PLAYER INFO
Name: Sam
Contact: atkascha
Are you over 18?: yup

CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Joshua Bright
Canon: Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Canon Point: Second Chapter, end of chapter 8. (The entire second game is called Second Chapter, but it contains chapters inside of that. Thanks, Falcom, that's not confusing at all.)

Appearance: As seen here: black hair, amber eyes, about 5'7". He manages to disguise himself passably as a girl in one bit, so he's definitely not exactly rugged. Official art is inconsistent as to which arm his Stigma shows up on, but I'm 95% sure it's supposed to be the left, and the pieces of art with it on the right are in error. (Or someone just didn't give a damn. That's always possible.)
Age: 16

Setting: There are some gaps here and there in the wiki, but what's there is good. The Zemurian continent combines some standard fantasy tropes with a world that's going through the growing pains of industrialization; the main power source is orbal energy, derived from setting-specific magic rocks called septium. With orbal energy only having come around about fifty years before the story, they've made great progress (airships! trains! lights!), to the point that the world has become fairly dependent on orbments (and there is in fact a segment in which the power goes dark across the kingdom, and things do not go well), but older folks still remember the days before, and some modern items of technology are mentioned but treated more as curiosities that aren't in reach of the average person. (One of the sequels mentions "air conditioning," which has been developed in one of the techie hotbeds but is news to the rest of the cast, who are told to think of it as the opposite of a stove.)

The impact of industrialization is still sending ripples through the political and economic landscape; Liberl's own technological developments are part of its bargaining process to try and maintain peace with its neighbors, and the games set in neighboring Erebonia dig deep into how the emerging industries are affecting social class and the nobility's power base (to the point that the nobility's eroding power is at the root of a civil war). Liberl is largely peaceful in the decade leading up to the story, and the main duo's hometown of Rolent in particular is portrayed as a nice, quiet place out in the sticks, good for kids to grow up in peace, although the war with Erebonia ten years before has left very deep scars on everyone involved.

History: On LoH wiki, but the main entry is pretty abbreviated; the more detailed version is here.

Personality: Joshua, as a first impression, seems to be a very calm, together kind of boy - the diplomatic one and the thinker in contrast to Estelle's "speak loudly and carry a big stick" approach to things. Joshua is actually a lot more messed up than that, but he tends to keep that under wraps.

Everything goes back to the Hamel incident, when Joshua was six years old. He was a nice, normal little boy before that, but then his village was massacred, the women raped, he killed a man trying to stop him from hurting his sister, and his sister then died protecting him from the man's dying reprisal.

It would be a polite understatement to say that this incident messed Joshua up.

Left to his own devices, Joshua would almost certainly have died in the aftermath; he was left catatonic from the shock and was wasting away when his only fellow survivor made a deal with the devil to try and save him. This is the introduction of something of a running theme in Joshua's life - for all that he puts on a stoic face, he's very bad at facing and dealing with his own pain. He eventually says as much outright: Weissmann's brainwashing aside, he considers the time he spent as an Enforcer to also be a product of his own weakness. It was easier to be a tool than to try to be a person. At one point he talks about his memories of Hamel feeling like they happened to someone else, and Estelle correctly points out that he's disassociating himself from them to try and deal with his own pain and fear. He says he's not capable of feeling fear anymore, because that was one of the things Weissmann locked off to make him a better assassin, and Estelle calls him on that, too, because most of his actions once he tries to leave the Bright family are motivated by the fear of others being hurt because of him. He leaves rather than explain what's going on, and even once he rejoins Estelle he doesn't tell her that Weissmann still has a backdoor built into his mind to take control of him again. He has no problem facing physical threats and issues head on, but his own mental and emotional struggles scare the shit out of him, and he clams up and avoids them.

And while he's made to finally confront these issues and work to move past them in his canon, it's not a perfect process. He backslides here and there; even after he's faced down Weissmann and had his dramatic ~people are stronger together~ speech, he still nearly gives up again after watching Loewe die. Estelle's told him more than a few times that she cares about him and he's a person with actual worth, but he needs reminding sometimes. He's made a lot of progress towards seeing himself as more than a broken tool that belongs in the trash heap, but it's been a struggle for him.

His own feelings are the most difficult for him to process, but he's not great at handling other people's feelings, either. He badly mishandles some almost-romantic moments, and even in one such case, where he's feigning ignorance of a crush to avoid dealing with the fallout, he still picks a pretty bad way to handle the fact that he and the sky bandits have progressed to something beyond just being two parties in a contract. When he later expresses confusion about how that happened, and Estelle tells him that it's not like you can really predict what's going to happen when people meet - maybe they'll fight, maybe they'll be friends, anything can happen - he flat out admits that those kinds of complications were never clear to him: "Kill, or be killed. Take, or be taken from. Until I met you, my life was an endless cycle of such...simplicity."

That aside, though, he usually manages to hide his dysfunction well. He's calm and thoughtful. He gets along with people easily, he attracts crushes easily, most of the people the party meets across the kingdom love him. Children especially seem to take to him very quickly; the kids in their hometown all love him and try to get him to play, and he hits it off well with the kids at the orphanage they visit later in the story. He has a bit of a sassy streak - mostly reserved for Estelle, who gives as good as she gets - but for the most part, he's the more tactful and polite of the two of them. He likes to read, he's the brains of the operation; he mostly comes across as a very good kid, a dramatic contrast to the complete mess he is inside.

At times, hints of the killer he used to be peek through. In an early mission, when he and Estelle are asked to exterminate some monsters that have been causing trouble for farmers, Estelle and the clients decide that just scaring them as a warning is probably fine, and Joshua somewhat coldly advocates for killing them anyway. He afterwards very casually self-deprecates over it and says that something in him is probably just broken; he clearly doesn't like who he used to be, but it takes him a long time to see it as something he can overcome and atone for, rather than just thinking of it as proof that he's not worthy of being around normal people.

Despite all of his problems, the thing that keeps Joshua from going over the edge is the people around him. He's clearly at his lowest points when Weissmann gets him alone and keeps feeding that voice that says he's not worthy of being around people, and the more time he spends around Estelle the more he's able to get it together. Joshua's dragging a lot of weight around, but he eventually comes to understand that the best way to handle that is with the support of other people, and by the time he's busting out the dramatic friendship speeches with Estelle at the end of the second game, it's clear that he really does believe what he's saying - even if he sometimes needs a reminder to keep himself from backsliding.

Canon Abilities/Skills:
- Enhanced physical abilities, although canon is very vague on the exact extent. To quote directly: "Your ability to reason through and execute a solution to a problem, no matter the circumstances... Your physical strength and reflexes, better than an entire squadron of normal soldiers..."
- Spy/assassin hax. He's extensively trained in stealth, infiltration, and killing from the shadows. He mentions having used explosives, and he knows how to make sleeping drugs (and dose them with impressive precision in how long they'll keep people out for).
- Combat. He's no slouch in a straight fight, although he is very clear that he's not on the same level as the top tier badass fighters in his canon - he specifically states that his training was entirely for stealth, and Loewe points out that as soon as he's seen, he loses his greatest advantage. Still, he managed to hold his own going toe to toe with some real heavyweights.
- He whips out some assorted other skills that aren't really focused on, but are justifiably useful in his former line of work - basic airship piloting, and he knows at least enough about orbal engineering to fuck with the Glorious's engines. And put different malfunctions in each one, rather than sabotaging them all in the same manner. idk, man.
- He plays a mean harmonica.

And then there's magic, or as they call it in-universe, "arts." Like most bracers, Joshua carries a combat orbment; these can be set with up to seven quartz that enhance stats or have other effects, and the combination equipped determine what spells the character can use. Joshua has two slots locked to time quartz only, so whatever else he may be packing, he's going to have the spells to speed up allies and slow down enemies.

If the orbment is too much, I can definitely BS that it's not working because dimensional issues, or that it's working at lower efficiency and isn't cranking out the high level spells - whatever works best. I'm mostly just interested in the couple of spells and effects that complement his natural skillset - the aforementioned Clock Up/Clock Down spells, and the effect of the Heaven's Eye quartz (which acts as a short-range radar, essentially, letting you see enemies on the minimap before they're in normal vision range). So if those are keepable, cool; if not, no sweat.


ON STATION 72
Symbiote Specialization: Rho
Symbiote Ability: Shadow stealth. When in the shadows, Joshua will be able to become undetectable - at full power, both visually and on scanners. He doesn't need to be in full darkness; the shadow of a tree on a sunny day, for instance, might not be terribly dark, but as long as he can fit under the shadow, it's possible to hide there. A lone flagpole in an otherwise bright area, on the other hand, isn't going to give him enough to work with.

