kaus_australis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kaus_australis) wrote2015-04-12 08:00 pm
kaus_australis) wrote2015-04-12 08:00 pm
Ryslig Application
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Birdy
Contact: kyanve@gmail.com, shirhanblade (AIM),![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
kyanve
Other Characters: Kain Highwind (FFIV, Gargoyle)
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Trey
Age: 17
Canon: Final Fantasy: Type-0
Canon Point: Between Ch. 7 and Ch. 8
Character Information: Wiki entry!
(On a note that isn't touched on in the individual wiki entry, the world is in a time loop; Trey and the Class Zero group are specific souls marked in incarnation, and the events leading up to Tempus Finis repeat with variations and get reset until the two goddesses/divine beings meddling can get to a certain successful outcome. The spiral's gone on so far a few hundred million times.)
Personality: Trey is too smart for his own good. While he's not necessarily always the top of the class academically (much to his dismay, two of his classmates frequently outscore him), he's easily in the "honors student" range anyway, and he takes great pride in his knowledge base, academic ability, and reasoning. The extent of it does follow a sliding scale based on areas of focus and what he thinks is useful; military tactics, psychology, metaphysics, magical structure, and information on some of the supernatural they deal with are his strongest subjects, with history and other related subjects next, and anything else will come up as he's either taken interest or gotten bored with books on it handy. He's also incredibly eager to either share his knowledge or show off, depending on how charitable you're feeling, enough that it's a fairly routine interaction among those he grew up with for him to rattle off some relevant information, attempt to continue on with more detail and background than is needed, and get cut off by the others continuing the conversation.
Extending from this, he tries to approach everything rationally, or at least maintain a rational presentation; even when he's presented with heavily emotionally charged subjects and discussing his own feelings on matters, he relies on explanation and rationality, and if he can duck back out of direct line of conversation or interaction, is more likely to go quiet if he's not sure of a response or feeling his control fraying than betray a strong reaction. This carries over into his attempts at herding one of the (relatively, they're all within about a year of each other) younger members of his team, also the one with the least tendency towards academics and thinking things over in depth. He doesn't talk down to her ever, although he also doesn't look surprised when Cinque has moments of demonstrating being far more observant than people would normally realize - including some of their own "siblings". He does genuinely want his intellect and rationality to be something of benefit to others, but his own pride in his abilities can cause him to come off unintentionally condescending, particularly with people he's less familiar with where he's being more guarded and has less sense what they would and wouldn't know.
It is an important central point that his academics and training are heavily military-action centric. While he and his siblings are amazingly well-adjusted for "raised to a purpose", he did grow up with combat training and military training, along with an understanding that it'd need to be put to use; this informs many of his priorities in study (tactics, magic, etc.), and shapes much of his behavior, particularly in threat or high-stress situations. He's already got battlefield experience and handles battlefields calmer and with less hesitation than many people older than him. His approach to fights on both the small scale in direct combat and in larger scale tactical thinking is "You minimize collateral damage by ending the fight as fast as possible" - threats are things you remove as efficiently as possible, and the response to someone starting a fight is to Finish It. Once the war in canon becomes "Both of the other still-surviving nations against Rubrum", he actually comments on the world map in the main headquarters with "I look forward to when this map is draped in Rubrum crimson" - referring to the color of the "who controls which territory" markers.
This isn't something contradictory with his sense of ethics and morality - it's just very military ethics that can jag more pragmatic than many civilians would be comfortable with, and can lead to some things that would seem confusing to anyone not used to military ethics. He doesn't see a conflict with shooting and killing an unarmed scientist about to sound an alarm during a mission to sabotage a prototype superweapon, then turning around to put effort into covering children and running errands to help citizens in an enemy town that was just occupied by their military. The scientist may be unarmed but is a direct threat to their survival and their mission if the alarm sounds, and the weapon they were there to destroy was a city-killing weapon of mass destruction; civilians, even in enemy nations, are CIVILIANS and are Not Targets, plus a military occupation (should be) a means to an end to bring the war to a close while terms are settled. It doesn't help the grey areas that Class Zero is involved in "Code Crimson" missions, which are essentially varying sorts of grey to black ops work; the "Code Crimson" runs can be anything from sneaking into an occupied fort ahead of the military lines to try to rescue captured civilian family members, to hunting down and assassinating a defector after they've crossed the enemy border to make sure they can't share any tactically relevant information with the enemy.
