app for emp

[penduli]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Bella
Contact: flaired; resplendentspirits on AIM
Age: 22
Current Characters: Fractured Milla Maxwell (descendend)


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Black (born William Macbeth) / The King of Despair (highlight for slight spoilers)
Age: At least 21, but unless/until there's official numbers let's go with “an adult”.
Canon: Blood Blockade Battlefront
Canon Point: Episode 8, after talking to the King of Despair at the Caster Memorial in Central Park

Background: (There be spoilers past here for the anime. Just a warning!)

For the series, and as for Black himself:

He and his twin sister were born William and Mary Macbeth respectively in the Scotland countryside. They grew up there for the majority of their lives as well, living a peaceful if abnormal life—it's hard to call it a normal life when there are people with incredibly strong psychic powers, including the majority of your family and yourself. While Mary was born without any powers at all, William inherited enough power for the both of them.

Not that he ever used it. After an incident where he blasted Mary's perfectly made mudball back in her face and felt embarrassed by how easily she just went to make another one, William swore off purposefully using his powers until he could be as strong as his twin sister, someone who didn't have the advantage he did. Purposefully being the keyword here: they still erupted whenever he had fits of high emotion, such as crying when his dog knocked his ice cream out of his head to steal it, but those happened mostly when he was younger. As he got older, he distanced himself from getting too loud about his feelings in order to control his psi powers, with some degree of success—he never unleashed them on the boys that bullied him (despite Mary scolding him about it—“If you have psychic powers, you should use them!”), and he never even thought about using them to catch his sister's camera that they tossed carelessly over the bridge.

He dove after it instead and would've drowned if they hadn't saved him.

Many years past their childhood, but three years before the plot of Blood Blockade Battlefront begins, the barrier between the Alterworld and their world collapsed right in the center of New York City. To the public's knowledge, the barrier was restored thanks to their world's League of Higher Order Spirituals (LHOS) and the Alterworld's own type of Casters; the destroyed city was rebuilt and renamed to Hellsalem's Lot, and life continued on despite the mix of otherworldly and ordinary.

For the Macbeth family, this wasn't entirely the case. Separated from their mother and father, and then from each other, William and Mary sought to keep themselves safe while looking for familiar faces. What William found wasn't quite familiar, or even friendly—Mary came upon him using his psi powers (something he's loathe to use) to keep something from forming. She broke his concentration by calling his name and heading towards him, relieved to find him, and he immediately told her to get away because it isn't safe—

but the warning came too late, and the break in his focus is just what the entity needed. What he was keeping from forming appeared, and William gave up his body to become a vessel for what became known as “The King of Despair” in order to protect his sister and keep her from its grasp. Not long after, William witnessed his parents sacrificing themselves in order to save the city like so many Casters had done, and he and his sister were left on their own.

Three years later, William—now going by his childhood nickname “Black”, while his sister goes by hers (“White”)—works as a Caster for the LHOS, presumably to keep some secrets under wraps and because there's no other work he can do. He doesn't have a ton of time to visit his sister in the hospital, where she was put after what became known as The Great Collapse due to a heart condition that'd started up around the same time, but he does it enough to learn about a young man named Leonardo Watch. They meet, go out a few times, and all in all—Black likes him.

The King of Despair has other plans. Leonardo Watch is the holder of the All Seeing Eyes of God—a special pair of eyes that can see pretty much anything without limit, as their name would suggest, and it's just what he's been looking for for the past three years. The King of Despair, unknown to Black, makes good on a deal he made with White some indeterminable time before, and he uses her to get to Leonardo's eyes in order to put his plan for a second collapse to happen on All Hallow's Eve into motion.

That part comes after episode 8, however—I'm putting it here because it's important enough to warrant it. As of episode 8, it's likely only just begun to get into October; episode 7 has him commenting it's getting close to Halloween and talking a little about All Hallow's Eve to Leonardo, who's giving him a ride home, and it's to be assumed their outing to the museum isn't too long after that.

Personality:

William Macbeth was born a prodigy in a family of powerful psi-users. Growing up, he was kind, well-meaning, and easy-going; not even being bullied for being small and wearing glasses seemed to damper his spirits (though he admits it made him feel pathetic that his sister would come save him and beat them up—he loved her for it, but still), nor did a scrape with death after he dove into a river after his sister's camera stop him from pursuing equally reckless, life-destroying decisions in the future. Despite the immense psi-powers he was born with, he never once used them. Not to fight back, not to stop the camera from falling into the river, nothing.

There is a reason for this, like all things.

Mary was born without psi-powers—unlike him, where he was born with power enough for the both of them. He perceived her to be stronger than him for it; she rarely cried, no matter the situation, where even the smallest thing could send him wailing and pulling ground out from beneath them in chunks. She accepted things as they happened and moved on. A good example is when they were much younger: he'd blown a mud ball up in her face (a perfectly made one, one he's sure she wanted him to compliment, but it'd only shown how bad his dry, lumpy ball was), and all she'd done was turn and go to make another. He'd felt, then, that he was being left behind—that Mary was growing up faster than him, that she was shedding the childish feelings he was still having—and he swore to himself that he'd never use his psi-powers until he felt he was strong enough to use them.

There is something important to note, and that is this: there is no one more important to William Macbeth in this world than his twin sister, Mary. The lengths he'd go to for her safety are without limit and completely without thought. His personality shifts entirely when his sister's brought into the picture—he becomes overbearingly protective, quick to anger, and incredibly reckless. If it threatens her, he's ready to take it on, whether or not it's something that can be defeated. He even hides her existence from the League of Higher Order Spirituals, and the both of them end up going by their childhood nicknames in public in order to keep their identities safe: Black and White.

