Tower of Animus App

[plumesofdusk]

Player Information

Name: Snarky
Personal Journal: jackalope
Age: 22
Contact Info: AIM & Plurk: sargentsnarky
Other Characters Played: N/A

Character Information

Character Name: Ryoji Mochizki / Nyx Avatar
Character Series: Persona 3 Portable - female protagonist route
Character Age: Unmeasurable - as a portion of Nyx, which is basically an eldrict abomination older than life on earth itself, his age is really just… yeah. Unmeasurable. He appears to be in his late teens or early twenties, however.
Character Gender: male
Alternate Universe
Canon Point: The end, after he has buried Aigis. [See AU background for details.]
Background Link: Wiki link here
A translation / paraphrase of additional information on Nyx and Shadows and whatnot located here

AU Background: Detailed Version Here
On December 31st, Ryoji gives the protagonist (hereafter referred to as Minako) a choice to either suffer and keep her memories and prepare to face Death and The Fall head on OR to end the Dark Hour and forget all about it and delay the Fall a little while so that it comes up on them unlooked for. This latter choice, he promises, will save them a lot of pain and suffering. To pick it, all she has to do is kill him. The canon True End choice is for her to not kill him. However, the Bad End choice and the choice this AU follows is to kill him. And that's what Minako does.

With that body dead, Ryoji fades into the night and into the shadows, and it takes several additional months until the Fall happens on March 5th. Ryoji reforms as Nyx Avatar, bringing her fully here and acts as a beacon to call all the fragments of Nyx out of everyone's minds/souls back to her. Once all of the Shadows have been pulled out of conscious beings, Nyx still isn't complete, as there are many isolated Plumes of Dusks - or pieces of Nyx - scattered around the world, many of which were collected by groups like the Kirijo group for experimentation. Ever Evoker has one, Aigis has two forming part of her Papillon heart, Mitsuru's motorcycle is probably powered by one, etc.

Therefore, in order to collect all the pieces to make Nyx whole so that it may once again traverse the stars, Ryoji is somewhat freed from his Nyx Avatar / beacon state to wander the globe, collecting them. It takes him many years (decades, maybe even a century or two; he lost count), but he isn't in a particular hurry. He and Aigis clash but also wind up being each others' only company, and her two Plumes are the very last two he takes, when she is at last ready to die and move on.

He buries her and decides to take one last "walk" around the world to say goodbye before returning her heart to Nyx, and this is his canon point.


Personality: Ryoji is kind and very sympathetic towards the suffering of others, and at this point, he is more at peace with himself than he ever was in his actual canon. And he is ready for his own end, now. He has reached a point where he can start to let go of the guilt and the self-hatred, because everything is at peace now. Everything is dead, and it will very soon be time to move on. However, such things may be reawakened with the right triggers - for example, being brought somewhere new and told he must keep on existing.

What he's left with at this point is a 'what now'? What is left for him, now that he has completed his appointed task? The interest of taking him here is to explore how he'd deal with a place where there is nothing but suffering. How does he react? What does he do? How does he find a new identity for himself, when his primary purpose has been fulfilled?

These are all questions he must answer for himself, in a new place.

Beyond this, he is chiefly defined, now, by resignation to his duty and to the ultimate result of how the world has come to be. He is resigned to the end of all things, and he comforts himself with the knowledge that no one will suffer any more. Even Aigis' suffering has ended at this point. And the idea of a world with no more suffering has been his comfort and something he's clung to for a long time.

That aside, he is still more than capable of smiling and laughing - in memorial of those who can no longer, if nothing else - and he often does when he reads preserved books or watches ancient recordings, though it's muted. He has lost his innocence and does not get as caught up in the wonder and beauty of the world and of life as he once did, though he remains sensitive to it; it is more like if the canon Ryoji is a child, this is a Ryoji who has grown up and grown old. He still appreciates beauty and does find wonder in new things he discovers in his travel - buildings he's never seen before, books he finds and reads, beautiful view of the ocean or of a valley or a mountain - but his ability to feel joy is muted, tempered by the knowledge that there has been no one for him to share these things with save for Aigis, and she is gone.

He is usually very calm, and like his canon self, not particularly prone to anger, though unlike his canon self, he is also no longer prone to quite the same exuberance and excitement. He does, however, carry with him a fair amount of self-hatred and a lot of guilt both for having had to bring the world to an end and for the continued suffering that had been inflicted upon Aigis by being aware of all of this. And he is still very much mourning the death of humanity and especially the ones he cared about most - the friends he made during his brief time living as purely human. At the same time, however, he is glad that they all died peacefully and had a last few months of joy instead of dread. So really... he has mixed feelings about it all.

One last notable difference between him and his canon self will be the flirting - the one he considers his soul mate (Minako) has been dead a very long time now, and although he still would happily befriend just about anyone, flirting is a little beyond him. Well, deliberate flirting. Some things he means as compliments may just be taken as flirting.

If thrown into a game setting, at first he might be a little shell-shocked at suddenly being surrounded by life, again, after so long with stillness, but he would also be joyful to know that there are worlds full of life and a desire to keep on living (even if he would also be sorrowful to know that all such worlds still contain suffering). And more than anything, he would revel in no longer being alone. If there were canonmates, he would ... be somewhat awkward around them, of mixed feelings whether he should even approach them or not and if so, what he should say to them, but a lot of that would initially be washed away by the simple joy of seeing them alive again.

He would be amazed to hear of a world where the protagonist chose not to kill him, and he wouldn't understand the decision, especially when he hears about The Seal. He would be upset at the thought of the protagonist dooming him or herself to a long time alone like that, stuck protecting everyone, and it would take a while for him to come to terms with that idea and to accept that the protag'd be okay with that for the sake of everyone else getting to live



Abilities:
> Ryoji is capable of freely shifting between his human form, his shadow form and his Nyx Avatar form, and sometimes he winds up somewhere in between. The long years of being mostly alone but closely tied to Nyx have warped his sense of self a little, and although he mostly adopts his human form, he has a tendency to manifest with wings sometimes or his sword or the chain of coffins. Nyx Avatar and his human form are the two most easy for him to manifest right now, as those are the two he is most tied to now. He is still capable of taking on his Death form, however, and will do so if necessary for defense or utility.

> A detailed list of what Nyx Avatar can do can be found here

> Even in his human form, he is capable of projecting some sort of barrier (perhaps a form of Moonlight Gown) to protect himself from attacks and reflect them back to an extent. In fact, because he's existed in this state for so long, what form he is in really doesn't matter that much when it comes to the use of his powers.

> Specific to this AU, as part of Nyx, he is capable of pulling someone's Shadow (in other words, their consciousness) out of their minds/souls. It's much easier if they have given in to death / have a death wish. [note: obviously this would only be something done with permission, if it isn't nerfed by the collars and how souls are here]

> In general, he is very, very durable, being what amounts to an end game boss mixed with a sealable-but-not-destroyable final boss. Obviously his Animus body is probably less durable than the shadowstuff he is originally made of, however, and will probably not reform so easily.


Sample Entry: Test Drive Here