. He'd risen from the moat to spit curses upon their ancestors, but when one of the boys had stepped towards the edge of the moat, hand on the hilt of a sword he could barely use, warning Shrieky to watch his tongue? Shrieky hadn't hesitated for an instant. He'd dragged the first forward, gripping his ankle and pulling it across the slick mud of the bank, and when the second had come forward to aid his brother, Shrieky had taken him with little more trouble. He'd held both boys underwater until their lungs emptied, and their bodies stilled, and then he'd released them onto the currents of the moat, letting them wash up for their parents to find.

Two days later, the Mages enlisted by the king cast a transmogrification spell over the moat, changing everything within it so that they could no longer survive away from land. Shrieky's tail split into legs, his gills sealed shut, and he was forced to the surface, where he was dragged out of the water.

Before his execution, The King tried to extract some explanation from Shrieky as to why he had murdered two teenage boys, but all he was rewarded with were furious ravings about the monstrosity of mankind.

And it would be at this point that Shrieky would be brought to Baedel

Powers: He's capable of functioning under heavy oceanic pressures. Unfortunately he can't breathe under water any more and he has terrible lung capacity, so this power is more like a cruel joke than anything else.

His metabolic rate and general aging is considerably slower than that of a human, a quality which becomes physically distinctive at maturity.

There is one useful power which it'd be possible for him to eventually develop, but which his complete isolation from other merfolk or their culture has stopped him from developing/knowing about the existence of at this point. Controlling people's minds through the medium of ~soooooong~.

Basically, my Mermaid headcanon is that they're capable of controlling their vocal range very acutely, and over generations their society has ascertained that singing at pitches can incline humans towards certain moods/states of suggestibility. It's not really nuanced enough to issue specific or complicated instructions, even for Merfolk who know exactly what they're doing, but if used effectively it can create feelings of rage, fear, elation, despair, and desire (desire being the most infamous 'coax sailors to their death' example).

At this point, while this is a physical capability that Shrieky has, he doesn't know he has it, nor would he have any idea how to utilize it if he did, if he ever figures it out, it'll be accidentally, and a long road before it ever becomes useful.

Talents/Abilities:: He can catch fish with his bare hands. This is about it. He's not even a good swimmer without his fish body.

Personality:

Shrieky is very much a child of rage. His outlook and personality are forged by the evolution of his consuming anger. This doesn't mean that he's constantly screaming and frothing at the mouth, but it does mean that almost everything he does in his life is steered in part by a kind of ever-present negativity.

His current outlook is very much an palimpsest of unhappiness, an image of the world which has been built upon decades of unreliable perceptions of humanity and how he relates to it. If at some point, early on, Shrieky had been sat down and had his lot in life clearly explained to him, then while he may never have been happy with it, he would at least have been able to come to terms with it and be at peace with the idea. Instead, he was forced to piece together the parameters of his unhappy existence, to decipher the consequences of it, and speculate on the reasons for himself. The result of this process has left his psyche a patchwork of rage, envy, and self hatred.

Shrieky's first instances of self awareness came with the assumption that he was a deformed human, and although this is an idea which he has long since shed, the longing for acceptance by other human beings which he felt at this age still underpins much of his consciousness. Consciously accepting this motivation would disgust him, but even while openly striving instead for the absolute rejection of humanity, the desire to be wanted by the dominant culture is deeply rooted in him.

Relatedly, he is exceptionally prone to jealousy. On a most basic level, he is jealous of the humans who he grew up around, which is why he'll generally try to lump these feelings in with his rational hatred of mankind (because they trapped him in a moat for his whole life, and that's a good reason to hate/envy people). However, while his hatred of humans is pretty focused and specific, and he's unlikely to apply it to members of other species/mythological beings/etc, the reality is that his envy is a lot more broad in scope. He's jealous of anyone with a strong sense of self, tight knit communities, people in loving, stable relationships, and anyone who's in touch with their heritage in any kind of significant way. He also holds a special kind of jealousy for anyone who's particularly worldly, or has had the opportunity to pursue their ambitions unfettered. A notable exception to this sizable list, is that Shrieky isn't at all jealous of children with close bonds with their parents, or vice versa. He probably would be, if he understood the significance of them, but it's one of the aspects of human life which has largely managed to allude him, so he doesn't feel like he's missed out on anything there.

