Player's Name: Birdy
Contact info: kyanve@gmail.com, kyanve @ Plurk, shirhanblade @ AIM
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kyanve_te_shirhan
Character: Kuja
Canon: FFIX
Version: N/a
Canon Point: Post-game, Not Dissidia
Age: 24
Gender: Male
History: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Kuja The "Not created as a child" was something of a one-off line in supplemental material for Dissidia years later that I've never actually counted as part of his canon, particularly considering that Zidane's mentioned as very clearly having grown up, and there are younger genomes. Also, possible ambiguity of canon ending aside, I do go with the assumption that he is dead.
Personality:Kuja is narcissistic, flamboyant, and manipulative, with a touch of a sadistic streak, and a strong, if self-centered survival instinct..
And psychologically, he's the equivalent of a bonsai tree that's been stepped on, had a hammer taken to it, grafted back together all wrong, had a very small drinking-glass shoved over it, and been kept in a too-small pot.
Most of his complexes have a pretty clear cause-effect relationship with his creation and purpose, whether for survival's sake coping with it or as a spiteful backlash against it, and he's never really had any opening to grow outside of that.He's well aware that he was never suppoesd to have that much of a personality of his own, and he's lived his entire life with a ticking clock. His sense of self and tendency to try to act on his own will made him a faulty prototype to Garland, and in Garland's mechanically clinical worldview, the squeaky wheel gets melted down for parts as soon as it can be replaced. He's known for a very long time that Garland intended to destroy and replace him as soon as it was feasible, and as much as I don't think he's ever thought about what he'd DO with himself if he were free of Garland, he didn't want to die – so that was the first seed of rebellion there; living and having some chance at something other than Garland's restrictions meant finding a way to destroy his creator somehow. One of his biggest background impulses has been a survival instinct honed down to desperation; he lived most of his life in a state of continual denial, with an awareness that his days were numbered and that he was grasping at straws for something he could use that may not even be able to save him in the end, yet stubbornly refusing to actually give up.... and lapsing into what amounted to a complete psychotic breakdown when he finally did manage to kill Garland and Garland triggered a killswitch on him.
The survival instinct has a bit of a cyclical relationship with his ego and narcissistic tendencies; the stubborn sense of pride grew in backlash reaction to the assurance that he was a failure that wasn't supposed to exist. He's very literally been the only person he has, and the arrogance is a sort of overkill response, asserting right back to the world that he is important and every bit a Person in spite of being a “weapon”. The survival instinct feeds into the ego, and there are streaks where things aren't going as well where the ego ends up supporting the survival instinct. He's distinctive and often eccentric; even at his most subtle, he refuses to blend in with the crowd per se so much as redirect attention and play from the background, less disappearing and more shunting blame off on others.
That intense flamboyant streak and his fascination for the arts are also another case of backlash; note that Bran Bal and Garland himself were a very bleak, mechanical, static existence. All of his preening and posturing was not only lashing back against being a 'failure', it was establishing himself as being as different from that as possible, as well as trying to wring as much out of what life he had as possible. Considering his hatred of his homeworld and its condition, it's no surprise that the things that drew his attention the most on Gaea were the fine arts, literature, theatre, beauty and emotion – all the “pointless” things that capitalized on what he wasn't supposed to have or be, and the things that asserted the idea that there was more to life than mere survival: heroic sagas, tragedies, romances, works of beauty. His “secret lair” in the desert says quite a bit about him. Not only is it covered in statuary, stained glass, bookselves, murals, marble, and luxury, but it's not something accessible to anyone else short of an occasional trap of his – it's something he built purely for his own benefit, hoarded away from public view.This was even applied to his intended role as “The Angel of Death”. As much as he was a living weapon in his own right and highly effective at causing devastation, he wouldn't settle for straightforward bloodshed and massacres, going so far as to try to avoid acting by his own hand.
He's intelligent and capable of being charismatic and incredibly manipulative, and the incredible amount of damage he caused before he was even identified clearly as a problem, was done by finding people's weaknesses, finding people he could use, pushing those to his advantage, and getting others to destroy themselves with just nudges here and there and offering the tools to do the most damage possible. Not only has he never learned any kind of weapon, he's actively shown disdain for such 'crude methods', relying entirely on magic and guile.Given that his entire purpoes was to wipe out life on Gaea, his basic senses of empathy are stunted; after all, why get attached to people you're going to be killing, anyway? His appreciation of heroic exploits and the wills and higher natures of others is somewhat sociopathic by training – it's an aesthetic appreciation of something fascinating, but not something he draws personal connections to easily at all.
He can be very, very cold-blooded, and incredibly vindictive; during his life on Gaea, a great deal of his bitterness and frustration at his own situation got channeled into his destructive tendencies. You know that temptation to lash out at anything in your path and hurt things when you're angry or frustrated that most people get taught is a bad thing? He's had it encouraged, cultivated, and left as his only real outlet. He has a very definite temper that can flash violently destructive or calculatingly sadistic with little to no warning.The one saving grace in his ability to deal with others as something other than tools and targets is a continuation of the nervous breakdowns and backlashes against his creator's will for him. As much as he played up the role of the villain, he was always well aware that he'd been cast as the VILLAIN whether he liked it or not; he ran with the role and was very good at it, but there's still that note of frustration that it was a role chosen for him.
After his psychotic break, as he was dying, he made every indication that, if he'd had a second chance, he wanted to be something other than the “Angel of Death”, and an opportunity to have an actual life that wasn't wrapped around devastation, suffering, and death – to live as a part of what he'd been observing, dissecting, and told to kill. Of course, this doesn't mean he'll be good at this whole “empathy and altruism” business. He has some basic understanding of “don't do more harm than necessary and try to help others where possible”, and might take some refuge in theatrics and literary tropes, but his understanding of “acts of kindness” is still mostly calculating and self-serving, and … well… "what would Zidane do" and literary tropes. He's cynical and paranoid, and will expect people to act on their own interests even at others' expense, and it'll be a while before he has a grasp of doing an “act of kindness” that isn't either trying to gain someone's favor, or maintain someone's favor and encourage them to help him, or maybe repayment for such. He'd really like to earn reactions from people that aren't “You bastard” and “Kill it with fire”, but he doesn't really have much understanding of emotional attachments to others, and it'll be a good while before his sense of ethics and morality finds any higher ground than enlightened self-interest. Still, between his own complexes and where he's been taken from, he's at least going to be trying.
Fears: *- Being controlled. He's spent his entire life under Garland's none-too-gentle control, and is liable to have twitches about anything having too much power over him, particularly anything that seems likely to play "or else" games.
*- Having his will/sense of self stripped away. This was a very real risk, as the Genomes were designed to be empty vessels to hold the stored dead souls of Terra; it's stated that his free will was a "glitch" and treated as him being "broken" somehow, although the other "blank" genomes were shown to actually have minds of their own whether they'd realized it or not. He also has some major issues where he's likely to be touchy about any powers that run along the lines of possession or inhabiting other bodies.
*- Dying. He has a well developed survival instinct and has had a ticking clock that he was an expendable "failure", and spent a lot of time, energy, and histrionics trying to find some way to avoid the inevitable and reclaim his own fate and life.
*- Experimentation/being treated as an object. Another touchy point due to the way the Genomes were handled, and the fact that Garland treated him as a "failed experiment" and a "tool/weapon" and nothing more; much of his more flamboyant personality was a backlash, establishing as much of an independent identity as he could, and he dressed to hide his tail since it was one of the largest tells that he was one of the Genomes, and therefore something intended to be, essentially, a meat-puppet.
Weaknesses: *He's stubborn and strong-willed; things that get in his way and are enough of an obstacle are very likely to get his temper aimed at them.
*He has a nasty temper. He's trying to learn, really he is, but he doesn't take insults or slights well at ALL, nor does he take being interfered with or opposed! He also holds grudges like a champion until something or someone manages to pry his grubby little paws off them. The times he visibly loses his temper and lashes out are the BETTER ones, since they at least lessen the chance that he'll do something overkillish and vicious months later for revenge.
*For someone as good with psychology as he is, and as fond of literature and the arts as he is, he can be annoyingly shallow at times. He takes his sense of aesthetics personally, preens like a peacock, and can be incredibly catty if those are tarnished or offended. It's less that he doesn't have an ability to appreciate people's strengths, and more that whole stunted empathy thing throwing his priorities funny sometimes. He'll survive having his dignity/appearance damaged without more than annoyance, but if situation allows, he'll whine about it.