Level I: When in cover of shadows and keeping still, he becomes visually undetectable, but can still be spotted on scanning equipment that looks for other signs of life, i.e. body heat. If he moves, he loses the visual cloaking as well.
Level II: When in cover of shadows and keeping still, he remains visually undetectable, and scanners will start to have a hard time picking him up - in particularly shadowy areas, he can probably count on them missing him, although it's not infallible. If he moves, he can be spotted with scanners normally but will be more difficult than usual to pick out visually - once again, in a darker area he stands a decent chance of continuing to go unnoticed, but the chance of failure remains present.
Level III: When in cover of shadows and keeping still, he becomes undetectable, either visually or by scanners that look for other signs. When moving, he keeps his immunity to visual detection, and has a decent, but not perfect, chance to remain invisible to other scanners as well - the darker the area and/or the slower and more careful the movements, the better his chances of remaining hidden, but he's got a solid chance of moving completely undetected if he's careful about how much he tries to get away with at once.

As a side effect to all of this: the better his abilities become, the more he'll find that natural light bothers him. At level I, he might not notice the effects much; some sensitivity to bright light, but not enough to really impair him. He'll just be less comfortable. At level II, it becomes more noticeable, and he'll find that he tires out a little more quickly in the sunlight. At level III, functioning in natural light will be significantly more taxing than it should be, and his internal clock will default to nocturnal - it won't be impossible for him to keep a regular sleeping schedule and function in daylight, but it will be a hell of a lot less comfortable than doing the opposite.

+REVISION:
The frequency of times Joshua can use his ability will depend on how long he uses it (i.e. a couple of brief uses will leave him more flexibility than a single prolonged one), but at level I a single use won't be able to go longer than fifteen minutes, and that'll be the approximate upper limit on how long total he can swing it for multiple uses in one day, though he may be able to milk a couple of extra minutes out of it depending on the intervals he's used it (i.e. if he's using it in shorter, more spaced out bursts as opposed to trying to go for two eight minute uses back to back). This doubles per level, to thirty minutes at level II and an hour at level III. Trying to go beyond his limits will leave him feeling tired and lightheaded at first, and continuing to try and push it may lead to him fainting on the spot.

Inventory:
- The clothes he's wearing.
- Two daggers.
- A few smoke bombs, a few sleeping gas bombs.
- His combat orbment and the installed quartz, which may or may not wind up being more useful than a fancy paperweight.
- The letter Cassius gave him at the end of Chapter 8.
- A harmonica.

SAMPLES
Samples:
test drive!

Rescue Write-up:
They'd expected some kind of trouble on the way to the flying city, but the trouble that found them wasn't at all the kind they were expecting.

Dorothy, of all people, had spotted it first; she'd looked up for a moment from gleefully snapping picture after picture of the view outside the bridge and innocently asked, "Hey, what's that?"

Joshua, naturally, had been at her side in a split-second, scanning the horizon. "...I don't know."

And that felt ominous, not knowing; Gospels aside, the society hadn't tried to pull out anything that he didn't recognize up until now, even the things he didn't think they'd successfully gotten working yet. Every unknown was another way for things to go horrendously wrong, and -

"Those...don't look like archaisms at all, actually."

And they weren't waiting for him to finish thinking about it.

"Full evasive!" Captain Schwarz snapped. The shapes were rapidly getting bigger in the viewports, and for a moment, Joshua thought, it almost looked like they were just being attacked by shadows -

No shadow could hit the hull with the kind of force that was rocking the ship, though, and no shadow could make the viewports crack and groan under the sheer pressure of something breaking through. Even as his hands shot straight for his daggers, he had to wonder if it was futile, and if those things even had enough form to be stabbed, and then for one brief, heart-stopping moment one of them looked straight at him (because he didn't know what else to call it, even if as far as he could tell it didn't have eyes or a face), and Joshua knew.

They were here for him, and they were a threat beyond even the Enforcers.

Estelle was yelling something behind him about the door, and she was right, they needed to get off the bridge and at least get a few seconds to regroup, but

Do you want to live?

The voice was in his mind, not his ears, and even as he mentally jerked back (get out of there), he had the answer. It wasn't so long ago that it wouldn't have mattered. Taking down Ouroboros was the only reason he was still going, and if his clock was punched, then that was that. But -

Estelle was still yelling. The words ran together in his ears but what really mattered was the look she was giving him, as he turned to meet her eyes and she reached out to grab his hand.

I know you don't want it to always be me protecting you. I know you want me to stay with you.

"I'm sorry."

He turned his back to her, to the (whatever it was). To the person appearing between it, and him, and reaching out their own hand.

This one, he took.