IF YOU BRING A GUN, BABY

Player NAME: Sophia
Current AGE:
Personal JOURNAL: oceanwrath
IM & SERVICE: aim: shallow bays
Player PLURK: oceanwrath
Current CHARACTERS: Bariyan e Kodhi (stonefaith)

Character NAME: Corosa Nyem
Character PULL-POINT: About six months after getting his arm amputated
Character AGE: 32

Corosa's got high dexterity, accuracy, and (somewhat surprisingly) speed. Basically, he's good at shooting guns and he's good at shooting guns fast. Or at least, he was until he got his arm cut off. These days his skill and speed have been greatly reduced as it's taking him a while to adjust and rebalance himself.

He also has a few special abilities that are fueled/paid for by magic coins, which are gained through an ability called Coin Flip, where he tosses a coin: if the result is heads, he gains an extra coin. If tails, he loses one. Each coin gained beyond the original one gives a little extra power to his shots (for example: a shot with one coin on his person will leave a bullet hole in a wall, a shot with ten coins might blow out a whole chunk of wall). He can generate a maximum of 10 extra coins this way, making for a max total of 11 coins on his person -- 10 generated ones, and the single original coin.

The original coin is special. It cannot be used to pay for his any of his abilities. If he is down to just the original coin, and he flips and loses, nothing will happen. And while the other coins will vanish into thin air if they part from his person, the original coin will not -- therefore, it can be stolen, taken away, or lost. Corosa is careful to keep a careful eye on it at all times.

Abilities that consume coins are (some slightly modified/adapted to work in an out-of-game setting):

Magical Bullet: Fires a ghostly bullet (and consumes no ammo) for normal damage. Costs 1 coin.
Cracker: A fired shot stuns the target instead of wounding them. Most successful at close range. Costs 1 coin.
Bull's Eye: Critical shot with greatly increased attack power, and a slim chance of knocking the target into a coma. Costs 1 coin.
Last Stand: Increases attack power and speed for a minute. Costs 4 coins.
Gunslinger's Panic: Reduces attack power and accuracy, but increases speed and evasion for 20 seconds. Costs 2 coins.

He's also sort of personally haunted by a mysterious force that likes to bend/fuck up reality around him. Whatever it is, its powers are limited to a) the indoors, and b) Corosa's general vicinity. So long as he stays outside, he and anyone around him should be fine. If he's stuck indoors for long enough, things will start to warp around him -- strange sounds and smells and sights, shifting rooms and doors and hallways, occasionally ghosts and hallucinations. Anything that comes to mind when you think "haunted house". Remove Corosa from the area and it'll go away.

Corosa's not entirely aware that this thing is personally attached to him. Also, it probably feeds on his suffering, and might get stronger and more dangerous over time.

Corosa was born in the city of Prontera, raised in a religious family, and became staunchly atheist after seeing how their faith completely failed to keep the family from distressing levels of poverty. He left both religion and home at an early age, intent on seeking out a better life for himself.

He eventually wound up in Einbroch, where he fell in love with the city -- pollution and all -- and found a job as a worker in one of the factories. It was in the factory that he met another worker, a girl named Aniyae, whom he fell in love with and married after six years in the city. Now a young man with a potential family on the way (one that would need providing for), Corosa decided to leave the factory and seek a better living.

He joined the Gunslinger's guild and spent a few years in intensive training, discovering that he greatly enjoyed the work. He was a stubborn and dedicated student and learned quickly. Finding jobs and uses for his skills was hardly a problem for him. After a while, he grew weary with familiar Einbroch territory and started to wander out further in search of more exciting and lucrative jobs, learning how to work in teams of all sizes, trying to find his foothold in the wider world. However, even at his busiest, he still made frequent trips back to his city. His family was there, after all.

But as Corosa found himself wandering further and further away from home, he and Aniyae decided that it would perhaps be more prudent to relocate. Decision made, Corosa returned to Einbroch one last time to help his family pack up and move to Prontera. By this time, their family consisted of Corosa, Aniyae, and their daughter Iara. Iara, only ten years old at the time, found the move difficult and was loudly unhappy about it.

Iara was the first in the family to notice something wrong about their new home, an old but solid building located in the outer skirts of the city, surrounded by other houses of similar style and age. Iara frequently reported strange smells and noises to her parents, but neither Corosa nor Aniyae had noticed anything out of the ordinary and brushed her off. It was only when Iara became so terrified of a wall in her bedroom that she tried to stab it with a knife that her parents decided there might be something wrong after all -- and they, of course, decided that the problem lay with their daughter.

