Voidtreckers Application

[fivemilesdeep]

Player Information

Name: Kia
Age: 32
Contact details: Kiaxet
Other characters: Siebren de Kuiper (Sigma)

Character Information

Name: Ryo
Canon: Original
Canon Point:
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC
Age: 16

World Information: Available here!

Personal History: (CW: abuse, neglect, violence)

Ryo was born in the small, rather secluded town of Eloe, to a mother who had traveled there with her brother and settled and a father who had lived there his entire life. Eloe, being far enough away from larger cities that it could go years between seeing caravans and not subject to a larger exchange of ideas, tended a bit towards tradition and superstition: among those was a hatred of strangers and a belief that the younger of a pair of twins was a cursed being, sent from the hells to bring misfortune and eventually kill the older twin.

Ryo’s identical twin brother, Ryoga, was born ten minutes before him. Ryo’s mother died within the hour of giving birth to him. Even in a world of magic, superstitions are merely superstitions, but that did not make life any easier for Ryo. The town shunned him, and while his father provided for him in accordance to his mother’s last wishes, he made it very clear he only loved one of his sons. The only people who cared about him at all growing up were his brother Ryoga, with whom he shared an incredibly close bond, and his uncle, who did his best to raise the twins in his sister’s stead.

While most of the residents of Eloe did their best to ignore Ryo’s existence, there were a few that went out of their way to make life that much worse for him. One such person was Torren, a bully a few years older than the twins and unafraid to express his opinions with violence. After all, if he was targeting the town pariah, who was going to stop him? Ryo quickly learned to avoid confrontation - and to avoid Torren at all - but that didn’t always work out. Ryoga stepped in when he could to defend his brother, but that didn’t deter Torren. At one point, he hurt Ryoga so badly that the result triggered Ryo’s healing magic for the first time; not long after, he made it clear that being a healer wouldn’t save Ryo and beat him half to death, in turn unlocking Ryoga’s healing magic. While there were more run-ins afterwards, Torren eventually left town with a passing caravan to make his way in the world when the twins were 12 - one of the few in town to willingly leave - making life a bit safer for them both.

It also evidently gave Ryoga an idea, as when the next caravan passed through town a few years later, he snuck out and left with it. His uncle had been trying to take the twins and leave town for a while, but their father refused to let Ryoga leave, so he simply took care of that himself. He left a note for Ryo explaining that he was planning on making his way to Orastin to try to make a space for them there, probably at clan headquarters; for all his noble intentions, it still left Ryo without the person that had always been there for him, and it rattled him deeply. Ryo and his uncle made plans to depart with the next caravan, whenever that would be; in the meantime, they settled in to wait.

And then, a year later, a stranger came into town, asking for help. The villagers sent the disliked stranger to the curse of a healer, and that was how Ryo met Endon - his brother Orion had been injured and was in need of help. Through an afternoon spent together, Ryo learned that Orion and Endon were twins (fraternal, not obvious upon first meeting), that they were mages traveling independently of caravans, and that he rather liked them - though it helped that they were the first people outside of his uncle to treat him like a human being since his brother had left. It didn’t take long for them to learn about Ryo’s situation and offer to take him to Orastin themselves - it would be more dangerous than waiting for a caravan, but at least he’d be out of Eloe. It took a bit longer to convince his uncle, but eventually he came around and did what he could to prep Ryo for the journey.

Traveling with Orion and Endon was the best turn Ryo’s life could have taken. Along with getting him out of Eloe and protecting him during their journey, they also did what they could to help him come out of his shell: encouraging him to join conversations and express his opinion, teaching him to ask for what he wanted, and caring for him. It helped that they were genuine, and that nobody in the towns they traveled to along the way knew him - encountering people with zero preconceived notions of him was a novel experience, but a good one. By the time they reached Orastin a few months later, Ryo didn’t want to leave them, and he’d come far enough along his path that he was able to ask to stay with them, depending on what Ryoga wanted to do. They accepted happily, and Ryo went to the headquarters of his clan, only to find Ryoga wasn’t there and hadn’t passed through. He left word - for his uncle and for Ryoga, whoever made it there first - and continued traveling with Orion and Endon. The next couple of months brought them to their hometown, where they hunkered down for the winter with Orion and Endon’s family. It was a winter of firsts for Ryo: first snowfall, first time in a functional family unit, and first time receiving training for his healing magic, as the local healer was more than happy to help him.

They set out to travel again in the spring, and while there were ups and downs, good times and close scrapes, nothing was too out of the ordinary for travel until, in one of the towns they entered, Ryo found Torren, who was none too happy to see Eloe’s “curse” out in the world and all too eager to fall back into old habits. Torren beat Ryo fairly badly; the difference this time was, Orion found them and stepped in to defend Ryo, and Endon found the town’s healer to help Ryo. Once it came to light that Ryo was a healer, Torren was thrown out of town by the town’s alderman, and Ryo took a few days to recover before they were ready to move on. He didn’t want to go - he insisted that Torren won’t take no for an answer and won’t quit, and that he would blame them for what happened and want revenge. Orion and Endon managed to convince him that they’d be okay, and they set out, though Ryo was still nervous - with Torren out there, he could no longer feel safe.

Unfortunately for them, Ryo was right, and Torren had spent the past few days lying in wait outside town, hidden from anyone with a Sense. He waited until they were a few miles outside of town before launching a surprise attack. Unfortunately for Torren, he had underestimated them - underestimated Orion, a trained fighter with warrior magic and a fire affinity, keyed to danger from wildlife and beasts and anything else that can evade a mage’s Sense. Orion reacted on reflex with enough stopping power to stymie a beast, which was more than enough to kill a human, and Torren went down.

There was cleanup to be done afterwards - a body to bring back into town, a death to report, a letter to be written and sent to Torren’s parents in Eloe - but while Orion was rattled after unintentionally killing a human, all Ryo could feel was relief. With Torren dead, he could stop looking over his shoulder in fear - and as far as he was concerned, that fiery death couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

It took a little time to recover, but eventually they did. A few months later, Ryo wound up on a platform to board the Voidtrecker Express.


Personality: Ryo is a very quiet person at first glance. He’s spent most of his life attempting to stay out of sight and out of the way, and two years of relative freedom has not been enough to break that habit completely - only ease it with external positive reinforcement. While he has gotten better about some things, he is still easily intimidated by more dominant or forceful personalities, and will sometimes need to be encouraged to speak his mind or asked his opinion before he will volunteer it.

Despite that, he genuinely loves people. He enjoys being around them, he enjoys listening to them and getting to know them, and he is genuinely compassionate. Growing up in a town where everyone hated him on sight dimmed this somewhat, but a few years of traveling - of meeting new people without the baggage of preconceived notions - has given it new life. He tends to begin social situations on the outskirts of the conversation, but can be easily encouraged into active participation. Once he has made friends with someone, he will actively seek out their company and will adamantly support them however possible. While he still has a bit of difficulty bridging that first step to making friends, he is very loyal and compassionate once that friendship is established. He has the makings of a Mom Friend a bit further down the line, especially with his healing magic, though he isn’t quite there yet. As it is, he is making a concerted effort to work on his social skills, his ability to accurately read a situation, and his willingness to make decisions and stand up for himself - all will eventually be required of him as a healer in his own right, and he is well aware of that and wants to improve as much as possible.

(That said, this is all with Endon and Orion with him, acting as encouragement and safety net. Alone, he is far more cautious and far less sure of himself, and it takes him longer to come out of his shell.)

He is a healer in mindset as well as in magic, and cannot pass by someone in danger or pain. He truly does care about people and wants to help them however he can. Situations in which his magic or talents are needed are the rare circumstance in which he will be assertive from the get-go - he has a job to do and he fully intends to do it. That said, that assertiveness can become overbearing very easily, as Ryo does not know how to leave well enough alone when someone is injured - he has been hurting for much of his life, and he hates to see anyone else in pain because of it. While he will never go so far as to completely overrule a patient’s wishes in their treatment, he can definitely be pushy about it.

Ryo has lived through a very personal hell and chosen to be kind despite it, using his pain as motivation to keep anyone else from feeling the same. That said, despite his determination to move past it, his upbringing has left its mark on him. He has a carefully hidden but still very much present vindictive streak, a metaphorical two inches wide and five miles deep: virtually impossible to stumble across, and you’d need to be looking for it, but gods help you if you find it, because once you fall in, he’s not letting you out. It’s where all the cold and pain and anger from a lifetime of abuse and neglect are stored, and he is not above leveraging them on anyone who has fucked with him badly enough - an extreme reaction, but still very much within the realm of possibility. It’s rare for anyone to get that squarely on his bad side - at this point in his story, Torren is the only one to manage it - but anyone who winds up there is someone he will outright refuse to help, regardless of the situation. Withholding care is the worst thing a healer can do in his world, and he is not above it, but only in very specific, very extreme circumstances - only for people who have gone searching for his vindictive streak and been persistently malicious enough to find it.

All in all, Ryo is a kind, compassionate teenager who is doing his best to overcome a history of abuse, better himself, and learn to stand up for himself. He’s a very soft boy with a very big heart, and he is trying his best.

Key themes: Overcoming abuse - learning to be his own person once removed from abusive circumstances. Compassion.

Main Motivation: Ryo wants to become the best healer he can possibly be. A good portion of that is devotion to his friends, as he feels he’ll never be able to fully repay them for giving him a second chance at life and this is as close as he’ll ever get; personal connections aside, deep down, he really does want to help people.

Skills: Ryo has healing magic! Long story short, he can heal other people’s injuries; long story long, details are available here. He’s also picked up a little bit of warrior magic - he has a wind affinity and uses it to defend himself, though he’s not terribly skilled yet. It’s mostly a measure to get him out of danger until it passes and he can do his job as a healer.

As a mage, Ryo also has a Sense - essentially, he can sense the life energy of others. Details are here.

On a less magical side, Ryo is also trained in field medicine and a self-taught herbologist. The field medicine is generally what one would expect - removing foreign objects, setting bones, stitches, wound care - the sort of thing needed to keep a person alive in the wilderness when magic and more complicated medicine wouldn’t be available. He picked up herbology as something between a hobby and a desperate attempt to be useful in a town that didn’t want him there, so he’s got years of self-directed study and rather limited practical experience. While the specifics may not carry across dimensions - because of the lot of the fauna he’s familiar with seem to be specific to his world - the basics (compounding, preservation, etc) should still apply.

On the defensive side, he’s learning knife work, just in case - he only has about a year of it under his belt, but he’s learned to throw knives with fairly high accuracy, though close quarters combat still unnerves him.

He’s also a competent cook, though admittedly it tends towards campfire cooking.

Item: A small satchel that essentially functions as his healer’s go bag - it contains a few labeled containers of dried herbs for making compounds, a roll of bandages, and the equipment for field stitches. It’s essentially the bag he’d keep by the door for easy access in case of an emergency.

Sample: Here!

Notes: