withazippo

» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Alex
Current AGE: Over 18.
Personal JOURNAL: aleeeeeeex
IM & SERVICE: RaduraSottoVoce
Player PLURK: aleeeeeeex
Current CHARACTERS: Fiona | Dragon Age | uncalled_for


» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Tephra
Character PULL-POINT: The second year out of his five sentenced years spent in the DZ
Character AGE: 17


Character ABILITIES: Tephra is a pyromaniac to put it simply. He specializes in fire and explosives and really anything that can go boom. He knows a bit of mechanics but his true gift is using anything he can find and essentially turning it into a bomb. What’s more is he knows how to hide them as well and in those places you’d never expect.


Character HISTORY: Tephra’s world is futuristic. It is clean, safe, strict, and orderly. Everything has a time and place and people are assigned what to do with their lives by the government. This is because decision making by mere civilians causes war. Or that’s how their government sees it. So the government has taken out such decision making and now they make all of the decisions. From how to dress and what the fashions are, to what is built, your job, your education, your marriage, the number of kids you can have. Everything. And this society isn’t shooting for equality either. Some geniuses are given low wage jobs and some morons are given corporate jobs. It’s how their government deals with balance. And usually very few argue against them since this is all they’ve ever known. How could things be different?

Those who rebel, cause harm, trouble, or any sort of crime are sent to the “destructive zone” or DZ for short. The DZ is a war zone and anyone sent there is declared dead during their absence from their governed homes. If they survive their sentencing they are given a rebirth certificate and are allowed a fresh start in their “utopia” of a society. This means a new name, new job (still chosen by the government), and sometimes even a new family.

Anyone who commits a crime over the age of 10 can be sent to the DZ. Therefore, family units or clans have arisen over time within the DZ’s culture (if you can even call it a culture). These clans act like small family units who are jointed together for survival against other clans/units (usually tied together by crime similarities). Children aren’t usually adopted into these clans unless they prove useful. And I mean really useful. These guys don’t like dead weight just because it’s cute and cries a lot.

Tephra’s own family are very law-abiding people, or his parents are anyways. His older sister, Cinder, after meeting someone who had previously been to the DZ and had “shown her the light” or the error in their government, vandalized a subway system’s tracks as a demonstration (or rebellious act). She was 15 and when she was caught she was promptly sent to the DZ. Her parents considering her dead decided to have a second child, Tephra. Five years after her initial sentencing Cinder returned having paid for her crimes and living to tell about it, although now after receiving her rebirth certificate, went by the name Caldera. Caldera was allowed to go back to her own family and meet her new, 5 year old little brother.

Caldera and Tephra surprisingly became close after the initial “you replaced me” phase (can’t really stay mad at a cute 5 year old now can ya’?). Caldera being the “bad” influence on Tephra and gave him his love of fire and taught him whatever she could and that included her opinions against their government. Although, Caldera’s specialty wasn’t in explosives or fire but mechanics… that could potentially hold explosives or fire (See the team effort forming?). Following his sister, Tephra joined a rebellion group that Caldera had co-founded, the Composition. The group’s goal was to destroy what they could of their so-called utopian society’s laws and functionality. Their targets were often government buildings and large public locations (but not people!).

One day, however, an explosion went bad in the government’s job sorting building. The explosives’ fuse didn’t take and the group working on it was caught, including Tephra and Caldera. The explosion’s failure actually being caused by a spy from the government who had worked his way into the Composition since the group started.

Tephra was sent to the DZ for a five year sentence, while his sister was sentenced to death as this was her second offense and one rebirth is all the government is ever willing to give.

His first few weeks in the DZ were awful. His sister’s stories of the war zone were pretty gruesome but nothing really prepared him for the reality of it. He spent most of his days in hiding, rigging his hideouts with bombs and traps wherever he could fit them.

The clans who fight one another within the DZ fight each day and every day. They are the cause of this war zone and even when peace looks probable a government spy is usually sent in to anger the opposite side. The idea being to make the criminals see the error of their ways and regret leaving or harming their utopia.

The two main clans (although there are many other smaller ones) are Dacites and Mafic. The Dacites focus on watching and waiting and taking out the most people at the best opportune time whereas the Mafic take out who they can, whenever they can. The Dacites are mostly comprised of rebels specializing in terrorism and vandalism, while the Mafic are just outright murderers and serial killers.