This sparked the start of many arguments between Aniyae and Corosa as they tried to figure out what to do about Iara. Aniyae wanted to take her to the Church, and Corosa steadfastly refused, unwilling to hand his daughter over to a god of any sort. In the meanwhile, Iara's paranoia skyrocketed. One day, Corosa returned home to find Iara shrieking at her mother from outside of the house, refusing to come inside. Slightly embarrassed by the scene she was making, Corosa and Aniyae physically hauled Iara back in through the door.

After being brought inside, Iara stopped fighting and went to her room as ordered. As she was normally a sweet, obedient child, neither Corosa nor Aniyae thought anything about it until they discovered that Iara's bedroom door was locked and she would not answer either of them. Angry, Corosa broke in through the door by force -- only to find Iara collapsed and lifeless on the floor.

There were no arguments about whether or not to take Iara to a priest after that. Corosa gathered Iara up in his arms and made straight for the door, but found stairs longer than they should have been, hallways with more twists and turns than he remembered, doors where there had been no doors before, muffled sounds and a smell like rotting meat. Yawning gaps appeared between the floorboards, walls started to snap together in deathtraps, windows opened into sheer drops. He turned back to look for Aniyae, but found himself facing a wall where there should have been none. The house had changed, perhaps come alive. And it refused to show Corosa any way out.

How long Corosa spent in that house, only God knew. Hours, days, months, years -- long enough to wear him out and cause his own sanity to start to unravel and fray. According to the priestess who'd first spotted him staggering into the church, he'd been wild-eyed, babbling, and half-dead. Crazed to the point where he simply dropped Iara's body and proceeded to flee the premises -- not just of the church, but of the entire city.

It took Corosa almost a full week to recover. Once he deemed himself sufficiently sane, he tried to return to the city to check on his daughter. However, anxiety and panic began to settle in as soon as he could see buildings, and despite all attempts at self-rationality, Corosa could not bring himself to go any further. So he fled, again. A few days later he was lucky enough to stumble across an old acquaintance heading into Prontera. Corosa asked her to check up on Iara for him. That was how he learned that his daughter had awoken -- but was now mute, blank-eyed, and unresponsive to the world.

He tracked down other acquaintances to send into Prontera, in order to try and find out what had happened to his wife, and to the house. There was no sign of Aniyae, and as for their home -- it sat on the street empty and innocuous. Just a normal house.

Iara remained stuck in her near-vegetative state, and Corosa remained too terrified of anything with four walls and a ceiling to venture near any cities. From there on out he spent all his time on the road, traveling, in the wilderness. He wrote to his daughter once a month and had travelers on the road deliver them to her. As far as he knew, she never read them. She certainly never replied to them.

About two years after the incident with the house, Corosa found himself wandering the Sograt Desert alone when he came across an enormous, oversized wolf. It attacked him, and bit deep into his right arm. Corosa escaped and staggered around injured and bleeding until he ran into an acolyte. The acolyte tried to heal him, and helped guide him to the priestess' outpost. However, it was too late. The wound festered and Corosa wound up having to get his right arm amputated at the elbow.

As a right-handed dual-wielding gunslinger, this became the start of many new and exciting woes for Corosa. His entire world had been turned upside down -- no longer able to wield his arms as he'd been trained all his life, no longer able to use his abilities to their full extent, sometimes just barely able to keep his balance while walking. He became terribly bitter about his injury, but resolved to work past it anyway.

Corosa is a fearful man. He fears cities, he fears buildings, he fears darkness, he fears losing his single good arm. So his personality is rather heavily influenced by his fears. Especially his fear of the indoors. He can wander around city streets, as uncomfortable as they make him, but he will absolutely refuse to go anywhere with four walls and/or a ceiling. This can turn him into an extremely irrational person, to the point of childishness -- he will dig his heels into the ground or grab on to a tree for dear life (and, if provoked enough, scream horribly) should anyone try to drag him in through a door. Or he'll simply shoot you in the leg and run away while you're writhing in agony. However, should someone somehow manage to get him indoors, Corosa will immediately transform into panic on legs. There will be no stopping his attempts to escape, short of knocking him out cold.

But instead of letting his fears destroy him entirely, Corosa has dug himself in and refused to give up on life -- and that has turned him into a very hard and resourceful man. When not faced with the immediate threat of buildings, he has developed some incredible outdoors survival skills, a stubbornness to put brick walls to shame, and an intense tolerance of any and every misfortune that the world throws at him. He's also grown very depressed and pessimistic. His wife is missing, his daughter is dead to the world, he's lost his right arm, and he's scared shitless of the indoors. What else can the universe do to him? Go on, he's waiting.

