Application for LifeAftr
Nov. 14th, 2019 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
afterthemomentPlayer Information
Name: Alice
Age: 38
Contact: Plurk: mimarin, Discord: Mimarin#7493
Current characters: None.
Character Information
Name: Wei Wuxian (courtesy name), Wei Ying (given name)
Series: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel)
Appearance: Here's a picture! His current body looks pretty similar to his original one, the main difference being that he's shorter at about 5'11". His build is on the slim side as well, given that its previous owner wasn't particularly athletic.
Age: Physically, he's in his early-to-mid twenties. Chronologically, he's in his early-to-mid thirties.
Canon Point: Chapter 2. The moment he's summoned into Mo Xuanyu's body.
Canon History: An incomplete account of Wei Wuxian's history can be found here. I'll pick up where it leaves off below since it leaves out some crucial events.
Following the incident at Qiongqi Way, all the sect leaders held a meeting about what to do about Wei Wuxian and the remnants of the Wen Sect he'd rescued from captivity. By this point, he'd fled with them to the Burial Mound since it was the only place he could take them where they wouldn't be persecuted. Wei Wuxian used his powers as a demonic cultivator to keep the malevolent undead and supernatural entities at bay. He helped the refugees build new homes, farms, and a small community of their own in Burial Mound.
Due to his close relationship and Wei Wuxian's close association with the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, Jiang Cheng was chosen to deal with the issue. Most of the powerful cultivation clans wanted Wen Qing and the remnants of her sect completely annihilated even though she and her family line had refused to fight during the Sunshot Campaign. The meeting between the adopted brothers went very poorly. Jiang Cheng dismissed the aid that Wen Qing and her brother had once given them in their time of need and insisted that she and her family be handed back to their enemies. This angered Wei Wuxian who absolutely refused which resulted in a duel between the two and him ultimately deciding to leave the Yunmeng Jiang Sect entirely.
Life went on for a time. Wei Wuxian continued aiding the Wen Sect remnants with their endeavor to build a new life in Burial Mound. He'd also begun conducting experiments on the undead Wen Ning after promising his sister and their relatives that he could bring his consciousness back, something that'd never been achieved before in a fierce corpse. At one point, Lan Wangji visited to notify Wei Wuxian that his beloved adopted sister, Jiang Yanli, is getting married to an old rival of his: the heir of the Lanling Jin Sect, Jin Zixuan. The news was somewhat devastating for Wei Wuxian, who realized for the first time that he won't be able to see the person he loves most in the world get married.
During the meeting with Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian received a talisman warning that something had gone wrong back at Burial Mound. When he returned, he discovered that Wen Ning had broken free of his constraints and started rampaging. After a struggle, he managed to calm him down and amazingly enough, Wen Ning regained his sentience. Afterward, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian had a conversation about the dangers of resentful energy; the former worried about whether the latter could truly control it and was concerned about the negative impact it was having on his body and mind. Wen Qing came in and took over care of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji left. For the first time, Wei Wuxian realized that while he might not be able to be close with his adoptive family in Yunmeng anymore, he found himself a new one among the Wen Sect remnants. Sometime later, Jiang Yanli, along with her brother as escort, arrived in Yiling for a surprise visit so he'd be able to see what she looked like on her wedding day.
About a year later, Wei Wuxian was still living with the Wen Sect remnants at Burial Mound and doing pretty well for himself. His adopted sister and her husband invited him to visit so he could meet his infant nephew, Jin Ling, at the one-month ceremony celebrating his birth. While travelling there with Wen Ning, he was ambushed by Jin Zixun, a cultivator of the Lanling Jin Sect, who falsely accused him of placing him under a curse. To make matters worse, he had come with substantial fight force that vastly outnumbered the two men. To make a long story short, a conflict broke out, Wei Wuxian's brother-in-law, Jin Zixuan came out just in time for Wei Wuxian to completely lose control over Wen Ning and get accidentally murdered in the conflict. Wei Wuxian blacked out and had to be rescued by Wen Ning and carried back to Burial Mound.
