[application] tu shansu

[heartofgraces]

Player Information:
Name: Kaji
Age: Over eighteen
Contact: kajichan AT gmail DOT com / yuecchi @ plurk
Game Cast: N/A

Character Information:
Name: Asbel Lhant
Canon: Tales of Graces F
Canon Point: Post Lineages and Legacies. He has resumed his duties as Lord of Lhant, Lambda and Fodra's core sleep within him, and he still awaits Cheria's return home.
Age: 19
Reference:
Tales Wiki Page
Asbel Wiki Page

Setting:
Welcome to Ephinea, where there are only four countries and magic gathers in giant glowing phalluses. To explain Ephinea, Fodra, and the series of strange events that occur there, there is some terminology that you should be familiar with, as well as the players involved in this tale. There will be a great deal of spoilers, and a quiz next class period.

Eleth: The very basic building block of all life and magic on Ephinea and Fodra, eleth is where it all begins. A planet's core, or Lastalia, produces eleth that gathers in crystals known as cryas, gathered in large 'banana' shaped structures known as Valkines. Eleth can be charged to water, fire or wind, and channeling it can create different magical effects.

Valkines: Let's talk more about the Valkines themselves! Each Valkines is around 25-30 feet long, and their absorbtion of eleth effects the climate around them in different ways. Each Valkines has a country grown around it,and the Valkines themselves regulate the flow of eleth throughout Ephinea.

The Countries; Technically, there are only three, each one with a different system of government. Conflict between the countries is historically related to the supply of Cryas, most notably between Fendel and Windor.

Windor, home of the valkines Gloandi, is a true monarchy ruled by King Richard. Due to Richard's Lambda-induced insanity, Windor has recently taken on a great deal of debt in restitution for the damage done to Strahta and Fendel, which is offset by the sale of King Richard merchandise, which shall be mercifully left at that. Windor contains separate sorts of city states which are largely independent, each one governed by a ruling family. Lhant, Asbel's hometown, is near the border into Fendel.

Fendel is the northenmost country in Ephinea and is mostly snow-locked. Due to the instability of Fobrannir's fire eleth, until very recently Fendel had few benefits from their valkines' presence. This has changed due to Malik and Pascal's efforts to use Fobrannir to pump hot water to people's homes. Located in Fendel is the Amarcian Enclave, home to a presumed-extinct culture of mad scientists trying to find a solution to the hardships of Fendel's people. Look, you're just going to have to go with it on this one.

Strahta is the westernmost country, and is run by a democracy, with the current president being very popular among the people. Strahta is a highly disciplined society, and is largely dominated by desert. Nevertheless, by utilizing the water eleth channeled by Duplemar, their valkines, Strahta maintains it's own sustainability, and in fact flourishes in it's harsh climate.

Fodra: The planet Ephinea orbits, Fodra lost it's ability to support life over 1000 years ago. Fodra's core reacted to the devastation on it's home planet by actively trying to eradicate life. Since Lambda has absorbed most of Fodra's core, Ephinea is no longer in danger of monster attacks, and is eventually beginning to heal.

The Plot Through the Eyes of an Idiot

Dramatis Personae:

Asbel Lhant is the young lord of Lhant, formerly a knight and adoptive father to Sophie. He resolved long ago to protect his friends with his own hands, and still adheres strongly to that ideal. He is Lambda's current host.

Richard, the current King of Windor, is wildly popular with the people of Ephinea and is Asbel's best friend. He is a kind and understanding young man who tried to end the world six months ago. He's feeling much better now. Former host to Lambda.

Hubert Oswell is Asbel's younger brother, adopted into the Oswell family of Strahta. Strict, overly serious and sharp-witted, Hubert is slow to warm up to others and closed off about his feelings, but does care deeply for his brother and their friends.

Cheria Barnes is Asbel and Hubert's childhood friend, and an extremely powerful healer and mage. She is currently heading a relief organization, having wished to pursue her dreams instead of immediately settling down.

Malik Ceasar is Asbel's former instructor at the knight academy and current special ambassador for Fendel. He works tirelessly for ways to harness Fobrannir's power to improve the quality of life in Fendel.

