Unfinished App (Ironically, Complete)

[extrasaltypotato]

Player Name: Talia Elliott Belser, FKA Bliss
Player Contact(s): therealbliss and taliaellib on Discord
Are you over 18? Happy 40th to me last March
Do you have any other characters in game?: Not yet.
Who invited you?: NA.

Character Name: Hikaru Aozora
Canon: The Wonders of Mundus, a published novel series, of which I am the author.
Canon Point: Immediately post book 2, Out of Bounds Interactions.
Age: Actually 38, apparently either 16 at first glance or 25 if you're more careful.
History:
In 2047, full sensory VR is how people tired of the U.S. government denying that how Covid is endemic first meet people before becoming friends online; and few venues for that are more popular than the seminal VRMMO The Wonders of Mundus: Mundane Phantasy Historia. A classic fantasy game in an alt-historical Renaissance setting of Mundus, almost everyone with access to a Neurohelm rig was online playing it's latest expansion, Pepper, Silk, Gunpowder and Rum, when it came out that October.

Then everything went to hell with what it's victims (and beneficiaries) would call "the Awakening."

As I joke on the back cover, "a trans woman in denial is about to get way too into her favorite VRMMO." That egg was piloting an avatar named Deedee Yeowoo, a Vulpecian Cleric of Sylphan, which is to say a ripped foxgirl who could both heal and fight like a monk of a martial order. She, along with Hikaru and the other members of her Free Company, Dungeon Crawling And Chill, washed up on the Shores of Awakening tutorial area, unable to log out. Together they rescued the 'sensecaster' Ace Striker, piloting a Vulpecian Warrior specced as the notoriously risky Berzerker subclass, who was unfortunate enough to be livestreaming her free trial up to level 70 with content up to the award winning King of the Mountain expansion when the Awakening hit.

After several misadventures with pirates being aided by other PCs on the island, and discovering that the locals had graduated from scripted NPC to fully sapient "Mundanes," they made their way to the Seville-like Free City of Viacruz. They learned there that the fast travel teleport circles had been nonfunctional ever since the Awakening, and earned an audience with it's mayor and the Contessa, Dolores Marisol, for their gallantry defeating the 'griefers' and their Mundane pirate allies.

She hired them to investigate rumors of agricultural pests infesting the royal vineyard - in a village literally called Vinyedo Real - and Hikaru and Deedee both realized almost immediately that she suspected the involvement of what they were now officially calling The Griefers. A local textile merchant named Tayeb Kosmos, grateful that Deedee's free company had rescued her daughter Shadi from being sold as slave labor by the Griefers, also hired them to take him to Vinyedo - coincidentally his hometown.

Tayeb vouched for the Contessa's recommendation for a guide, a Ranger of Hikaru's Pixie species called Siobhan Greenwood - As brilliant as she was deadly with a bow and absolutely fluent in internet memes. After dealing with mercenaries sent by the Griefers to stop them, they marched overland along the Juadipato to their destination. Hikaru was nursing a crush on both her and on Deedee as they went, but as it became apparent that Deedee was more interested in Ace, he silently wrote her off.

Then they encountered the Glitch Sargasso.

Forced to make up for time lost from the mercenaries, Siobhan led them through a risky shortcut through the Neverglades - or an instanced dungeon in Faerieland that would pop them out closer to Vinyedo than taking the roads. But the area had been glitched by the same thing that caused the waygates to close, a portal in the sky dripping seawater and allowing Scylla - a powerful Profane Beast raid boss from a distant ocean that outclassed thier party - to sense and attack them. Ace was injured enough for the first time to actually go berzerk, nearly dying as she recklessly attacked, and they all barely escaped with thier lives at their intended exit.

Which is how Hikaru came to realize two things: first, that Siobhan was not a player at all but a Mundane exceptionally skilled at 'personating one,* and second, that the AI governing scene transitions - including logging in and out - Io, the Worldsculptor, the namesake for the Mundane god of spaces physical and liminal - must have been very badly injured by a cyberattack.