On a more personal level, this does mean he can be both cold-blooded and compassionate in very short order, and see both as Part Of The Mission. When the defector in the assassination mission above turns out to be trying to elope with an enemy officer who's also fleeing their post for the relationship, if the player (controlling Sice, one of his "siblings") chooses to allow them to escape, Trey expresses some confusion and surprise that she let them go, albeit without arguing or trying to stop them escaping. They were someone of high enough rank to mean a lot of lives lost if they DID decide to share military secrets with the country they fled to, so to Trey's mind it was a far more grey-area judgment call to let them go than it would look to most. At the same time, he's acridly uncomfortable with a decent sized enemy unit charging Class Zero in a suicide run to cover the escape of their commander, and any case of indiscriminate death and destruction caused by either side; slaughter and massacres aren't something that sits well with him, and his cold-blooded moments are tactical battlefield math with an intended end result of the fewest lives lost in the long run. He dislikes unnecessary death and misery, and often expresses real moral affront at it.
He can stray into bitter cynicism in his darker moments; while he never sees it as a reason to abandon their work or not fight to defend others, he doesn't react with surprise on the few occasions when they get blamed for disasters they had nothing to do with. He weathers false accusations of assassination of a previously allied nation's leader with dark mutters and grumpily reasoning through the political power play involved. When some of the panicking cadets blame Class Zero for Tempus Finis - the "end of the world" - leaving some of his siblings upset that they're being turned on, he just bitterly waves it off that it was only natural for "those that were once hailed as heroes to be hunted as heretics".
On another potentially creepy note, he doesn't think anything of absorbing the life energy and essence of the dead, including a foray to collect it from the dead of their own side in the aftermath of a high-casualty battle. This is granting that this is an example of "his sense of normal is skewed, he was raised with that"; he's AWARE that it's a bad idea to discuss that one and that he's got instructions to NOT talk about it to anyone outside his siblings, but he treats it as a completely accepted routine part of his life that seems to fall on the more pragmatic line of his ethics. The dead are dead, the main priority is moving on to ensure the living remain living wherever possible, if collecting energy from the dead of the battlefield helps contribute to the goal of ending the war sooner and the Living remaining Living, then he takes it as an easy judgment call.
He also reflects in both his moments of acknowledging people around them dying and in less lethal matters such as Machina's growing anxieties a philosophy he tries to live by of "Learn from the past, then leave it in the past so you aren't weighed down by it, and focus on what can be done now/the future".
He's protective of his "siblings", but is perfectly calm about a mission where one of them allows himself to be captured and interrogated in order to track where prisoners and captive civilians are being kept, with Trey as one of the two with the job of coming in after to "rescue". As much as he worries about the others, he's also one of the ones that is up front that they all know they're doing dangerous work where they could die and getting hurt is likely to be unavoidable. Still, even with protections that prevent them from actually DYING for most of the plot, he has a visible panic moment seeing Cinque get shot down by a sniper, and in a different mission, is fast to grab the others to keep them from walking into an open area when he realizes there's a sniper about. Unavoidable injury or discomfort is something he feels they should be prepared for, death is a possibility he academically accepts, but he still worries and is upset by the idea of one of them getting hurt needlessly or killed. He also has a comment when trying to explain why the Crystal taking away memories of the dead is "a blessing" where he indicates that he thinks he'd be too crippled by grief to go on if he DID remember everyone that died around them, which is a big betrayal that emotion does impact him no matter how rational he wants to be.
Military morality does feed into his ego and his perfectionist streak; he's well aware that they're there to accomplish things that impact the survival and lives of many other people, and where falling short or failing could have far-reaching consequences. Hence, perfectionism and taking pride in it isn't something frivolous, it's a part of the job. He does have occasional tics about it and has a noted tendency to want to cover anything that would be seen as a weakness or failure. It's likely a testament to how much work their "Mother" put into trying to keep them well-adjusted that he does actively lapse into "That's not productive, find something constructive to focus on to solve the problem" when under high stress; he has the habits and traits that could've easily turned into neurotically overanalyzing setbacks. Instead, he's quick to push towards moving on and taking problems as Things To Solve. Even at the end, when Tempus Finis - the end of the world - starts and some of the others in the academy are panicking on the comm, he cuts in sharply snapping at them that if they have time to panic and sling accusations on the comm, they have time to find something to do to help, although he trails off back into "I have no answer" quiet when the panicked other cadet returns a question asking what he expects them to do against an enemy they literally cannot fight.
He tries to cover his awkward moments, putting effort into at least acting calm and rational as much as possible. Early on, he even tries to carry the Calm, Coldly Rational Tactician a bit too far to an inadvertent "cold-bloodedly thoughtless" front a few times. He's outgrown worst of it by his canon point, and the few things he says when he IS trying to keep that act up blatantly clash with his own actual reactions and actions. It's not a calculated, planned act, but rather a mix of what he wants to think of himself as and hiding "weaknesses". The act has uneven edges and he doesn't seem to notice when he slips or says something that betrays his actual feelings more than he wanted to admit. It can also be easily popped in unfamiliar social situations or if he's caught off-guard enough; Cinque manages to get him spending an entire conversation floundering with a deer-in-headlights face repeating "What?!" and stammering.
For all the effort he puts into being calm, composed, and ... attempting eloquence to the point of sounding eccentric, Trey is socially awkward and people-dumb. He's spent most of his life in an isolated facility with just his "siblings", Arecia, and a few other adults from Sorcery. He logically understands rules of courtesy and he's capable of recognizing voice tone, body language, and other signals, but outside of his siblings, he's not very good at gauging which of the possible "academically plausible" reactions is appropriate.
His confidence flags fast if he's confronted harshly enough or is at enough of a loss for a useful response, and he "handles" such situations by trying to quietly withdraw and going awkward when he fails at having something to say. He's also bad at predicting when what he's saying is going to be upsetting, between his occasional moments of trying to pretend to be Completely Rational and times he's trying to be comforting and failing. One of his biggest canon examples of a well-meaning failure is answering Cater, one of his "sisters", worrying about strange deja-vu; his attempt at helping is rattling off the psychological and neurological causes of deja'vu...including that it's related to patterns involved in schizophrenia. Cater, the unfortunate subject, finds that about as comforting as you'd expect, and he's genuinely confused that she's upset by it. (Funny enough, it's technically accurate on a level I rarely see in media - some of the neurological patterns recorded for deja'vu ARE similar in a MUCH lesser extent to some of the neurological interruptions characteristic of schizophrenia, so he IS very well versed in psychology as a science - but it's also completely useless information at the time he's quoting it and is miles away from practical application skills related to said science.)
Essentially, off-the field, he goes from a sharp-shooting, lethal, calm, composed sniper with a honed tactical mind to an awkward pile of socially insecure bookworm teenager that's trying to act cool, and hoping nobody notices when he flounders or stops to check if he's done something wrong. His tactical ruthlessness is pure pragmatism; outside of combat situations, he's damn near the least aggressive and confrontational of Class Zero. It literally takes the end of the world to get him snapping at people in anger, and even that wilts when confronted.
