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HAVE YOU HEARD THE RUMBLINGS?
THE MOUNTAIN STIRS ONCE MORE
BENEATH ITS CRAGS, CLIFFS AND ROCKS
THERE'S EVIL IN ITS CORE
(How am I doing with Nef? I'm willing to talk about any and all character choices - hit me up!)
HAVE YOU HEARD THE RUMBLINGS?
THE MOUNTAIN STIRS ONCE MORE
BENEATH ITS CRAGS, CLIFFS AND ROCKS
THERE'S EVIL IN ITS CORE
(How am I doing with Nef? I'm willing to talk about any and all character choices - hit me up!)
Application for Ryslig
Nov. 27th, 2016 05:53 pmOOC INFORMATION
Name: Fire
Contact: bluecanary on plurk
Other Characters: none
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Nefarian (Lord Victor Nefarius, in his human disguise)
Age: Somewhere between 500 and 10,000. Probably closer to the latter.
Canon: Warcraft series
Canon Point: After his inexplicable resurrection at the beginning of WoW: Cataclysm, before he's killed by the players again.
Character Information: Here at Wowpedia.
Personality: To explain Nefarian, one must first explain the Black Dragonflight. The shapers of the planet Azeroth, who terraformed and awakened the chaotic world into one that could sustain life designated its most powerful native residents as its keepers in their stead. These were the dragons, and the five largest families or "flights" were each given partial domain. The Black flight's charge was over the four elements of fire, water, earth, and air, and their leader was named the "Aspect of Earth" - both avatar and guardian. Unfortunately for both the Black flight and their aspect, buried deep within the earth that was their charge were the original, unkillable beings of horror and chaos that the shapers had imprisoned, the Old Gods. It is not known when the Aspect of the Black flight was first driven to madness, but the deep magical ties that bound him to the lower-ranking dragons quickly dragged them all along with him. For ten thousand years, the Black dragonflight has been known as traitors, villains, cackling ne'er-do-wells, and general douchebags. This is a little bit prejudicial, but mostly completely correct. The madness is in their blood. Even if many of them do not seem to fully understand that they are serving the Old Gods who seek to unmake the planet, they are literally born as tiny supervillains. Horses can walk almost immediately after they're born. Black dragons can fly, speak English, and construct an elaborate plan to take over or destroy the nearest unsuspecting country. You get a free Sinister Cape every time you hatch a Black dragon, and lessons in how to rub your hands together in a scheming manner.
The Aspect of the Black flight has been missing for forty or fifty years, and in his absence, Nefarian, the Aspect's eldest son, has been their leader. He is not very good at getting anything done. Nefarian has no less than seven different plans to take over the world in a span of ten years, and not one of them works. In fact, most of them stop working before they even make it out of his front door. His house is a volcano, by the way, because of course it is. He seems largely unaware of the Old Gods; to the contrary, he believes that he (and the rest of the Black flight) should rule simply because they are superior. In what ways are they superior? They just are. Don't worry about it. Nefarian won't. He seems to be ruling the flight exactly the way he thinks his father would have, trusting that there must have been a good reason for it.
Questioning things is not Nefarian's strong suit. It's not that he's unintelligent, exactly, because the strides in Mad Science he makes are very impressive. He has an excellent working knowledge of engineering, necromancy, biology, and magic. He creates several very gross mishmash creatures from scratch, resurrects his sister via lightning and bolts in her neck, Frankenstein style, and creates a mind-control device out of a crystal that was supposed to do something totally different. He is also, however, deeply impractical, and in classic villain fashion prefers to sit on a throne and brag and wait for adventurers to knock over every room in his house one by one before stabbing him. He is in complete denial about ever being killed right up until the exact second that this happens, when he promptly goes into a brief, screaming breakdown about how insignificant mortals are. Being terrible at logistics, it should be noted, is not a family trait. Nefarian's father blew up the planet (it got better) and took over the biggest human kingdom in the world with a combination of hypnotism and politics. Nefarian's mother communed with a parallel plane and brought forth a flight of half-dream monsters, then started a giant cult around herself. Nefarian's sister was well on her way to taking over yet another kingdom while Nef himself was sitting in his lair, splicing together chunks of animal and yelling at his minions. The point is, Nefarian sucks.
