Aloy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
toservelife) wrote2017-06-30 10:46 pm
toservelife) wrote2017-06-30 10:46 pm
thisavrou app
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Dara
Are you 16 or older: I am!
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
specialmandate or discord: yuigadokuson#1238
Current Characters: Not right now!
Tag: Horizon Zero Dawn: Aloy
IN CHARACTER
Name: Aloy
Canon: Horizon Zero Dawn
Canon Point: Post-final battle
Age: 19
History: Game synopsis (spoilers)
Timeline (2040 and onwards is the relevant stuff, but the game itself starts in 3021)
Personality:
"Being smart will count for nothing if you don't make the world better. You have to use your smarts to count for something: to serve life, not death."
Aloy has spent almost her entire life cloistered away from other people – growing up in the Nora sacred lands, Nora tribe members weren’t allowed to even talk to her lest they become outcasts too. Even other outcasts are forbidden to talk to one another. Because of this, Aloy sometimes finds talking to other people difficult – Rost, her adoptive father, was very taciturn and blunt, and she has picked this up, adopting a generally no-nonsense attitude and sometimes not really getting people that aren’t like this. She’s not fully comfortable talking about her own personal feelings – and when certain people flirt with her or show an interest in that way, she often won’t entertain the conversation at all.
Her isolation growing up also gives her a tendency of talking to herself – she’ll talk about the terrain, what’s going on around her, just whatever comes into her mind.
She also wasn’t raised like a Nora, with their traditions and taboos – she doesn’t fear ancient ruins, like the old city of Devil’s Thirst (read: Colorado Springs) or the underground facility she fell into as a child, not even the little trinket she picked up there that taught her so much. She doesn’t believe, as the Nora do, that leaving the Sacred Lands will taint her irrevocably, so she has no fear of leaving them or of going anywhere she wants or doing what she wants. Her ties to the tribe are somewhat artificial – they are her tribe and Rost told her to care for them, but unless she’s somehow involved anyway (such as when her enemies sent corrupted machines to massacre them) the tribe’s affairs are little of her concern.
When they realise that the All-Mother they worship sent Aloy to them with a mission, they fall to their knees and worship her as “the Anointed”; Aloy doesn’t like that any more than she did being an outcast. All she wants is to be respected for who she is and her actual abilities, as a person – the Nora never seem to manage it, and the only ones who manage to look past that and to who she is are the only ones of them she likes.
The first and biggest of those, of course, was Rost. Any loyalty Aloy shows the Nora is out of loyalty towards the man who took her in as a baby when no one else would, who taught her to survive and to be honourable and brave, and, in letting her go and then dying to save her, taught her to sacrifice for what you believe in.
There is also Teersa, one of the three High Matriarchs. Teersa was the only one of the matriarchs who really tried to give her a chance, despite resistance from the others. Aloy is brash, even hostile, towards her – Teersa is still a High Matriarch and still bound by the laws of the Nora, much to Aloy’s frustration. But she is one of those Nora – along with a couple of others – who shows her the humanity of the tribe: that following the law doesn’t have to make a person inhumane.
It’s not just the Nora Aloy gets frustrated with: she doesn’t respect any tradition or law simply because she’s told to. Her response to being told that another tribe believes the sun is male is to retort, “I haven’t seen anything dangling from it”, and her pet peeve when helping people is to hear them thank their respective gods instead of her: “It wasn’t the sun risking its ass down here.”
(Aloy is very sarcastic, even biting when she wants to be.)
But she helps anyway, just because it’s the right thing to do. When a person is in trouble, even if they treat her with contempt, she’ll help them – albeit with some sharp words of her own in return. This is mostly thanks to Rost’s teachings – that she should have respect for everything around her, natural or mechanical. She might not have acted like she was listening at the time – she chafed under the insistence that she should treat the Nora with anything less than the hatred they showed her – but it sunk in one way or another. Even as a child she defied Rost to save a Nora boy in danger – he might have been like the boy who scarred her by throwing a stone at her face, but she saved him anyway. Later, anyone who acts without respect or regard for others raises her ire…even if they’re on her side.
Driven by the desire to find her mother, she rejoined the tribe solely to make them tell her where she came from – and then, when they couldn’t help her, ventured out into the world by herself to find the answers. Aloy is determined, even single-minded, and lets nothing stand in her way of her goals. She’s also unafraid to use force – fighting through machines, bandits and cultists – but she doesn’t take any pleasure in it. One of her occasional companions in clearing out bandit camps takes true pleasure in killing other human beings and Aloy is at best uncomfortable and at worst disgusted by him.