As socially awkward and introverted as he is with people outside their class, he's deeply attached to his "siblings" and quick to accept people that are introduced as "a part of the group" or that are helping him or his siblings. He doesn't join the few that have a "YOU'RE NOT MOM" fight over taking orders from Kurasame when the man's assigned their "commanding officer". When they're assigned two other new "classmates", he accepts them as part of the group immediately, and when one of them starts disappearing for entire missions and acting erratically hostile, he never completely loses patience. In fact, his comments on said erratic behavior waver between frustrated concern and working through understanding it. On the latter, he has comments that are simultaneously eerily keen on psychology and utterly lacking any aspect of "how to react to that kind of anxiety response". On the former, while even some of the more normally bleeding-heart of the class are angry and betrayed-hurt by Machina's disappearance from a major mission, his reactions run more towards hurt and confusion.
This sums up the non-weird-shit parts of his personality.
He very emphatically shares his "siblings'" absolute and unswerving loyalty and devotion to their "Mother". He is among the ones that will more easily accept temporary situational authorities or intermediate authorities if it's in line with either an order from "Mother" or seems to fit with what she'd want them doing, and he is a reliable and diligent ally, but he is still not going to accept any attempt at expecting him to place some other being or individual above the Archsorceress that raised them. He can be loyal to something else, but only so long as it doesn't conflict with his loyalty to her.
He's never seriously had to think about what to do with himself outside of the time loop and wars and all beyond some hypothetical discussions about "if we did survive", although his great ambition outside of military service is to continue academic study and become a scholar.
Thanks to the entire thing with time resetting every time they fail at resolving Tempus Finis and opening a particular Gate, he's essentially lived the same life several hundred million times and repeatedly died at seventeen. They're subconsciously aware of it, as well - multiple members of Class Zero have odd moments of deja-vu, recognizing people they "haven't met before", finishing someone else's sentence without any way to know what they were about to say, or being aware that the assault on the Militesi capitol that would end the war "doesn't feel like it's over". He's very settled in his behavior patterns and general personality, with an occasionally weird ability for resilience that chalks up partly to Arecia's care taken raising them... and partly to having been through different variations of this shit so many times that it's subconsciously not actually real trauma anymore, just Tuesday, again. He's several hundred million years old going on seventeen and he doesn't have more than a vague academic sense of what was written in the Nameless Tome about it - enough to realize there's a time loop, and a few lines that're a clue that they die at the end of most/failed loops, but not enough to know how long it's gone on or what the details are.
Also, the Class Zero group is earmarked as an unusual set of souls of the sort that have one foot mortal and one foot not, each of them connected to some attribute or facet of human life and existence. In that role, he's named as the Locus of Knowledge, which almost definitely drives some of his need to learn and understand things, and informs some of his distressed reactions when he falls short on information - not only is it a conscious point of pride, but it's a part of the central founding pillar of his existence.
While he doesn't openly state awareness of it, he's canonly memorized the Nameless Tome with the prophecies and esoteric lore that describes the Loci and the entire flow of events around them at an early age, including that there would be Twelve that would be joined by Two Others that'd been separated...and Arecia was NOT subtle about the naming scheme she used for them. When Tempus Finis starts, at the first solid clue he and Queen (who's the one ACTUALLY SEMI-ASSIGNED to sorting out the prophecy thing) start reciting the Nameless Tome's prophecy, finishing each other's sentences with Ace, who also memorized parts of it, joining in. He also never seems surprised that it's happening - shaken and upset, but not surprised. He does demonstrate that he's perfectly able to show discretion on classified information and things he's not supposed to talk about on other subjects, and the Nameless Tome is his only area of expertise he never references or tries to ramble about until Tempus Finis begins - it's actually possible that a factor in his "schizophrenia" commentary to Cater is dodging the subject with the grace of a blind giraffe in a tripwire factory.
There's also been a few canon nods that they do have a state outside mortal existence, albeit one they have no memory of normally while incarnated; still, it's enough for one of his classmates to be recruited to interpret and use something that she helped build while not-incarnate, relying on her instinctive familiarity with the device.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
*Intelligent/rational
*Military - highly trained/principled
*Non-aggressive
*Socially awkward
*Worries about others
*Perfectionist
*Resilient
*Observant
*Highly (weirdly) moral, ethically pragmatic
*Proud
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER? Either!
Opt-Outs: Gargoyle (Kain), Vampire
Roleplay Sample: Test drive threads: here, here, here!
Name: Birdy
Contact: kyanve@gmail.com, shirhanblade (AIM),
Other Characters: Kain Highwind (FFIV, Gargoyle)
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Trey
Age: 17
Canon: Final Fantasy: Type-0
Canon Point: Between Ch. 7 and Ch. 8
Character Information: Wiki entry!
(On a note that isn't touched on in the individual wiki entry, the world is in a time loop; Trey and the Class Zero group are specific souls marked in incarnation, and the events leading up to Tempus Finis repeat with variations and get reset until the two goddesses/divine beings meddling can get to a certain successful outcome. The spiral's gone on so far a few hundred million times.)
Personality: Trey is too smart for his own good. While he's not necessarily always the top of the class academically (much to his dismay, two of his classmates frequently outscore him), he's easily in the "honors student" range anyway, and he takes great pride in his knowledge base, academic ability, and reasoning. The extent of it does follow a sliding scale based on areas of focus and what he thinks is useful; military tactics, psychology, metaphysics, magical structure, and information on some of the supernatural they deal with are his strongest subjects, with history and other related subjects next, and anything else will come up as he's either taken interest or gotten bored with books on it handy. He's also incredibly eager to either share his knowledge or show off, depending on how charitable you're feeling, enough that it's a fairly routine interaction among those he grew up with for him to rattle off some relevant information, attempt to continue on with more detail and background than is needed, and get cut off by the others continuing the conversation.
Extending from this, he tries to approach everything rationally, or at least maintain a rational presentation; even when he's presented with heavily emotionally charged subjects and discussing his own feelings on matters, he relies on explanation and rationality, and if he can duck back out of direct line of conversation or interaction, is more likely to go quiet if he's not sure of a response or feeling his control fraying than betray a strong reaction. This carries over into his attempts at herding one of the (relatively, they're all within about a year of each other) younger members of his team, also the one with the least tendency towards academics and thinking things over in depth. He doesn't talk down to her ever, although he also doesn't look surprised when Cinque has moments of demonstrating being far more observant than people would normally realize - including some of their own "siblings". He does genuinely want his intellect and rationality to be something of benefit to others, but his own pride in his abilities can cause him to come off unintentionally condescending, particularly with people he's less familiar with where he's being more guarded and has less sense what they would and wouldn't know.
It is an important central point that his academics and training are heavily military-action centric. While he and his siblings are amazingly well-adjusted for "raised to a purpose", he did grow up with combat training and military training, along with an understanding that it'd need to be put to use; this informs many of his priorities in study (tactics, magic, etc.), and shapes much of his behavior, particularly in threat or high-stress situations. He's already got battlefield experience and handles battlefields calmer and with less hesitation than many people older than him. His approach to fights on both the small scale in direct combat and in larger scale tactical thinking is "You minimize collateral damage by ending the fight as fast as possible" - threats are things you remove as efficiently as possible, and the response to someone starting a fight is to Finish It. Once the war in canon becomes "Both of the other still-surviving nations against Rubrum", he actually comments on the world map in the main headquarters with "I look forward to when this map is draped in Rubrum crimson" - referring to the color of the "who controls which territory" markers.
This isn't something contradictory with his sense of ethics and morality - it's just very military ethics that can jag more pragmatic than many civilians would be comfortable with, and can lead to some things that would seem confusing to anyone not used to military ethics. He doesn't see a conflict with shooting and killing an unarmed scientist about to sound an alarm during a mission to sabotage a prototype superweapon, then turning around to put effort into covering children and running errands to help citizens in an enemy town that was just occupied by their military. The scientist may be unarmed but is a direct threat to their survival and their mission if the alarm sounds, and the weapon they were there to destroy was a city-killing weapon of mass destruction; civilians, even in enemy nations, are CIVILIANS and are Not Targets, plus a military occupation (should be) a means to an end to bring the war to a close while terms are settled. It doesn't help the grey areas that Class Zero is involved in "Code Crimson" missions, which are essentially varying sorts of grey to black ops work; the "Code Crimson" runs can be anything from sneaking into an occupied fort ahead of the military lines to try to rescue captured civilian family members, to hunting down and assassinating a defector after they've crossed the enemy border to make sure they can't share any tactically relevant information with the enemy.
