maskormenace: application

[buttonedup]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Asha
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: ziskandra
IM / EMAIL: ziskandra(at)gmail[dot]com
PLURK: ziskandra
RETURNING: New!

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Cassandra Pentaghast
CHARACTER AGE: ~38
SERIES: Dragon Age
CHRONOLOGY: Shortly after the Inquisition arrives at Skyhold
CLASS: Hero!
HOUSING: Feel free to place her with random roommates in any of the four cities! It will be fun.

BACKGROUND:
Cassandra on the Dragon Age Wiki.

PERSONALITY:
Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast. Seventy-eighth in line to the Nevarran throne. Cassandra comes from a long line of famous dragon-slayers, the Pentaghasts, who are the ruling family of the Thedosian nation of Nevarra. Despite her noble background, Cassandra is one of the least princess-like women you'll ever meet. She's a formidable warrior with an active disinterest in politics who's never worn a dress for a day in her life. Cassandra's feelings towards her extended family are ambivalent at best. She scoffs at the Pentaghasts' legacy of dragon-hunting, believing her various uncles and cousins to be resting on the laurels of their own power. Her regard of dragons (widely considered 'majestic' creatures) is even more dismissive: she's the type of person who's quick to point out that dragons take shits larger than a house.

Alongside her warrior spirit, Cassandra is also a deeply pious individual. She is a devout Andrastian (the majority religion in Thedas), and her belief in the Maker rarely wavers despite the present-day wars and rebellions currently occurring world-wide. Despite her faith, she is aware that the Chantry (i.e. the Church) is an institution run by people and therefore fallible. Cassandra served as the Right Hand of the Divine (the head of the Andrastian Chantry) for almost two decades, a position she was appointed into after foiling a plot against the previous Divine's life. The 'hands' of the Divine acted as her closest advisors, and as the Right Hand, it was Cassandra's role to enforce the strength of the Chantry across the land as the Divine saw fit. The most recent Divine, Justinia V, was more liberal than her predecessors: she foresaw a time where the Chantry would require reformation and gave Cassandra an writ that would allow her to recreate the 'Inquisition': a political force separate from the Chantry that would be able to investigate the Chantry's abuses of power against magic-users.

Despite Cassandra's own personal distrust of magic-users, due to the death of her brother at the hands of mages, she agreed with the Divine that the corruption of the Chantry had gone too far. After the Divine's death in an explosion that ripped a literal hole in the sky, as well as the spreading nature of the mage rebellion, Cassandra was propelled to declare the Inquisition reborn. She did not question her decision: she had simply acted as she felt she must; Cassandra feels that her faith and personal integrity frequently leave her with a clear-cut, straightforward path.

Even though Cassandra has spent most of her life working for the Chantry in one form or another, she recognised the institution's failings. She criticised the Chantry for caring more about the design of the Divine's robes instead of caring for the poor. Despite everything, she still holds the belief that the Chantry can still change, that it can become the institution she invisions it being. When others call her an idealist, she doesn't deny it. Cassandra is an idealist, but she is very much the type of person who does the very utmost to make her ideals become reality.

Cassandra's dogged determination can certainly come across as intimidating to other people. She's not the type of person who cares about being palatable, or well-liked. When she was originally fleshing out the realities of forming the Inquisition, Cassandra had an individual in mind to become its leader: Hawke, the Champion of Kirwall, who had been involved in the thick of things towards the start of the mage rebellion. Hawke, however, had gone missing, and Cassandra decided that the best course of action was to kidnap and interrogate one of Hawke's friends, Varric, to locate the Champion's whereabouts. Unsurprisingly, Varric opted not to tell Cassandra the details of Hawke's whereabouts, instead leading Cassandra to believe that he didn't know them and instead plied her with the tale of how Hawke saved Kirkwall, and therefore became its Champion. Cassandra promptly dragged Varric away to meet the Divine to tell her his story in person, but then the aforementioned explosion happened. Damn.

The thing about Cassandra is that she doesn't immediately realise when people do not match her high levels of integrity; later when it eventuates that Varric did know the Champion's whereabouts, Cassandra acts as though betrayed...such action taking the form of physically lunging for Varric in a burst of rage. She often sees integrity for integrity's sake as an ultimate goal, sometimes accidentally overlooking the fact that other people have simpler goals, such as protecting their friends. It takes Varric a long time to forgive Cassandra for her treatment of him, and he acts as though she's liable to lose her temper at any moment. Given time, however, they develop a sense of camaderie and Cassandra is able to joke that if she was angry, people would know: there would be yelling and books would be stabbed. (She...might have stabbed a book during her interrogation of Varric.) She's not the type of person who's in the habit of hiding her emotions, and as a result, is not very skilled at doing so.

As she held a position of influence in the Chantry, people often look at Cassandra as though as she is a hero or a leader, neither of which are roles Cassandra relishes. (Unfortunately, the whole 'saving the Divine's life' thing earned her the title of Hero of Orlais). People often tell her that if she were simply a bit more charismatic she could be an excellent ruler, but Cassandra is not the type of person who has interest in being adored.

Cassandra simply sees herself as an agent of the Divine and the Maker's will, and that her reason for being is to simply be the best person she can, nothing more and nothing less. When it is suggested that Cassandra may become a candidate for the position of Divine after Justinia's death, Cassandra merely accepts this possibility and says that if she is elected, it will be due to the Maker's will and not her own ambition.