Pascal is an Amarcian researcher aiding in the efforts to harness Fobrannir. With an aversion to baths.

Sophie, also known as Protos Heis. Protos Heis was a humanoid robot created from samples of Fodra's core specifically to destroy Lambda, but these days Sophie works on gardening under the care of Asbel. Sophie was designed to specifically fight Nova monsters, and as such has powers extremely effective for fighting them. She is also capable of splitting herself into particles, although doing so will wipe her memories. Seven years ago, she split herself into particles residing in Cheria, Asbel and Hubert, giving them some of her power.

Lambda is Sophie's original target, and a mysterious being very little is known about. While he had a humanoid body, Lambda was not built the same as Protos Heis, and says only that he came from the Core. While he was treated like a son by the researcher Cornell, Emeraude saw him as little more than data, and blamed him for the appearance of monsters on Fodra. In their escape to Ephinea, Cornell was killed, and Lambda suffered further at the hands of humans on Ephinea due to his monstrous appearance. Hurt and essentially a small child emotionally, Lambda hid himself away until eventually joining with Richard in the crypts under Barona. And then they decided to destroy the world. Lambda has the ability to absorb eleth and mutate his host's form, and can take almost total control over a host he possesses. Due to Asbel's trust and influence, Lambda no longer wants to destroy humanity, and in fact took Fodra's core of resentment and anger towards humans into himself in order to teach her otherwise. He coexists peacefully inside Asbel, and makes no attempt to assume total control of him as he did with Richard.

The Little Queen is a manifestation of Fodra, and something similar to white blood cells. Created as a defense mechanism, the Little Queen seeks to destroy all humanity in order to ensure Fodra's survival, and can accelerate evolution in monsters exposed to her eleth. After most of Fodra's eleth is absorbed by Lambda, the remaining Little Queen gives her power, emotions and eleth to Sophie.

The Summary.

Around 1000 years ago, while Fodra lay dying and the ancient Amarcians there were being killed off by the Little Queen, Lambda fled to Ephinea, pursued closely by Protos Heis. Both of them were severely injured in the fight, and went into hiding. Protos Heis would not awaken until much later, when Hubert and Asbel find her at Lhant Hill. They quickly befriended the humanoid, renaming her Sophie, and befriended and rescued the young crown prince, Richard, shortly after. Asbel, Sophie and Richard made a pact to always be friends, but their happiness was to be short-lived. Shortly after, Richard was poisoned by his uncle and the others were attacked by Lambda. During the fight, Sophie appeared to have died protecting them all. Asbel, torn apart by his failure to protect her, and furious at his little brother's adoption, ran away from home and joined the Knight Academy in order to gain the strength to protect his friends.

Seven years later, Asbel was called home just before he was to become a full-fledged knight due his father's death. Lhant was under attack by Fendel, and Asbel assumed lordship in time to be cornered by their new weapons. At that time, Sophie reappeared to protect them, although she didn't remember her previous time with them. Shortly after, Hubert arrived with forces from Strahta, and challenged Asbel to a duel. On defeat, Asbel was banished from Lhant. From there, he headed to Barona, pursued by Royal Knights, only to find Richard in the crypts and that Richard's uncle, Cedric, had staged a coup. The three of them fled the city and, joined by Pascal, headed to Gralesyde for aid in retaking the throne. On the march back, Richard was ambushed and seemed killed, only to revive with much more erratic behavior. Asbel's attempts to curb Richard's strange behavior were met with angry outbursts and accusations of betrayal, finally culminating in the new King Richard attempting to invade Lhant, nearly killing Hubert and Sophie in the process. Once in close proximity to Hubert, Sophie regained the rest of her dispersed particles, and with them, her memories. Asbel went to Strahta afterwards on Hubert's behalf, only to be attacked there by Richard as he drained Strahta's valkines.

From there on, Asbel continued on to Fendel to try and prevent Richard from draining their valkines, and to prevent Fendel's experiments from coming to disastrous results. They stopped the experiments but could not stop Richard, and were from there forced to try to stop him at the core. Once they managed to separate Lambda from Richard and subdue Lambda, Asbel voluntarily became Lambda's host to prevent Sophie from sacrificing herself to destroy him, and hoped to show Lambda the trust and kindness he'd been missing.