Tephra’s alignment to a clan came one night when he was caught in a sudden crossfire. Three family units of the Dacites were returning back to their base when Mafics who had been patrolling the area caught sight of them and opened fire. Tephra had been staking out this particular location, meaning the entire street was rigged with his explosives. Although his own survival was really his only concern, he ended up taking out most of the Mafic shooters. The Dacites lost some as well, a child each from two of the family units. When the family units found Tephra’s hideout (thanks to a poorly timed sneeze. Unfortunately, the kid’s allergic to dust.) one had every intention of blaming him for their family unit’s kid’s murder, while the other two remained indifferent.

The other unit who had also lost a child then brought up an entertaining idea just as the mother of the other family unit was ready to cut Tephra’s throat. Since Tephra seemed so well-prepared in the art of explosives, why not keep him and let him set up more along the roads so as to guard the Dacites’ base and maybe take out a Mafic’s base one day. The idea was luckily enough to give the mother from the other unit pause and Tephra was allowed to return with them to the Dacites’ base.

He was taken to the council of elected officials for the Dacites, Tephra didn’t even know people could be elected for something like that. What’s more is that they had asked for his opinion and his side of the story, something else Tephra had never heard of. You see, part of the reason why people stay in these war zones is because of the freedom they receive to rule their own. The overall decision was to send Tephra to live with the family unit who had saved his life from the other unit’s mother.

He fit right in. The father of the unit, Tuff, had been sent to the DZ after he had revealed certain documents to the public as his job as an archivist. The mother unit, Felsic, was sent to the DZ after she was caught helping her husband with his job and not doing her own. And the other child unit within the family, ten year old Lahaar, was sent to the DZ after he was caught throwing a cherry bomb into a mail pipeline.

Within no time at all, Tephra was showing Lahaar how to make any bomb out of anything and within months Tuff and Tephra were sketching out plans for their big explosion rig for a Mafic base.

And all was good, more or less.


Character PERSONALITY: Despite being a pyromaniac or the fact that he lives in a war zone, Tephra is actually extremely laid back. He’s not too concerned if someone pushes him around or if there’s a large decision to be made. He’ll go with whatever seems to work best, and often let’s others make the decisions for him. He’s still getting used to the whole “voice your own opinion” thing.

He’s really terrible at making his own decisions, he’s much more accustomed to just doing what’s told of him. Tuff has been trying to get him out of this, but it’s been a difficult learning process.

It’d be wrong to call him selfish, but his main priority (blame the war zone lifestyle on this one) is self-preservation. He’s really not concerned if the little guy falls down in the mud and gets shot a few times. The only time he would be concerned about that is if he really knew this little guy. Like say if the little guy was Lahaar, he’d take it very personally.

With that said, Tephra’s laid back nature lets him generally trust most people. He’s not about to tell you his life story on the first conversation, but he mostly doesn’t mind a little small talk regardless of the person he’s speaking to. It makes him easy to get along with, at least on the surface. But to get him to really trust people takes quite a bit of time full of good impressions.

On top of that, he generally stays away from caring for people. Being in a war zone means a lot of death so he generally keeps a decent distance from getting too close to most others. This is much like his method of trusting people as well. Only on the surface and never much more.

It takes a lot to upset or anger him though. He’s a guy who can take many punches before the hate sets in. Sometimes the hate just never even happens. But if it does, be warned. It may take a lot to get him to that point but when it does, run. He’s not afraid to set everything in his reach on fire. Consider it something of a “berserk mode”. Once he’s pissed he’s impossible to reason with him or tell him what to do, in fact it will likely just make him even angrier.

Luckily, as I said, it’s a rare sight to see. But he still holds that nasty habit of keeping things bottled and opinions to himself – until he goes off and explodes.

And speaking of explosions, there’s just something about fire that fascinates him. How it chooses to go wherever it wants and is so difficult to put a stop to. Also how it takes whatever it wants. It’s kind of a state that he strives to become but just isn’t sure how to get there. Not to mention, he’s also a little addicted to his pyro ways. He genuinely has to light something up occasionally or he gets antsy and starts to fidget and sweat about it. He’s a bit challenging to talk to when this happens. But a good trash bin full of paper and a lighter usually fixes this. He doesn’t really see the wrong in doing so, either.