Trying to be his father and fill the shoes of a being that was chosen by the gods while also not being very good at this at all has done a number on his ego. Nefarian seems to believe that he's capable of taking over the flight and leading it away from the Aspect altogether while simultaneously keeping up a stream of the kind of forced bragging only managed by the deeply insecure. Here's an example: When the player (an inferior mortal, as Nefarian reminds the raid constantly during their encounters) kills his second in command, the one responsible for keeping most of his operation running, Nefarian peforms a zone-wide shout:
"Congratulations! Allow me to grant you a title befitting the amazing achievement you just performed! Henceforth, you shall be known as the Slayer of Stupid, Incompetent and Disappointing Minions."
Then you get a debuff for thirty minutes called "MASTER ADVENTURER AWARD" that looks like a little thumbs-up and changes your title to exactly that.
This is not an isolated incident. Unlike every other boss in the game, Nefarian keeps a running commentary through the raid's progression on every fight in Blackwing Descent. Most of it is themed around how little he cares that you're in his house breaking his things, and how insignificant a setback each of your victories are. Different tactics in the raid will actually change his responses, and on higher difficulties he will act to block common strategies. He gloats when you lose, huffs to himself when you win, and yells instructions to his minions to target your healers. He is paying very close attention, and desperately trying everything he can think of to stop the player while loudly announcing that he doesn't care what you do. The announcements, furthermore, are definitely directed to the player, which suggests that far from being able to simply ignore mortals he actually cares what they think about him, and derives some kind of validation from extremely petty victories against them. Being killed once certainly contributed to this, but rather than learning from his first death he has apparently decided to fake it (badly) until he makes it. His entire persona is a self-defeating house of cards; he is too dedicated to trying to be his father and trying to be Impressive and Evil to be any good at either of those things, most of his self-esteem is tied to his ability to be accomplish this, and his solution to having awful self-esteem is to try to be more like his father.
So the question is, probably, what is Nefarian like when he's not inside his own self-fulfilling prophecy of failure? From his constant quips, he's both funny and a showoff. As his complete disdain for most of his underlings shows, he doesn't have much empathy for people who people who fail to do what they're ordered to (there may be some projection here.) He has sympathy for those harmed through no fault of their own - when one of Maloriak's experiments inadvertently blinds a young dragon, Nefarian scolds him harshly and raises the whelp himself rather than dispose of the failed subject. His awareness that his actions hurt others in no way stops him from horrific genetic experiments, but he's certainly capable of empathy to at least some degree. He doesn't deal well with surprise, and he's awful at improvising once he's decided on a plan; as previously described, he refuses to actually retreat when he's faced with certain death, just screams and denies it to the very end. Despite this, he's actually one of the most aware of the conventions of his genre of all of the bosses in his game; he has some understanding of how adventurers work and what the invisible mechanisms that govern in-game mechanics are. I don't think he's aware that he's in a video game, per se, but he's a lot closer to figuring it out than anybody else on Azeroth.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Self-aggrandizing
Insecure
Sarcastic
Foolish
Conniving
Grandiose
Bombastic
Disdainful
Incompetent
Mad Science
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs:
faerie
werewolf
minotaur
nymph
vampire
Roleplay Sample:
You fools!
[The latest batch of arrivals has washed up a miserable-looking man. His elaborate cape and doublet are so waterlogged that he appears to be having trouble dragging himself upright out of the sand on the dimmed beach.]
I am no mere mortal. You toy with-
[He inhales some of the seawater dripping from his mustache and has to pause to hack it out of his lungs.
A helpful fellow monster stops over, concerned. Her hand is immediately batted away.]
No! I was going to say that you toy with the wrath of Blackwing himself.
[The man hauls himself up, laboriously. His clothes stick to him, sodden, but he thrusts his arms into the air so that his cloak spreads like magestic, drippy wings.]