Normally, Shrieky manages to convince himself that this envy is just a particularly bitter strand of dislike, but once in a while, there's no escaping the gut reaction of longing which he has to seeing happy human beings, and it is this recognition in which Shrieky's self hatred tends to arise. He has created a mental image of humans as being unanimously deplorably wicked, and has spent literally years trying to drive out the idea that there is anything desirable or good about them (Except for Everett, who was a rare exception to the rule). What this means is that whenever anything even resembling his deeply buried desire to be a part of humanity arises, his hatred for mankind turns inwards.

In terms of demeanor, while he is quite prone to histrionics and over dramatic bouts of rage, most of the time Shrieky is fairly placid and dour in terms of how he presents himself. He's quite impolite, and isn't always particularly adept at picking up social cues. It's extremely easy to obtain his attention, however, and he's a very naturally curious man who's easily drawn into conversation. He's not unintelligent, but he hasn't been exposed to many things which other characters might take for granted as being normal, such as having to unlock doors, or lace shoes, so it's possible that at least initially he could come across as not being particularly smart.

Despite his frequent emotional outbursts, Shrieky is actually less affected by most things than he lets on. He's spent so much time being vocally unhappy that sometimes he just defaults to behaving as though he feels personally wronged by something even if it doesn't really bother him too much. This may partly be to keep him from having to address positive emotions, or the possibility that his resentments against people don't always have too much substance underneath them.

While Shrieky's anger against humanity comes from a place of significant suffering, he's not good at directing it well. He doesn't know how to fairly assign responsibility for what happened to him, and he can't acknowledge the possibility that the people around him didn't understand that he was suffering, or in many cases, didn't even know he was there. He doesn't have the self restraint or the self awareness to consider the possibility that it wasn't his place to be meteing out vengeful retribution. Unless he can trace a direct parallel between the experiences of others and himself, he struggles to empathize with other people's problems or suffering.

Despite himself, Shrieky actually enjoys the company of others a great deal. He would probably find talking to more than one person at a time quite overwhelming (and may occasionally rage quit conversations because of this) but he cherishes conversation, and dislikes being alone. He's likely to make excuses to allow himself to talk to people, and to interject into people's conversations without warning.

He's also particularly fond of music and singing, and finds listening to the voices of others uncharacteristically soothing. This might be something of a species specific trait rather than something dependent upon his personality, but there it is none the less.


Object: The Complete Cryptid Compendium, aka The Ridiculously Huge Scholarly Tomme which Everett first used to explain the difference between Merfolk and Humans to Shrieky.

Reason for playing: I'm really interested in roleplaying a kind of open, frothing hatred for humanity that's never really been tested by kindness. Shrieky's got this vast, violent rage which has grown in almost complete isolation from society, and I'd really like to play it out while he lives in close contact with a community of people who he's convinced himself are all terrible wicked monsters. It's interesting to me in terms of where this contact could take a character who's capable of doing some pretty majorly terrible things under the right conditions, and not feeling at all guilty about it.

I'm also interested in playing a character who has some real difficulties actually adapting to this world. Shrieky has quite poor literacy, and is completely incapable of writing. Almost everything to do with having legs is going to be a new and confusing adventure for him, and I honestly I think these assorted difficulties could balance out the grimdarkness of his OMG I HATE EVERYTHING outlook, and make him quite approachable and hopefully fun to play against. I'd expect his primary character arcs to involve figuring out how to relate to humanity and how to approach his own existence.

Gods: Vell, God of Fire. Basically Shrieky's life has just been a string of horrible events which he has responded too with the thirst for vengeance and misplaced rage. He's massively bitter and his attention is consumed by his personal tragedies. At least superficially, it seems to me that they have quite a lot in common.

Writing Samples
Players may choose to write three of the four writing samples. Additionally, for two of the three samples applicants may substitute links to previously written roleplaying threads of no less than eight substantial replies. We reserve the right to ask for an additional sample if more information is required.

First-Person Network Post: [Video clicks on, and you are confronted with the image of a sullen looking young man, who looks like he's just gotten out of a bath and been vigorously towel dried. In one sharp movement, he holds up what may be familiar as a copy of A Settlers Guide to the Wondrous City, which appears to have been scrawled all over in red pen.]

