Snowblind app

Player Information

Name: Archer
Age: 19
Contact Info: skysplitter @ plurk, murkrows @ dreamwidth
Other Characters: None

Character Information

Name: Ienzo, no surname
Canon: Kingdom Hearts
Age: Estimated to be around 21
Gender: Male
Canon Point: Post-DDD
Background Link: Here.
Inventory: Just the clothes he's wearing (lab coat; button-down white shirt with collar; purple cravat thing; grey vest; black pants; black boots).

Personality: Before we get into the personality, there is one thing you must understand about Ienzo: he is a Kingdom Hearts character. Therefore, his life experience is way more convoluted and leather-garbed than it absolutely has to be. We see Ienzo at three points in his life: as a nine-year-old child in Birth by Sleep, as a seventeen-year-old (or so) Nobody in Chain of Memories, and as a twenty-one-year-old (or so) Somebody in Dream Drop Distance.

The first thing that’s immediately obvious about Ienzo is, he’s smart. Really smart. He was performing scientific experiments on Darkness (a force of nature in the Kingdom Hearts world that has corrupting influence and seemingly a mind of its own), alongside the other thirty-something-year-old apprentices of Ansem the Wise, at age ten. He reads books pretty much all the time, and as such has an extensive vocabulary and grasp of written communication. He also understands a great deal about people and how they work – but strictly from a logical, cause-to-effect perspective. Add his own logic-defying emotions into the mix, and Ienzo is suddenly woefully unprepared.

The definition of a Nobody is “someone who doesn’t have a heart”. In the Kingdom Hearts universe, the heart is not only a physical organ, but also a spiritual center of the body that generates and controls emotions. Therefore, someone without a heart doesn’t have any emotions whatsoever – all they have are logic and memories of their past lives. Unlike many of the other Nobodies, Ienzo lost his heart when he was still very young, when he didn’t understand or express his emotions much at all. Then he spent a few years performing immoral scientific experiments on people and destroying worlds. As you might expect, all of this does not add up to a very emotionally healthy individual.

He’s not really sure how to take this whole matter of regaining his heart. It’s been so long since he had emotions to speak of – he spent his entire adolescence (from approximately ages eleven to eighteen) growing up in Organization XIII with no feelings whatsoever, which means that while he is very intellectually advanced, he’s not really sure what his feelings are doing at any given time. His manner of dealing with this is to casually ignore them entirely and hope they go away. Incidentally, the “ignore it until it goes away” approach also seems to be what he uses for a lot of things related to his life as Zexion, such as when he had a pleasant and cordial conversation with Lea – the man who killed him as a Nobody – just a few hours after waking up human again.

Hearts are normally grown back by having meaningful emotional interactions with others. Even though Ienzo does have it back now, he still doesn’t know how to use it; if Ienzo does well on the ship, then maybe he’ll start to learn a bit more about this “humanity” thing. But in the meantime, he’s going to be operating mostly off knowledge of his life experience as a Nobody. Ienzo and Zexion are still very much the same person, and Zexion’s traits don’t magically disappear once a heart is applied to them. In the beginning, at least, Ienzo will act much the same as he used to, and deal with this strange and newfound feeling called ‘guilt’ later.

Upon meeting new people, his demeanour is cordial but detached, as we see with the Roxas tutorial in Days. However, he quickly starts slipping some underhanded comments in when Roxas attempts to return to base without completing the mission to the absolute best of his ability. He clearly does not take kindly to slackers and reacts to them with excessive aggression – similar to Vexen, one of the people who raised him. However, unless someone strays over to Ienzo’s bad side, he will probably remain at the ‘cordial but detached’ stage for most of his time spent with others.

Zexion’s official title within the Organization was the Cloaked Schemer, and for good reason. He is what one might call a chessmaster, always watching his surroundings carefully and thinking out every possible course of action that others could take – and, in turn, what he would have to do to get the better of them. We see this very clearly in the basement scenes of Re:Chain of Memories, where both Lexaeus and Vexen basically defer to Zexion’s judgment when it comes to combatting the equally-intelligent turncoat Marluxia. (Vexen protests a lot, as is his way, but eventually concedes.) This continues on all throughout Riku’s route, with Zexion constantly watching Marluxia’s actions and setting up countermeasures.

However, when Zexion strikes, he strikes. All throughout Re:Chain of Memories, Zexion had been watching Riku and studying his weaknesses while subtly manipulating him into working for their agenda. Later, we get to watch him put all of that intel to work and thoroughly break Riku down, exploiting his insecurities and guilt about his past actions and relationship to Darkness. It was highly effective.

However, he only did this when he was backed into a corner, with Vexen and Lexaeus dead and Axel possibly betraying both him and Marluxia. Being a schemer by nature, he dislikes direct conflict. (I mean, he fights with a book. That’s not a weapon meant for melee combat.) We also see this in his battling style; Zexion’s main magical power is over illusions, meaning he enjoys confusing enemies and hiding himself amongst the shadows.

Worth noting: Despite buying in completely to the Organization propaganda that Nobodies can’t grow their hearts back, Zexion still displays a few supposedly-fake moments of sentiment that are perhaps more real than he thought. First of all, he still has a very solid and trusting friendship with Lexaeus, the Nobody immediately above him in rank, and with whom he had an almost parent-child-like relationship in the past (his Somebody, along with Ansem, were the only two of Ienzo’s seven caretakers who had any business or capability for raising a child). When he – and even Vexen – died, Zexion was visibly distraught. He also seems to hold some fading delusion that the Organization members should be united and not actively striking one another down. This is doubtless a carryover from the relationship he had with some other members of the Organization as a child.

