Empatheias app

[willneverlose]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Ami
Contact: Email: ofthursday@gmail.com | Plurk: amiasha | AIM: FluffyTemptress
Age: 26
Current Characters: None


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Atem
Age: While his soul is about 3000 years old, Atem is actually only 15ish. His age isn’t given directly but he’s an infant in a flashback that takes place about fifteen years earlier, so he’ll be fifteen and turning sixteen in June.
Canon: Yugioh
Canon Point: Near the end of the last episode (224.)

Background: A link to Atem's entry on the YGO wiki is here! An extremely short history is that Atem was once a pharaoh in ancient Egypt, who died protecting his country from an ancient evil. His soul was sealed into a magical artifact called the Sennen Puzzle, which was put together by a boy named Yuugi three thousand years later in modern day Japan. Atem's memory was lost upon his death, as part of the spell he used, so he has no idea who he is; his main arc in the series is his quest to regain his memory and truly stop the evil that he sealed away once before. By the end of the series his soul has moved onto the afterlife, saying goodbye to all of his new friends but finally having a chance to rest with those he's lost.

Personality: It's difficult to say much about Atem's personality without giving a little backstory. As mentioned above, Atem lost his memory upon his death in Egypt three thousand years before the start of the series, and so when he reawakened as a spirit he didn't actually realize he was a separate person from the boy whose body he was sharing: Yuugi. Yuugi was being bullied, and Atem--thinking he and Yuugi were the same person--fought back, but Atem was unstable at best and his retaliation was disproportionately deadly. For awhile, Atem was a vengeful and dangerous spirit that only appeared when Yuugi was in danger, and both Atem and Yuugi believed he was an alternate personality.

It took a long time before Atem began to realize he was actually his own person, but from there his personality developed rapidly. Despite his lack of memory, Atem's personality was very strong and distinct; once Yuugi's friends realized there were two of them it was easy enough to tell them apart, despite the two being identical.

The most obvious thing about Atem is his apparent confidence. He seems self-assured, calmly capable and unshakable; Atem even appears taller than Yuugi because of his presence and posture. However, much of Atem's confidence is an act, and while he's definitely sure of his own abilities he's not nearly as stoic as he pretends to be. Atem is often nervous or afraid in a conflict, but his confidence is actually courage; despite his fear or what is on the line, Atem's strength is facing the threat no matter the risk.

This strength, however, is also a weakness in several ways. One, that he's mainly overcome, is the tendency toward arrogance; Atem would get much too carried away, blindly believing that he could handle anything. He learned the hard way that this wasn't so when he made an enormous mistake, costing Yuugi his soul for an entire season, and the event haunted Atem. After that, his moments of overconfidence were far more tempered if not eradicated completely; it was no longer arrogance but determination that Atem fell back on in tough situations.

Not quite a side effect of that, but as sort of a sister issue, Atem's determination has limits. While Atem's will is incredibly strong--strong enough to bend reality--it only matters when Atem decides he wants to succeed. Much of the time, this isn't a problem; he almost always has a reason to need to win or overcome an obstacle, but while Atem claims to be fighting for the big picture, such as the fate of the world, it's not always true. Atem is usually fighting for his friends, to protect the people he loves, and there have been numerous occasions in which Atem thought he lost everyone he had to fight for. When that happened, Atem came very close to giving it; it was just a momentary weakness either, but it's happened several times through the series. If Atem is alone he loses the will to keep fighting, because just his own life isn't worth saving.

Atem's friends and family mean everything to him, and always have. In his life in ancient Egypt he was very close to his father and presumably his mother, but she died when he was young. He was also good friends with his six priests (Seth, Akunadin, Kalim, Shaadah, Mahaado, and Aishisu), as well as his grand vizier Simon and a magician-in-training called Mana. They were all like a family more than like a pharaoh and his servants; that was, except Akunadin--Atem's uncle, unbeknownst to Atem--who turned on them. Akunadin wanted to put his son Seth, who was Atem's high priest and just as oblivious as Atem to Akunadin's relationship with either of them, on the throne of Egypt, but the bond between Atem and Seth was so strong that Seth refused to join his father. Along with all the others he fought at Atem's side against the great evil Akunadin brought to life, but the battle was hopeless; one by one the priests and Simon lost their lives, until Atem took the drastic action to seal away the evil being by giving up his own life. By doing so he was able to save Seth and Mana, and also his country.

His devotion to his friends in modern times is just as strong, and Atem is very afraid of losing them. He does everything he can to keep them safe, especially Yuugi, who he loves more than anything or anyone. Yuugi is his closest friend and the only person who he tells just about everything, and who helped Atem every step of the way in his journey to find out who he was. Yuugi's other friends, particularly Jounouchi, Anzu, and Honda, are also Atem's friends and he adores all of them. He would gladly give up anything to make sure they were safe.

However, while Atem loves his friends and loves people in general, he is not a super social person. He's generally quiet and somewhat introverted, preferring to listen and observe than interact, but once he's really comfortable with the people he's around or the situation he starts to open up and engage a bit more. He's not actually shy or afraid of how people will react, he's just cautious and thoughtful. Once he gets started on a topic he cares about he's enthusiastic and animated, and in situations where he's really in his element--like during a duel--he can be very dramatic. Also, despite not being particularly social, Atem is actually very good at reading people's expressions, tones, and body language; similarly, he's a good actor and able to play other people in return.