*Authority issues! If he doesn't have to, he will NOT take orders. He has a sense of respecting the laws for his own self-interest, but that's about it; you won't get him to do something unless he has some stake in it or you can bargain him into it, or he decides to do it on his own. Try to order him around, and you will find one of his shortest fuses ever, whether he obviously blows up at you or not. Try to force the issue, and not only will he not bow, he might just decide to screw with whatever you're trying to do out of spite.
*He's not used to being treated decently. On the negative side, he'll expect people around him to be acting, at best, out of their own self-interest, and will be cynical about altruistic motives.
*He has no ability with melee weaponry or physical combat at ALL, and has active disdain for it, enough to go through complicated hostage plots to get someone else to go get something out of a dangerous ruin where magic didn't work.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: *He's very intelligent. He learns very quickly, has a good grasp of tactical sense, and is very good at the mastermind game, making plans with contingencies and alternate routes in case of things going wrong, and adapting his plans to unexpected changes about as well as is possible. He also can memorize long swathes of poetry and plays, and has a terrifying grasp of literary devices, analysis, and criticism that occasionally bleeds into his worldview in ways that border on fourth-wall jabs.
*As much as it wasn't his purpose, he does have some ability of his own with 'creative pursuits'; he created an entire RACE via artifice and magic, and probably has some skills with more mundane artistic pursuits as well...and his fascination for the arts probably has led to forays into it. Honestly, it's hard to tell if some of the artwork and statuary around his desert palace is things he had some minion-creature create or things he did himself, if using magic to be quicker about it than a hammer and chisel, and there's also his aforementioned fascination with theatre and opera to consider.
*He can be very good with people. He's excellent with politesse and courtesy, and as much as he might not actually care that much, he can fake it damn well; he knows a good amount of the standard tricks of rhetoric, and does know how to play off people's personalities, wants, and needs. This can go either way, since sure, he's used to using it destructively, but it's just as easy to turn that towards something useful, or towards preventing conflicts instead of instigating them, if he's thinking in those terms.
*He's stubborn and strong-willed. Once he gets set on a goal, it's very hard to shift him away from it, and as long as he's still after said goal or something that's “best interest”, nothing short of killing him will stop him even if he might not always be actively working towards it.
*He's not used to being treated decently - someone acting to help him without being stupid about it will make a very strong impression an may earn a very protective ally.
*As fussy about aesthetics and appearance as he is, he's not stupid or without common sense – he does understand needing foundations for his actions, concerns of resources and practical needs, and the whole enlightened self-interest/self-serving thing means he'll be working towards having a solid base to work with that anyone who ends up around him will likely benefit from as well.
*HE'S AN EXCELLENT LIAR and a very good actor. He can lie like a rug, and it comes off perfectly natural and sincere; he doesn't have any real tics or tells, there's no hesitation or uncertainty, and he's very good at gauging what people would and wouldn't believe.
*He's somewhat faster and stronger than an equivalent human, although the strength particularly hasn't really been honed - so it basically boils down to him having slightly superhuman reflexes, being able to move faster than a human, and being stronger than he looks, although not really amazingly so.
*Given some of the rest of his creation and some bits, he can probably see in the dark very well (catlike slit-pupilled eyes), and likely has some higher-than-human resistance to toxins/drugs and ability to survive a bit more in terms of heat/cold, although not ridiculously past normal - enough to be harder to kill than would be expected in mundane terms, but not enough to be immune to any of it.
*He's had to survive on his own with little to no help, and in a desert/scrub area for part of it, to boot. While he might flounder a little on some things if his magic were removed, he can take care of himself, as well as cook for himself and do his own sewing/maintenance on his clothing and belongings, or make new if given time and materials to work with.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: He has some minor ability to feel ambient power, although it's not really enough for more than "there's something here" and generalities. Considering how canon renders the "Scan" ability, it's likely he has it as well - a relic of being a Terran bioweapon that amounts to a system where he can at least attempt to get general information on something; what sort of creature it is, about how much and what kind of power it'd have, what weaknesses or strengths it might have, which does register as a sort of mental data-readout. It's not 100% reliable, and there's things in canon that can't be read.
Kuja is a walking weapon of mass destruction that's specialized in magic. He's shown ability with both white (healing) and black (destructive) magic. The magic he uses in canon includes gravity manipulation, lightning, some very powerful power-energy bursts, as well as healing spells, shield spells against physical attacks and magical/energy based attacks, and the reflect spell to throw magic/energy based attacks back at the user. It's probably safe to assume that he knows most of the lower-rank white/black magic, as focused on it as he is, which would mean fire and ice magics as well, and outside of gameplay he's also shown to be able to use a "sleep" spell that lasted indefinitely and took one of the strongest white-magic-users available to break. He's probably going to get nerfed on power level; the Ultima spell ends up being an "instant win" in gameplay mechanics even without entering Trance state, and his shield spell was strong enough to take a direct hit from an angry Eidolon demi-god without doing more than drawing blood on him.
He does habitually keep up some defensive spells that further boost resistances to things like toxins and drugs, harmful magics/powers. Also, honestly, given how he dresses and where he tends to go like that, he probably cheats and has some minor spells to keep warm in cold weather and the like that are almost unconscious reflex.
He also knows something akin to a Float/levitation spell.
Pushed to states of high emotion and stress, he can enter a "trance" state, with his feathers turning red-tinged and more obvious; it doesn't last for more than a few minutes, but turns him into even more of a living nuke. /MUN would be okay with this not working.
He also has skill with the creation of construct creatures and enchanting objects, able to make some very complicated traps and enchanted devices, engineer living, sentient constructs, and even design machines capable of crafting said constructs en masse given a power source to draw from.
Supply List: His clothes, which are a bit scorched and ragged.
/as per an idea of TC's: Sondren/dragon, albeit smaller/pick-up-able. Can't talk, roughly on intelligence level with a smart bird/small child. MOSTLY fairly well-behaved, if a little bit on the spoiled side, and he's liable to be bratty/unsure/not entirely friendly with anyone besides Kuja.
Game Transfers: None
Sample RP post: There were many things about the situation that were currently secondary concerns; he wanted to know where he was, yes, what was going on, and was tentatively exploring for that purpose - but for now, such simple things were minor details next to the one, most important thing.
Someway, somehow, he was alive again, even with his clothes marked by the burns and ragged edges of his death; alive, and somewhere unknown, without even the vaguest signs of Garland's influence or anything coming after him. It was a simple, tiny thing, but the one thing he'd fought tooth and nail for all his life without ever having a solid hope of attaining it.
Garland was gone and he was free, with a hundred weights taken off of him and simple existence turning into everything so open that he wasn't even sure where to begin.
He crossed part of the ballroom in waltz-steps, the time and movement practiced, pausing to take note of the pipe organ - then flitting to it on a whim, fingers running over the keys appreciatively as he looked up at the spread of pipes. He didn't sit down at it, not with so many other things to go get a look at, but he stayed long enough to play out a few short bars of an aria from one of the operas back home, eyes closed with a smile as the last note faded away into the air. His fingers lingered on the keys for a few moments, before he turned, making back for the hallway to see what else was here.
It was the theatre where he stopped to linger next, pausing in the doors to take it in; something that could've easily fit in Treno, albeit minus the upper box seats he'd usually taken. He walked down the center isle, with his attention mostly on the carvings and frescos in the same half-daze… and then he noticed the blood he was beginning to walk into, the all-too-familiar stench of gore and death.
It was thick enough to be revolting, familiar enough to get mostly a gesture of holding the fabric of his sleeve over his face partly - as much as that, itself, smelled more of being burned and through Hell itself - resorting to a simple levitation charm to avoid getting what was left of his skirt in the blood between there and the stage. It was an impressive display of carnage, with the stage itself further littered, and apparently not all of the remains there, judging by an occasional misplaced piece that didn't seem to match anything else. He stopped in the middle of the stage, feet maybe a half-foot over the bloody panelling, and turned to survey the theatre from that vantage point, oddly bemused.
"A familiar enough audience, as droll as tragedy has become of late. As much as I may be willing to oblige a scene or two, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take issue with the script…." He shifted, kneeling down in mid-air to nudge a severed hand closer to the jagged remains of a maybe-matching wrist. "And this casting is simply impossible to work with."
Contact info: kyanve@gmail.com, kyanve @ Plurk, shirhanblade @ AIM
DW:
kyanve_te_shirhanCharacter: Kuja
Canon: FFIX
Version: N/a
Canon Point: Post-game, Not Dissidia
Age: 24
Gender: Male
History: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Kuja The "Not created as a child" was something of a one-off line in supplemental material for Dissidia years later that I've never actually counted as part of his canon, particularly considering that Zidane's mentioned as very clearly having grown up, and there are younger genomes. Also, possible ambiguity of canon ending aside, I do go with the assumption that he is dead.
Personality:Kuja is narcissistic, flamboyant, and manipulative, with a touch of a sadistic streak, and a strong, if self-centered survival instinct..
And psychologically, he's the equivalent of a bonsai tree that's been stepped on, had a hammer taken to it, grafted back together all wrong, had a very small drinking-glass shoved over it, and been kept in a too-small pot.
Most of his complexes have a pretty clear cause-effect relationship with his creation and purpose, whether for survival's sake coping with it or as a spiteful backlash against it, and he's never really had any opening to grow outside of that.He's well aware that he was never suppoesd to have that much of a personality of his own, and he's lived his entire life with a ticking clock. His sense of self and tendency to try to act on his own will made him a faulty prototype to Garland, and in Garland's mechanically clinical worldview, the squeaky wheel gets melted down for parts as soon as it can be replaced. He's known for a very long time that Garland intended to destroy and replace him as soon as it was feasible, and as much as I don't think he's ever thought about what he'd DO with himself if he were free of Garland, he didn't want to die – so that was the first seed of rebellion there; living and having some chance at something other than Garland's restrictions meant finding a way to destroy his creator somehow. One of his biggest background impulses has been a survival instinct honed down to desperation; he lived most of his life in a state of continual denial, with an awareness that his days were numbered and that he was grasping at straws for something he could use that may not even be able to save him in the end, yet stubbornly refusing to actually give up.... and lapsing into what amounted to a complete psychotic breakdown when he finally did manage to kill Garland and Garland triggered a killswitch on him.
The survival instinct has a bit of a cyclical relationship with his ego and narcissistic tendencies; the stubborn sense of pride grew in backlash reaction to the assurance that he was a failure that wasn't supposed to exist. He's very literally been the only person he has, and the arrogance is a sort of overkill response, asserting right back to the world that he is important and every bit a Person in spite of being a “weapon”. The survival instinct feeds into the ego, and there are streaks where things aren't going as well where the ego ends up supporting the survival instinct. He's distinctive and often eccentric; even at his most subtle, he refuses to blend in with the crowd per se so much as redirect attention and play from the background, less disappearing and more shunting blame off on others.
That intense flamboyant streak and his fascination for the arts are also another case of backlash; note that Bran Bal and Garland himself were a very bleak, mechanical, static existence. All of his preening and posturing was not only lashing back against being a 'failure', it was establishing himself as being as different from that as possible, as well as trying to wring as much out of what life he had as possible. Considering his hatred of his homeworld and its condition, it's no surprise that the things that drew his attention the most on Gaea were the fine arts, literature, theatre, beauty and emotion – all the “pointless” things that capitalized on what he wasn't supposed to have or be, and the things that asserted the idea that there was more to life than mere survival: heroic sagas, tragedies, romances, works of beauty. His “secret lair” in the desert says quite a bit about him. Not only is it covered in statuary, stained glass, bookselves, murals, marble, and luxury, but it's not something accessible to anyone else short of an occasional trap of his – it's something he built purely for his own benefit, hoarded away from public view.This was even applied to his intended role as “The Angel of Death”. As much as he was a living weapon in his own right and highly effective at causing devastation, he wouldn't settle for straightforward bloodshed and massacres, going so far as to try to avoid acting by his own hand.
He's intelligent and capable of being charismatic and incredibly manipulative, and the incredible amount of damage he caused before he was even identified clearly as a problem, was done by finding people's weaknesses, finding people he could use, pushing those to his advantage, and getting others to destroy themselves with just nudges here and there and offering the tools to do the most damage possible. Not only has he never learned any kind of weapon, he's actively shown disdain for such 'crude methods', relying entirely on magic and guile.Given that his entire purpoes was to wipe out life on Gaea, his basic senses of empathy are stunted; after all, why get attached to people you're going to be killing, anyway? His appreciation of heroic exploits and the wills and higher natures of others is somewhat sociopathic by training – it's an aesthetic appreciation of something fascinating, but not something he draws personal connections to easily at all.