After waking up back home, Wei Wuxian freaked out at Wen Ning over the killing, worrying about what Yanli and his new nephew were going to do . A flipping out for a while in front of him and Wen Qing, he breaks down crying. Wen Qing paralyzes him, announcing that the Lanling Jin Sect said they'd drop the matter if the leaders of the remaining Wen Sect came forward. She tells Wei Wuxian that she and her brother have decided to turn themselves in with the hope that the dust around the incident will settle, even though it's likely they'll both lose their lives. She takes this one last opportunity to apologize and thank him for everything's done. Wei Wuxian had no choice but to watch his two closest friends leave him behind to walk to their deaths.
As soon as the paralysis wore off three days later, Wei Wuxian headed straight to Koi Tower, the headquarters of the Lanling Jin Sec, even though he knew he'd probably be too late to save them. Once there, he ran to Jiang Yanl mourning her husband, but ran away, unable to face her after killing her husband. Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian was spotted by someone else and an alarm was sounded. Before he escaped, he learned that that his friends had been burned to death and their ashes would be spead publicly as part of a victory celebration over the Wen Sect remnants during an annual conference involving all the sects at Nightless City, their ancestral home. Already dangerously unstable from recent devastating losses and mistakes, unprocessed war trauma from the Sunshot Campaign, prolonged usage of resentful energy, this news combined with overhearing a lot of vicious gossip about terrible of a person he was pretty much pushed Wei Wuxian over the edge. He confronted the gossips, violently assaulted them, and then started making his way to Nightless City to settle things with the Four Great Sects, unaware that Lan Wangji was on his trail and had been searching for him for days.
Wei Wuxian arrived at the Discussion Conference just in time to see Jin Guangshan, the Lanling Jin Sect's leader, scatter the the ashes of Wen Qing and her brother, and publicly vowing to do the same thing to him and their family of refugees. A bitter confrontation broke out between the opposing sides. Wei Wuxian called out the sect leaders on their unjust and cruel genocide of innocent people who'd done them no harm. The sect leaders called him out on his arrogance, general opposition of their goals, and slaughter of their cultivators whenever they'd come to blows. Basically, both sides escalated the conflict and got angrier and more hateful until a young cultivator shot an arrow at him with clear intent to kill but missed his heart. Wei Wuxian pulled it out and threw it right back him, killing him.
From that point on, the Discussion Conference turned into a bloodletting with the sect cultivators vowing to kill their enemy and Wei Wuxian, now half-mad with anguish, grief, and rage in addition to being corrupted by resentful energy, raising the dead of Nightless City to combat them. Much to the shock, Jiang Yanli showed up on the battlefiend, calling for him. Bloodlust now replaced by terror, Wei Wuxian began frantically searching for her through the chaos, in the process losing control of the corpses he'd summoned. Jiang Cheng, who'd also attended the meeting, also sought out his sister. Unfortunately, Jiang Yanli was cut down by one of the walking corpses before either of her brothers could get to her. Urged on by Lan Wangji to get the corpses back under his control, Wei Wuxian tried and failed, unable to do so in his distraught state. Jiang Cheng, furious at situation, turned on his adopted brother for his role in all of it.
It turned out that Jiang Yanli's wounds weren't fatal and despite being in pain, disoriented, and losing a lot of blood, she called Wei Wuxian over to her. She persuaded him to stop the corpses from rampaging and this time he was successful. It looked like the situation might calm down until the brother of the young cultivator that Wei Wuxian had killed earlier chose that moment to attack him from behind. Jiang Yanli, spotting the would-be killer, pushed her adopted brother out of the way and took the fatal blow meant for him. In that moment, Wei Wuxian's fragile grasp on sanity finally snapped completely. He snapped the neck of the boy who'd killed his beloved sister with his bare hands and assembled the Stygian Tiger Seal, a powerful and dangerous artifact that could create and control undead in massive numbers without straining the person using it.
Somewhere between three thousand and five thousand people were slain that night. Wei Wuxian, himself, was so deeply traumatized by the death of Jiang Yanli and the painful events that led up to it and simply shut down. The only reason he escaped Nightless City was because Lan Wangji rescued him and helped him escape back to the Burial Mound at Yiling. His old friend nursed him back to health, took care of him, and even confessed his love for him but nothing could reach Wei Wuxian. All he would say was "Get lost."
For three months, the cultivation world, shaken and enraged by the massacre that had occurred in Nightless City, banded their forces together and prepared to besiege Yiling and rid themselves of Wei Wuxian once and for all. Led by Jiang Cheng, they attacked the Burial Mound. All the Wen Sect survivors save one were murdered. Wei Wuxian, himself, was also murdered, apparently cut to pieces.
For thirteen years after the Yiling Patriarch's death, the cultivation world kept vigil over his former home and regularly attenmpted to contact his spirit but to no avail. According to a translated interview with the author, Wei Wuxian existed in a primordial, chaotic, dream-like state where he was aware of the passage of time but not fully conscious either. She likened it to a never-ending nightmare but has stated in quite a few interviews that she's leaving a lot of things to fan interpretation. Based on what the author's said, ancient Chinese beliefs about the afterlife and reincarnation, and how he's characterized in the present segments of the story, I'm playing Wei Wuxian as having spent the past thirteen years in a purgatory where he's been forced to relive and reflect on his worst mistakes as a means of atonement and preparation for reincarnation.
Reincarnation comes sooner than expected when a demonic cultivator by the name of Mo Xuanyu sacrifices his own body and soul to bring Wei Wuxian back into the realm of the living to take revenge on his abusive family. The moment this transfer takes place is the canon point I'm pulling him from.
Personality: For someone as widely feared and reviled as Wei Wuxian is in his canon, he doesn't come across as very evil. The myth of the terrible Yiling Patriarch who kidnaps innocent maidens to use in blood sacrifice rituals and commits horrible, unspeakable acts seems grossly exaggerated and unreliable upon actually meeting the man in person. In reality, Wei Wuxian is a rather easygoing, playful, friendly man who enjoys playing harmless pranks on others and stirring up light-hearted chaos wherever he goes. In many ways, he's a textbook trickster: intelligent, witty, disobedient, and utterly irreverant when it comes to traditional rules and values or conventional behavior. In his youth, he had a very free-spirited, live in the moment attitude and even after a highly traumatic first life and death, this sense of childish fun and wonder about the world around him remains intact. Honestly, he comes across as much more of a heroic figure than a villainous one with his strong innate desire to do good things to benefit humanity, fight genuine evil, and protect the weak.
This doesn't mean that Wei Wuxian isn't without his flaws, however. He can be downright annoying at times, given his talkative nature and inability to mind his own business. He doesn't really have much of a sense of boundaries, thinking nothing of invading people's personal space, oversharing, or bringing up inappopriate topics of conversation in public or private. He's also brazen, sometimes to the point of arrogance, and is near impossible to shame into good behavior. Wei Wuxian has little respect for proper rules or decorum; if he feels they're getting in the way, he won't hesitate to bulldoze right though them. In his own words, he's a master of running wild and the more someone tries to tell him what to do, the less he wants to do it. He's stubborn and insubordinate far more than he isn't. He also has a long history of being short-sighted, reckless, and impulsive; time and time again, he has to face negative consequences for actions he did on a whim or simply didn't think far enough ahead about.
Wei Wuxian can be a bit of a flirt, to the point he had a reputation for being a bit of a ladies' man growing up, but it's generally more out of a desire to cheer up or encourage people than out of any real romantic intent. In fact, he's actually very oblivious when it comes to romance. He doesn't realize that one of his closest friends has been blatantly in love with him for literal years and has to be told about it by a third party. Wei Wuxian doesn't realize that he himself harbors romantic feelings for said friend until over a decade and an impulse kiss later. Generally speaking, he's pretty bad at identifying, regulating, or putting his feelings into words so other people can understand them.
In his youth, Wei Wuxian had a tendency to believe that everyone around him genuinely liked him and was willing to forgive him for any social faux pas he made. For most of his first life, he had unshakable self-confidence in his abilities and talents and no amount of negative backlash from other people could convince him otherwise. He succeeded at virtually everything he attempted to do, seemingly without barely needing to try, so he had no real experience with failure. However, by the time he's reincarnated into Mo Xuanyu's body, this is no longer true and the self-confidence he displays in the present is merely a facade and pale shadow of what it'd been in his youth. His failure to control the resentful energy, failures that led to so much loss of life has left him deeply scarred and humbled. Nowadays, Wei Wuxian rarely uses demonic cultivation despite being the practice's founder and grandmaster. If he does use it, it's only as a means of protecting himself or others, used sparingly, and usually when all other options have been exhausted whereas in his first life, he resorted to demonic cultivation as a casual way to assert his dominance or summon supernatural companionship for himself.
His early childhood and the events leading up and during the Sunshot Campagn have left Wei Wuxian unspeakably traumatized. Amnesia was a recurring theme of his first life, starting with forgetting most of his childhood before he was nine years old; he barely remembers his birth parents or his early days with the Yunmeng Jiang Sect. After his fierce corpse lieutenant, Wen Ning, murders his adopted sister's husband many years later, Wei Wuxian can't face it and blacks out completely with no memory of how he made it back home to the Burial Mound. Many of his memories before, during, and after the massacre at Nightless City have been repressed and most information about the past is given to the reader in the form of Wei Wuxian's dreams and triggered flashbacks. He also has a severe phobia of dogs dating back from his early childhood that he cannot manage at all, even with the least threatening of canines.
Wei Wuxian carries a lot of guilt and feelings of responsibility for the things he's done and even things he hasn't done but was blamed for by other people. He's haunted by the deaths of his beloved sister and her husband, the Wen Sect remnants that he'd bonded with and fought so hard to save, and the thousands of lives lost during his rampages as the Yiling Patriarch. He believes that his adoptive parents' deaths and the annihilation of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect when he was a teenager is his fault; his guilt over this event was so great that he sacrificed his own spiritual power in an extremely risky and painful procedure to give it to Jiang Cheng after he'd lost his as a means of repaying the family who'd taken him in. There's an underlying theme of atonement to Wei Wuxian's character, as if every good deed, deviation from his old destructive ways, or punishment he endures from his enemies is another step toward clearing his conscience. However, he doesn't seem to expect forgiveness from those who'd been grievously injured or lost loved ones due to his actions. As Wei Wuxian tells a surviving sect member during a face off later in the novel, just as they remember the horrible things he did in his first life, he remembers them, too. It's not forgiveness from others that Wei Wuxian seeks; he wants to make amends with himself.
Ultimately, it's Wei Wuxian's own conscience and values that guide him through life rather than what anyone else says or thinks he should do. He has a strong moral compass that he never deviates from, even when committing atrocious acts such as the revenge he took on Wen Chao, Wen Zhuliu, and Wang Lingjiao, the members of the Wen Sect responsible for destroying his home of Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian's sense of morality is based on the principles of justice, benevolence, and courage. He was infuriated by the appalling, unjust treatment of Wen Sect members who couldn't protect themselves and were innocent of wrongdoing. He dedicated himself to creating new inventions that would benefit humanity and did everything he could to protect those who were vulnerable and weak. He braved harsh opposition, criticism, and hardship while pioneering demonic cultivation because he genuinely believed that resentful energy could be used in a way that was beneficial. While Wei Wuxian's a great deal more cautious and considerate of its dangers now, it's clear that he still believes demonic cultivation is a valid path that can save lives if used wisely and proves this through actions such as trying to seize control of fierce corpses attacking people, animating puppets to take them out, using paper metamorphosis to spy on a high ranking official suspected of criminal acts, and an assortment of other ways.
While Wei Wuxian is a nonconformist in a society of conformists in this canon, he still has a need for acceptance and belonging. There's a downside to being as much of an independent and critical thinker as he is - loneliness. Most of the cultivators in canon consider his ideas on demonic cultivation to be taboo or an abomination, regardless of whatever noble intentions he might have behind them. As a result, Wei Wuxian's spent a substantial portion of his life being invalidated by others. His adoptive mother, Yu Ziyuan, and ranked members of the cultivation sects never let Wei Wuxian forget that he was and would always be just the son of a servant in their eyes, regardless of what he accomplished. In his first life, this was a major source of repressed anger and resentment, exploding into outright hostility toward those that didn't validate him as he became corrupted by resentful energy. Since his death, however, Wei Wuxian has come to accept his lot as a societal outcast and moved past it; at most, it hurts his feelings a little but most of the time, he just shrugs it off and ignores it.
Thirteen years in purgatory reflecting on one's sins and mistakes can do wonders for a soul.
