app: labyrinthum

[oracledriven]

OOC INFORMATION
Player Name: kri
Pronoun Preferences: she/they
Contact: posolutely or kribbit on discord
Are you over the age of 18?: yes!
Invitation Link: here!
Current Characters: n/a
Link to Permissions: Permissions.

IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Noel Kreiss
Species: human
Canon: Final Fantasy XIII
Canon Point: Lightning returns, just before fighting Lightning
Character Age: 518
CRAU: No
Character Appearance: Image and description.
Powers and Abilities:

Guardian. Noel has spent much of his life fighting monsters and protecting people. He's a talented swordsman, wielding dual blades, one long and one short.

Hunter. In addition to his sword skills, Noel has spent much of his life hunting monsters, and thus has basic hunting and tracking skills. Fun fact! He also knows how to cook behemoth meat! (...but why)

Multiclass roles. While he can focus on strength-based sword attacks, Noel is also able to wield basic Final Fantasy-style magic (Blizzard, Aero, Ruin, et cetera). His elemental focus is wind, ice, and he is able to use basic medic spells such as Cure.

Monster recruitment. Squeenix really did go "Final Fantasy needs more time travel and pokemon." In game, the party is able to keep 3 monsters at a time after besting them in battle, and only if they "crystallize" after being fought. If this mechanic is carried over into game, it would work similarly but would be HEAVILY nerfed (if he ever got it back through regains, I mean). In previous games, I've nerfed this ability by having him only being able to "use" a monster to fight 1 time before it runs away, only being able to use 1 at a time, and not being able to "store" them the same way the characters are able to in game. It would mostly work like a temporary taming of the beast.

What Did Your Character Wish For? "I wish for the prophecy to come true."
What Potion Did They Receive? Blue
Did They Drink It? yes!
If Yes, What Element/Animal? n/a

Character Questions:
1. Who is the person your character is most bonded with from their canon, or who is someone they miss the most and why?
The reason Noel does everything he does, the one who drives him to seek a new future, the one he's willing to kill for at his current canon point, is Paddra Nsu-Yeul, a seeress who is reborn throughout time and never lives past her teenage years. The Yeul of Noel's time became one of his closest friends, and his entire training as a child and teen was in anticipation of becoming her guardian. She --and to be honest, his role of protecting her, the very idea of it-- means more to him than anyone or anything in the world.

In the end, he was unable to protect her, but his dream had been to take her on a journey to find life outside of their small, dying settlement. The fact that he couldn't do so, that he couldn't save her, haunts every footstep since her death. It continues to haunt him 500 years later, when he's promised the future of reuniting with her.

2. What are they most afraid of and why?
The surface answer is that Noel is afraid he doesn't measure up as a guardian. He's compared himself to Caius Ballad, his mentor and teacher, since he was a kid, and even though he likes the challenge of trying to beat him in combat, he's afraid he doesn't measure up when the time comes. He believes, firmly (and objectively correctly), that he has been unable to save anyone, that he doesn't deserve to be called a hero, that the only way to make things right is by changing the past. In Lightning Returns, his fear comes into new focus when Snow refuses to blame him for Serah's death: the deeper meaning, here, is that Noel is afraid to not be admonished for his failings. He's afraid of people accepting that part of him, because currently, he's unwilling to accept it for himself. He can't handle not being blamed, and he can't handle facing the truth that he tried, and that sometimes failure happens no matter what. No matter how hard you fight.

3. What are their emotional, mental, and physical weaknesses and why?

Emotional: Noel has a lot of emotional "trigger points," I'd say. He gets a little hotheaded about them and can easily explode if someone touches upon something that hits a sore spot. This is all verbal, mind; he tends to be an outspoken guy when it comes to opinions, so if someone hits a nerve, he won't hold back against them. The moment Snow tries to draw a comparison between the two of them, the moment Snow tries to say that Noel was able to do something good, Noel verbally lashes out, creating a rift and a rivalry between them of his own making.

Mental: Noel has been stuck in a cycle of crushing guilt and self-blame for 5 long centuries. Getting out of that mindset, pulling himself out of his thoughts and his grief, is the biggest challenge he faces. The other half of that issue is that he doesn't share any of this with anyone; he refuses to, and doesn't believe he deserves to. You could kind of call this a self-worth issue, in a way; he doesn't believe his own life has worth unless he's able to fix things he perceives as mistakes.

Physical: Noel is a strong fighter, but he goes all out, especially if he's emotionally compromised. He can be worn down easily just by someone with a lot of stamina. He also gets somewhat reckless if he's feeling desperate.

4. What discrepancies are there between their inner self (who they feel they are) and their outer self (how they present themselves to others)?
Noel wants to present himself as strong, as a person willing to do whatever it takes to make a new world and see his dreams come true. He presents a dark front, in Lightning Returns: the Shadow Hunter doesn't have friends, doesn't need friends, he fights alone and he fights in the shadows. But beneath this front he is desperately lonely, and always has been. As the last child of the apocalypse, all he's ever wanted is friends. A real world full of life. He's so desperate to make that happen that he believes he can live up to the darkness he presents to the outside world. In the end, he fails, not because he's weak but because he really cares.