It helps a little to look at the personality of Elisabet Sobeck as well: after all, Aloy is her clone, created by GAIA because she would be like Elisabet. Elisabet was a person who threw away an illustrious career over her beliefs, then returned to help when she was truly needed. The Faro swarm of machines was going to destroy the planet, and Elisabet quickly realised that and instead of giving up, spent the last months of her life working on the only solution she could – to give life a chance after all was lost. Then, in the end, she walked out of the only safe facility she had to make vital repairs and save the project, refusing to let her compatriots sacrifice themselves. Aloy never truly had to sacrifice her life like that, but there is no doubt at all that she would have, to do what was right.
Aloy is probably also just as smart as Elisabet, who was a brilliant scientist, but she lacked the formal education to use it in “standard” ways. She did figure out by herself that the earth is round (and did not take kindly to being told this like she’s a savage who wouldn’t have realised for herself), and her skills with technology are very ahead of (behind?) her time – her Focus also taught her to read, as well as a lot about the world around her.
Setting: Aloy’s used to being on her own, and hasn’t been a normal member of society before. Either she was the outcast or the Nora savage or the Anointed or the saviour of the world, always. Being in a place where no one cares what or who she is will be a brand-new thing for her. This also looks a lot more like the world Elisabet Sobeck came from – a world Aloy’s been fascinated with since she was a kid. It’s not the same, but it lets her imagine what it could have been like to be a normal person in a time like this. Plus, with her being brought after the finale of the game, she also has far less reason to worry about home. If she’d come here before defeating HADES, her whole reaction would have been to fight her hardest to go home. That’s not an issue here.
Abilities/Skills:
Survival: Where Aloy comes from, you hunt your own food and medicine, make your own shelter, sew your own clothes, do everything by yourself because it won’t get done for you. Her ability to live off the land might not be so strong on alien worlds, but she can almost certainly still manage the basics, especially with the help of her Focus.
Combat: Aloy is proficient with a wide variety of weapons, the bow and arrow in particular. Her Focus helps her pinpoint the enemy’s heat signature and weak spots, and she’s good at either fighting from stealth or directly.
"Horse"back riding: She’s a proficient rider – albeit of machines.
Physical fitness: Aloy can run and swim long distance and climb almost sheer surfaces for long periods of time.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Strengths:
Resourceful: she’s often shown gutting machines to make resources from the parts
Determined: she doesn’t let anything stand in her way
Fast-learner: she isn’t educated, but she’s still smart
Moralistic: has a deep sense of right and wrong
Weaknesses:
Awkward: she’s just not that great with people sometimes
Pig-headed: the counterpart of determined!
Impatient: get on her level or get out of her way
Not a team player: growing up alone doesn’t let you play well with others
(tl;dr: Aloy is very socially awkward)
Items:
Focus (a micro-computer fitted on the wearer’s ear. Has a wide variety of functions)
Lance (capable of giving electric shocks to anything she hits with it. Also capable of overriding machines, but that won’t work on anything outside her own world without some extra tinkering)
Sharpshot Bow (slow firing, but powerful; can fire explosive arrows, if Aloy can find ingredients to make those) + quiver full of arrows
Blast Sling (a slingshot that can fire projectiles that stick to enemies, detonate on impact or go off after a short time) + full ammo in the pouch
Shield-Weaver outfit (Nora armour outfitted with parts of ancient armour that renders the wearer invincible – to a point)
Several pouches with healing herbs, health potions and random assorted scrap that will probably come in handy at some point
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
[She fumbles a little at first with the TAB. It wavers, looks at the top of her head at first instead of her face. Think ‘old person getting to grips with this new-fangled nonsense’ realness.]
Uh, hi. [The smile is very perfunctory. Blink and you’ll miss it.] I haven’t had any reason to talk to everybody all at once before. To tell you the truth… [‘…I’m regretting this already’. But no. Be nice. She settles for a shrug. Take what you want from that.]
Anyway, I need supplies. I’m running short on a few things. Usually I’d scavenge them myself, but Ridge-wood, Chillwater and rat bones aren’t exactly easy to find around here.