Abilities:
Mundane Abilities
- Highly skilled in the "six arts" of ancient China: poetry, music (flutist), archery (one of the best of his generation of cultivators), calligraphy, mathematics, and horseback riding
- Leadership: Particularly in crisis situations or around people with less knowledge or life experience. Includes mentoring.
- Innovation: Invented an entirely new way to cultivate as well as an assortment of magical tools that continued to be used by cultivators long after his death.
- Survival: Managed to survive for substantial lengths of time under harsh, dangerous conditions in inhospitable places. Includes hunting. Also has some basic knowledge of farming and building basic shelters.
- Swimming: He's a pretty strong swimmer, or at least, he was in his previous life. His current body is weaker than his original one was, though.
- Swordsmanship: Highly skilled swordsman in his youth though he's been out of practice for 13+ years.
- Accuracy: On top of being a good archer, he's also good at aiming just in general.
- High Tolerance: Specifically to alcohol and strong spices.
- Art: Very skilled at drawing.
Mystical Abilities
- Demonic Cultivation: He's a top expert at gathering and using resentful energy (aka negative energy given off by dead or supernatural beings). Tapping into this source comes with a hefty price, however; the more he uses it, the more it clouds his mind and corrupts his body and soul. His ability to control resentful energy is also tied to his emotional state. If Wei Wuxian loses control of himself, he loses control of the resentful energy which has often ended in catastrophes where people died. For this reason, he's careful to only use it sparingly in situations where he has no other option.
- Summoning/Controlling Undead: Demonic cultivation ability. By manipulating resentful energy, Wei Wuxian's able to summon the undead, spirits, and other supernatural entities to his present location. He mainly does this through flute music but it's demonstrated in canon that he can do it to a less reliable extent through whistled tunes. He's also able to train them as if they were an animal to responds to direct, verbal commands. Since he's able to summon and control very large numbers in canon, I'm willing to nerf this down to a maximum of 3 at a time.
- Creating Animated Corpses: Demonic cultivation ability. By raising their level of resentful energy, Wei Wuxian's able to animate corpses. They can be created from one complete cadaver or one that's been assembled using spare parts from different incomplete ones. Canonically, he's able to animate literal hordes but as the previous ability, I'm willing to cut the number down drastically to a maximum of 3 at once. In this particular setting, he'd mainly use them for defensive purposes and manual labor if he even used them at all.
- Musical Influencing: Wei Wuxian's able to influence the moods of specific targets through his flute playing. Most of the time, he uses this on the undead but he's able to use it on the living as well. The type of influence depends on the tune; faster, chaotic tunes agitate and invoke hostility in the subject while slower, softer melodies relax and soothe them.
- "Evocation" and "Rest": These are two special songs from MDZS canon that can be played by a flute and guqin player as either individual solos or as a duet that specifically effect spirits. "Evocation" is a song that uses a spirit's corpse, a piece of its corpse or a personal object in order to summon it to the person's location. "Rest" is a song that's played to calm or suppress a spirit. They're a little different from previous abilities listed in that it's the songs themselves that hold special power here and they're stronger when played as a duet. Wei Wuxian knows the flute parts of both of these songs so even if they don't work in this setting or ever come up, I still wanted to mention it.
- Summoning of Painted Eyes: Demonic cultivation ability. Basically, it's a specific spell that summons a spirit to possess and animate a puppet or doll. Unlike the walking corpses that require more direct, hands on control, the puppets just need to be instructed once and they'll carry out their task until completion. In the novel, the puppets are supernaturally stronger and more durable than the materials they're made of but I'm willing to cut that property of them out completely and limit them to what's naturally feasible. I'm also willing to include a set duration for the spell's effect since the novel doesn't really give one. I'd also be up for limiting the spell to only working on specific materials, too. Since he's only shown animating two puppets at once, I'm willing to set that as the hard limit for here.
- Paper Metamorphosis: Demonic cultivation ability. Wei Wuxian can place his soul into a paper doll he can then animate and control for a limited amount of time. While he is possessing the doll, his real body is unconscious and completely vulnerable to danger. Any damage that's done to the paper doll is transferred over to his soul, which can result in him falling comatose for a year or rendering him insane for the rest of his life. Given the amount of risk involved, Wei Wuxian uses this ability mainly for spying on others.