He can be very, very cold-blooded, and incredibly vindictive; during his life on Gaea, a great deal of his bitterness and frustration at his own situation got channeled into his destructive tendencies. You know that temptation to lash out at anything in your path and hurt things when you're angry or frustrated that most people get taught is a bad thing? He's had it encouraged, cultivated, and left as his only real outlet. He has a very definite temper that can flash violently destructive or calculatingly sadistic with little to no warning.The one saving grace in his ability to deal with others as something other than tools and targets is a continuation of the nervous breakdowns and backlashes against his creator's will for him. As much as he played up the role of the villain, he was always well aware that he'd been cast as the VILLAIN whether he liked it or not; he ran with the role and was very good at it, but there's still that note of frustration that it was a role chosen for him.
After his psychotic break, as he was dying, he made every indication that, if he'd had a second chance, he wanted to be something other than the “Angel of Death”, and an opportunity to have an actual life that wasn't wrapped around devastation, suffering, and death – to live as a part of what he'd been observing, dissecting, and told to kill. Of course, this doesn't mean he'll be good at this whole “empathy and altruism” business. He has some basic understanding of “don't do more harm than necessary and try to help others where possible”, and might take some refuge in theatrics and literary tropes, but his understanding of “acts of kindness” is still mostly calculating and self-serving, and … well… "what would Zidane do" and literary tropes. He's cynical and paranoid, and will expect people to act on their own interests even at others' expense, and it'll be a while before he has a grasp of doing an “act of kindness” that isn't either trying to gain someone's favor, or maintain someone's favor and encourage them to help him, or maybe repayment for such. He'd really like to earn reactions from people that aren't “You bastard” and “Kill it with fire”, but he doesn't really have much understanding of emotional attachments to others, and it'll be a good while before his sense of ethics and morality finds any higher ground than enlightened self-interest. Still, between his own complexes and where he's been taken from, he's at least going to be trying.
Fears: *- Being controlled. He's spent his entire life under Garland's none-too-gentle control, and is liable to have twitches about anything having too much power over him, particularly anything that seems likely to play "or else" games.
*- Having his will/sense of self stripped away. This was a very real risk, as the Genomes were designed to be empty vessels to hold the stored dead souls of Terra; it's stated that his free will was a "glitch" and treated as him being "broken" somehow, although the other "blank" genomes were shown to actually have minds of their own whether they'd realized it or not. He also has some major issues where he's likely to be touchy about any powers that run along the lines of possession or inhabiting other bodies.
*- Dying. He has a well developed survival instinct and has had a ticking clock that he was an expendable "failure", and spent a lot of time, energy, and histrionics trying to find some way to avoid the inevitable and reclaim his own fate and life.
*- Experimentation/being treated as an object. Another touchy point due to the way the Genomes were handled, and the fact that Garland treated him as a "failed experiment" and a "tool/weapon" and nothing more; much of his more flamboyant personality was a backlash, establishing as much of an independent identity as he could, and he dressed to hide his tail since it was one of the largest tells that he was one of the Genomes, and therefore something intended to be, essentially, a meat-puppet.
Weaknesses: *He's stubborn and strong-willed; things that get in his way and are enough of an obstacle are very likely to get his temper aimed at them.
*He has a nasty temper. He's trying to learn, really he is, but he doesn't take insults or slights well at ALL, nor does he take being interfered with or opposed! He also holds grudges like a champion until something or someone manages to pry his grubby little paws off them. The times he visibly loses his temper and lashes out are the BETTER ones, since they at least lessen the chance that he'll do something overkillish and vicious months later for revenge.
*For someone as good with psychology as he is, and as fond of literature and the arts as he is, he can be annoyingly shallow at times. He takes his sense of aesthetics personally, preens like a peacock, and can be incredibly catty if those are tarnished or offended. It's less that he doesn't have an ability to appreciate people's strengths, and more that whole stunted empathy thing throwing his priorities funny sometimes. He'll survive having his dignity/appearance damaged without more than annoyance, but if situation allows, he'll whine about it.