He’s also quite the optimist. He’ll find something good in almost any situation. “Oh, you lost a leg? Well, at least you have another one.” And he’ll be completely sincere while saying this. Despite the optimism he doesn’t really mind joking about death or morbid things and what’s worse is he can do this without even twitching a smile. And when he jokes about death, he goes all out. He’ll create scenarios and morbid stories of a situation that doesn’t even look like it’s going downhill yet. Like a time when he and Lahaar had to leave their base to redo some of the traps just outside of it. The entire time he was explaining awful ways the traps could backfire onto them instead and then they’d be blown to tiny fragmented pieces and dogs would eat them. Lahaar luckily is used to this by now and will only elbow his unit brother when he does this. Tephra doesn’t really do it to scare others. He just likes going over the worst possible thing to make himself feel better. Maybe it’s because he knows the likelihood of dogs wanting to eat them before the birds get them is a slim chance. Behold, optimism at its finest.


» EXSILIUM INFORMATION

Chosen WEAPON: His handy-dandy zippo lighter.

Chosen SKILLSET: He’s not exactly a fighter and he’s not exactly an intellectual. He’s a strategist and a behind the scenes sorta guy. He’s good at defense and infiltration and the overall sneaking about but he’s not a battlefield soldier.


» SAMPLES

First PERSON:

Laptops? Last I saw this was in a museum.

[He’ll mess with it a bit and turn it upside down so that the only thing visible is a table for a moment. Some odd scratching noises and rubbing sounds follow, the video fuzzes a bit before clearing back to him facing the camera again.] Doesn’t look so bad. But is it fireproof?

You never know, this thing could just combust on you when you’re asleep. Burn down the whole apartment structure and a block radius before someone even notices it. People don’t always wake up from excessive smoke inhalation. Sometimes the smoke gets to them first. But… there’s enough of us here that someone is bound to wake up before it gets out of control, right? People not comfortable living in the apartments, maybe? [Shrug, he really doesn’t seem all that bothered by this notion.]

Well, at least these laptops are free.


Third PERSON: Shots were being fired from not so far away, a bad sign. Tephra was prepared though since this certainly wasn’t the first time fire broke out while he was rigging some new traps.

Under a pile of debris he waited as those firing came into view, putting on his face mask as some dust fell from the debris over his head from the rumbling of the first few traps going off. He wasn’t about to let himself cough or sneeze this time. But boy would that be annoying later. He had just reset those traps less than moments before.

Even with some of the traps having gone off the pursuers kept their chase. Through cracks in the debris he watched as the group fleeing came even closer. Dust was flying up everywhere from the explosions in the distance, but not near the approaching group. They must have been Dacites to know where to avoid the traps, meaning the others were of course Mafics.

Just then, one of the Dacites missed the safe spot. The explosion was small but large enough to end the lives of most nearby, or send them hurtling outward and potentially onto more traps. It was like watching a game of checkers when the pieces are lined up just right and you can take four of your enemy’s pieces in just a few hops in one move. That’s how he had designed it, but never was he usually around to witness it in action. The flow of explosions seemed beautifully organized, a wave on a beach but with more reds and oranges and less greens and blues.

The firing had stopped then and now all that was left was the moaning of the survivors and shouts from further away. But there were always shouts somewhere, it was hard to tell whether it was the Mafics further off who had taken the first round of traps or simply a completely different location under attack.

Just as Tephra was about to emerge from his hiding place he heard an awful sobbing close by, very close by. He looked to see two Dacites, one was missing some limbs and clearly dead and the other was a woman crying over the body. Only problem was, she had sat herself down right on a pressure plated trap. If she even shifted her weight or the corpse she held, she’d be just as dead, and also potentially Tephra. He knew her, as well as the body she held. They lived just down the road from his unit home.

She made the sweetest sugar cookies and Lahaar was always asking to stop by her house to see if there was a batch recently made. The corpse looked like her husband unit, which was rumored to be her actual husband. People never gave that sort of family tie away in a place like this. Now, however, the rumor seemed as true as the ground under them. People didn’t just cry over the local corpse, Tephra certainly wasn’t.

But he needed to get out of there and fast, before she saw him and before she could even try turning her head to speak to him. Tephra dashed out of his hiding spot, nimbly jumping from safe spot to safe spot. And then she called out, “You won’t help? You’re just going to leave?” Tephra froze where he stood and turned around. The woman clearly knew where she had sat, if not a little too late, because she hadn’t moved the rest of her body otherwise. “You’re not going to help me stand or use something to hold the pressure plate down so I can get up?”

Tephra continued to look around. There were some debris pieces large enough to fool the mechanism but not without another’s support to hold it in place. This woman was dead to him already, but that didn’t mean he had to die with her.

“No.”

And he left.