I've touched on Noel's self-worth in a few other places, here, but this is another place where those feelings come out. Part of the reason Noel presents himself in this prickly way right now is because he doesn't believe he deserves forgiveness. He doesn't deserve friends, he doesn't deserve a chance at a new life. He'll fight like hell to protect other people, even at this low point in his character arc, but his passionate insistence that people deserve to live doesn't extend to himself.


5. What would make them happiest and why?
In the end, all Noel has ever wanted is a world with people, with life, a world not on the razor edge of annihilation. He wants people to be happy. He's lived alone at the end of days, and no one deserves to live that life. Even in Lightning Returns, behind all of his guilt is the understanding that everything is horrible because no one can really live. Even if it meant his own erasure, he has always fought for a future where no one is alone the way he was. Having friends, having a living world, having a full life -- that would make him happier than anything.

6. What characteristics does someone need to have to be your character's ideal significant other?
The answer to this, romantically or platonically, is the same. Noel needs someone he can trust, someone he can rely on, someone he can protect who cares just as much about him as he does about them. In canon, he first meets Serah and trusts her entirely basically as soon as they team up. They grow to be inseparable friends, not only because they share a goal, but because they rely on each other equally. At heart, Noel is a guardian; he trained for most of his life to take over the task of Guardian for the Seeress, and he needs someone to look after. But he values someone who can be his equal, too; if not in fighting, then in mental understanding. Someone who knows him and isn't afraid to call him out when he needs a reality check.

7. Would your character make a sacrifice to save someone else and why or why not?
This is a tough one. On one hand, Noel wants a new future so desperately that he's willing to change time and make it so that he doesn't exist. He believes no one should have to grow up the way he did, that no one should be alone. He also believes (at least outwardly), in Lighting Returns, that he will be able to kill Lightning in order to make a prophecy come true about a new world. On the other hand, one of Noel's fundamental core beliefs is that all life is sacred. That the most important thing is just to be able to live, and that everyone should have that choice. So as much as he talks big about being able to kill Lightning, in the end, he's unable to do it. Because life matters. Would he still be able to sacrifice his own life, then? Yes. But he's going to fight like hell to avoid that if he can, too.

8. What is one thing they would tell their younger self if they had the chance, or if your character is young, what is one thing they would want their older self to remember?
"If you change the future, you change the past."

This is a big theme in 13-2, and it's something he knows, but he would say it to his younger self as a warning again nonetheless. As he goes through his journey in time, fixing paradoxical events and setting the timeline right, he brings his partner Serah to more and more danger: the ability she has, to see the future as it changes, brings her closer to death every time. Noel's memory of this is a bit messed up in the beginning of the game, and by the time his memories come back, Serah has already made her decision to continue, even at the cost of her life. Noel knows he can't change her mind, but I think he'd want to set his younger self up for the heartbreak to come, and sort of remind himself that it can't be changed.

9. When in dire circumstances does your character fight, flee, freeze or fawn and how does that look?
FIGHT. Fight fight fight. ...Well, it's a little more complicated than that, actually. Noel's instinct as a survivor, as a guardian, as a hunter, is to keep fighting to the bitter end. To claw his way out of the dirt and keep living for the things he wants. Noel's been this way for his entire life: finding a new path forward even when it seems impossible to fulfill his goals. He's dedicated to seeing things through, no matter what. But, when emotions get involved, this gets more complicated, and he may choose flight instead. For example: when Chaos was first unleashed on the world and everything started turning bad, he, Hope, Snow, and Sazh decided to work together and fight to save humanity. However, after a few centuries (and Hope's disappearance), Noel could no longer bear to be around Snow due to his own guilt, and fled. He isolated himself and decided to work on his own instead. He'll flee from his emotions pretty easily, and sometimes he even chooses a fight option in order to flee from having to accept emotionally difficult truths.

10. Why did your character make the wish they did?
At his current canon point, Noel is being manipulated by a false prophecy by way of an Oracle Drive that shows him something he wants to see: a new world and a happy reunion with Yeul, his childhood friend who died and left him alone at the end of days. His biggest wish is to see this prophecy done; at his exact canon point, he thinks he'll be able to make this happen by killing Lightning, and is desperate to believe he can actually see that through. But it's always been his wish, to reunite with Yeul in a world that's not broken or dying. It's why he started his journey with Serah, and was the thing that kept him going in the Dying World even before that. Over time, as he starts to look more at his own character arc from the distance of a jamjar game, there's a strong possibility that this wish will begin to grate on him. Eventually I think he'll see how stupid he's being, how easily manipulated he is right now, and the wish will feel like a regret.


Samples:
One log sample
One network sample