*Authority issues! If he doesn't have to, he will NOT take orders. He has a sense of respecting the laws for his own self-interest, but that's about it; you won't get him to do something unless he has some stake in it or you can bargain him into it, or he decides to do it on his own. Try to order him around, and you will find one of his shortest fuses ever, whether he obviously blows up at you or not. Try to force the issue, and not only will he not bow, he might just decide to screw with whatever you're trying to do out of spite.
*He's not used to being treated decently. On the negative side, he'll expect people around him to be acting, at best, out of their own self-interest, and will be cynical about altruistic motives.
*He has no ability with melee weaponry or physical combat at ALL, and has active disdain for it, enough to go through complicated hostage plots to get someone else to go get something out of a dangerous ruin where magic didn't work.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: *He's very intelligent. He learns very quickly, has a good grasp of tactical sense, and is very good at the mastermind game, making plans with contingencies and alternate routes in case of things going wrong, and adapting his plans to unexpected changes about as well as is possible. He also can memorize long swathes of poetry and plays, and has a terrifying grasp of literary devices, analysis, and criticism that occasionally bleeds into his worldview in ways that border on fourth-wall jabs.
*As much as it wasn't his purpose, he does have some ability of his own with 'creative pursuits'; he created an entire RACE via artifice and magic, and probably has some skills with more mundane artistic pursuits as well...and his fascination for the arts probably has led to forays into it. Honestly, it's hard to tell if some of the artwork and statuary around his desert palace is things he had some minion-creature create or things he did himself, if using magic to be quicker about it than a hammer and chisel, and there's also his aforementioned fascination with theatre and opera to consider.
*He can be very good with people. He's excellent with politesse and courtesy, and as much as he might not actually care that much, he can fake it damn well; he knows a good amount of the standard tricks of rhetoric, and does know how to play off people's personalities, wants, and needs. This can go either way, since sure, he's used to using it destructively, but it's just as easy to turn that towards something useful, or towards preventing conflicts instead of instigating them, if he's thinking in those terms.
*He's stubborn and strong-willed. Once he gets set on a goal, it's very hard to shift him away from it, and as long as he's still after said goal or something that's “best interest”, nothing short of killing him will stop him even if he might not always be actively working towards it.
*He's not used to being treated decently - someone acting to help him without being stupid about it will make a very strong impression an may earn a very protective ally.
*As fussy about aesthetics and appearance as he is, he's not stupid or without common sense – he does understand needing foundations for his actions, concerns of resources and practical needs, and the whole enlightened self-interest/self-serving thing means he'll be working towards having a solid base to work with that anyone who ends up around him will likely benefit from as well.
*HE'S AN EXCELLENT LIAR and a very good actor. He can lie like a rug, and it comes off perfectly natural and sincere; he doesn't have any real tics or tells, there's no hesitation or uncertainty, and he's very good at gauging what people would and wouldn't believe.
*He's somewhat faster and stronger than an equivalent human, although the strength particularly hasn't really been honed - so it basically boils down to him having slightly superhuman reflexes, being able to move faster than a human, and being stronger than he looks, although not really amazingly so.
*Given some of the rest of his creation and some bits, he can probably see in the dark very well (catlike slit-pupilled eyes), and likely has some higher-than-human resistance to toxins/drugs and ability to survive a bit more in terms of heat/cold, although not ridiculously past normal - enough to be harder to kill than would be expected in mundane terms, but not enough to be immune to any of it.
*He's had to survive on his own with little to no help, and in a desert/scrub area for part of it, to boot. While he might flounder a little on some things if his magic were removed, he can take care of himself, as well as cook for himself and do his own sewing/maintenance on his clothing and belongings, or make new if given time and materials to work with.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: He has some minor ability to feel ambient power, although it's not really enough for more than "there's something here" and generalities. Considering how canon renders the "Scan" ability, it's likely he has it as well - a relic of being a Terran bioweapon that amounts to a system where he can at least attempt to get general information on something; what sort of creature it is, about how much and what kind of power it'd have, what weaknesses or strengths it might have, which does register as a sort of mental data-readout. It's not 100% reliable, and there's things in canon that can't be read.