Flavor Abilities: Most of his abilities would honestly be too significant to use. I headcanon that he's slightly better at handling cold than the average bear because of spending so much time in Even's stupidly cold laboratories, but that is extremely minimal and won't save him from much of anything. He'll just be slightly more comfortable than most in "normal" Snowblind temperatures.

Oh! He also has the ability to smell and track people by the scent that their Darkness and Light gives off. This can be rendered useless by Norfinbury just reeking of Darkness, god, everywhere smells like Darkness what the fuck is wrong with this town.

Suitability: Admittedly, Ienzo is not especially well versed in wilderness survival situations. When going on missions in the Organization, he could just kinda pull up a portal and go back home whenever he needed food or shelter. However, what he is well versed in is logic, practicality, and learning new things. He'll probably pick up survival skills pretty quickly if given the opportunity to learn. He's also a scientist -- a biologist, of sorts -- so he has a very thorough and methodical approach to things, as well as presumably some knowledge of basic medical skills.

Additionally, simply because he rose as a Nobody after falling to the Darkness, we know that Ienzo has strong perseverance and power of will. (Those whose wills are strong come back as Greater Nobodies after losing their hearts; weak-willed people turn into thoughtless monsters.) This is, obviously, a very good trait to have when attempting to survive Snowhell. And being someone who works with and fights monsters on a regular basis, the ones in Snowblind aren't exactly a shock to him, though they are of course still a threat.

He also has emo hair, which as we all know is an excellent facial insulator.

Difficulties he'll face include the aforementioned learning survival skills, but also in accepting that he is powerless and without his squad Lexaeus and Vexen to back him up. Logic tells him that cooperation and teaming up will increase chances of survival, but he really doesn't want to get to know and cohabitate with new people. Extra fun is his newly developed heart, which will of course be inducing the feelings of paranoia, isolation, and so on -- if Ienzo bottles those feelings up and doesn't learn to express them like a normal person, he will be in for a lot of trouble down the road.

RP Samples:

Action
[Snow everywhere. Ugh. There is a ridiculous amount of snow.]

[Now, Ienzo’s no stranger to snow, necessarily. Radiant Garden received snow in the winter months, and even though there was no such thing as weather in the World that Never Was, he had been to other worlds where he had to traverse it. But never this much for this long. He’s learned more about the properties of snow in his time here than he has in, well, the rest of his life combined. If he were ever to find his way off this hellish world and back to, say, the Land of Dragons, Ienzo is confident that he would be able to handle anything the universe could throw at him.]

[But of course, he still had to get off this world first.]

[There’s a building ahead, he knows, even before seeing it. He’s gone through this way before. With a grunt of effort he tugs the door open and trudges inside, shutting it behind him – carefully, so as not to break it. He stomps the snow off his boots at the door, a force of habit from when he was a boy. His eyes pass over the entrance room, checking to see if anything has changed; it hasn’t, right down to the written note (“ALPHONSE ELRIC, DAY ONE, TRAVELLING WEST”) on the hallway wall. Who knows where Alphonse Elric is now. Ienzo’s never met the man or spoken to him on the network, but the notes on the wall are… well, they’re something to him. Comforting? Maybe? Perhaps it’s comforting. He doesn’t know.]

[After dusting the rest of the snow off of him, Ienzo drops his bag onto one of the end tables and sits down in an armchair. He’s going to stay in this building through the night, probably. It’s served him well before. Once settles, he pulls put his handy-dandy tablet and opens up the note-taking application. It’s not the same as writing in a physical notebook, and a petty part of Ienzo dislikes that, but he also realizes that data does not take up weight – therefore, storing notes digitally is better for travel in the long run.]

Clock day: 139, my day: 19
6:03 PM

Items found: Bookmark, rubber gloves

That was from another house earlier today. I’ll check this house later and update with results.

I am passing through territory I already know; nothing of note occurred today. Some people on the network were discussing hallucinations when I left. I have yet to experience any, but who knows. (I’ve also yet to experience meeting anyone else on this world, so who knows – perhaps the network is nothing but an elaborate hoax of advanced computer-generated text and images. An attempt to spark up hope of meeting compatriots who will never arrive. I am withholding opinion on the matter; if I am the only one here, I refuse to let my captor win by playing into their hands.)

Network
[The broadcast begins with a sweeping view of a room, illuminated by morning sunlight. A child’s bedroom, it seems. Charming little toys scatter the area, all over the bed and floor, looking like they haven’t been touched in ages. The video stops on the window, where – oh dear.]

[The window is intact, but has scratches in the glass, and the wooden windowsill has had bits taken out of it.]

It looks like an oversized cat has had her way with it, doesn’t it?

[Ienzo turns the camera back around to face himself.]

It was like that when I got here. Which, incidentally, was during the night… after curfew. I take it you have all seen the message from the admin – “Surveillance encountered an error shortly after 8 PM last night,” and so on.

I fell asleep in a completely different building. And woke up here.

One wonders what matter of creature or force might have caused this… glaring discrepancy. [He was about to say ‘troubling’, but that would let the network knowt hat Ienzo feels – gasp! – fear.] And furthermore, if I walked here myself as the snow on my boots would lead me to believe, how am I even still alive?

Has anyone else experienced a similar phenomenon? Perhaps we can make even a small step closer to figuring this damned world out.