Being the type of person who wears her heart very much on her sleeve, Cassandra isn't the type of person who harbours many secrets. Her motivations are straightforward to anybody who's so much as spoken to her for five minutes. Cassandra is, however, reserved about talking about personal matters. For example, she will not talk about her brother's death to anyone she does not truly trust; Anthony Pentaghast's murder was what lead Cassandra to becoming a Seeker of Truth, the order that looks over those (the templars) that are meant to protect the mages and protect the people from mages. It is this event that moulded the path that she would walk upon for the rest for her life. While at first she joined the order out of a thirst for revenge, over time she grew to realize how insidious the corruption of power was in all branches of the Chantry and that the templars' treatment of the mages was overly harsh. Seeing as mages who act in any way outside Chantry law can have their magic and emotions stripped from them, it's a fair assessment. The mage rebellion was spurred on by part the revelation that this rite could be reversed; too many mages had been subjected to it for the most spurious of trangsressions. Thus, even though Cassandra has mages to blame for the most tragic and defining moment of her life, as a grown woman she is well aware that not all mages are responsible for her brother's death.

That's not to say that's Cassandra's only secret, of course. However, she dislikes being regarded as weak or frivolous, so there are some, ah, indulgences that she tries to hide from the rest of the inquisition. The main one is her love of romance novels; she has a whole stash of them 'hidden' in her room. One of her favourite serials is written by Varric himself. Cassandra's romantic side is pretty much one of the Inquisition's worst-keep secrets: pretty much everyone knows about the books because, well, she doesn't hide them very well. She gets a little defensive about her hobby, claiming that romance is the same as passion: being swept away by the pursuit of an ideal. Being the idealist she is, it's only natural that Cassandra would apply the same feelings to her love life. Of course, the life of a Seeker of Truth, Right Hand of the Divine is not one that holds much time for relationships; the only lover Cassandra has ever had was when she was a young woman was a mage by the name by the name of Regalyan, who was actually instrumental in saving the Divine's life back in the day (i.e. the event that Cassandra got almost all of the credit for). But this is what books are for!

Cassandra Pentaghast is known by many titles. She's a Nevarran noble, the Hero of Orlais, the Right Hand of the Divine, a Seeker of Truth... but first and foremost she is a woman who is doing her best to make the world a better place, guided by her indomnitable integrity and her faith in the Maker.

POWER:
These are all powers Cassandra has in canon, adapted for the Mask or Menace setting.

Mental Immunity: As a Seeker of Truth, Cassandra's training allows her to be immune to demonic possession and mind control. I'm happy to proceed with these canon limitations in place; e.g. she might not be resistant to other forms of mental contact, such as mind-reading.

Power Nullification: Another one of Cassandra's Seeker powers allows her to nullify hostile magic around her. It is important to note that this will function very much as it does in canon: it is an active ability and not a passive one. Cassandra has to intentionally want to nullify someone's powers for it to take effect. Also, even Cassandra has her limits, and if someone's magic reserves/power reserves/stamina/whatever system we're using outweighs Cassandra's own, she can and will be overpowered.

Blood Burning: This is the power of Cassandra's that has been most altered to fit into the setting. In canon, Cassandra has the ability to set the lyrium in a person's blood aflame. (Lyrium being the subject ingested by various factions to grant them supernatural abilities). In canon, it is implied that Cassandra mostly used this as an interrogation tool, as she lacks the power to actually kill someone through this power of hers. Seeing as lyrium does not exist in the MoM universe the same way it does in canon, I was thinking it might be acceptable to expand her ability to affect any substance that might be used as a source of powering magic/super-natural abilities, including blood. She will be subject to line-of-sight limitations, and since this power is a departure from her natural canon abilities, I'm willing to give her some time (e.g. several months) before she can use it with the same level of control again.

With all that being said, I am happy to adjust any of these powers if they're deemed unsuitable/excessive, and I will definitely set up a permission post and talk with other players before I do anything that could affect other characters!

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
( It's taken Cassandra a great deal of learning to be able to use the communicator at all. It sits awkwardly in her hands, as if mocking her ineptitude. The thought of people being able to see her face, from a distance, is frankly unnerving, so she quickly discounts the video option. Writing is bad enough when it's ink on paper, so that leaves her with one option she understands, really: voice communication. There are items in Thedas that have a similar function, Cassandra knows, but usually they're not so... bright. And rectangular.

Now, she knows, she is just procrastinating, and she is not the type of woman who likes to waste time. She flicks the audio function, like she'd been taught, and scowls at the device as if she expects it to stare back. )

I do not like this.

( A moment later, it's as though she's just realised she's already turned pressed the button. )

Oh! It's...on?

( Of course it is. And everyone has heard her confusion. Why did anyone think this form of communication was a good idea again? She does her best to gather both her composure and her thoughts. She starts to talk in a clipped staccato: )

I shall be brief. I am not familiar with this technology. Obviously. I was merely wondering if anyone else here is from a world similar to my own. I would like to hear your experiences, if you would share them.

( And she ends the call there partly because she's not sure what else to say but mostly because she's still not convinced that this actually worked. )



LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Cassandra on the TDM!

FINAL NOTES: n/a