(no subject)

[gunbladegrrl]

Player

Name: Dragon
Contact: ultimaweapon
18+? Yes.
Other Character: N/A

Character

Name: Maria Cyphert
Canon: Final Fantasy VIII Fandom
Canon point: Postgame/post Witches Reign
Age: 19

Canon history: Pre-Witches Reign, post-game canon:

Some time after Ultimecia's defeat, pockets of Time Compression began causing chaos and havoc through the world. Its worst effects, as far as the average person was concerned, was bringing people, places, or THINGS from other worlds to this one. Particular people that had strange powers, which this world could only term as Sorceresses, lacking any other title. Most of the world hated and feared these people, even tried to kill them on sight at times.

Balamb Garden, on the other hand, welcomed them, freely and without reservation, and trained promising offworlders into SeeDs and even instructors. For some time, this proceeded well, but worldwide tension began to build to a head as Time Compression's effects grew worse and worse.

History: Maria was born in Dollet, six years before the Balamb Garden SeeD exam that kicked off the plot of FFVIII proper.

For a few days during the Siege of Dollet, the girl watched carefully through the windows at the comings and goings of the Dollet army and the Galbadian forces. Not understanding the gravity of the situation, Maria thought it was a heck of a show -- especially when, three days later, the first SeeDs poured off the boat, In their cadet uniforms, and gunblades drawn and ready, they seemed like heroes to her. And when a short while later, they came crashing down the streets, followed by the X-ATM092, she thought this was the greatest thing she'd ever seen. At that moment, a desire to become a SeeD crystallized in her heart, and would never leave again.

Her parents certainly weren't gung-ho for the idea, but to placate her they arranged for her to study under a semi-retired captain in the Dollet infantry. Captain Kartany recognized that Maria's goal was not just a lark or a whim, and in respect of this fact steered her down the path of basic swordsmanship and physical development.

As Maria turned 16, Time Compression abruptly gripped Dollet in a brutal hand, as a group of hostile offworlders appeared and began to rampage through the city. Her father quickly made arrangements for her enrollment in Balamb. Captain Kartany, in recognition of her drive and zeal, gave her a parting gift: two Dragon-class gunblades he'd acquired from the old Dollet military storage.

Maria parted from her mentor and family with the grim knowledge that they would almost certainly never see each other again, and the boat sailed... into a pocket of extremely dilated time. It emerged after a month inside, and ten years outside.

CRAU History: At the start of Witches Reign, Galbadia and Esthar formed the two major power blocs, besides Balamb Garden, of the world, and each began moving in a way that would inevitably lead to confrontation. In Balamb Garden, the Garden Master's machinations brought to power Commander Erlea Zabala, a masterful SeeD who implemented many unpopular reforms in Garden. In Esthar, work began on rebuilding the army and developing technology to control Time Compression. Galbadia, still possessed of the superior army, began slowly osmosing more and more of the world. Meanwhile, an organization named Sol Invictus and consisting of offworlders who refused to sign up with Balamb Garden emerged to begin making their own mark.

Tensions quickly came to a head: Galbadia Garden attacked Balamb Garden and was only repelled with serious losses. A mysterious Time Compression Mage manipulated a massive temporal distortion at Tears Point to summon enough temporal clones of the Lunatic Pandora to induce a massive Lunar Cry, but was stopped by the combined efforts of SeeD and Sol Invictus. Time Compression continued to worsen dramatically, thanks to Esthar's experimentation and Sol Invictus's meddling.

Galbadia was the first faction to fall. Time Compression buried Deling City under a lake, leaving Sol Invictus to capture Galbadia Garden. From there, the organization led an assault on Balamb Garden, convinced that the SeeDs were the only threat to their ascension. Commander Zabala was nearly killed, but slew the leader and almost everyone else that had survived till the end of the battle.

With Zabala incapacitated, the Garden Master at last revealed himself -- as Laguna Loire, recently-deposed President of Esthar and now intent on stopping the plans of the warmongering faction that had ousted him. Esthar had successfully weaponized Time Compression, and only a last-ditch effort by all of Garden's resources at last broke through to the containment devices they hadn't intended to use until after their victory. Time Compression was contained at last, and Esthar's power broken.

Maria entered midway through this. After a brief incident in which she accidentally discharged her gunblades, leading Instructor Claire Farron to forbid her from using the triggers until she was used to the weapons, she settled into a routine with so much eagerness she practically vibrated. She also had absurdly little respect for her own limits -- on multiple occasions, she fought in the Training Center until she was weak from blood loss, and the Infirmary got sick of seeing her. She pushed herself so hard and considered that to be so par for the course that periodically, people had to sit her down and explain to her that she was seriously overworking herself.