- Talisman Magic: Essentially, these are magical symbols drawn or painted on various materials in order to produce a wide assortment of effects. They can draw or repel spirits, produce light, serve as an alarm if a perimeter has been breached, teleport the user, etc. Most talismans burn up after just one use, requiring the user to create additional replacements so it's heavily dependent on resources. The more powerful a talisman is, the more spiritual power it requires. Given that Wei Wuxian's current body has limited spiritual power, he's not able to actually use any powerful talismans himself but he may be able pass on his knowledge to others. Given that this is probably the ability he uses the most, I'd like to retain it for him in some form if at all possible. Since canon's pretty vague on the subject of exactly what kinds of talismans exist outside the ones I listed here, I'm completely open to just limiting him to a mod-created list of one-use talismans that won't give him much of an advantage.
- Empathy: A special technique used by Wei Wuxian in order to channel spirits and experience their memories as if they are his own. It's risky to use because it's possible for him to lose himself in the spirit's emotions if they are abnormally strong and become unable break the link on his own. The spirit being Empathized with may also simply possess him and take over his body as his own. Aside from these risk factors, Wei Wuxian is also vulnerable to physical harm during these trances whenever he uses it.
Inventory: The clothes on his back. Specifically, a set of black robes, sandals, and a hair tie.
(As previously discussed with the mods, Wei Wuxian would be coming in with two sets of crisscrossing cuts on his wrists that his body's previous owner made as part of the ritual to summon him. In canon, the cuts won't heal as part of a curse that'll destroy him unless he meets certain conditions. Since his canonpoint is before it's resolved, I'd like to halt the curse's progress while keeping the unhealing status of his wounds for him to deal with in game.)
Sample
Thread Sample: Wei Wuxian on the TDM
POWER NERFS
on 2019-11-20 03:54 am (UTC)[ ♆ ] Per mod discussion, many of Wei's abilities as they pertain to spirits will be nerfed entirely upon entry to LifeAftr. Attempting to summon, control, or otherwise speak to ghosts will prove useless. This will affect any spiritual aspects of Wei's abilities of demonic cultivation, summoning undead, the evocation and rest skills, the summoning of the painted eyes, and his spiritual empathy.
[ ♆ ] Wei will, however, still be capable of animating and controlling one undead creature at a time. It may be no larger than a dog in size, and he will be unable to raise himself. In the event of his death, he will be subject to the same penalties as any other. He may upgrade this limitation to two undead creatures at a time. You are welcome to keep his in-canon restraints of needing to actively restrain and control the undead via whistling and music, and the risk of deterioration of Wei's body and mind, as you see fit.
[ ♆ ] We recommend use of a permissions post for Wei's ability to musically influence others, for other players to fill out as it pertains to their characters.
[ ♆ ] Wei's skill of paper metamorphosis may remain, though its use will be limited to one hour per day, total.
[ ♆ ] As is the case with most magic-users in LifeAftr, Wei's abilities will be limited to start with. His ability to use talisman magic will be equated to spellslots, which limit the amount of spells that can be cast per day and start at three slots only. This means that he may choose three talisman spells to make use of consistently. The option to access further slots, and therefore further talisman functions, is available further in the game as a reward or Item Request.
Starting Talisman Magic: Light, Flame, and Pin
INVENTORY
on 2019-11-20 04:01 am (UTC)(1) package of salted jerky
(1) wood saw
(1) spool of fishing line
(1) jug of rubbing alcohol
(1) Stone of Farspeech, whose functions are detailed HERE
Due to your participation in the Test Drive Meme, Wei has been awarded a package of Candied Vines!
The package itself is utterly nondescript, comprised of brown paper, save for the fact that its front is stamped with a smiley face. Once you eat one of the vines inside, you'll learn why. With the thickness and consistency of asparagus but the taste of rock candy, these particular treats can make for a strange dining experience. However, they might very well be worth it.
Consumption of one vine will fill one with a rush of absolute bliss and the most pleasant feelings imaginable for one full hour. Nothing can or will bother you, even if it really should. So be careful of when and under what circumstances you consume this little delicacy.
Each package comes with twenty Candied Vines total. You may share them with whoever you like, but do mind the rate of consumption; once they're gone, they're gone.