On a more personal level, this does mean he can be both cold-blooded and compassionate in very short order, and see both as Part Of The Mission. When the defector in the assassination mission above turns out to be trying to elope with an enemy officer who's also fleeing their post for the relationship, if the player (controlling Sice, one of his "siblings") chooses to allow them to escape, Trey expresses some confusion and surprise that she let them go, albeit without arguing or trying to stop them escaping. They were someone of high enough rank to mean a lot of lives lost if they DID decide to share military secrets with the country they fled to, so to Trey's mind it was a far more grey-area judgment call to let them go than it would look to most. At the same time, he's acridly uncomfortable with a decent sized enemy unit charging Class Zero in a suicide run to cover the escape of their commander, and any case of indiscriminate death and destruction caused by either side; slaughter and massacres aren't something that sits well with him, and his cold-blooded moments are tactical battlefield math with an intended end result of the fewest lives lost in the long run. He dislikes unnecessary death and misery, and often expresses real moral affront at it.
He can stray into bitter cynicism in his darker moments; while he never sees it as a reason to abandon their work or not fight to defend others, he doesn't react with surprise on the few occasions when they get blamed for disasters they had nothing to do with. He weathers false accusations of assassination of a previously allied nation's leader with dark mutters and grumpily reasoning through the political power play involved. When some of the panicking cadets blame Class Zero for Tempus Finis - the "end of the world" - leaving some of his siblings upset that they're being turned on, he just bitterly waves it off that it was only natural for "those that were once hailed as heroes to be hunted as heretics".
On another potentially creepy note, he doesn't think anything of absorbing the life energy and essence of the dead, including a foray to collect it from the dead of their own side in the aftermath of a high-casualty battle. This is granting that this is an example of "his sense of normal is skewed, he was raised with that"; he's AWARE that it's a bad idea to discuss that one and that he's got instructions to NOT talk about it to anyone outside his siblings, but he treats it as a completely accepted routine part of his life that seems to fall on the more pragmatic line of his ethics. The dead are dead, the main priority is moving on to ensure the living remain living wherever possible, if collecting energy from the dead of the battlefield helps contribute to the goal of ending the war sooner and the Living remaining Living, then he takes it as an easy judgment call.
He also reflects in both his moments of acknowledging people around them dying and in less lethal matters such as Machina's growing anxieties a philosophy he tries to live by of "Learn from the past, then leave it in the past so you aren't weighed down by it, and focus on what can be done now/the future".
He's protective of his "siblings", but is perfectly calm about a mission where one of them allows himself to be captured and interrogated in order to track where prisoners and captive civilians are being kept, with Trey as one of the two with the job of coming in after to "rescue". As much as he worries about the others, he's also one of the ones that is up front that they all know they're doing dangerous work where they could die and getting hurt is likely to be unavoidable. Still, even with protections that prevent them from actually DYING for most of the plot, he has a visible panic moment seeing Cinque get shot down by a sniper, and in a different mission, is fast to grab the others to keep them from walking into an open area when he realizes there's a sniper about. Unavoidable injury or discomfort is something he feels they should be prepared for, death is a possibility he academically accepts, but he still worries and is upset by the idea of one of them getting hurt needlessly or killed. He also has a comment when trying to explain why the Crystal taking away memories of the dead is "a blessing" where he indicates that he thinks he'd be too crippled by grief to go on if he DID remember everyone that died around them, which is a big betrayal that emotion does impact him no matter how rational he wants to be.
Military morality does feed into his ego and his perfectionist streak; he's well aware that they're there to accomplish things that impact the survival and lives of many other people, and where falling short or failing could have far-reaching consequences. Hence, perfectionism and taking pride in it isn't something frivolous, it's a part of the job. He does have occasional tics about it and has a noted tendency to want to cover anything that would be seen as a weakness or failure. It's likely a testament to how much work their "Mother" put into trying to keep them well-adjusted that he does actively lapse into "That's not productive, find something constructive to focus on to solve the problem" when under high stress; he has the habits and traits that could've easily turned into neurotically overanalyzing setbacks. Instead, he's quick to push towards moving on and taking problems as Things To Solve. Even at the end, when Tempus Finis - the end of the world - starts and some of the others in the academy are panicking on the comm, he cuts in sharply snapping at them that if they have time to panic and sling accusations on the comm, they have time to find something to do to help, although he trails off back into "I have no answer" quiet when the panicked other cadet returns a question asking what he expects them to do against an enemy they literally cannot fight.
He tries to cover his awkward moments, putting effort into at least acting calm and rational as much as possible. Early on, he even tries to carry the Calm, Coldly Rational Tactician a bit too far to an inadvertent "cold-bloodedly thoughtless" front a few times. He's outgrown worst of it by his canon point, and the few things he says when he IS trying to keep that act up blatantly clash with his own actual reactions and actions. It's not a calculated, planned act, but rather a mix of what he wants to think of himself as and hiding "weaknesses". The act has uneven edges and he doesn't seem to notice when he slips or says something that betrays his actual feelings more than he wanted to admit. It can also be easily popped in unfamiliar social situations or if he's caught off-guard enough; Cinque manages to get him spending an entire conversation floundering with a deer-in-headlights face repeating "What?!" and stammering.
For all the effort he puts into being calm, composed, and ... attempting eloquence to the point of sounding eccentric, Trey is socially awkward and people-dumb. He's spent most of his life in an isolated facility with just his "siblings", Arecia, and a few other adults from Sorcery. He logically understands rules of courtesy and he's capable of recognizing voice tone, body language, and other signals, but outside of his siblings, he's not very good at gauging which of the possible "academically plausible" reactions is appropriate.
His confidence flags fast if he's confronted harshly enough or is at enough of a loss for a useful response, and he "handles" such situations by trying to quietly withdraw and going awkward when he fails at having something to say. He's also bad at predicting when what he's saying is going to be upsetting, between his occasional moments of trying to pretend to be Completely Rational and times he's trying to be comforting and failing. One of his biggest canon examples of a well-meaning failure is answering Cater, one of his "sisters", worrying about strange deja-vu; his attempt at helping is rattling off the psychological and neurological causes of deja'vu...including that it's related to patterns involved in schizophrenia. Cater, the unfortunate subject, finds that about as comforting as you'd expect, and he's genuinely confused that she's upset by it. (Funny enough, it's technically accurate on a level I rarely see in media - some of the neurological patterns recorded for deja'vu ARE similar in a MUCH lesser extent to some of the neurological interruptions characteristic of schizophrenia, so he IS very well versed in psychology as a science - but it's also completely useless information at the time he's quoting it and is miles away from practical application skills related to said science.)
Essentially, off-the field, he goes from a sharp-shooting, lethal, calm, composed sniper with a honed tactical mind to an awkward pile of socially insecure bookworm teenager that's trying to act cool, and hoping nobody notices when he flounders or stops to check if he's done something wrong. His tactical ruthlessness is pure pragmatism; outside of combat situations, he's damn near the least aggressive and confrontational of Class Zero. It literally takes the end of the world to get him snapping at people in anger, and even that wilts when confronted.
As socially awkward and introverted as he is with people outside their class, he's deeply attached to his "siblings" and quick to accept people that are introduced as "a part of the group" or that are helping him or his siblings. He doesn't join the few that have a "YOU'RE NOT MOM" fight over taking orders from Kurasame when the man's assigned their "commanding officer". When they're assigned two other new "classmates", he accepts them as part of the group immediately, and when one of them starts disappearing for entire missions and acting erratically hostile, he never completely loses patience. In fact, his comments on said erratic behavior waver between frustrated concern and working through understanding it. On the latter, he has comments that are simultaneously eerily keen on psychology and utterly lacking any aspect of "how to react to that kind of anxiety response". On the former, while even some of the more normally bleeding-heart of the class are angry and betrayed-hurt by Machina's disappearance from a major mission, his reactions run more towards hurt and confusion.
