bloodypath |

Out-of-Character

PLAYER HANDLE: GS
CONTACT: PM preferred
AGE: 25+
Opt-Out Page: Opt-out
Reservation Link: Reserve

In-Character

CHARACTER NAME: Hubert von Vestra
CHARACTER CANON: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

AGE: 26 (at canonpoint)
SEX/GENDER: Male

Suitability: Hubert is of suitable age and not a CRAU. While he is paranoid, mistrustful, and poor with interpersonal bonds, that is what I think will make this fun. The setting will challenge him regularly, forcing him closer to others through bonds and to explore intimacy if it is a practical means for resources and power.

Character Summary: A lifetime of cloak-and-dagger intrigue has honed everything Hubert perceives through three lenses: ally, enemy, and potential threat. To his liege and the few who can win his trust, he's a loyal and selfless, if overbearing, friend; to his enemies, he is relentless and borderline sadistic in his merciless pursuit; to everyone else, he is cold, suspicious, and watchful. Hubert embodies devotion, giving the whole of his being to Edelgard and her cause, believing the ends do justify the means so long as they bring new hope to their stagnant society and depose the quasi-immortal creatures controlling it. While Hubert conducts himself aloofly and analytically in order to be the knife in the dark Edelgard needs him to be, he's deeply emotional at heart, driven by anger over tragedies he's witnessed and an unfaltering determination to never allow those tragedies to repeat themselves, even if he has to be remembered as one of history's most bloody and ruthless figures to ensure it.

Class & Powers

Class Choice: Dragon

Class Description: Changes to his humanoid form include: serpentine eyes, small dark scales speckled with white (sides of his forearms, sides of his lower legs, along his back), ridges along the scale patches that can extend into small fins. Hubert would despise the idea of being a king or any kind of ruler (as his place is next to the throne rather than in it), so his crown is a simple: plain circlet that wraps around three times like the coil of a snake.

Since Hubert is acrophobic, his dragon form is inspired by sea serpents, dark-scaled and long and skinny with short legs, claws, fins, and a head between a maw between a snake and a deep-sea fish. His flight will be clumsy due to his acrophobia, so I wanted to give him alternative modes of movement (swimming and hovering a few inches above the ground). Does he fly through the water or swim through the air? We may never know.

The element I'd like is gravity: the ability to lessen or increase his or another's, draw objects toward him, and perhaps alter the directionality of gravity someone is subjected to. Being sea serpent-like, it pairs well with the pressure of deep sea and a snake's ability to crush, and has associations with darkness (trapping light) that suit Hubert. Plus it’ll have great kink applications, don’t look at me like that.

Canon Powers: The only powers Hubert has access to beyond that of a regular human is magic. Fire Emblem magic is depicted somewhat inconsistently, but the common baseline is that Hubert knows magic primarily developed for combat and war. There are two (and a half) classification of magic in Fodlan: Reason, which governs black magic (fire, ice, wind, lightning) and dark magic, and is implied to be associated with math; and Faith, which governs white magic (healing, health-altering, and teleportation) and is associated with, well, faith.

Hubert is very good at Reason magic and a powerful mage despite his lack of a magical lineage in the form of a Crest. Though black magic is known for its elemental spells, Hubert primarily wields the much rarer dark magic, hard-hitting spells often depicted as poison, corrosion, or strange and ethereal and tend to have additionally destructive effects. Hubert will be coming in with his full Reason spell list. He will also retain his Faith spell list: Mend, Nosferatu, and Recover, but because he canonically struggles with Faith magic he will likely use it sparingly. In the Three Houses canon (that I am aware of), no one is ever depicted being able to use Mend/Recover on themselves for unknown reasons; thus, he will not use them on himself. These will be played loosely and narratively if they come up, because turn-based RPG mechanics mesh weirdly with text RP.

Miasma Δ - his basic attack, a dark blast. Slow, but heavy.

Mire Β - mid-range harm. Also saps the target's defenses for a brief time.

Banshee Θ - harms, and hinders the target's mobility for a brief time.

Death Γ - mid-range. High chance of striking deadly blows (criticals).

Dark Spikes Τ - conjures powerful spikes of dark energy. Anti-cavalry spell.

Faith Magic:

Mend/Recover: Two healing spells of varying potency. Recover is much more potent, but he can't use it often.

Nosferatu: Using light magic offensively to siphon health from his target to himself.

Should it come up, his class path will be one of his three canonical suggestions, Dark Knight. Being a Dragon, I doubt he'll have a chance to fight with a spear or ride a horse, but he'll be moderately skilled with those and be able to supplement his spearwork with magic through his in-game martial ability, Frozen Lance.

Starting Influence: 0

SAMPLE SECTION

Roleplay Sample One: Alucard
Sample One Summary: Hubert's paranoia and discomfort with vulnerability is on full display here. Alucard's pale features closely resemble that of the Agarthans, a secretive and advanced society of underground-dwelling mages that Hubert despises. Despite the fact that Alucard is nothing but gentle and supportive through Hubert's weakness, he can't bring himself to trust the other man, only cooperating due to raw necessity.

Roleplay Sample Two: Zoya
Sample Two Summary: Despite the sinister persona Hubert puts on, he is ultimately an idealist. He knows the power of being driven by the hope that things can be better and how difficult it can be to cling to that hope until better is achieved. He respects others that possess the will to take action and endure all the hardship that comes with fighting for change, rather than those that sit on the sidelines in willful ignorance or accept the easier path of complacency.

Roleplay Sample Three: Medea
Sample Three Summary: As mistrustful as Hubert is, he is a practical man that is intimately familiar with delicate balances of power: despite coming from one of the most prominent noble families in the Empire, his lineage has been servants of another for over a thousand years, and he's spent over half his life (including adolescence) conspiring with Edelgard to overthrow enemies with vastly more experience and political power. Here, he recognizes Medea as a threat, but a threat that appears to operate by the same rules and logic he does, and one that is likely reasonable. He has nothing in Absentia and knows he must make alliances and bargain for resources, even if he half expects to find a dagger pressed to his ribs down the line.

SURVEY SECTION

2) What is something irrational that you believe?

He scoffs quietly, the sound curt and derisive. "All belief is irrational by nature. If it weren't, it would be simple fact. No amount of fervent wishing while averting your eyes from reality will force something to become true. Holding to that is nothing but delusion."

Hubert falls silent, his gaze drifting to the side at some distant point. When he speaks again, his voice is lower and without its prior edge. "And yet, I believe in Lady Edelgard's victory. Our task is beyond monumental; despite all of our preparations, innumerable factors remain beyond our control and the cruel, raw math of it all is weighted against us. But... if there is anything so foolish as destiny, some absolute confluence of opportunity and ambition upon a single person, she is the one to bear it. Things deemed impossible are only such until it is accomplished for the first time. That I believe. She will bring a bright dawn to Fodlan."

5) Have you ever met someone who changed the course of your life?

Hubert chuckles slowly, the deep and languid sound rolling in his chest. Though his smile is faint, his eyes glimmer with amusement.

"Truly? Typically others are all but begging me to cease speaking about Lady Edelgard. We met even before my earliest memory as a child, but she would not alter the course of my life until mid-adolescence. She spared me from the trappings of peerage—rescued me from becoming another spoiled, privileged nobleman that lamented the state of our wretched society, trying to affect change in meager, useless ways. Even when she was a child, one that endured atrocities that would break the best of men, she showed me a path forward to a better future. Unbowed and unyielding, she inspired me to something greater than myself. She channeled my rage into focus, and together, we embarked side by side to reject Fodlan's broken system founded on lineage and divine right."

9) What does weakness look like to you?

"Weakness is an unwillingness to do what must be done." Hubert's wrist rolls in a vague gesture of dismissal. "Whether one is impeded by fear, by laziness, by selfishness, or by empathy, the end result is the same. What is the point of values if you will not hold to them? What is the point of exceptionalism if it is not applied constructively? What is the point of the desire to protect if you cannot destroy what means harm?"

His brow pinches slightly, eyes bright and sharp, not unlike an agitated bird of prey. "No matter the softhearted sentiments people wish to believe, power is a necessary pursuit. This is not an excuse for wanton cruelty, no, nor an argument against kindness; power must not be sought for the sake of power itself, but to protect what you hold dear, whether that is a cause, a person, or a place. Without political, military, or social power, nothing can be changed nor protected. And an unwillingness to pursue that necessary power—that is weakness."

10) Is it better to be loved or feared?

"Neither," Hubert says with the dry bluntness of a man restraining himself from calling someone daft. He's heard the question before, often coached in terms of politics or leadership, and assumes it to be the same context. "Simply because they're both emotions does not make them comparable; they are both tools with different boons and banes. Love is a fickle, clumsy, and unpredictable thing, but commands great zeal and loyalty. It can motivate a population to acts beyond their usual means. Fear, however, is as brittle and effective as a glass dagger: when wielded with precision, its edge cuts deeper than any other, but a single wrong twist will shatter it and cut the wielder in turn. Love and fear are most effective when employed in tandem by two sources upon the same individual; the carrot and the stick, as they say. Fear will drive the subject into the light of the adored one, while love directs the subject and whispers promises of protection from the thing in the dark."

11) What’s your deepest fear? Do you know why that is?

Hubert is quiet for a long time. Fear was difficult to acknowledge; it lived deep within him, partitioned away with other inconveniences of being human. When one tried to become a monster that preyed on other monsters, one couldn't be beholden to fear.

"Failure. True and final, not the sort known by a frustrated child giving up on their arithmetic studies. As long as one can learn and persevere, there is no real failure. True failure is a crystalized moment of understanding that your best, your absolute height of potential, was not enough—that what you desired with ever fiber of your being would never come to pass. It is knowing in the dimming of your final moments that your contributions meant nothing... or worse still, that the world is poorer off for your existence."

He falls silent again for a moment. "I have given everything to Lady Edelgard's dream, to our cause... should we perish but our cause live on, I could accept that. If we utterly fail to shake the grip of our tyrants, only then will the bloodshed and suffering be in vain, a blemish upon a bleaker future."

15) What do people tend to like about you?

His bark of laughter is an uncharacteristically loud single note. "What do people like about me?" He laughs under his breath, the sound oddly delighted as he crosses his arms.

"They don't. That is the point. I'm terrifying. I have been told this, you know. I'm aware of the things they say and call me: Lady Edelgard's sinister right hand; the Empire's blade in the dark; the Emperor's rabid dog. My conversation is known for its dourness and my tongue for its sharpness. My appearance is dull and unappealing. I've even heard murmurings of being a 'kill-joy.'"

He smiles, and although thin, the expression is genuine and content. "This is by design. I do not need to be liked. Everyone must know there are consequences to obstructing Lady Edelgard's path. I am a mere foil to her brilliance, the shadow cast by her flame. My reputation is simply another tool I wield, nothing more."

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