As time progressed, the harsh hand of experience shaped and melded Maria into a more rounded person than anyone would have expected of the fanatic fangirl who'd walked through the front gates. Thanks to the influence of Instructor Farron, she ended up pursuing specializations she never intended to take, such as Intelligence and mastery of the rifle. She also picked up the card game Triple Triad with that same mania she showed for all her pursuits.

After three quarters of classes, her past came back to her in a rush when Balamb Garden visited Dollet in between semesters, and Maria returned to a home that had ten years of advancement she'd missed out on. She had time to think and consider, to finally see the home she'd left behind... and she had the chance to decide, once and for all, that everything she had done was worth it.

Maria graduated almost effortlessly, with eight specializations to her credit, and Garden had never seen a happier graduate. She threw herself into the business of being a SeeD with gusto, taking on missions and putting herself up against dangers as if she had been born to do nothing else.

Maria rampaged through all these battles with her customary determination, dedication, and feral bloodlust -- As time passed, she realized that almost no new cadets were choosing to take up her own weapons of choice, and those who did were getting poor training. As the final battle approached, Maria decided that once it passed, she would get her Instructor license and teach. She would pass on her knowledge to the next generation of SeeDs (at the ripe old age of 20, which is when she would have gotten it). She'd give back.

With victory achieved, Time Compression was bound into a portal that could bridge space and time intentionally. The offworlder population could at last go home -- and SeeD with them, taking on missions and setting up branches of Garden on welcoming worlds to spread its strength and legacy past the bounds of their homeland.

Personality:

Self-Centered: Not selfish, but she Mariaherself as the hero and protagonist of her story, and with that view comes a tendency to view other people as supporting staff (or antagonists). She has a tendency to follow the letter of the laws a bit too closely; on a SeeD exam, she's the sort who won't just save a dog from a robot, but will actively go looking for a dog to save from the robot in order to get the boost to her Conduct score. She would cheerfully sit and eat attacks from Ifrit till there were just ten seconds left on that timer for the points.

Bloodthirsty: Not that she runs around stabbing people with gunblades, but she very much feels that the purpose of training as a SeeD is to right wrongs and triumph over evil. After all, SeeDs saved not just Dollet, but the whole world! And they didn't do it by NOT beating the crap out of monsters and Sorceresses and whatnot with gunblades (and other, lesser weapons). In battle, she's something of a howling berserker -- gunblades whirling, explosions left and right... To be blunt, she has very little talent for subtlety, and while she CAN be diplomatic to people who are neutral or friendly but with diverging interests, she's not the person anyone would pick to lead a high-pressure delegation to secure peace with Galbadia or the like.

Determined: Absolutely nothing can or will stop Maria once she's set her mind to it. She WILL become a SeeD, she WILL be the best, she WILL achieve her lifelong goal. She won't back down and no hardship will discourage her in the slightest.

Decent, Really: Despite her flaws, Maria is a pretty good-hearted person, who'd rather pull up people to her level than climb over them. She believes in fighting against evil and villainy and using her strength for good ends.

Overreactive: Maria doesn't do subtle emotions. She laughs loud when she's happy, rages when she's angry, assumes love isn't for her when she hasn't found it in all her nineteen years, and generally tends to be at 115% all the time.


CRAU Personality:

Calmer Buy Far: Time and achievement of her dream mellowed her a great deal since she came to Garden, along with the help of her friends and instructors, and these days and it takes a particularly strong circumstances to push her to real joy or real anger. She remains confident and difficult to insult or distress. Time and achievement have NOT tempered her gunblade obsession, though.

Always Keep In Mind: Maria is a person who achieved a near-impossible lifelong dream, with almost all of her life left to go. Thus she's both supremely self-confident and still looking for more to do.

Samples

Log Sample: Lookie here!

Questions: Write an IC answer to the following questions:

What do you want to study at Diatu Magicademy?

It's a magic academy, so obviously I need to study magic. And whatever else is necessary to be a great wizard.

If you knew you could go back to the moment you left, would you leave immediately or continue your studies for a while?

That depends on if I would still be able to use magic when I left. If not, no reason to stay, but if so, I'd definitely want that edge!

If your enemy was at Diatu Magicademy, how would you react?

If I'm not getting paid, I don't have enemies. But if someone MAKES me their enemy, they'll regret it.

When is it acceptable to resolve a dispute by force?

Whenever it's necessary. A famous SeeD once said there's no right and wrong, just differences of opinion. That isn't true, in my opinion, but it's not false either. Sometimes the only way one side or the other can prevail is force.

What should the supreme goal of any wizard be?

To be the best damn wizard they can be.

Special Considerations

Your Special Something: A Rare Familiar

Rank Your House Choice: Random

Items:
Training Swords: a pair of light one-handed swords that Maria used prior to getting gunblades.
SeeD Uniform: Pretty obvious.

Anything Else: Boy, we'll cross the paramagic questions when we come to them...