He felt he could not in good conscience conceal the latter fact from his companions - player and mundane - and explained it to them, the first night they could rest on the trail after the deadly encounter in the glitched, wrongwarped dungeon. Siobhan then confessed her ignorance about computers as a Mundane, which twigged the rest of Deedee's party to her deal; Tayeb and Shadi took it in remarkable stride, as harrowing as the news that one of their gods was injured and that from a certain perspective they were bit players in someone else's entertainment, helped by Hikaru's kind assurances that he considered the connections they made on Mundus to be as real (or as much a part of maya) as any friendships on Earth, which everyone could agree on.

This also suggested a hopeful note: if they were unable to log out because the system enabling them was damage, this meant that if the people who found them knew what they were doing, they would still be alive if catatonic on Earth.

The book ends as they pull into Vinyedo, "six adventurers walk(ing) into a tavern, too tired to find a punchline," and find inn beds after their ordeal.

*(look it up. personation is the medieval crime of pretending to be someone else without pretending to be someone specific, which is impersonation.)

Is this character an AU? What type?: Nope.

Personality:
Hikaru believes in heroes.

Hikaru has believed in heroes ever since he was a wee lass of 10 (he's transmasculine), when his babysitter on the TV was the action scientist Kamen Rider Build Kikaiser Nano - who fought, not for an ideal of justice that could be warped around matters of nation, race or creed, but around the simple utilitarian principle of reducing the net suffering in the world. He adopted this system of personal ethics, as informed by his Buddhist upbringing and a secular faith in the inherent virtue of humanity and of (self-)knowledge. Technology is used for evil, he professes, only by those too wrapped up in their own ego; very few people are evil themselves, just capable of wrong action and a warped state of mind, which requires a certain clarity of thought to avoid. Only those who deliberately inflict suffering for suffering's sake, such as the neonazi Griefers, are monsters in this worldview; all lesser acts of evil are tragedies, not villanies.

He protests that he's the only member of his guild that's not a weeaboo, but can only manage to do so on the technicality that he's nisei Japanese; Kikaiser Nano blowing his goddamn mind before he even used he/him pronouns led him down the rabbit/tank hole of toku, shonen, gaming and Hollywood action, and he's as big of a fucking nerd as the rest of them. He's heavily involved in fandom, from speedruns to anime cons to knowing all the best tabletop and video games; he probably even did some panfandom journal RP, and might paint the fourth wall by referring to the Library as "a spooky jamjar."

(Naturally, he won't recognize any of the other Editors unless he met them on Mundus - I've been compiling a list of expies and parodies of the sort of things he and his friends have been into, some of which are other projects of mine. Although, that said, he might tell a hypothetical Rainbow Dash how much she reminds him of Skybiscuit, the Pegasus Champion of Valor...)

Hikaru as a result can seem simultaneously standoffish and naive. He is the type who will lose track of the world and everything going on in it when he finds his passion, but he doesn’t understand what goes on in people’s heads well - which also means he has trouble recognizing when people aren't acting in good faith, and he can seem rather gullible when he's not already suspicious of someone's motives. A string of code is simple, straightforward, easy-to-understand - for Hikaru; and with computers, if you don’t have any errors in your code, the output of your input is predictable. But people are messier, and there’s no ‘right’ answer, no way to precisely match input to output.

That doesn’t mean he’s okay with this state of affairs. He’s bad at showing it, but he does have a lot of empathy - perhaps too much, even. He doesn't have difficulty understanding the emotions of others, but rather with appropriately expressing his own. He doesn’t know when he hurts people, but when he finds out, it hurts him too. He doesn’t want to be alone, even if he has accepted it as the most likely outcome due to who he is and what he’s like. He doesn’t want pity, he just wants to be understood.