This brave, noble behavior has unfortunately landed him the honor of being possessed by a being that refers to itself as “The King of Despair”. The King of Despair is malicious, mocking, manipulative, and overall a terrible person; he plans and plots and uses people without a second thought, in stark contrast to his host Black, who holds a fair amount of consideration for the rest of the world. In the King's own words, “If there's an efficacious method that allows you to achieve your objective, then you fully embrace it, no matter what it is.”

That includes going back on any agreements made. The King of Despair's only and ultimate goal is to trigger a second great collapse in Hellsalem's Lot. It's not as if he does it for no reason: he speaks a fair amount of times about how everyone wants to leave a mark on the world, to see that their actions truly do mean something to people, and how the despair of his being is that he is actually forgotten by Death itself. It's not a stretch to say he's looking for a way to make sure he won't be forgotten again, just as it isn't a stretch to say he's trying to find a way to permanently die. The implication that the King is an immortal being isn't a very subtle one after all, and in a city full of various creatures, beings, and lifespans, it's no surprise either.

But yes: he has a plan, and he's going back on most of the agreements he's made in order to make sure it goes smoothly. That includes the one he made with Black three years ago: that his sister White was off-limits, and he wouldn't involve her at all. Technically speaking, the King did have no part in involving White—she decided to do that all on her own, in order to get her brother back from his clutches. He's not above double-crossing people if it suits his needs, obviously, but he does it through loopholes instead of out-right lying or cheating them. In Black's case, the King keeps him in the dark by literally keeping him in the dark. Black never has any recollection of what goes on when the King possesses his body, creating holes in his memory that can get a little worrisome depending on who he meets and what mischief the King gets into.

It's better in the King's eyes that Black's kept in the dark about the whole business anyway, as he is ultimately the type of character who would sincerely do anything to derail a plan that involved the use of his sister or the destruction of the city.

Especially considering Black seems to know what her heart really is, the same as the King of Despair: a barrier seemingly linked directly to the seal keeping Hellsalem's Lot from collapsing into the inter-dimensional sinkhole that appeared three years ago. If the city goes down, so does she.

And there is no way he could ever bear to live without her, just as she can't bear to live without him.




Abilities: As defined by Blood Blockade Battlefront, “Psi: Psychic abilities, or a person who possesses them. Supernatural powers that cannot be rationally explained by science.”

This is what Black is. So far, he's been shown to be capable of telekinesis (lifting things up, both voluntarily and involuntarily, with the latter coming out at periods of high emotion; holding things and people in place; etc), teleportation (likely applies to short distances, going by how another psi's teleporting works in a later episode), and concentrating his psychic power enough to blow up someone's head.

However, Black likes using his psychic power almost as much as he likes being a registered Caster in the LHOS—that is to say, not at all. He even specifically admits to Leonardo that he's no good at using them, no matter what he does. How truthful that is isn't certain, though considering he couldn't hold coffee in place without a struggle it's safe to say he's spent more years learning how not to use them.

As for the King of Despair, he excels at using Black's psychic powers. In fact, the last two abilities on the list are specifically him. He's also capable of possessing Black's body completely whenever he likes with no to little resistance on Black's part, thanks to their little deal, and Black doesn't remember a single thing from the point he loses consciousness at.

Alignment: Sosyne. Black keeps a remarkably cool head about things—when they don't concern his sister, anyway. The King also manages to keep up a calm aloofness in the face of almost anything—though he does get irritated quite a bit when people drag on him for too long.

Other: Nothing I can think of, except to say the Black will be housing the King of Despair in his body as per their deal, hence why he's included in the personality/abilities section. It's not a Jack & Oz type of situation—the King isn't shown with a body other than Black's. They're pretty tied together.

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample:

Now, a voice breathes in his mind, isn't that a sight for sore eyes?

“Cut it out,” Black mutters in reply. The voice quiets down, albeit with an eye-roll Black feels more than sees, as he picks his way through rubble. Over fallen walls, debris—and roots, the closer he gets to the tree. Intrepid explorers still head inside, but Black stays as far as he can from the foreboding dark entrance of the clock tower.

He has no reason to go in, and he's no fighter. He just wanted to see what'd made a mess of the city. And now that he has, he can go—

Not so fast, the company he's unfortunate enough to keep cuts in. Black can almost feel him trying to take over, inching down his arms. He shakes it off and grits his teeth, only turning back to the tree once he feels the entity retreat back into the corner of his mind he usually stays in. What was so important that that guy'd want him to stick around—ah.

It's probably the petals, flashing memories in front of his eyes. There's when his dog knocked his ice cream from his hand and caused him to cry—the petal settles in his hand as the world floats up inside the memory, and it replays until Black touches it. It pauses, a world seen through misty eyes, and another drifting beside him immediately catches his attention.

A mudball. White's surprised look. He watches it turn away as she goes to make another, hands digging into the soft, fresh mud, and he feels the same shame from that day wash over him. A third petal, a third memory—White's hospital room.

“The two of us,” Black murmurs in time with the memory,

are both one and the same, the voice in the back of his mind finishes with a sneer, and a mostly-intact streetlamp cracks all the way to the base. Black tosses the petals away, feeling his stomach churn, and tries to bury the King of Despair's laughter beneath his hurried steps to home.



Questions: None!