This sums up the non-weird-shit parts of his personality.
He very emphatically shares his "siblings'" absolute and unswerving loyalty and devotion to their "Mother". He is among the ones that will more easily accept temporary situational authorities or intermediate authorities if it's in line with either an order from "Mother" or seems to fit with what she'd want them doing, and he is a reliable and diligent ally, but he is still not going to accept any attempt at expecting him to place some other being or individual above the Archsorceress that raised them. He can be loyal to something else, but only so long as it doesn't conflict with his loyalty to her.
He's never seriously had to think about what to do with himself outside of the time loop and wars and all beyond some hypothetical discussions about "if we did survive", although his great ambition outside of military service is to continue academic study and become a scholar.
Thanks to the entire thing with time resetting every time they fail at resolving Tempus Finis and opening a particular Gate, he's essentially lived the same life several hundred million times and repeatedly died at seventeen. They're subconsciously aware of it, as well - multiple members of Class Zero have odd moments of deja-vu, recognizing people they "haven't met before", finishing someone else's sentence without any way to know what they were about to say, or being aware that the assault on the Militesi capitol that would end the war "doesn't feel like it's over". He's very settled in his behavior patterns and general personality, with an occasionally weird ability for resilience that chalks up partly to Arecia's care taken raising them... and partly to having been through different variations of this shit so many times that it's subconsciously not actually real trauma anymore, just Tuesday, again. He's several hundred million years old going on seventeen and he doesn't have more than a vague academic sense of what was written in the Nameless Tome about it - enough to realize there's a time loop, and a few lines that're a clue that they die at the end of most/failed loops, but not enough to know how long it's gone on or what the details are.
Also, the Class Zero group is earmarked as an unusual set of souls of the sort that have one foot mortal and one foot not, each of them connected to some attribute or facet of human life and existence. In that role, he's named as the Locus of Knowledge, which almost definitely drives some of his need to learn and understand things, and informs some of his distressed reactions when he falls short on information - not only is it a conscious point of pride, but it's a part of the central founding pillar of his existence.
While he doesn't openly state awareness of it, he's canonly memorized the Nameless Tome with the prophecies and esoteric lore that describes the Loci and the entire flow of events around them at an early age, including that there would be Twelve that would be joined by Two Others that'd been separated...and Arecia was NOT subtle about the naming scheme she used for them. When Tempus Finis starts, at the first solid clue he and Queen (who's the one ACTUALLY SEMI-ASSIGNED to sorting out the prophecy thing) start reciting the Nameless Tome's prophecy, finishing each other's sentences with Ace, who also memorized parts of it, joining in. He also never seems surprised that it's happening - shaken and upset, but not surprised. He does demonstrate that he's perfectly able to show discretion on classified information and things he's not supposed to talk about on other subjects, and the Nameless Tome is his only area of expertise he never references or tries to ramble about until Tempus Finis begins - it's actually possible that a factor in his "schizophrenia" commentary to Cater is dodging the subject with the grace of a blind giraffe in a tripwire factory.
There's also been a few canon nods that they do have a state outside mortal existence, albeit one they have no memory of normally while incarnated; still, it's enough for one of his classmates to be recruited to interpret and use something that she helped build while not-incarnate, relying on her instinctive familiarity with the device.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
*Intelligent/rational
*Military - highly trained/principled
*Non-aggressive
*Socially awkward
*Worries about others
*Perfectionist
*Resilient
*Observant
*Highly (weirdly) moral, ethically pragmatic
*Proud
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER? Either!
Opt-Outs: Gargoyle (Kain), Vampire
Roleplay Sample: Test drive threads: here, here, here!