[She's about to cut off the message when-] Wait - I want to be clear – I want to trade. I don't want people giving me anything. There’s probably something I can give you in return. Just...just let me know.
Prose/Action Sample: TDM starter
Another TDM thread
Player Name: Dara
Are you 16 or older: I am!
Contact:
Current Characters: Not right now!
Tag: Horizon Zero Dawn: Aloy
IN CHARACTER
Name: Aloy
Canon: Horizon Zero Dawn
Canon Point: Post-final battle
Age: 19
History: Game synopsis (spoilers)
Timeline (2040 and onwards is the relevant stuff, but the game itself starts in 3021)
Personality:
Aloy has spent almost her entire life cloistered away from other people – growing up in the Nora sacred lands, Nora tribe members weren’t allowed to even talk to her lest they become outcasts too. Even other outcasts are forbidden to talk to one another. Because of this, Aloy sometimes finds talking to other people difficult – Rost, her adoptive father, was very taciturn and blunt, and she has picked this up, adopting a generally no-nonsense attitude and sometimes not really getting people that aren’t like this. She’s not fully comfortable talking about her own personal feelings – and when certain people flirt with her or show an interest in that way, she often won’t entertain the conversation at all.
Her isolation growing up also gives her a tendency of talking to herself – she’ll talk about the terrain, what’s going on around her, just whatever comes into her mind.
She also wasn’t raised like a Nora, with their traditions and taboos – she doesn’t fear ancient ruins, like the old city of Devil’s Thirst (read: Colorado Springs) or the underground facility she fell into as a child, not even the little trinket she picked up there that taught her so much. She doesn’t believe, as the Nora do, that leaving the Sacred Lands will taint her irrevocably, so she has no fear of leaving them or of going anywhere she wants or doing what she wants. Her ties to the tribe are somewhat artificial – they are her tribe and Rost told her to care for them, but unless she’s somehow involved anyway (such as when her enemies sent corrupted machines to massacre them) the tribe’s affairs are little of her concern.
When they realise that the All-Mother they worship sent Aloy to them with a mission, they fall to their knees and worship her as “the Anointed”; Aloy doesn’t like that any more than she did being an outcast. All she wants is to be respected for who she is and her actual abilities, as a person – the Nora never seem to manage it, and the only ones who manage to look past that and to who she is are the only ones of them she likes.
The first and biggest of those, of course, was Rost. Any loyalty Aloy shows the Nora is out of loyalty towards the man who took her in as a baby when no one else would, who taught her to survive and to be honourable and brave, and, in letting her go and then dying to save her, taught her to sacrifice for what you believe in.
There is also Teersa, one of the three High Matriarchs. Teersa was the only one of the matriarchs who really tried to give her a chance, despite resistance from the others. Aloy is brash, even hostile, towards her – Teersa is still a High Matriarch and still bound by the laws of the Nora, much to Aloy’s frustration. But she is one of those Nora – along with a couple of others – who shows her the humanity of the tribe: that following the law doesn’t have to make a person inhumane.
It’s not just the Nora Aloy gets frustrated with: she doesn’t respect any tradition or law simply because she’s told to. Her response to being told that another tribe believes the sun is male is to retort, “I haven’t seen anything dangling from it”, and her pet peeve when helping people is to hear them thank their respective gods instead of her: “It wasn’t the sun risking its ass down here.”
(Aloy is very sarcastic, even biting when she wants to be.)
But she helps anyway, just because it’s the right thing to do. When a person is in trouble, even if they treat her with contempt, she’ll help them – albeit with some sharp words of her own in return. This is mostly thanks to Rost’s teachings – that she should have respect for everything around her, natural or mechanical. She might not have acted like she was listening at the time – she chafed under the insistence that she should treat the Nora with anything less than the hatred they showed her – but it sunk in one way or another. Even as a child she defied Rost to save a Nora boy in danger – he might have been like the boy who scarred her by throwing a stone at her face, but she saved him anyway. Later, anyone who acts without respect or regard for others raises her ire…even if they’re on her side.
Driven by the desire to find her mother, she rejoined the tribe solely to make them tell her where she came from – and then, when they couldn’t help her, ventured out into the world by herself to find the answers. Aloy is determined, even single-minded, and lets nothing stand in her way of her goals. She’s also unafraid to use force – fighting through machines, bandits and cultists – but she doesn’t take any pleasure in it. One of her occasional companions in clearing out bandit camps takes true pleasure in killing other human beings and Aloy is at best uncomfortable and at worst disgusted by him.