Kuja is a walking weapon of mass destruction that's specialized in magic. He's shown ability with both white (healing) and black (destructive) magic. The magic he uses in canon includes gravity manipulation, lightning, some very powerful power-energy bursts, as well as healing spells, shield spells against physical attacks and magical/energy based attacks, and the reflect spell to throw magic/energy based attacks back at the user. It's probably safe to assume that he knows most of the lower-rank white/black magic, as focused on it as he is, which would mean fire and ice magics as well, and outside of gameplay he's also shown to be able to use a "sleep" spell that lasted indefinitely and took one of the strongest white-magic-users available to break. He's probably going to get nerfed on power level; the Ultima spell ends up being an "instant win" in gameplay mechanics even without entering Trance state, and his shield spell was strong enough to take a direct hit from an angry Eidolon demi-god without doing more than drawing blood on him.
He does habitually keep up some defensive spells that further boost resistances to things like toxins and drugs, harmful magics/powers. Also, honestly, given how he dresses and where he tends to go like that, he probably cheats and has some minor spells to keep warm in cold weather and the like that are almost unconscious reflex.
He also knows something akin to a Float/levitation spell.
Pushed to states of high emotion and stress, he can enter a "trance" state, with his feathers turning red-tinged and more obvious; it doesn't last for more than a few minutes, but turns him into even more of a living nuke. /MUN would be okay with this not working.
He also has skill with the creation of construct creatures and enchanting objects, able to make some very complicated traps and enchanted devices, engineer living, sentient constructs, and even design machines capable of crafting said constructs en masse given a power source to draw from.
Supply List: His clothes, which are a bit scorched and ragged.
/as per an idea of TC's: Sondren/dragon, albeit smaller/pick-up-able. Can't talk, roughly on intelligence level with a smart bird/small child. MOSTLY fairly well-behaved, if a little bit on the spoiled side, and he's liable to be bratty/unsure/not entirely friendly with anyone besides Kuja.
Game Transfers: None
Sample RP post: There were many things about the situation that were currently secondary concerns; he wanted to know where he was, yes, what was going on, and was tentatively exploring for that purpose - but for now, such simple things were minor details next to the one, most important thing.
Someway, somehow, he was alive again, even with his clothes marked by the burns and ragged edges of his death; alive, and somewhere unknown, without even the vaguest signs of Garland's influence or anything coming after him. It was a simple, tiny thing, but the one thing he'd fought tooth and nail for all his life without ever having a solid hope of attaining it.
Garland was gone and he was free, with a hundred weights taken off of him and simple existence turning into everything so open that he wasn't even sure where to begin.
He crossed part of the ballroom in waltz-steps, the time and movement practiced, pausing to take note of the pipe organ - then flitting to it on a whim, fingers running over the keys appreciatively as he looked up at the spread of pipes. He didn't sit down at it, not with so many other things to go get a look at, but he stayed long enough to play out a few short bars of an aria from one of the operas back home, eyes closed with a smile as the last note faded away into the air. His fingers lingered on the keys for a few moments, before he turned, making back for the hallway to see what else was here.
It was the theatre where he stopped to linger next, pausing in the doors to take it in; something that could've easily fit in Treno, albeit minus the upper box seats he'd usually taken. He walked down the center isle, with his attention mostly on the carvings and frescos in the same half-daze… and then he noticed the blood he was beginning to walk into, the all-too-familiar stench of gore and death.
It was thick enough to be revolting, familiar enough to get mostly a gesture of holding the fabric of his sleeve over his face partly - as much as that, itself, smelled more of being burned and through Hell itself - resorting to a simple levitation charm to avoid getting what was left of his skirt in the blood between there and the stage. It was an impressive display of carnage, with the stage itself further littered, and apparently not all of the remains there, judging by an occasional misplaced piece that didn't seem to match anything else. He stopped in the middle of the stage, feet maybe a half-foot over the bloody panelling, and turned to survey the theatre from that vantage point, oddly bemused.
"A familiar enough audience, as droll as tragedy has become of late. As much as I may be willing to oblige a scene or two, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take issue with the script…." He shifted, kneeling down in mid-air to nudge a severed hand closer to the jagged remains of a maybe-matching wrist. "And this casting is simply impossible to work with."