Six months later, attacks from the nova monsters left behind by Lambda and Richard's fusion were increasing, and new, more powerful monsters had begun to appear. The groups efforts to find the cause eventually lead them back to Fodra, where they found the Little Queen, a manifestation of Fodra's core attempting to defend itself. They traveled to Fodra's core in an attempt to shut it down, and Asbel planned to allow Lambda total control over his body long enough to absorb the eleth from the core. He convinced the rest of the party to trust Lambda, and Lambda himself agreed to return Asbel's body to him when the deed was done. Lambda managed to absorb Fodra's hate, and became dormant again, effectively ending the threat to Ephinea without destroying Fodra's recovery. Asbel returned home, and promised to meet Richard and Sophie at Lhant Hill again when there was enough peace for them to once again travel the world.

Personality:
The simplest way to describe Asbel Lhant is that he is an idiot. Maintaining a stubborn idealism that gives him a kind of tunnel-vision, Asbel firmly and resolutely believes in trying to talk things out before coming to blows, no matter how far past the time for talking it actually is. Asbel's stubborn kindness and idealism are as much his greatest weakness as they are his greatest strength, making him the sort of man who is often unaware of the feelings of others, even as he strives for the strength to protect everyone around him, and to understand Lambda's feelings. At the same time, however, Asbel's stubborn refusal to let go of his idealism breaks through from simple idiocy into a kind of foolishness that, in a strange way, makes itself true. Asbel believes so strongly in his friends and Lambda's redemption that he makes it true, despite all expectations to the contrary.

Asbel is not, however, completely self-centered; paradoxically, while he is often unable to pick up on the mood or other people's feelings, he is extremely empathetic to the suffering of others, going so far as to feel deeply sorry for people who have greatly wronged him and his friends. He constantly worries for other people's suffering, and blames himself for any sadness or worry his friends or the people of Lhant face. Asbel very much sees his friends being upset as a failure on his part, and is perhaps hypercritical of his own emotional ineptitude.

Kind as he is, Asbel bears no grudges, and makes no show of forgiveness; the moment Richard and Lambda ceased to be actively hurting anyone, they were already forgiven. Asbel easily shrugs off the early betrayal of his mentor, Malik, in the archduke's coup, and just as easily forgives his banishment from Lhant at the hands of his brother. He even goes so far as to tell Richard he never hated Hubert for these actions, and from Asbel, this is absolutely true. He trusts everyone around him and everyone he meets implicitly until they prove absolutely otherwise they are untrustworthy, and even then, Asbel will forgive them and trust them again without hesitation.

Even though Asbel is extremely forgiving and trusts whole-heartedly and instantly, he doesn't react very well to other people doubting the trustworthiness or behavior of his friends. While he might worry about his friend's behavior and actions, apparently protecting them means being sensitive to criticism. While Asbel is no longer prone to shout down anyone who questions Richard his friends, he does continually stress that since he trusts a person, other people should trust that person too.

Asbel's stubborn tunnel-vision has lead him to being anchorless without a direction to go in life. While he now finds himself happily occupied working towards prosperity for Lhant and creating a family, the period between his father's death and Richard's coronation was marked by a sense of helplessness and loss of direction. Because of this loss he ended up with a heavy codependency on Richard, amplifying his own blindness to the other's increasingly erratic behavior and his snappishness when it was pointed out. While Asbel is no longer so directionless as to become codependent and is highly unlikely to become so again, the fact that it happened informs how he behaves with his other friends, most notably Sophie and Richard.

To explain his behavior towards Sophie and Richard, one must also explain how Asbel handles his own feelings of upset or sadness. Asbel, for all the time he spends forgiving others and being mostly even-tempered, flies quickly to anger at the thought of one of his friends dying or being lost to him. With his entire identity and sense of self tied to the well-being of his friends, the idea of one of sacrificing themselves, in the case of Sophie, or being unsavable, in Richard's case, is entirely unacceptable to him. He absolutely cannot stand the idea of someone dying to save him, and as such, continues to try and shield anyone from the pain of loss most particularly. This leads to Asbel being almost hyperprotective of Sophie and Richard, as he has come closest to losing both of them.