I don't understand the content of this publication. I have used red ink to draw attention to the parts that I require an explanation of. [His tone is clipped and a little forced, as if he's quite uncomfortable expressing this and trying to overcompensate for that fact. He glances down at the pamphlet and gives a little frown, turning onto the second page of it, which has considerably less red ink] I altered this method here, and decided to use the red ink to indicate the parts which I do understand instead, because originally I was obscuring too many words, I think.

[He holds the pamphlet forward, so that it fills the entire screen of the CID. The parts which he's indicated that he understands are certain individual words which are underlined in red.]

Please assist me with this.

First-Person Journal Post: I am all right.

I am all right, and what is more, I am going to be all right.

It's just strange. That's all this is, and once the strangeness has been overcome I will be as capable here as I would be anywhere else.

People balance. They do it all the time, and I have seen them do it. People balance, and they walk, and they go to places, and they adorn their bodies with trinkets, some of which-- [Exhale] --Some of which I am now in possession of myself. So, I will just adorn my body with cloth and trinkets, and I shall balance, and I shall walk to places, and... Gods, for all that any of them would know, I could be one of them.


Third-Person Arrival Post: Shrieky gritted his teeth together hard, as his face was ground against the wooden execution block. There wasn't any ceremony to this, no grand public show to be made of it, neither monarch had wanted any embellishment upon this ugly consequence of his ugly deed. He felt uncomfortable, the body forced against the block still didn't feel entirely his own, but after days of screaming and howling, he at least did not feel angry anymore. He refused to blame himself for this. Perhaps his killing the boys had motivated this action to be taken, but there was a whole lifetime of suffering which motivated-- nay, necessitated his killing the boys, so really, none of this was his fault. Nothing he did would ever be his fault. This wasn't so much more terrible than anything else, really. Not worse to be beheaded than to be drowned. Or to be married. Or to be anything else.

Shrieky decided, as he heard the scrape of metal against stone, that it would be prudent of him to use his last moment of existence, to dream about being anything and anywhere else.

The wind dropped, and it slowly occurred to Shrieky that he could no longer feel the grain of wood against his cheek. Shifting awkwardly, he pushed himself up onto his forearms and lifted his head. A pamphlet which had stuck slightly to his damp skin came un-stuck, and fluttered down to land back on the small table before him. Shrieky looked down, then up at the walls surrounding him, then back down at the pamphlet. At a glance, most of the words were meaningless to him, but he was able to pick out a few of importance which he knew. The words: 'Welcome', 'Congratulations', 'Chosen', and 'Freedoms', all seemed to paint the first paragraph of the pamphlet as rather optimistic, however, the title of the second paragraph was also one which Shrieky recognized. 'Warning'.

The second paragraph offered fewer immediately recognizable words than the first, and Shrieky decided to return to it later. Gripping the edge of the table, he steadied himself and pulled his legs underneath him into a crouch, with another motion, he pushed up unsteadily onto his feet. He tottered to the side, slightly, trying to balance himself, before falling unceremoniously against one of the green tile walls. It was here that Shrieky discovered two more words which he understood, which were immediately more relevant to his concerns than the pamphlet was.

"DONT PANIC"

Shrieky was not convinced of the veracity of this advice.

Third-Person Action Post: A prose post describing your character in an emotionally fraught or heated situation. It can be sexual, violent, or just frightening; regardless, it must be adult in nature. At least two paragraphs.

Misc
Other: I feel like I should explain why I choose to refer to Shrieky as... well, Shrieky, when I mention in the app that he wouldn't respond to this, and that he considers his name to be Conway.

Basically, it's because my initial concept for the character was for a merman who'd grown up alone in a moat and tried to drown children, and it didn't make sense for a character who's got no parents or peers to have a name assigned to him by his own culture, so the only title he could have would be one assigned by... well, the children he was trying to drown. I needed a name to refer to him throughout the app when I began writing, so I went with this one.

When I got to the point of writing about his relationship with Everett, it didn't make sense to me that such a close friend would be willing to just refer to him by a generic descriptor or a childhood taunt, hence the introduction of the name Conway.

The reason why I've continued using Shrieky in the descriptions and narrative after this point, is because upon entering Baedel, Shrieky is unlikely to actually share the fact that his name is Conway with anyone, and there's no reason why anyone should necessarily attach the name to him. "Shrieky" on the other hand, is a pretty descriptive title which could be more easily gleaned from his general behavior.