It helps a little to look at the personality of Elisabet Sobeck as well: after all, Aloy is her clone, created by GAIA because she would be like Elisabet. Elisabet was a person who threw away an illustrious career over her beliefs, then returned to help when she was truly needed. The Faro swarm of machines was going to destroy the planet, and Elisabet quickly realised that and instead of giving up, spent the last months of her life working on the only solution she could – to give life a chance after all was lost. Then, in the end, she walked out of the only safe facility she had to make vital repairs and save the project, refusing to let her compatriots sacrifice themselves. Aloy never truly had to sacrifice her life like that, but there is no doubt at all that she would have, to do what was right.
Aloy is probably also just as smart as Elisabet, who was a brilliant scientist, but she lacked the formal education to use it in “standard” ways. She did figure out by herself that the earth is round (and did not take kindly to being told this like she’s a savage who wouldn’t have realised for herself), and her skills with technology are very ahead of (behind?) her time – her Focus also taught her to read, as well as a lot about the world around her.
Setting: Aloy’s used to being on her own, and hasn’t been a normal member of society before. Either she was the outcast or the Nora savage or the Anointed or the saviour of the world, always. Being in a place where no one cares what or who she is will be a brand-new thing for her. This also looks a lot more like the world Elisabet Sobeck came from – a world Aloy’s been fascinated with since she was a kid. It’s not the same, but it lets her imagine what it could have been like to be a normal person in a time like this. Plus, with her being brought after the finale of the game, she also has far less reason to worry about home. If she’d come here before defeating HADES, her whole reaction would have been to fight her hardest to go home. That’s not an issue here.
Abilities/Skills:
Survival: Where Aloy comes from, you hunt your own food and medicine, make your own shelter, sew your own clothes, do everything by yourself because it won’t get done for you. Her ability to live off the land might not be so strong on alien worlds, but she can almost certainly still manage the basics, especially with the help of her Focus.
Combat: Aloy is proficient with a wide variety of weapons, the bow and arrow in particular. Her Focus helps her pinpoint the enemy’s heat signature and weak spots, and she’s good at either fighting from stealth or directly.
"Horse"back riding: She’s a proficient rider – albeit of machines.
Physical fitness: Aloy can run and swim long distance and climb almost sheer surfaces for long periods of time.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Strengths:
Resourceful: she’s often shown gutting machines to make resources from the parts
Determined: she doesn’t let anything stand in her way
Fast-learner: she isn’t educated, but she’s still smart
Moralistic: has a deep sense of right and wrong
Weaknesses:
Awkward: she’s just not that great with people sometimes
Pig-headed: the counterpart of determined!
Impatient: get on her level or get out of her way
Not a team player: growing up alone doesn’t let you play well with others
(tl;dr: Aloy is very socially awkward)
Items:
Focus (a micro-computer fitted on the wearer’s ear. Has a wide variety of functions)
Lance (capable of giving electric shocks to anything she hits with it. Also capable of overriding machines, but that won’t work on anything outside her own world without some extra tinkering)
Sharpshot Bow (slow firing, but powerful; can fire explosive arrows, if Aloy can find ingredients to make those) + quiver full of arrows
Blast Sling (a slingshot that can fire projectiles that stick to enemies, detonate on impact or go off after a short time) + full ammo in the pouch
Shield-Weaver outfit (Nora armour outfitted with parts of ancient armour that renders the wearer invincible – to a point)
Several pouches with healing herbs, health potions and random assorted scrap that will probably come in handy at some point
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
[She fumbles a little at first with the TAB. It wavers, looks at the top of her head at first instead of her face. Think ‘old person getting to grips with this new-fangled nonsense’ realness.]
Uh, hi. [The smile is very perfunctory. Blink and you’ll miss it.] I haven’t had any reason to talk to everybody all at once before. To tell you the truth… [‘…I’m regretting this already’. But no. Be nice. She settles for a shrug. Take what you want from that.]
Anyway, I need supplies. I’m running short on a few things. Usually I’d scavenge them myself, but Ridge-wood, Chillwater and rat bones aren’t exactly easy to find around here.
[She's about to cut off the message when-] Wait - I want to be clear – I want to trade. I don't want people giving me anything. There’s probably something I can give you in return. Just...just let me know.
Prose/Action Sample: TDM starter
Another TDM thread