Sophie's apparent death protecting Asbel, Cheria and Hubert ended Asbel's childhood and created Asbel's obsession with protection and aversion to the deaths of others. His obsession is what leads him to originally seek to become a knight and throw away his right to succeed his father. It wasn't until he returned, and Sophie mysteriously reappeared, that Asbel began to become more self-aware, reflecting on his mistakes that had driven his brother and Cheria apart from him. His growth is then further forced by Lambda's possession of Richard, as the party had no awareness that Richard's actions were anything other than his own autonomy until very close to the final hour. Nevertheless, Asbel steadfastly refuses to give up on Richard, even though he is forced to acknowledge that Richard's actions in trying to destroy the world are completely unacceptable. It's this steadfast belief that allows Asbel to not only rescue Richard from his fusion with Lambda, but take on Lambda's infection himself and help dispel Lambda's own bitterness.

Upon arrival in Keeliai, Asbel will be most concerned with his separation from his duties in Lhant, and further concerned with the feelings of Cheria and Sophie. He won't immediately grasp that time has ceased to flow for him, and will be mostly concerned with arranging it so that the two of them don't have to worry. Once convinced that such is unnecessary, Asbel will likely try to find various ways to ease the situation in the city itself, be it the tensions between the natives and the people landed on Tu Vishan, or finding some way to halt and repair Tu Vishan's decay, and may attempt to offer his help directly to the Empress herself, as well as any individual kedan he spots in need of assistance.

Appearance:
At an average height, Asbel is thin like a jrpg protaganist but athletically built. He has red hair that shades ever-so-slightly to brown, and his eyes, without Lambda's influence, are a bright sky blue. With Lambda's infection, Asbel's left eye turns a dark purple, and will display a red ring around the pupil when Lambda is awake and active.

Full Costume
Status Menu Portrait
Mystic Arte Cut-in

Abilities:
Asbel is highly skilled in sword artes, making him the primary physical fighter of the group. Even his artes that channel eleth are meant for close-range combat with a sword. He fights with a combination of two sword styles, with his artes alternating between sheathed-sword artes, which focus mostly on his martial arts prowess and quick-drawn sword strikes, and drawn sword artes which utilize the power imparted to him by Sophie near the end of his childhood. Asbel has no channeled spell artes, and is in fact the only party member who does not.

Asbel's Sheathed sword artes are characterized by quick kicks or hits with the sword still in scabbard. The Drawn Sword Artes focus on channeling eleth and defensive stances, and when Asbel initially begins this style he becomes briefly immune to being staggered. He is capable of utilizing lightning attacks and some illusionary effects with his sword drawn.

Asbel has access to Mystic Artes, which are usable after enough sustained attacks. With Lambda's aid, Asbel can also enter accel mode, that causes damage to enemies too close to him for a few seconds, and increases his own attack power. In accel mode, he can also trigger a mystic arte. In this medium, while his mystic artes would be useable after enough attacks, the accel mode would only be usable under extreme stress.

Asbel is the current host of Lambda, and while Lambda is active he is capable of using his own power without Asbel's control. This is only ever in the event of life-threatening danger to Asbel and, by extension, the rest of the party, in which case Lambda can create a repelling shield powerful enough to completely negate the attack from a being formed from the core of an entire planet's worth of power. Lambda is also capable of absorbing eleth, although doing so in large quantities without complete control of Asbel's body is very likely to kill him, and even if Lambda has complete control, there will still be a notable strain on Asbel's body afterwards.

Inventory:
1 Sword (Valkyraffe)
1 Sheath
Costume (Default)
1 Burn Charm (Prevents Burned Effects)
5 Peach Gels (Healing Items, heal a moderate amount of health)
1 Eleth Mixer (A device that synthesizes more of items put in it during combat. It can even cook meals!)
5 Various Flower Seeds


Suite: WO-3C.