He's shaped up into a fiercely independent soul. After his escape from his house and Prontera, Corosa immediately sought out company for support. However, very few of his friends and allies believe him about his "haunted house", and many of them distanced themselves from him after seeing how strange he'd become. So he's given up on telling people his story. In fact, after being laughed at and called insane by so many former acquaintances, Corosa's given up on trusting people in general, really. He's accepted that it's just him versus this strange new world, and he's got nothing but his own two legs to stand on.

Corosa's experiences and his pessimism have shaped him against society, turned him into a grumpy, irritable man with the occasional touch of dry sarcasm. He is no longer an easy person to work with, on account of his testy personality and his occasional instability -- caused by his many terrors, reinforced by his insomnia. Furthermore, the past couple years have seen him turn heavily inwards. He spends much of his time chewing on his own thoughts and musings, oblivious to the outside world. In other words: Corosa is not terribly observant, to the point of appearing downright thick. It can take multiple attempts to even get his attention, let alone expect him to notice something on his own.

But for all his flaws, for all his crankiness and paranoia and baby-eating atheism, Corosa tries his damndest to remain a good person at heart. He's as dutiful as dutiful can be. He keeps his promises. He refuses to kill other human beings. He is ridiculously tolerant of flaws in others, though he may bitch and snipe at them for said flaws anyway. In fact, he probably will. But rest assured, deep down in his soul: Corosa forgives you all your faults. Not that that means much, coming from this neurotic heap of hot steaming mess.

Chosen WEAPON: A single, white-gold coin (the use/function/properties of which were detailed in his abilities section above)
Chosen SKILLSET: Completely a fighter! It's practically the only thing he can do.

First PERSON:
[ video. hello, camera. have a very tired, very squinty, very suspicious look. from... the great outdoors? those are some nice green plains and trees and countryside shit behind him. ]

That was not very nice. I did not appreciate that. [ he sounds out of breath, as if he's been running. no, sprinting. for dear life. he rubs at the back of his neck, scowls, and takes a deep breath. it's a little while before he calms down enough to speak again. ]

However. I'll fight your war for you, as it appears that you'll be paying us to do so. So long as you don't make me go in there again. [ he looks down at something in his hands, off-camera. ] Though... er. What is the marque to zeny exchange rate?

Third PERSON:
He is having trouble sleeping again. Not that he wants to sleep, of course. He's been having awful dreams as of late. There's this terrible voice in his head, a whisper in his waking life, a scream in the dark twists of his own dreams. He doesn't like listening to it. He knows what it is, who it is, and he knows that it is only a part of his own wrecked psyche and he knows it is not real and he knows that he should not listen to it.

So he does not. So he does not sleep. So he is here, trying to find his way out of the woods in the black of night.

Corosa makes an annoyed 'tch' sound as he stumbles over a tree root. He catches his balance, finds his footing, continues on his way. Move on. Always moving on. What for, these days? He wonders. Something. Nothing. Aniyae is gone, now a memory, now a painful wrench in his gut. And Iara -- Iara, he does not think about. Poor Iara, cannot see, cannot hear, cannot read her father's shaky and barely legible words...

Another tree root trips him up. Corosa instinctively throws out his right arm for balance -- an arm that he is missing a good half of. He catches that mistake too late and swears as he goes to his knees, lurching forwards and nearly falling flat on his face without. He at least manages to avoid that embarrassment and gets back up onto his feet within seconds. Patting his holsters to make sure his guns are still safely stowed away, making sure that there's still a coin in the bottom of his left pocket, checking for any other belongings dropped during the fall... nothing. Good.

Move on, then. Make use of this sleepless night. Corosa sets his mouth into a hard frown and soldiers on. The least he can do is clear this damned woods by morning.

Other belongings of note that he will be bringing along with him: a) some ammunition, and b) his revolvers with him (Wasteland's Outlaw). He owns two, though Corosa can only use one at a time....

If he can unintentionally bring his PERSONAL HOUSE GHOST (see the end of his abilities section) with him, that'd be awesome.

Also -- due to his overwhelming terror of WALLS AND CEILINGS, he definitely will not be staying in the apartments. So he doesn't have to be assigned to a unit -- but if it's still appropriate to do so, feel free to :>