Even though Atem is generally a serious person, he has moments of being normal. He likes to tease Yuugi, especially about Yuugi's crush on Anzu; he can be very sarcastic and sassy, likes playing games, and is generally a huge dork. He's clever and a quick learner, and particularly likes figuring out puzzles and learning new games. He's very adaptable and sees new situations a challenge more than anything else.

Abilities: Atem has three powers that actually count as abilities for an application. The first is the most elaborate; I detailed it here on the FAQ comments page but I'll briefly go over it here as well.

Summoning: Atem's most powerful ability is to be able to summon monsters, whether from his own soul or from a card. In Yugioh, monsters all come from the souls of humans; a person manifests part of their soul (their kaa) as a creature that reflects them. The other portion of their soul (the baa) powers the kaa and serves a combo of mana/magic points and life/hitpoints for the summoner. Summoning, fighting, and taking damage to a summoned monster all use baa, and running out of baa means the summoner dies. Additionally, losing a personal kaa (instead of a creature summoned from a card) is fatal because having part of your soul destroyed is a problem. Atem's kaa will be the Magician of Black Chaos, which is powerful but not ridiculously so, and shown in the series several times a parallel for him/connected to him in an innate way.

Sensing: This is a very generic sixth sense type of power. Atem can usually feel is something is 'off', is sensitive to mental communication, can tell if there are other people approaching/he's being watched, etc etc. Of course, anything involving another player character will be run by them first, and there will be a permissions post for this! It's not particularly powerful.

Reality Warping: This sounds a whole lot more impressive than it actually is. In fact, it only works in very specific instances, and Atem is wholly unaware of the ability. Throughout the series Atem seems extremely lucky; by believing in himself and his cards and blah blah Atem can normally draw the cards he needs, get the dice roll he wants, etc etc. It was always explained away as destiny or fate or just luck, until the last or second to last episode in which one of the characters reveals that Atem is actually willing things to happen how he wants. His determination affects things that are supposed to be chance, and causes them to come out in his favor. However, this only works for minor things (like cards, dice, guessing numbers, etc) and Atem's unaware of it, so it pretty much only activates when it's life or death. Again, this is something that would be oocly discussed if it came up in a conflict between characters or something, but I don't expect this power to have reason or opportunity to be used often.

Other: Atem is coming in from the point in time when he's about to watch through the door to the afterlife. While he doesn't have his duel disk and his cards on him at the time, he just had them and I'd like them to come with him into game. Since he already has his kaa-summoning ability he'll only be able to use four of the cards for summoning; the rest of them will be normal cards. I probably will stick mostly to the kaa-summoning, though.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
First Person Sample:
So.

[Atem opens simply, not looking or sounding all too enthused about any of this, but at least using the amulet isn't too confusing. He'd hesitated to do so at first, knowing better than to just use whatever weird magical artifacts show up out of nowhere, but it seemed the best option at this point.

He'd learned some of the basics of this place he'd ended up in from running into other people in the city, but he wants more details.]

How many of those here are from worlds other than this one? It seems there are both natives and visitors here, and those from other worlds have been showing up in this one over time? When did the first do so?

[He's curious about all of this, but the question themselves aren't actually all that important. He's more interested in getting people to respond than getting the answers, though the next question he does want to know.]

I presume someone has attempted to get off this island, also. Was there anything to be found? What occurred?

[He hasn't ventured to the edge of the island to look down, so he's not sure there's anything there at all, but surely someone's checked it out by now. He seems tempted to leave the conversation there, but then has one more question that is nowhere near as serious and on-task as his others have been.]

And... How exactly does one go about purchasing... Anything?

[He needs a coat. And... Some other stuff, surely. He hasn't lived as an independent person in some time, and before that he hadn't exactly done the money and shopping thing; Atem is so not sure where to begin.]

Third Person Sample:
This was not the afterlife.

Okay, it was possible it was the afterlife; Atem thought that was unlikely, however, for several reasons. One was that this place looked nothing like it was supposed to look like, another that there were none of the people he was expecting to see. More strangely, he was still dressed like Yuugi, and when he glanced down he noticed the duel disk on his arm.

That was what really convinced him that this was not where he was supposed to be.

He blinked a few times, taking a step back and looking around, confused and some other combination of emotions he couldn't quite sort of. This wasn't right at all; everything was supposed to be over. He'd put down his sword. His story was supposed to be finished.

What had gone wrong?

Atem reached out to touch a nearby tree, almost curiously, and it felt real. That didn't mean much, but it was something; he leaned back against the tree, taking a steadying breath and looking down at his duel disk again. If he had this, then there was probably a new challenge ahead, which meant someone had probably interfered in his attempt to cross through the door to the afterlife. It wouldn't be the first time someone had interfered in a step on his journey, so he really shouldn't be surprised.

But what was he supposed to do now?

He pressed his hand against his chest, where the chain of the Sennen Puzzle would've been, but there was nothing there to hold onto any longer. The connection with Yuugi was gone, as it was supposed to be, but Atem wasn't supposed to be in some new world rather than at rest. He felt suddenly very alone.

Still, he wasn't going to accomplish anything leaning against a tree and feeling sorry for himself. He needed to find someone, or somewhere, or preferably both; his eyebrows furrowed and he pushed off from the tree, picking a direction on intuition and beginning to walk. It didn't take more than a few minutes of walking before the forest thinned out, and Atem caught his first glimpse of the city of Verens.

At least it was somewhere to start.

Questions: Nope! c: