RECOLLE NAVIGATION.
meadowlark app.
> PLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: Jen
PRONOUNS: she/her
AGE: 32
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
aurajen
> CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Ardyn Izunia (Ardyn Lucis Caelum)
CANON: Final Fantasy XV
AGE: 2000+
CANON POINT: Just after summoning down the astral Ifrit during the final chapter.
HISTORY: A wiki link for this hot mess of a man.
PERSONALITY:
Ardyn Izunia is a difficult man to parse. At first glance, he is built upon contradictions which make little sense when compared to each other; but upon further inspection and knowledge of his past experiences, all these bizarre pieces come together to neatly form a whole. To begin, it’s easiest to start with outside appearances.
The Chancellor of Niflheim is a lofty title, one that might invoke the imagery of a stern and unrelenting man. And yet, instead you get Ardyn — supercilious and fueled by a condescending sort of humor aimed at those around him. He is malleable as he is silver-tongued, eloquent, and unaffected by very much. He is theatrical and even sarcastic; he’s just as quick to pay a compliment as he is to throw out verbal barbs, and his expression remains the same regardless of which he chooses. As his English VA once described him, he is full of “insincere sincerity”. He’s a difficult man to read, because he seems fluid and unnecessarily fills the air with words that may not have much meaning to them to begin with. In this way he is both ineffable and confusing, even frustrating, but undoubtedly dripping in charm the entire time. He's shrewd and intelligent, confident and subtly cocky. He can get under your skin with some well-placed words, which is how he prefers to do it.
Whereas some of this persona is a farce, some accurately reflects his character. Ardyn lacks empathy, which can be clearly seen once he reveals his more devious side in the later chapters of the game. How he kills Lunafreya without so much batting an eye, how he patronizingly taunts Noctis throughout all of Chapter 13, and how eager he is to bring darkness to all of Eos, just for the sake of revenge on the Caelum line and the astrals, two thousand years in the future. If he seems lackadaisical, it's because he simply doesn't care about the "smaller picture", the day-to-day moments and considerations. Immortal and long-lived, Ardyn looks at everything in a wider scope. This is especially true given his goals in the game.
The other side of Ardyn Izunia is the ugly half. It’s the devious mind that lies beneath the surface of what most think is a puzzling man; it’s the fact that often his empty words are empty for a reason, because he’s either manipulating someone by holding back the truth, or merely sees no reason to share it at all. He's clever and calculating, and Ardyn likes to pull the strings from afar — throughout the game, he aids Noctis and his companions (technically his enemies) just to further his own goals. And it takes a bitter, twisted sort of man to cover the world in literal darkness just for the sake of his own vendetta. Beneath everything, he has an anger and a cruelty there that, coupled with his apathy, makes him a very dangerous person. He even takes a sadistic sort of pleasure in toying with others, something he doesn't even try to hide near the end of the game.
It isn't a stretch to say that a very, very long time ago, Ardyn may have been a nicer person. He had been a King and leader, as well as a healer; he healed countless, the implication being that there was a clear devotion to the goal, and a possession of empathy for those suffering from the Starscourge. In the game, we no longer see him utilizing these powers at all. He's lost any sense of humanitarianism beyond achieving a clear-cut objective. There's no warmth, no real concern for those around him; he's quick to even betray those he had allied with, simply because they outlived their usefulness. This is important, because this clear transition from healer king to Man Who Wants to Fuck Up the World was brought on by a betrayal that defined him for millennia to come.
This betrayal was by both gods and family, and in its completeness Ardyn became angry and spiteful. Shrewd and motivated. In his most revealing moments, he tells Noctis that he had been left in the darkness for ages, the resentment finally spilling forth in uncommon forthrightness. It reveals the anger he has kept bubbling in the pit of his chest for countless years, a bitterness that has been the motivation behind his very existence. Revenge turns a mind dark and its purpose razor-sharp, and this, along with the burden of countless daemons he keeps within himself, only fueled this venom within him.
And yet despite everything, as immortal as the man is, as eager as he can be to destroy the Lucis Caelum line, there is a part of him that wishes for his own death just so that he can finally be unburdened by the daemons he carries and pass peacefully. This adds a twist of tragedy to his otherwise unsavory character faults, and though it does not excuse the travesties he wishes to place upon Eos, it does provide further motivation for Ardyn. In various bits of dialogue, there's hinting that Ardyn almost expects Noctis to kill him during the final battle, so that he can finally be free. This lends itself to the notion that there may be the tiniest amount of regret he harbors, or at the very least, a stark awareness of the monster he's become over millennia. It's enough for him to pursue the only way in which he can actually die, which is to have Noctis become the True King to kill him.
As a result, this desire for revenge (and possible freedom) is what makes up the ugly core of Ardyn, completely disregarding any sort of decent individual he might have been in the past. He's calculating with more than enough potential to be cruel, though he usually keeps all of this hidden behind a veneer of patronizing humor, questionable charm, and clever wordplay. In the end, most everything he does is either for the sake of manipulation, or in contrast, because something is unimportant enough in his eyes to actually care. His past experience as a king, his betrayal by his own family line and the astrals, and the thousands of years wrought on his humanity was more than enough to unfortunately shape him into the man he is during the events of the game: a man bent on throwing the world into darkness simply because of the injustices incurred upon him thousands of years ago.
CRAU:
Ardyn spent a little more than a year in the game El Nysa. There, he was forced to live with several circumstances he never had to take into consideration during his canon — the information of his world being apparently destroyed, the extreme nerfing of his powers, and close proximity and forced cooperation with canonmates, and others with whom he would not normally associate with.
At first, this combination didn’t help very much with his ingrained character faults, seeing it as all of his plans for Eos, and for his own death, having been quickly upended. He felt wronged by it, as if the wheel of fate kept turning and crushing him under its force; the entirety of it all made him angry, and Ardyn dealt with that anger by antagonizing familiar faces and strangers alike. Yet given that he had no choice but to interact with fellow characters who had been taken by their homes as well, he began to form a small circle of acquaintances that he would speak to time and time again. And by way of integrating to the new setting, he even took up a job in the local city, beginning his slow adjustment to what was forcibly his new life. He became used to the idea of foreign magics, of different worlds/universes, and with his own castmates' misaligned timelines.
Time passed, wearing down the edges of this anger, though he would never feel as if it was a fair lot that he had been thrown in. With his own castmates came interactions by way of proximity, until there became a strange undercurrent of tense understanding between them. Facets of his true personality and the truth of who he was, what he had done, slowly began to unravel. Between them, even some small amount of understanding, though never a true comfortability with any of them. The idea of him being able to move on from his agenda in Eos came up time and time again, and while Ardyn would never say as much to any of them, it slowly began to become a consideration in his own mind.
As a result, compared to the beginning of his stay in El Nysa, near the end, the villainous tendencies did not so much disappear, but they did abate slightly. Acceptance of his new life was slowly beginning to sink in, possibly the most poignant change for Ardyn as a character, which brought on small tweaks to his personality as a result — a faintly more prevalent willingness to cooperate, honesty about himself and who/what he was with his closest CR, and his violent tendencies (while still very prevalent) sleeping under a few more layers, taking more to awaken than it would normally.
Since there’s the potential of one of his closest CR apping in the same round, it’s worth mentioning it briefly here. X’rhun Tia and Ardyn Izunia grew close during their time spent in El Nysa, and it was this relationship that helped some of the positive growth mentioned above take place, however small. X’rhun, despite knowing of Ardyn’s history, wanted to see him live a new life as a better man. He kept faith in him even though he saw the worst parts of his personality, and encouraged him to be better and to keep hope. Ardyn didn’t quite buy all of it — still doesn’t completely — but appreciation and consideration for these efforts still existed. As a result, Ardyn has a distinct fondness for X’rhun, and the man was the one he had trusted most by the time he departed the game.
SPECIES: Human/daemon. The latter is thanks to his connection to the Starscourge; otherwise born as a human, and will certainly be defined as one in the game setting.
APPEARANCE: [1] [2]
SKILLS:
GENERALIZED COMBAT - Ardyn is familiar with a wide range of weapons (as indicated by him having his own Armiger), and is a skilled combatant on the field, even if seeing him sincerely fight is reserved only for the end of the narrative. He is intimate with the handling of a multitude of traditional melee weapons, as well as firearms and hand-to-hand combat.
MASTER MANIPULATOR - It's worth mentioning that Ardyn is a very manipulative individual. Keen on looking at the bigger picture as a whole, he is a far-seeing man in regards to knowing how people will react, and how to subtly push them in the right direction to get what he wants. He's particularly good at manipulating the emotions and motivations of others by mere words alone. This, coupled with an innate cleverness, makes him a very shrewd individual.
MAGICAL/DAEMONIC KNOWLEDGE - While his canon abilities wouldn't apply here, he still possesses thorough knowledge of how his magic works in his world, as well as how the Starscourge itself works... considering that he's the avatar of it.
REALLY EXTRA - Ardyn is very eloquent to the point of grandiloquence. He has a penchant for dramatic gestures and rhetoric, and will flaunt and tease others without much remorse. He wears whatever the heck he wants, has the floofiest hair, and is overall just A Lot. So much that this does deserve its own bullet point.
NEW POWER: Illusion manipulation. The ability to make a single object or person appear as something completely different to the person he is affecting his power on. This isn't a transformation, but merely what it says on the tin; an illusion. An apple will stay an apple, for instance, even if Ardyn can suddenly make it appear as an orange to this single individual.
As per mod suggestion: Limited to working only on smaller objects for now, will be mentally taxing when employed, and not sustainable for very long.
POWER REASONING: Ardyn is a deceitful and manipulative individual, which is reflected in the power of illusion; a talent that relies heavily on misdirection. This is also parallel to his role in canon, in which hides his true identity until he wishes to reveal it on his own terms. More practically, it is also congruent with a canon power he possessed of similar function.
> SAMPLES
SAMPLE ONE: log sample.
SAMPLE TWO: log sample.
NAME: Jen
PRONOUNS: she/her
AGE: 32
CONTACT:
> CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Ardyn Izunia (Ardyn Lucis Caelum)
CANON: Final Fantasy XV
AGE: 2000+
CANON POINT: Just after summoning down the astral Ifrit during the final chapter.
HISTORY: A wiki link for this hot mess of a man.
PERSONALITY:
Ardyn Izunia is a difficult man to parse. At first glance, he is built upon contradictions which make little sense when compared to each other; but upon further inspection and knowledge of his past experiences, all these bizarre pieces come together to neatly form a whole. To begin, it’s easiest to start with outside appearances.
The Chancellor of Niflheim is a lofty title, one that might invoke the imagery of a stern and unrelenting man. And yet, instead you get Ardyn — supercilious and fueled by a condescending sort of humor aimed at those around him. He is malleable as he is silver-tongued, eloquent, and unaffected by very much. He is theatrical and even sarcastic; he’s just as quick to pay a compliment as he is to throw out verbal barbs, and his expression remains the same regardless of which he chooses. As his English VA once described him, he is full of “insincere sincerity”. He’s a difficult man to read, because he seems fluid and unnecessarily fills the air with words that may not have much meaning to them to begin with. In this way he is both ineffable and confusing, even frustrating, but undoubtedly dripping in charm the entire time. He's shrewd and intelligent, confident and subtly cocky. He can get under your skin with some well-placed words, which is how he prefers to do it.
Whereas some of this persona is a farce, some accurately reflects his character. Ardyn lacks empathy, which can be clearly seen once he reveals his more devious side in the later chapters of the game. How he kills Lunafreya without so much batting an eye, how he patronizingly taunts Noctis throughout all of Chapter 13, and how eager he is to bring darkness to all of Eos, just for the sake of revenge on the Caelum line and the astrals, two thousand years in the future. If he seems lackadaisical, it's because he simply doesn't care about the "smaller picture", the day-to-day moments and considerations. Immortal and long-lived, Ardyn looks at everything in a wider scope. This is especially true given his goals in the game.
The other side of Ardyn Izunia is the ugly half. It’s the devious mind that lies beneath the surface of what most think is a puzzling man; it’s the fact that often his empty words are empty for a reason, because he’s either manipulating someone by holding back the truth, or merely sees no reason to share it at all. He's clever and calculating, and Ardyn likes to pull the strings from afar — throughout the game, he aids Noctis and his companions (technically his enemies) just to further his own goals. And it takes a bitter, twisted sort of man to cover the world in literal darkness just for the sake of his own vendetta. Beneath everything, he has an anger and a cruelty there that, coupled with his apathy, makes him a very dangerous person. He even takes a sadistic sort of pleasure in toying with others, something he doesn't even try to hide near the end of the game.
It isn't a stretch to say that a very, very long time ago, Ardyn may have been a nicer person. He had been a King and leader, as well as a healer; he healed countless, the implication being that there was a clear devotion to the goal, and a possession of empathy for those suffering from the Starscourge. In the game, we no longer see him utilizing these powers at all. He's lost any sense of humanitarianism beyond achieving a clear-cut objective. There's no warmth, no real concern for those around him; he's quick to even betray those he had allied with, simply because they outlived their usefulness. This is important, because this clear transition from healer king to Man Who Wants to Fuck Up the World was brought on by a betrayal that defined him for millennia to come.
This betrayal was by both gods and family, and in its completeness Ardyn became angry and spiteful. Shrewd and motivated. In his most revealing moments, he tells Noctis that he had been left in the darkness for ages, the resentment finally spilling forth in uncommon forthrightness. It reveals the anger he has kept bubbling in the pit of his chest for countless years, a bitterness that has been the motivation behind his very existence. Revenge turns a mind dark and its purpose razor-sharp, and this, along with the burden of countless daemons he keeps within himself, only fueled this venom within him.
And yet despite everything, as immortal as the man is, as eager as he can be to destroy the Lucis Caelum line, there is a part of him that wishes for his own death just so that he can finally be unburdened by the daemons he carries and pass peacefully. This adds a twist of tragedy to his otherwise unsavory character faults, and though it does not excuse the travesties he wishes to place upon Eos, it does provide further motivation for Ardyn. In various bits of dialogue, there's hinting that Ardyn almost expects Noctis to kill him during the final battle, so that he can finally be free. This lends itself to the notion that there may be the tiniest amount of regret he harbors, or at the very least, a stark awareness of the monster he's become over millennia. It's enough for him to pursue the only way in which he can actually die, which is to have Noctis become the True King to kill him.
As a result, this desire for revenge (and possible freedom) is what makes up the ugly core of Ardyn, completely disregarding any sort of decent individual he might have been in the past. He's calculating with more than enough potential to be cruel, though he usually keeps all of this hidden behind a veneer of patronizing humor, questionable charm, and clever wordplay. In the end, most everything he does is either for the sake of manipulation, or in contrast, because something is unimportant enough in his eyes to actually care. His past experience as a king, his betrayal by his own family line and the astrals, and the thousands of years wrought on his humanity was more than enough to unfortunately shape him into the man he is during the events of the game: a man bent on throwing the world into darkness simply because of the injustices incurred upon him thousands of years ago.
CRAU:
Ardyn spent a little more than a year in the game El Nysa. There, he was forced to live with several circumstances he never had to take into consideration during his canon — the information of his world being apparently destroyed, the extreme nerfing of his powers, and close proximity and forced cooperation with canonmates, and others with whom he would not normally associate with.
At first, this combination didn’t help very much with his ingrained character faults, seeing it as all of his plans for Eos, and for his own death, having been quickly upended. He felt wronged by it, as if the wheel of fate kept turning and crushing him under its force; the entirety of it all made him angry, and Ardyn dealt with that anger by antagonizing familiar faces and strangers alike. Yet given that he had no choice but to interact with fellow characters who had been taken by their homes as well, he began to form a small circle of acquaintances that he would speak to time and time again. And by way of integrating to the new setting, he even took up a job in the local city, beginning his slow adjustment to what was forcibly his new life. He became used to the idea of foreign magics, of different worlds/universes, and with his own castmates' misaligned timelines.
Time passed, wearing down the edges of this anger, though he would never feel as if it was a fair lot that he had been thrown in. With his own castmates came interactions by way of proximity, until there became a strange undercurrent of tense understanding between them. Facets of his true personality and the truth of who he was, what he had done, slowly began to unravel. Between them, even some small amount of understanding, though never a true comfortability with any of them. The idea of him being able to move on from his agenda in Eos came up time and time again, and while Ardyn would never say as much to any of them, it slowly began to become a consideration in his own mind.
As a result, compared to the beginning of his stay in El Nysa, near the end, the villainous tendencies did not so much disappear, but they did abate slightly. Acceptance of his new life was slowly beginning to sink in, possibly the most poignant change for Ardyn as a character, which brought on small tweaks to his personality as a result — a faintly more prevalent willingness to cooperate, honesty about himself and who/what he was with his closest CR, and his violent tendencies (while still very prevalent) sleeping under a few more layers, taking more to awaken than it would normally.
Since there’s the potential of one of his closest CR apping in the same round, it’s worth mentioning it briefly here. X’rhun Tia and Ardyn Izunia grew close during their time spent in El Nysa, and it was this relationship that helped some of the positive growth mentioned above take place, however small. X’rhun, despite knowing of Ardyn’s history, wanted to see him live a new life as a better man. He kept faith in him even though he saw the worst parts of his personality, and encouraged him to be better and to keep hope. Ardyn didn’t quite buy all of it — still doesn’t completely — but appreciation and consideration for these efforts still existed. As a result, Ardyn has a distinct fondness for X’rhun, and the man was the one he had trusted most by the time he departed the game.
SPECIES: Human/daemon. The latter is thanks to his connection to the Starscourge; otherwise born as a human, and will certainly be defined as one in the game setting.
APPEARANCE: [1] [2]
SKILLS:
NEW POWER: Illusion manipulation. The ability to make a single object or person appear as something completely different to the person he is affecting his power on. This isn't a transformation, but merely what it says on the tin; an illusion. An apple will stay an apple, for instance, even if Ardyn can suddenly make it appear as an orange to this single individual.
As per mod suggestion: Limited to working only on smaller objects for now, will be mentally taxing when employed, and not sustainable for very long.
POWER REASONING: Ardyn is a deceitful and manipulative individual, which is reflected in the power of illusion; a talent that relies heavily on misdirection. This is also parallel to his role in canon, in which hides his true identity until he wishes to reveal it on his own terms. More practically, it is also congruent with a canon power he possessed of similar function.
> SAMPLES
SAMPLE ONE: log sample.
SAMPLE TWO: log sample.
empatheias app.
Player: Jen
Contact:
Age: 18+
Current Characters: N/A
Character: Ardyn Izunia
Age: 2000+
Canon: Final Fantasy XV
Canon Point: Post-game, AKA after his death
Background: Wiki link here!
Personality:
Ardyn Izunia is a difficult man to parse. At first glance, he is built upon contradictions which make little sense when compared to each other; but upon further inspection and knowledge of his past experiences, all these bizarre pieces come together to neatly form a whole. To begin, it’s easiest to start with outside appearances.
The Chancellor of Niflheim is a lofty title, one that might invoke the imagery of a stern and unrelenting man. And yet, instead you get Ardyn — supercilious and fueled by a condescending sort of humor, aimed at nearly everyone around him. He is malleable as he is silver-tongued, eloquent in words (as a politician must be), and oddly unaffected in general. He is theatrical and even sarcastic; he’s just as quick to pay a compliment as he is to throw out verbal barbs, and his expression remains the same regardless of which he chooses. As his English VA once described him, he is full of “insincere sincerity”. He’s a difficult man to read, because he seems fluid and unnecessarily fills the air with words that may not have much meaning to them to begin with. In this way he is both ineffable and confusing, even frustrating, but undoubtedly dripping in charm the entire time. He's shrewd and intelligent, confident and subtly cocky. He can get under your skin with some well-placed words, which is admittedly the way he prefers to do it.
Whereas some of this persona is a farce, some of it is a sincere a part of Ardyn’s character. He’s a man who has lived for two thousand years, and only a small fraction of this time was he driven by action in the narrative (the events shortly prior to, and during, the game); the rest of this time, Ardyn was merely living in Eos, unheard of by others. Floating through the ages, and being dismissive about people, events, and other transient things was just a part of an immortal life. In this sense, Ardyn lacks empathy, which can be clearly seen once he shows his more devious, darker side in the later chapters of the game. How he kills Lunafreya without so much batting an eye, how he patronizingly taunts Noctis throughout all of Chapter 13, and how eager he is to bring darkness to all of Eos, just for the sake of getting revenge on the Caelum line and the astrals, two thousand years in the future. If he seems lackadaisical, it's because he simply doesn't care about the "smaller picture", the day-to-day moments and considerations. He's seen centuries pass, and he's geared himself to look at everything in a wider scope. This is especially true given his goals in the game.
The other side of Ardyn Izunia is the ugly half. It’s the devious mind that lies beneath the surface of what most think is a puzzling man; it’s the fact that often his empty words are empty for a reason, because he’s either manipulating someone by holding back the truth, or merely sees no reason to share it at all. He thinks with a calculating mind, lending well to his station as Chancellor. Ardyn pulls the strings from afar — throughout the game, he aids Noctis and his companions, who are technically his enemies. All of this because it lends to his end goal of being able to turn Noctis into the True King, so that he can end the Lucis Caelum line with the King’s death and his own. And it takes a bitter, twisted sort of man to cover the world in literal darkness just for the sake of his own vendetta. When you dig even deeper, there’s an anger and a cruelty there that, coupled with his apathy, makes him a very dangerous person. He even takes a sadistic sort of pleasure in toying with others, one that he doesn't bother hiding when the curtains have been drawn back completely.
It isn't a stretch to say that a very, very long time ago, Ardyn may have been a nicer person. He was going to be a King and leader, as well as a healer; he healed countless, the implication being that there was a clear devotion to the goal, and a possession of empathy for those suffering from the Starscourge. In the game, we no longer see him utilizing these powers at all. He's lost any sense of humanitarianism beyond achieving a clear-cut objective. There's no warmth, no real concern for those around him; he's quick to even betray those he had allied with, simply because they outlived their usefulness -- in a true villainous fashion. This is important to point out, because this clear transition from healer king to Man Who Wants to Fuck Up the World was brought on by a betrayal that defined him for millennia to come.
This betrayal was by both gods and family, and in its completeness Ardyn became angry and spiteful. Shrewd and motivated. In his most revealing moments, he tells Noctis that he had been left in the darkness for ages, the resentment finally spilling forth in uncommon forthrightness. It reveals the anger he has kept bubbling in the pit of his chest for countless years, a bitterness that has been the motivation behind his very existence. Revenge turns a mind dark and its purpose razor-sharp, and the same could be said for Ardyn Izunia. This, along with the burden of countless daemons he keeps within himself, only fueled this venom within him.
So, Ardyn is a villain, we get that now. But there's one final thing worth mentioning; as immortal as the man is, as eager as he can be to destroy the Lucis Caelum line, there is a part of him that wishes for his own death, so that he can finally be unburdened by the daemons he carries and pass peacefully. This adds a bit of tragedy to his otherwise unsavory character faults, and though it does not excuse the travesties he wishes to place upon Eos, it does provide further motivation for Ardyn. In various bits of dialogue, there's hinting that Ardyn almost expects Noctis to kill him during the final battle, so that he can finally be free. This lends itself to the notion that there may be the tiniest amount of regret he harbors, or at the very least, a stark awareness of the monster he's become over millennia. It's enough for him to pursue the only way in which he can actually die, which is to have Noctis become the True King to kill him.
As a result, this desire for revenge (and possible freedom) is what makes up the ugly core of Ardyn, completely disregarding any sort of decent individual he might have been in the past. He's calculating with more than enough potential to be cruel, though he usually keeps all of this hidden behind a veneer of patronizing humor, questionable charm, and clever wordplay. In the end, most everything he does is either for the sake of manipulation, or in contrast, because something is unimportant enough in his eyes to actually care. His past experience as a future king, his betrayal by his own family line and the astrals, and the thousands of years wrought on his humanity was more than enough to unfortunately shape him into the man he is during the events of the game: a man bent on throwing the world into darkness simply because of the injustices incurred upon him thousands of years ago.
Abilities:
Power Nerfs (if applicable): Ardyn is basically the Starscourge incarnate, but I think it would be reasonable to nerf his ability to ~cover the world in darkness~ if he ever became so inclined. He would no longer be able to do so.
Alignment: Elios. Ardyn, despite his apparent flippant demeanor, is a man of very deep emotion. In the beginning, he was a healer, who gave himself to the people out of his concern and love for them. He took on their suffering so that they would not have to. And it is also because of this betrayed love and trust (of people, family, and gods) that he became filled to the brim with hate, as we see in canon.
Other: N/A
General Sample: TDM top level link
Emotion Sample:
Ardyn did not want to do this in the company of those he knew; he was a man who kept his emotions hidden under that usual thick veil of flippancy, of patronization that cut into the skin of others, of frustrating smiles and suffocating superciliousness. At times, it was sincere, this dismissive nature that he harbored towards the thoughts and feelings of others — other times, it was but a cover for what lurked beneath. That torrent of bitterness and hatred and complete, utter spite that he had felt towards the gods, family, and his so-called destiny to be the darkness that ended his world.
That much had ended, of course. Seen through to its end, as he wished it to be. But that did not mean that he could not still call upon this hatred, for he need only focus on the memory of his brother, of the entire damnable Lucis Caelum line, and how it stood for all that he had lost. How the gods had denied his ascension, sealing his fate to be demonized by others. How he would bear the burden of the Starscourge of thousands of years, crushed under the heel of fate to adhere to a self-fulling prophecy.
No, that was more than enough to fuel the fire for his little test. To see just how much damage he could do with his baseline emotions if he reached deep, grabbing a fistful of the ugly stuff and letting it flourish above the surface. He had so much of it, after all. Accumulated after such a long existence, the end result would not be surprising.
The window to a storefront cracked under an invisible pressure, as if struck. It vibrated, groaning, then shattered, its pieces falling to the ground unceremoniously. Nearby, the flora of a flower-seller’s stall, adorned with rows of bright yellow and red blossoms, began to wane and wither and shrivel. As if some invisible scourge was reaching out, sapping away life from all it touched.
Ardyn let out a laugh, dry and hollow yet sharp. A few flowers lost their petals, and they fluttered pitifully to the ground at his feet. The man tending to the stall noticed a minute too late, before Ardyn had already turned to walk away. He had his answer here -- he would try elsewhere, as well.
Questions: Nothing I can think of!
BLOOD TITHE NAGIVATION.
INFO POST FOR BLOOD TITHE
 
|
 @ blood tithe 
|
(no subject)
i. nightmares;
ii. the fog;
( a ) cw: dead bodies
[The setting is dark, desecrated. It is, unmistakably so, the interior of a throne room, as evidenced by the steps leading up to a seat of obvious power. A wall adjacent to it lies crumbling, revealing the night sky. There is nothing peaceful to be felt from the sight; the stars that hang in the sky will not provide anyone with their usual ethereal calm, but only a strange, discomforting sense of something being wrong. The darkness is bleak. Suffocating.
This is the aftermath of… something. This isn't only evident by the way everything has been abandoned, or the strange, glowing crystal that hangs above the throne, washing the room with an eerie blue glow. There’s something far more noticeable — corpses, chained up and hanging from the tall ceiling, like marionettes on strings. They twitch, they laugh. They cry and they shout things unintelligible, voices reverberating in the cavernous, empty space. Their faces are blotted out with something dark, their forms unable to be made out clearly. Three men, perhaps, and a woman. It’s hard to tell.
Maybe you’re seated on the throne, given a clear view of this sight. Maybe Ardyn is, and you’re craning your head up to look at him, wondering why he’s overseeing such a dreary place, with bodies twitching above your head. Caught in a circle of dark swirling out of the ground, like wisping smoke, heralding something about to happen. What it is for now remains a mystery.
Either way, Ardyn is the first to speak, breaking the silence.]
What do you think has happened here?
[A strange non-lucidity brought on by dreaming incites this strange question, reasonable as it might be.]
( b )
[Eventually that nightmare melts away at the edges to reveal something different. An empty street, with people milling about. The where doesn’t matter — it may be Recolle, it may not be. It might be from a world far away, it might be nowhere at all. Ardyn stands next to you, and he looks as if he wants to say something, when a faceless person walks up him. They grasp at his sleeve, pleading with him, Heal me, please. It hurts.
Something dark cracks along the stranger’s face. They might shift into someone recognizable (that of a loved one, someone from your own memories?) or it could remain the face of a stranger. But one thing is unmistakable — a crowd is slowly forming. All of them, asking the same thing over and over and over again. Heal me.]
ii. the fog;
[It wasn’t a particularly good idea to walk through the fog at night, but Ardyn had been certain he could manage it. It wasn’t far to his car, and he was hardly the type to be disquieted by a still, eerie atmosphere. But it’s a miscalculation on his part, because a shortcut down an alleyway turns into something altogether different: cold, dark corridors. Leading to somewhere unseen.
Naturally, this gives Ardyn pause, causing him to frown. A spike of adrenaline surges through his body, felt in the faster tempo of his heart rate. He hisses something like a curse under his breath, looking back the way he came. The view is the same, and no more promising.
Breaking the silence, loud and stringent, is a voice over the crackling PA system. It’s familiar, and it startles him. It’s his voice, twisted with a facetiousness that borderlines on cruel.]
Lost, are we? It’s best to keep moving, or else you'll be met with a nasty surprise.
[It sends a chill up his spine, it makes his skin crawl for long, lingering seconds. All that distracts him from that voice is the sound of clattering in the distance, and he turns his head to see who — or what — it might be.]
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ARDYN IZUNIA
Ardyn Izunia. Professor of law. Lord of law. Liege of law. The one grading your papers. Leave a message.
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OOC
Handle: Jen
Contact:
Over 18? Yes
Characters Played: N/A
THE CHARACTER
Character Name: Ardyn Izunia (Ardyn Lucis Caelum)
Series: Final Fantasy XV
Canon Point: After calling down Ifrit in the final chapter of the game. (Chapter 14)
Character Age: Anywhere from 2000 - 3000 years old. Physically appears anywhere from late thirties to mid forties.
Background: ye olde wiki link
Personality:
Ardyn Izunia is a difficult man to parse. At first glance, he is built upon contradictions which make little sense when compared to each other; but upon further inspection and knowledge of his past experiences, all these bizarre pieces come together to neatly form a whole. To begin, it’s easiest to start with outside appearances.
The Chancellor of Niflheim is a lofty title, one that might invoke the imagery of a stern and unrelenting man. And yet, instead you get Ardyn — supercilious and fueled by a condescending sort of humor, aimed at nearly everyone around him. He is malleable as he is silver-tongued, eloquent in words (as a politician must be), and oddly unaffected in general. He is theatrical and even sarcastic; he’s just as quick to pay a compliment as he is to throw out verbal barbs, and his expression remains the same regardless of which he chooses. As his English VA once described him, he is full of “insincere sincerity”. He’s a difficult man to read, because he seems fluid and unnecessarily fills the air with words that may not have much meaning to them to begin with. In this way he is both ineffable and confusing, even frustrating, but undoubtedly dripping in charm the entire time. He's shrewd and intelligent, confident and subtly cocky. He can get under your skin with some well-placed words, which is admittedly the way he prefers to do it.
Whereas some of this persona is a farce, some of it is a sincere a part of Ardyn’s character. He’s a man who has lived for two thousand years, and only a small fraction of this time was he driven by action in the narrative (the events shortly prior to, and during, the game); the rest of this time, Ardyn was merely living in Eos, unheard of by others. Floating through the ages, and being dismissive about people, events, and other transient things was just a part of an immortal life. In this sense, Ardyn lacks empathy, which can be clearly seen once he shows his more devious, darker side in the later chapters of the game. How he kills Lunafreya without so much batting an eye, how he patronizingly taunts Noctis throughout all of Chapter 13, and how eager he is to bring darkness to all of Eos, just for the sake of getting revenge on the Caelum line and the astrals, two thousand years in the future. If he seems lackadaisical, it's because he simply doesn't care about the "smaller picture", the day-to-day moments and considerations. He's seen centuries pass, and he's geared himself to look at everything in a wider scope. This is especially true given his goals in the game.
The other side of Ardyn Izunia is the ugly half. It’s the devious mind that lies beneath the surface of what most think is a puzzling man; it’s the fact that often his empty words are empty for a reason, because he’s either manipulating someone by holding back the truth, or merely sees no reason to share it at all. He thinks with a calculating mind, lending well to his station as Chancellor. Ardyn pulls the strings from afar — throughout the game, he aids Noctis and his companions, who are technically his enemies. All of this because it lends to his end goal of being able to turn Noctis into the True King, so that he can end the Lucis Caelum line with the King’s death and his own. And it takes a bitter, twisted sort of man to cover the world in literal darkness just for the sake of his own vendetta. When you dig even deeper, there’s an anger and a cruelty there that, coupled with his apathy, makes him a very dangerous person. He even takes a sadistic sort of pleasure in toying with others, one that he doesn't bother hiding when the curtains have been drawn back completely.
It isn't a stretch to say that a very, very long time ago, Ardyn may have been a nicer person. He had been a King and leader, as well as a healer; he healed countless, the implication being that there was a clear devotion to the goal, and a possession of empathy for those suffering from the Starscourge. In the game, we no longer see him utilizing these powers at all. He's lost any sense of humanitarianism beyond achieving a clear-cut objective. There's no warmth, no real concern for those around him; he's quick to even betray those he had allied with, simply because they outlived their usefulness -- in a true villainous fashion. This is important to point out, because this clear transition from healer king to Man Who Wants to Fuck Up the World was brought on by a betrayal that defined him for millennia to come.
This betrayal was by both gods and family, and in its completeness Ardyn became angry and spiteful. Shrewd and motivated. In his most revealing moments, he tells Noctis that he had been left in the darkness for ages, the resentment finally spilling forth in uncommon forthrightness. It reveals the anger he has kept bubbling in the pit of his chest for countless years, a bitterness that has been the motivation behind his very existence. Revenge turns a mind dark and its purpose razor-sharp, and the same could be said for Ardyn Izunia. This, along with the burden of countless daemons he keeps within himself, only fueled this venom within him.
So, Ardyn is a villain, we get that now. But there's one final thing worth mentioning; as immortal as the man is, as eager as he can be to destroy the Lucis Caelum line, there is a part of him that wishes for his own death, so that he can finally be unburdened by the daemons he carries and pass peacefully. This adds a bit of tragedy to his otherwise unsavory character faults, and though it does not excuse the travesties he wishes to place upon Eos, it does provide further motivation for Ardyn. In various bits of dialogue, there's hinting that Ardyn almost expects Noctis to kill him during the final battle, so that he can finally be free. This lends itself to the notion that there may be the tiniest amount of regret he harbors, or at the very least, a stark awareness of the monster he's become over millennia. It's enough for him to pursue the only way in which he can actually die, which is to have Noctis become the True King to kill him.
As a result, this desire for revenge (and possible freedom) is what makes up the ugly core of Ardyn, completely disregarding any sort of decent individual he might have been in the past. He's calculating with more than enough potential to be cruel, though he usually keeps all of this hidden behind a veneer of patronizing humor, questionable charm, and clever wordplay. In the end, most everything he does is either for the sake of manipulation, or in contrast, because something is unimportant enough in his eyes to actually care. His past experience as a king, his betrayal by his own family line and the astrals, and the thousands of years wrought on his humanity was more than enough to unfortunately shape him into the man he is during the events of the game: a man bent on throwing the world into darkness simply because of the injustices incurred upon him thousands of years ago.
Powers/Abilities:
Power Nerfs (if applicable):
Of course, I don't want him to be completely godmode either, nor do I want to play him that way. I'm willing to compromise on this if the mods think it needs to be tweaked!
Inventory: Quite literally only the clothes on his back. Which is quite unfortunate, really. He gets to bring the hat, too, but not the wing accessory. Because he's already questionable looking as-is. As mentioned prior, he also has his sword tucked away in his Armiger, but this isn't immediately noticeable.
Incentives:
SAMPLES
A musebox thread with lots of tl;dr, I'm sorry mods.
A Hadriel thread, featuring the most awkward dance with Regis ever.
A PLAYLIST;
| ardyn; yoko shimomura  | don't get in my way; zack hemsey Well let this serve to warn, I won't enable or reward And let the flies swarm, let the noble die strong This is my scorn, new day, new dawn [full lyrics] | everything goes dark; the hoosiers Would you leave yourself alone? If everything goes dark Would you lighten up your town? Once everything goes dark Everything goes dark Everything goes dark [full lyrics] |
| dark necessities; red hot chili peppers Yeah, you don't know my mind You don't know my kind Dark necessities are part of my design Tell the world that I'm falling from the sky Dark necessities are part of my design [full lyrics] | hurt; johnny cash I wear this crown of thorns Upon my liar's chair Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair Beneath the stains of time The feelings disappear You are someone else I am still right here [full lyrics] | destruction; joywave Oh my god, there's nobody who can set me right I've been sent to torch the palace down in broad daylight I wanna know who you told 'til they're all laying on the floor Frozen to the core [full lyrics] |
| welcome to the black parade; my chemical romance A world that sends you reeling from decimated dreams Your misery and hate will kill us all So paint it black and take it back, let's shout it loud and clear Defiant to the end we hear the call [full lyrics] | you want it darker; leonard cohen Magnified, sanctified Be thy holy name Vilified, crucified In the human frame A million candles burning For the help that never came You want it darker [full lyrics] | magna insomnia; yoko shimomura  |
open rp post;
"The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry,
I cannot see but darkness, death, and darkness."
[art credit.]
EL NYSA NAVIGATION.
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ARDYN IZUNIA @ EL NYSA ❛ You want it darker / we kill the flame ❜
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