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application for jarjammed
cries because it's so long don't read this please
CHARACTER INFO
Name: !!Emperor!! Zetch'r'r
Gender: Male
Source: Dungeons & Dragons (specifically from scales of war but is that ever gonna matter)
Canon point: Somewhere between the adventures The Lich Queen's Beloved and Tyranny of Souls; well after he's bargained with Tiamat to assume control of Tu'narath but before things really start falling apart.
Age: It's hard to say, given how warped-to-nonexistent time is on the Astral Plane! Vaguely middle-age, if you will? 30s or so at the very least, though he's likely older. By decades. SHRUGS.
Colour: #70226E (it's purple btw)
Chumhandle: risenTraitor
History: AW MAN WHAT IS VAGUE BACKSTORIES AND TIMELINES.
Life in githyanki society is pretty simple; you prove your worth or you die. (Trolls might find this sounds kind of familiar.) While the caste system is fluid, changes occur rarely, with assignments occurring at birth and education ensuing immediately. The highest and most populous caste is that of the warriors (who have some dumb apostrophe-ridden name i give literally zero fucks about), who are raised into heartless killing machines for their race's glorious Eternal Crusade. (Trolls might find this also sounds kind of familiar!)
It can pretty much assumed that Zetch'r'r's life doesn't deviate radically from this, at least in terms of upbringing. There's certainly nothing to indicate such, given his position as a rather esteemed warlord and the fact that after a long series of shenanigans he remains a valid candidate for the throne as far as everyone's concerned-- but we'll get to that later.
His history and the like may be relatively boring, but there was one thing that set Zetch'r'r apart from the majority of his peers: idealism. Rampant idealism. You see, once upon a time there was only one gith race, and they ended up splitting into two over a minor disagreement (we should kill everybody else vs we should not kill everybody else), and over thousands and thousands of years this had become seething, murderous hatred. The only common ground anyone was willing to admit was that their end goals were the same (genocide), with both races following the doctrines of their first leaders.
Zetch'r'r? Thought it would be totally cool if the races united again and went and kicked a bunch of aberrant spacetopus ass instead of fighting all the time. It just seems kind of stupid not to work together, right?
This is where things get super nebulous and vague-- he finds a splinter group in society called the Sha'sal Khou, which is dedicated to the idea of reuniting the races, says HEY I LIKE YOU GUYS and joins forces with them to plot a complete and total rebellion. Wow! (Also he's a warlord and has a keep and armies and shit, but who knows when or how that happened? Whatever.) It's a lot of useless planning, though, because it turns out when your queen is a thousand year-old lich who commands dragons and devours the souls of any who might possibly challenge her dominion it is hella hard to even remotely convince her subjects that she's a bad thing, even when she's planning to rip open the dead god that the city was founded on and use his latent power to make herself into a deity.
'Cause of the soul eating, you know.
Long story short: years passed, shit failed, Zetch'r'r turned his attentions to possible solutions outside of their (incredibly small and insular tbh) holdings. Somehow, he caught wind of some talented adventuring band from the material plan, and somehow, he even got them to agree to help him out! Something about lots of treasure, and also maybe a threat to the entire world in there? It's hard to remember, and he probably exaggerated a lot! A lot.
The important thing here is: they succeeded in killing her. Quite thoroughly, actually! This was actually pretty great-- and Zetch'r'r was totally ready to step in there and lead everyone to glory or whatever-- but then everyone didn't want him for their king.
Well, not everyone. Turns out, the main problem with bribing a group of outsiders to kill someone that's ruled for a thousand years is uh, well, people tend to notice that sort of thing! While no one could conclusively link him to the sudden convenient disposal of a certain lich, it was pretty obvious that it was... sort of his fault. A little. Everyone splintered off into factions pretty quickly, and while his was one of the largest, there just weren't enough people on his side to seize control of the city.
It was a bit too late to regret any previous poor decisions, however. Instead, it was time to make a whole bunch more of them! Convincing everyone would take too long, and Zetch'r'r was pretty positive (and rightly so) that his people would eat themselves alive before he could actually get them all to agree. Drastic times call for drastic measures, so he took a little bit of inspiration from history and contacted Tiamat, mother of all dragons but also uh, the god of avarice and greed and all that. (as of 4e, anyway? idr if it was like that in 3.x, i don't have the books anymore ughhhh BUT SERIOUSLY WHO CARES)
See, once upon a time, the original leader of the githyanki had gone to one of Tiamat's exarchs and asked really nicely and received an artifact that controlled dragons! (Red ones.) The cost? Well... her soul, and the soul of every githyanki leader afterwards, but really that's sort of a shit deal when the trade-off is dragons.
Tiamat had always been sort of bitter about this, because it was expressly laid out in the bargain that she could never exercise any control over the githyanki; when the chance to gain what she had been seething over for thousands of years came up, she took it without thought. Zetch'r'r thought it would be fine-- it's not like gods are a big deal, right?-- and with Tiamat at his back, he crushed the opposition and took control
You know, in exchange for causing the one thing he had spent all his efforts trying to stop before: enslavement to a god. It wasn't so bad at first, except for the part where Tiamat has been slowly encroaching on his power in an attempt to weaponize the githyanki and conquer the material plane! Which... is something he would've gotten around to anyway, but it's a bit different when you're not doing it because you want to, but because some five-headed dragon bitch wants to rule everything.
His popularity's been slipping, incidentally.
(despite being an enormous fuck up all his terrible decisions have actually paved the way for everything he ever wanted to actually happen, which is great except for the part where he's also going to get killed before any of it occurs. THAT'S ALL IN THE FUTURE THOUGH!!)
Personality:
It's always easiest to start at the beginning, and with most D&D characters, that's their alignment. Since I am a huge dumb cheater and it's actually a fairly good baseline for the character, let's start there! Zetch'r'r is Lawful Evil; very very lawful, despite the whole rebellion thing, and very very evil, despite the whole idealism thing. Most of what he is can be condensed down to those two points-- he's a man of his word and his honor (or something like it), and his ultimate end goal is to lead his people on an all-encompassing quest of genocide.
We're introduced to him as a tyrant, and that's pretty accurate! Zetch'r'r rules with an iron fist, and does not take kindly to anything that isn't expressly his control. Discipline and compliance are expected and enforced to deadly degrees, making him really no different from the person he overthrew. Whoops! The main difference between them (aside from not attempting to implode the kingdom on a whim of trying to attain godhood) is that he also believes in a certain sort of personal freedom. So long as things are getting done properly, he has no interest in micromanaging his subjects' lives.
Freedom is a really big deal, though. It has been thousands of years since any gith were slaves to anybody, but the racial hatred of it runs deep all the same. As much as he expects people to listen to his commands, he has an equally hard time listening to anyone else; suggestions are taken and followed within reason, but if there is even the slightest hint of dominance behind it he will lash out. Angrily. Such is actually the norm for githyanki; for all their hyper-disciplined, rigid militaristic laws they are incredibly volatile and incredibly willful. It's sort of amazing their society hasn't imploded all these years, though uh it's sort of on the verge of that during his canon point. Whoops again!
Unlike most of his brethren, though, Zetch'r'r is patient! Do you know how many years it takes to outwit someone like twenty times your age. He actually deviates from the norm significantly, and not just because of that; he is philosophical, idealistic to the point of being naive ('man there's no way tiamat will just seize control of everything if if i bargain with her and swear undying loyalty right!!') and capable of controlling himself (even if he does have a tendency to react really poorly to rejection-- if the party denies his offer he literally sends dragons after them lmfao).
Zetch'r'r has only gotten as far as he has due to an uncharacteristic amount of charisma and intelligence, too, if only because the previous ruler liked killing everyone that displayed either trait for over a thousand years. Too bad that leads directly to him being sort of a narcissistic douchebag! It's like they completely set him up to be a villain, or something. I ALSO FEEL THE NEED TO ADD IN THAT APPARENTLY HE KEPT EIGHT LIFE-SIZED STATUES OF HIMSELF IN THE FUCKING ENTRY FOYER OF HIS FORTRESS SO UH. HUGE EMPHASIS ON THE NARCISSISM, OKAY.
The worst part is, maybe, that he's genuinely well-meaning. Unfortunately, the chief way githyanki express good will is through murder-- of something the good will recipient doesn't like, of course-- so it's a bit hard actually say, well, he's a good person.
Yeah, sure, he wanted to end utterly baseless animosity stretching back centuries and centuries, but... he only wanted to do that because it would make killing all the mind flayers ever easier! p.s. part of eradicating the threat is systematically conquering every world they come across, you know, just to make sure they're not hiding in there somewhere. And yeah, he wanted to stop his queen from divine ascension in a move that would enslave all his people forever the end because she was so completely awful and crazy, but a good 50% of that was actually born from 'also, i would totally be a better ruler than she is, because i am so great.'
It's also worth noting that by his canon point, he is beginning to realize what an enormous fuckup he is! Discovering that trading one divinely-based threat to your people and their free will for another that's even more powerful p.s. it's all your fault is pretty disheartening, especially since all you wanted to do was good. It's led to him being a bit morose and surly, even by his standards, although he's still not quite ready to just hang out and wait for death like he is by the end of his timeline. :V
In essence, he is a completely awful person, but he also wants to do good things! Lots of them.
Just, all of them are murder to varying degrees, and if you say they probably shouldn't happen he'll stab you in the face.
P.S. zetch'r'r is a cat person. this is canon.
Abilities & physical limitations:
well aside from having literally the worst name in theworld multiverse there are a couple things:
- Githyanki are naturally psychic, due to centuries of being enslaved by horrorterrors! This leads to things like spell resistance, the (really super mild) ability to alter reality/mess with perception on a small scale, and yes, teleporting, two different ways although even before SBURB he couldn't do them more than once a day anyway, and who's to say how well they'll work now? (Spoilers: probably not very!)
Also they can see in the dark, because 3.5 is cool and that's where most of his canon is anyway. Darkvision is rad.
- Blackguards are BIG EVIL PALADINS which is funny because they don't actually need to worship gods? I guess given his canon point you could say he's a Tiamat worshiper but ha ha that'll pretty much disappear half a second after entering the medium!!
Blackguards get ~FEAR AND EVIL~ powers which are super cheesy if you think about them for longer than about half a second and/or are above the age of thirteen. It also results in him being incredibly fucking unsettling to be around, because he has an aura of ~despair and evil~ surrounding him at all times. It sort of makes him incredibly easy to track? Like, it lingers for literal days after he leaves, everywhere he goes. smh
Other misc powers: he can use poisons and sneak attack; command undead and detect/smite good; and, is exceptionally skilled with swords and heavy armor like any halfway decent space-thing trained from birth to kill should be.
Also more of his levels are in fighter than not but all that means is that he can hit stuff pretty good I guess.
- Limitations-wise... there isn't a fuck of a lot aside from daily limits on powers? He's still blind on his right side, though, because his replacement not-an-eye just gives him an extra fear spell and no ability to see whatsoever. s m h
Appearance: Zetch'r'r is a tall man, well over six feet, and rather heavy-set for a member of his race; this roughly equates to being about as wide as your average everyday human, however. (Space is weird!)
There's little else notable about him physically, save for that his right eye is missing, having been replaced by a finely polished onyx stone. He wears blackened plate armor of a particularly spiky sort, and carries a large silver sword. Additionally, thanks to his ~auras~, he looks and/or feels vaguely menacing and sinister though it's not really clear why or how!
Notable AU differences from canon, if applicable: none!
Strife Specibus: Swordkind. D&D IS BORING SORRY
Prototyping: sexy handmaiden lady that he hates/hates him yes
Title: Thrall of Greed
In-game abilities: THIS IS THE PART I HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT YET I JUST WANT SBURB TO BE A REAL ASSHOLE TO MY CHARACTER
Planet: The Land of Glaciers and Unrest is ashithole seemingly endless tundra of silver snow and ice; it'd all be very pretty were it not also the former site of a large battle in an age long past. There are bones and rusted, decayed weapons decorating the land, and the only landmarks are hasty attempts at fortifications that have since eroded and fallen apart.
The Denizen, Bahram, is the surly sort, not given much to conversation-- or anything remotely amicable at all, really. His arrival ended the war through a bloody conquest, and no one has opposed his rule since. The consorts, who are bright green baby seals-- and the last remnants of their civilization, as all the adults died in the war ( :( ) -- are forced to remain in the ocean, lest they be taken for rebels and destroyed. IT IS VERY AWFUL AND YOU SHOULD FEEL TERRIBLE FOR THEM.
RP Sample:
FUCK OFF I CAN'T WRITE THESE THEY'RE TERRIBLE YOU DON'T GET TO SEE IT
CHARACTER INFO
Name: !!Emperor!! Zetch'r'r
Gender: Male
Source: Dungeons & Dragons (specifically from scales of war but is that ever gonna matter)
Canon point: Somewhere between the adventures The Lich Queen's Beloved and Tyranny of Souls; well after he's bargained with Tiamat to assume control of Tu'narath but before things really start falling apart.
Age: It's hard to say, given how warped-to-nonexistent time is on the Astral Plane! Vaguely middle-age, if you will? 30s or so at the very least, though he's likely older. By decades. SHRUGS.
Colour: #70226E (it's purple btw)
Chumhandle: risenTraitor
History: AW MAN WHAT IS VAGUE BACKSTORIES AND TIMELINES.
Life in githyanki society is pretty simple; you prove your worth or you die. (Trolls might find this sounds kind of familiar.) While the caste system is fluid, changes occur rarely, with assignments occurring at birth and education ensuing immediately. The highest and most populous caste is that of the warriors (who have some dumb apostrophe-ridden name i give literally zero fucks about), who are raised into heartless killing machines for their race's glorious Eternal Crusade. (Trolls might find this also sounds kind of familiar!)
It can pretty much assumed that Zetch'r'r's life doesn't deviate radically from this, at least in terms of upbringing. There's certainly nothing to indicate such, given his position as a rather esteemed warlord and the fact that after a long series of shenanigans he remains a valid candidate for the throne as far as everyone's concerned-- but we'll get to that later.
His history and the like may be relatively boring, but there was one thing that set Zetch'r'r apart from the majority of his peers: idealism. Rampant idealism. You see, once upon a time there was only one gith race, and they ended up splitting into two over a minor disagreement (we should kill everybody else vs we should not kill everybody else), and over thousands and thousands of years this had become seething, murderous hatred. The only common ground anyone was willing to admit was that their end goals were the same (genocide), with both races following the doctrines of their first leaders.
Zetch'r'r? Thought it would be totally cool if the races united again and went and kicked a bunch of aberrant spacetopus ass instead of fighting all the time. It just seems kind of stupid not to work together, right?
This is where things get super nebulous and vague-- he finds a splinter group in society called the Sha'sal Khou, which is dedicated to the idea of reuniting the races, says HEY I LIKE YOU GUYS and joins forces with them to plot a complete and total rebellion. Wow! (Also he's a warlord and has a keep and armies and shit, but who knows when or how that happened? Whatever.) It's a lot of useless planning, though, because it turns out when your queen is a thousand year-old lich who commands dragons and devours the souls of any who might possibly challenge her dominion it is hella hard to even remotely convince her subjects that she's a bad thing, even when she's planning to rip open the dead god that the city was founded on and use his latent power to make herself into a deity.
'Cause of the soul eating, you know.
Long story short: years passed, shit failed, Zetch'r'r turned his attentions to possible solutions outside of their (incredibly small and insular tbh) holdings. Somehow, he caught wind of some talented adventuring band from the material plan, and somehow, he even got them to agree to help him out! Something about lots of treasure, and also maybe a threat to the entire world in there? It's hard to remember, and he probably exaggerated a lot! A lot.
The important thing here is: they succeeded in killing her. Quite thoroughly, actually! This was actually pretty great-- and Zetch'r'r was totally ready to step in there and lead everyone to glory or whatever-- but then everyone didn't want him for their king.
Well, not everyone. Turns out, the main problem with bribing a group of outsiders to kill someone that's ruled for a thousand years is uh, well, people tend to notice that sort of thing! While no one could conclusively link him to the sudden convenient disposal of a certain lich, it was pretty obvious that it was... sort of his fault. A little. Everyone splintered off into factions pretty quickly, and while his was one of the largest, there just weren't enough people on his side to seize control of the city.
It was a bit too late to regret any previous poor decisions, however. Instead, it was time to make a whole bunch more of them! Convincing everyone would take too long, and Zetch'r'r was pretty positive (and rightly so) that his people would eat themselves alive before he could actually get them all to agree. Drastic times call for drastic measures, so he took a little bit of inspiration from history and contacted Tiamat, mother of all dragons but also uh, the god of avarice and greed and all that. (as of 4e, anyway? idr if it was like that in 3.x, i don't have the books anymore ughhhh BUT SERIOUSLY WHO CARES)
See, once upon a time, the original leader of the githyanki had gone to one of Tiamat's exarchs and asked really nicely and received an artifact that controlled dragons! (Red ones.) The cost? Well... her soul, and the soul of every githyanki leader afterwards, but really that's sort of a shit deal when the trade-off is dragons.
Tiamat had always been sort of bitter about this, because it was expressly laid out in the bargain that she could never exercise any control over the githyanki; when the chance to gain what she had been seething over for thousands of years came up, she took it without thought. Zetch'r'r thought it would be fine-- it's not like gods are a big deal, right?-- and with Tiamat at his back, he crushed the opposition and took control
You know, in exchange for causing the one thing he had spent all his efforts trying to stop before: enslavement to a god. It wasn't so bad at first, except for the part where Tiamat has been slowly encroaching on his power in an attempt to weaponize the githyanki and conquer the material plane! Which... is something he would've gotten around to anyway, but it's a bit different when you're not doing it because you want to, but because some five-headed dragon bitch wants to rule everything.
His popularity's been slipping, incidentally.
(despite being an enormous fuck up all his terrible decisions have actually paved the way for everything he ever wanted to actually happen, which is great except for the part where he's also going to get killed before any of it occurs. THAT'S ALL IN THE FUTURE THOUGH!!)
Personality:
It's always easiest to start at the beginning, and with most D&D characters, that's their alignment. Since I am a huge dumb cheater and it's actually a fairly good baseline for the character, let's start there! Zetch'r'r is Lawful Evil; very very lawful, despite the whole rebellion thing, and very very evil, despite the whole idealism thing. Most of what he is can be condensed down to those two points-- he's a man of his word and his honor (or something like it), and his ultimate end goal is to lead his people on an all-encompassing quest of genocide.
We're introduced to him as a tyrant, and that's pretty accurate! Zetch'r'r rules with an iron fist, and does not take kindly to anything that isn't expressly his control. Discipline and compliance are expected and enforced to deadly degrees, making him really no different from the person he overthrew. Whoops! The main difference between them (aside from not attempting to implode the kingdom on a whim of trying to attain godhood) is that he also believes in a certain sort of personal freedom. So long as things are getting done properly, he has no interest in micromanaging his subjects' lives.
Freedom is a really big deal, though. It has been thousands of years since any gith were slaves to anybody, but the racial hatred of it runs deep all the same. As much as he expects people to listen to his commands, he has an equally hard time listening to anyone else; suggestions are taken and followed within reason, but if there is even the slightest hint of dominance behind it he will lash out. Angrily. Such is actually the norm for githyanki; for all their hyper-disciplined, rigid militaristic laws they are incredibly volatile and incredibly willful. It's sort of amazing their society hasn't imploded all these years, though uh it's sort of on the verge of that during his canon point. Whoops again!
Unlike most of his brethren, though, Zetch'r'r is patient! Do you know how many years it takes to outwit someone like twenty times your age. He actually deviates from the norm significantly, and not just because of that; he is philosophical, idealistic to the point of being naive ('man there's no way tiamat will just seize control of everything if if i bargain with her and swear undying loyalty right!!') and capable of controlling himself (even if he does have a tendency to react really poorly to rejection-- if the party denies his offer he literally sends dragons after them lmfao).
Zetch'r'r has only gotten as far as he has due to an uncharacteristic amount of charisma and intelligence, too, if only because the previous ruler liked killing everyone that displayed either trait for over a thousand years. Too bad that leads directly to him being sort of a narcissistic douchebag! It's like they completely set him up to be a villain, or something. I ALSO FEEL THE NEED TO ADD IN THAT APPARENTLY HE KEPT EIGHT LIFE-SIZED STATUES OF HIMSELF IN THE FUCKING ENTRY FOYER OF HIS FORTRESS SO UH. HUGE EMPHASIS ON THE NARCISSISM, OKAY.
The worst part is, maybe, that he's genuinely well-meaning. Unfortunately, the chief way githyanki express good will is through murder-- of something the good will recipient doesn't like, of course-- so it's a bit hard actually say, well, he's a good person.
Yeah, sure, he wanted to end utterly baseless animosity stretching back centuries and centuries, but... he only wanted to do that because it would make killing all the mind flayers ever easier! p.s. part of eradicating the threat is systematically conquering every world they come across, you know, just to make sure they're not hiding in there somewhere. And yeah, he wanted to stop his queen from divine ascension in a move that would enslave all his people forever the end because she was so completely awful and crazy, but a good 50% of that was actually born from 'also, i would totally be a better ruler than she is, because i am so great.'
It's also worth noting that by his canon point, he is beginning to realize what an enormous fuckup he is! Discovering that trading one divinely-based threat to your people and their free will for another that's even more powerful p.s. it's all your fault is pretty disheartening, especially since all you wanted to do was good. It's led to him being a bit morose and surly, even by his standards, although he's still not quite ready to just hang out and wait for death like he is by the end of his timeline. :V
In essence, he is a completely awful person, but he also wants to do good things! Lots of them.
Just, all of them are murder to varying degrees, and if you say they probably shouldn't happen he'll stab you in the face.
P.S. zetch'r'r is a cat person. this is canon.
Abilities & physical limitations:
well aside from having literally the worst name in the
- Githyanki are naturally psychic, due to centuries of being enslaved by horrorterrors! This leads to things like spell resistance, the (really super mild) ability to alter reality/mess with perception on a small scale, and yes, teleporting, two different ways although even before SBURB he couldn't do them more than once a day anyway, and who's to say how well they'll work now? (Spoilers: probably not very!)
Also they can see in the dark, because 3.5 is cool and that's where most of his canon is anyway. Darkvision is rad.
- Blackguards are BIG EVIL PALADINS which is funny because they don't actually need to worship gods? I guess given his canon point you could say he's a Tiamat worshiper but ha ha that'll pretty much disappear half a second after entering the medium!!
Blackguards get ~FEAR AND EVIL~ powers which are super cheesy if you think about them for longer than about half a second and/or are above the age of thirteen. It also results in him being incredibly fucking unsettling to be around, because he has an aura of ~despair and evil~ surrounding him at all times. It sort of makes him incredibly easy to track? Like, it lingers for literal days after he leaves, everywhere he goes. smh
Other misc powers: he can use poisons and sneak attack; command undead and detect/smite good; and, is exceptionally skilled with swords and heavy armor like any halfway decent space-thing trained from birth to kill should be.
Also more of his levels are in fighter than not but all that means is that he can hit stuff pretty good I guess.
- Limitations-wise... there isn't a fuck of a lot aside from daily limits on powers? He's still blind on his right side, though, because his replacement not-an-eye just gives him an extra fear spell and no ability to see whatsoever. s m h
Appearance: Zetch'r'r is a tall man, well over six feet, and rather heavy-set for a member of his race; this roughly equates to being about as wide as your average everyday human, however. (Space is weird!)
There's little else notable about him physically, save for that his right eye is missing, having been replaced by a finely polished onyx stone. He wears blackened plate armor of a particularly spiky sort, and carries a large silver sword. Additionally, thanks to his ~auras~, he looks and/or feels vaguely menacing and sinister though it's not really clear why or how!
Notable AU differences from canon, if applicable: none!
Strife Specibus: Swordkind. D&D IS BORING SORRY
Prototyping: sexy handmaiden lady that he hates/hates him yes
Title: Thrall of Greed
In-game abilities: THIS IS THE PART I HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT YET I JUST WANT SBURB TO BE A REAL ASSHOLE TO MY CHARACTER
Planet: The Land of Glaciers and Unrest is a
The Denizen, Bahram, is the surly sort, not given much to conversation-- or anything remotely amicable at all, really. His arrival ended the war through a bloody conquest, and no one has opposed his rule since. The consorts, who are bright green baby seals-- and the last remnants of their civilization, as all the adults died in the war ( :( ) -- are forced to remain in the ocean, lest they be taken for rebels and destroyed. IT IS VERY AWFUL AND YOU SHOULD FEEL TERRIBLE FOR THEM.
RP Sample:
FUCK OFF I CAN'T WRITE THESE THEY'RE TERRIBLE YOU DON'T GET TO SEE IT