BEHOLD!
[A calamitous flash of magic and fire completely fails to manifest. The man's expression freezes in an unmistakable "oh shit."]
What? It can't be ... am I to be trapped? In this tiny, frail disguise?
[He zeroes in on the nearest creature that doesn't seem to be attacking anyone.]
YOU! What is the meaning of this?
Name: Fire
Contact: bluecanary on plurk
Other Characters: none
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Nefarian (Lord Victor Nefarius, in his human disguise)
Age: Somewhere between 500 and 10,000. Probably closer to the latter.
Canon: Warcraft series
Canon Point: After his inexplicable resurrection at the beginning of WoW: Cataclysm, before he's killed by the players again.
Character Information: Here at Wowpedia.
Personality: To explain Nefarian, one must first explain the Black Dragonflight. The shapers of the planet Azeroth, who terraformed and awakened the chaotic world into one that could sustain life designated its most powerful native residents as its keepers in their stead. These were the dragons, and the five largest families or "flights" were each given partial domain. The Black flight's charge was over the four elements of fire, water, earth, and air, and their leader was named the "Aspect of Earth" - both avatar and guardian. Unfortunately for both the Black flight and their aspect, buried deep within the earth that was their charge were the original, unkillable beings of horror and chaos that the shapers had imprisoned, the Old Gods. It is not known when the Aspect of the Black flight was first driven to madness, but the deep magical ties that bound him to the lower-ranking dragons quickly dragged them all along with him. For ten thousand years, the Black dragonflight has been known as traitors, villains, cackling ne'er-do-wells, and general douchebags. This is a little bit prejudicial, but mostly completely correct. The madness is in their blood. Even if many of them do not seem to fully understand that they are serving the Old Gods who seek to unmake the planet, they are literally born as tiny supervillains. Horses can walk almost immediately after they're born. Black dragons can fly, speak English, and construct an elaborate plan to take over or destroy the nearest unsuspecting country. You get a free Sinister Cape every time you hatch a Black dragon, and lessons in how to rub your hands together in a scheming manner.
The Aspect of the Black flight has been missing for forty or fifty years, and in his absence, Nefarian, the Aspect's eldest son, has been their leader. He is not very good at getting anything done. Nefarian has no less than seven different plans to take over the world in a span of ten years, and not one of them works. In fact, most of them stop working before they even make it out of his front door. His house is a volcano, by the way, because of course it is. He seems largely unaware of the Old Gods; to the contrary, he believes that he (and the rest of the Black flight) should rule simply because they are superior. In what ways are they superior? They just are. Don't worry about it. Nefarian won't. He seems to be ruling the flight exactly the way he thinks his father would have, trusting that there must have been a good reason for it.
Questioning things is not Nefarian's strong suit. It's not that he's unintelligent, exactly, because the strides in Mad Science he makes are very impressive. He has an excellent working knowledge of engineering, necromancy, biology, and magic. He creates several very gross mishmash creatures from scratch, resurrects his sister via lightning and bolts in her neck, Frankenstein style, and creates a mind-control device out of a crystal that was supposed to do something totally different. He is also, however, deeply impractical, and in classic villain fashion prefers to sit on a throne and brag and wait for adventurers to knock over every room in his house one by one before stabbing him. He is in complete denial about ever being killed right up until the exact second that this happens, when he promptly goes into a brief, screaming breakdown about how insignificant mortals are. Being terrible at logistics, it should be noted, is not a family trait. Nefarian's father blew up the planet (it got better) and took over the biggest human kingdom in the world with a combination of hypnotism and politics. Nefarian's mother communed with a parallel plane and brought forth a flight of half-dream monsters, then started a giant cult around herself. Nefarian's sister was well on her way to taking over yet another kingdom while Nef himself was sitting in his lair, splicing together chunks of animal and yelling at his minions. The point is, Nefarian sucks.
Trying to be his father and fill the shoes of a being that was chosen by the gods while also not being very good at this at all has done a number on his ego. Nefarian seems to believe that he's capable of taking over the flight and leading it away from the Aspect altogether while simultaneously keeping up a stream of the kind of forced bragging only managed by the deeply insecure. Here's an example: When the player (an inferior mortal, as Nefarian reminds the raid constantly during their encounters) kills his second in command, the one responsible for keeping most of his operation running, Nefarian peforms a zone-wide shout:
"Congratulations! Allow me to grant you a title befitting the amazing achievement you just performed! Henceforth, you shall be known as the Slayer of Stupid, Incompetent and Disappointing Minions."
Then you get a debuff for thirty minutes called "MASTER ADVENTURER AWARD" that looks like a little thumbs-up and changes your title to exactly that.
This is not an isolated incident. Unlike every other boss in the game, Nefarian keeps a running commentary through the raid's progression on every fight in Blackwing Descent. Most of it is themed around how little he cares that you're in his house breaking his things, and how insignificant a setback each of your victories are. Different tactics in the raid will actually change his responses, and on higher difficulties he will act to block common strategies. He gloats when you lose, huffs to himself when you win, and yells instructions to his minions to target your healers. He is paying very close attention, and desperately trying everything he can think of to stop the player while loudly announcing that he doesn't care what you do. The announcements, furthermore, are definitely directed to the player, which suggests that far from being able to simply ignore mortals he actually cares what they think about him, and derives some kind of validation from extremely petty victories against them. Being killed once certainly contributed to this, but rather than learning from his first death he has apparently decided to fake it (badly) until he makes it. His entire persona is a self-defeating house of cards; he is too dedicated to trying to be his father and trying to be Impressive and Evil to be any good at either of those things, most of his self-esteem is tied to his ability to be accomplish this, and his solution to having awful self-esteem is to try to be more like his father.
So the question is, probably, what is Nefarian like when he's not inside his own self-fulfilling prophecy of failure? From his constant quips, he's both funny and a showoff. As his complete disdain for most of his underlings shows, he doesn't have much empathy for people who people who fail to do what they're ordered to (there may be some projection here.) He has sympathy for those harmed through no fault of their own - when one of Maloriak's experiments inadvertently blinds a young dragon, Nefarian scolds him harshly and raises the whelp himself rather than dispose of the failed subject. His awareness that his actions hurt others in no way stops him from horrific genetic experiments, but he's certainly capable of empathy to at least some degree. He doesn't deal well with surprise, and he's awful at improvising once he's decided on a plan; as previously described, he refuses to actually retreat when he's faced with certain death, just screams and denies it to the very end. Despite this, he's actually one of the most aware of the conventions of his genre of all of the bosses in his game; he has some understanding of how adventurers work and what the invisible mechanisms that govern in-game mechanics are. I don't think he's aware that he's in a video game, per se, but he's a lot closer to figuring it out than anybody else on Azeroth.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Self-aggrandizing
Insecure
Sarcastic
Foolish
Conniving
Grandiose
Bombastic
Disdainful
Incompetent
Mad Science
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs:
faerie
werewolf
minotaur
nymph
vampire
Roleplay Sample:
You fools!
[The latest batch of arrivals has washed up a miserable-looking man. His elaborate cape and doublet are so waterlogged that he appears to be having trouble dragging himself upright out of the sand on the dimmed beach.]
I am no mere mortal. You toy with-
[He inhales some of the seawater dripping from his mustache and has to pause to hack it out of his lungs.
A helpful fellow monster stops over, concerned. Her hand is immediately batted away.]
No! I was going to say that you toy with the wrath of Blackwing himself.
[The man hauls himself up, laboriously. His clothes stick to him, sodden, but he thrusts his arms into the air so that his cloak spreads like magestic, drippy wings.]
BEHOLD!
[A calamitous flash of magic and fire completely fails to manifest. The man's expression freezes in an unmistakable "oh shit."]
What? It can't be ... am I to be trapped? In this tiny, frail disguise?
[He zeroes in on the nearest creature that doesn't seem to be attacking anyone.]
YOU! What is the meaning of this?