Hikaru isn't bothered by the Awakening itself; he quite enjoys the intellectual puzzle of unraveling the game physics of Mundus, and of feeling like a benevolent genius when his discoveries improve the Namer condition. He is annoyed that his 4'2" stature contributes to his youthful appearance, with guesses anywhere from 16 to 25: to put it bluntly, he is and remains a tremendous flirt, looking for love pretty much anywhere he thought his attentions would be mutually amusing... before getting isekai'd into a body that most humans double-guess the age of. Meaning he has to second guess the motives of everyone demonstrating interest in a Pixie like him and he hates it - do they think he's a teenager and an easy mark, or do they appreciate him for his maturity and his sense of humor?

Powers and Abilities:
In addition to his ordinary skills with scientific experimentation, coding, media literacy and literary analysis, and ability to do library research, this version of Hikaru is a 5th level character using the Valor: Heroic Roleplaying tabletop RPG system.

Diegetically.

Isekai, y'all!

Specifically, he has the Attributes, Skills, Techniques and Proficiencies that mark him as what WoM would call a "Wizard," an arcane spellcaster and warmage that uses both Spirit-based impulsive evocations and more involved Mind-based thaumaturgical rituals.

His Attributes of Spirit and Mind are both as good as they can be for a 6th level character, granting him keen intuition and reasoning skills as well as a faintly palpable aura of both magical power and benevolence, mostly manifesting as a powerful and commanding voice - and people confiding in him without knowing why in canon. These grant him an exceptional amount of physical stamina, which he can easily charge with the spiritual energy that, on Mundus, would be called "Breath" or "Pneuma." In comparison, his Agility and Guts are a high civilian or heroic average value, while his physical Strength is abysmal, as usual for Pixies.

His Skills include various ways to increase his raw magical power (Energy Attacker, Empower Attack, Blazing Might and Versatile Fighter), and thaumaturgical skill enough to: shape AoE spells with Discretion so as to miss allies; activate his Spirit Sight, which can sense creatures and allow him to analyze magical objects and places by their Aura; Nullify ongoing magical effects or heal minor afflictions; fog foes minds to Seal away their most obnoxious Techniques (physical or magical); and lay down runic circles that he can cast spells out of, extending his range. He can't fly, but he can use his wings to double jump quickly around the battlespace. He's also an expert in Thaumaturgy, as maybe the only person in America who actually read the damn loreposts.

He can shoot Magic Missiles an Elfshot Barrage, werf flammen in the form of a classic Fireball, hurl Frost Lances that freeze over their targets, fire Chain Lightning bolts, and scribe Ley Lines Pentagrams of Power to boost his and others magical prowess.

And his Ultimate Technique or Tension Break, which he only pulls out on worthy targets because it's incredibly taxing to cast, a Star Shower: calling down a rain of exploding meteors that leave huge, smoking craters.

Inventory:
Hikaru customarily wears his black wizard hat, a red mantle with a gold clasp that can absorb or deflect some of the energy of incoming hostile magic, plain black robes with gold check, and a belt with a potion holster, a sporran for keeping his coin, and a sheathed knife. He also walks around with a black staff with a diamond-shaped hollow and a red "auracite" crystal point at the tip, which he uses to channel and direct his magic spells.

Unfortunately, he left his backpack with his rations and some other consumables and necessity in his chest at the foot of his inn bed, so the clothes on his back and his staff are all he gets.

Sample: Here.

When presented with a choice, is the character more likely to stick with tried and true methods? Or make something new up on the fly? This is situational, but he'll likely experiment with the New Thing.

What is more important to your character, preserving the past or forging a future? Forging a future.

How does your character influence their own story? What about the stories of others? He has often willingly stepped into the role of a mentor, and exposits at the drop of a hat.

Are you alright with your character’s canon being used as a Recommended Reading?:
Would you please use The Wonders of Mundus as recommended reading? (laughs in wanting a wider readership)