Post by nicholas on Feb 13, 2012 20:00:02 GMT -5
The Basics
Name: Nicholas Paolenti
Alias: Nick
Age: 20
Species: Meta-human (gifted/mutant)
Gender: Male
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 162 Lbs
Hair: Dark brown, typically worn either long and loose or tied back in a simple pony tail. Well over a foot in length, reaches about mid back.
Eyes: A dull brown.
Build: Very skinny, but built of little more than whipcord muscle, skin and bone. Not very athletic at first glance until seen running or climbing.
Skin: Normal caucasion - light but not pale.
Class (Ranking): Hero/Anti Hero
Original or Canon: Original
Theme songs:
Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynard
Lineage & Relations:
Put information about your character's family and relations here.
Lineage:
Mother: Elizabeth Paolenti (50 years old)
Father: Dean Paolenti (51 years old)
Siblings: Elinda Paolenti (15 years old), Sarah Paolenti (17 years old)
Relations:
Crush: None (yet)
Love: None (yet)
Rival: None (yet)
Enemy: None (yet)
Appearance:
Nicholas typically tends to wear conservative clothing that shows as little skin as possible, a fact made easy in that he has little tolerance for the cold preference wise. Typically speaking he will wear a high necked, slightly form fitting black fleece over varying kinds of casual shirts (t shirts, simple long sleeves, etc.) that both hides his neck while in public, and pants wise he typically prefers function over appearance, more often than not wearing some variety of cargo pants or jeans, almost always black or brown. While in the company of people who know what he is (such as his family), Nicholas tends to relax somewhat, often shedding his fleece for some other shirt or jacket worn over the shirt underneath. As far as his shoes go, he tends to wear rather heavy duty sneakers when possible, more akin to work shoes or hiking boots than the sleek sneakers most people his age tend to wear. His hair is long, reaching about mid back behind him and his upper chest in the front when worn loose, but Nicholas tends to tie it back most of the time to keep it out of his eyes.
Physically speaking, Nicholas isn't much different from the stock human in either appearance or functionality - two arms, two legs, a head and a torso, the basic arrangement. His skin is exactly the tone you might expect for an Irish/Italian american, with little to none excess fat, and his face has virtually no facial hair, although that is more a result of genetics and may be subject to change within the next few years. What sets Nicholas apart from the crowd, though, is his height - while not anywhere near basketball player height he is still much taller than the average human, and as a result he tends to stand out in crowds.
Personality:
A complicated person to say the least, Nicholas is a mix of contradictions and an enigma to most people, mostly as a result of his thought patterns being slightly different from most and as a result somewhat unpredictable in both his opinions and actions. More than anything else, what most people tend to notice when he speaks is either his intelligence or rather blunt attitude - he does not pull his punches when it comes to voicing his opinion unless the person he is speaking to happens to be one of the handful of people who he actually cares about opinion wise. Despite being born into and rasied by a military family, Nicholas also displays highly individualistic traits and tendencies along with mildly narcissistic values and a rather cynical view of the world and the people in it. Occassionally rude to those he doesn't know or doesn't respect, Nicholas's exterior image tends to waver between that of a delinquint and that of a highly intelligent but relatively withdrawn young man.
To those who get to know Nicholas as friends or otherwise respected individuals, though, much of the rough exterior of his personality will either fade away or likely be viewed in a different light as other traits begin to slowly surface. While Nicholas is indeed a cynical person, he does not believe in the idea that the world is beyond saving, not after all the trouble the human race has gone to in order to both survive and preserve that which would have otherwise been destroyed, a belief further instilled by being raised by a family with a military background, ironically enough. He is also a firm believer in the idea that power corrupts, and the addage that "those who want power should not have it" - as a result he is typically even more untrusting of authority figures who worked to get where they are, although highly respecting of those who don't abuse their power or who try to spread it among those who need it. Nicholas is also deeply loyal to those he considers friends or mentors, something that did not go unnoticed by many of his teachers and classmates back during his high school years. Finally, Nicholas is also a fan of the "Do it yourself" policy - if you don't handle a problem with your own two hands, you have little right to complain if it doesn't go the way you want it to, and it was in large part this belief that led to Nicholas enrolling at the University of New Masada.
Abilities & Weaknesses:
Here is a list of your character's strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. Describe each one in decent detail.
Powers/Abilities
- Alchemical Manipulation - Nicholas possesses the ability to freely alter and control solids, liquids and on rare occasions, gasses. He can both change or control the shape, density, movement and even the chemical composition of any substance he touches, although not without limits. While it is an extremely quick ability and allows him to create even complex objects from the most basic materials (or break objects down to their base components), usually taking less than a second to use (small object the size of, say, a sword can be transmuted within less than a second from raw iron or steel, while object the size of a car can take anywhere between two seconds to over a minute, depending on the complexity of the transmutation), the matter being controlled or altered can take several moments to change or move if the alteration is drastic enough or on a large enough scale, and any matter being controlled is still subject to its natural physical and chemical properties (ie stone being manipulated by him will still crumble if extended too far or struck hard enough, and will last as long as the object is not physically or chemically destroyed). Also, any changes to the chemical composition must contain the same base elements or similar substances - he cannot simply change silicon into iron, for instance (in short, his ability is still in large part subject to most of the laws of physics, ie the Laws of Conservation). He can gradually make the changes over several applications of his ability, however. Nicholas must also understand what the substance he is altering or controlling is made of - if he uses his ability without this knowledge it will likely fail altogether, or produce otherwise unsatisfactory results. Finally, his ability has a defined range - while it can be channelled through substances similar to the target matter over great distances, it is still currently limited to 250 meters.
- Decent Martial Artist/Physically Fit - While by no means a master of any of the styles that he learned when he was younger and rather rusty as a result of falling out of practice, Nicholas is still not someone you'd want to mug on the street between his physical size, speed and strength and what knowledge he does retain. As a result Nicholas is easily able to break free of most grabs and grapples and throw physical blows without harming himself in the process, and he is also capable or redirecting most physical blows that come his way, allowing him to avoid at least direct hits from opponents who are much stronger than he is physically. His build also allows for rather quick and comprehensive dodges, and his own physical attacks (punches, kicks, openhand blows) have little to no "tell", meaning that he is quite adept at executing surprise attacks if someone is foolish enough to give him both reason and opportunity. Hypothetically speaking Nicholas would be quite proficient with mid sized bladed weapons as well due to his experience with Aiki Ken Ai Kido, which uses Ken Jutsu as the basis for many of its techniques.
- His Greatest Weapon.... - Is his mind. While Nicholas may be no more than a stock human physically speaking, his autism, while high functioning, is something of a double edged sword. As a trade off to the few shortcomings that come with it, Nicholas is much more intelligent than most people would think, well over the "Above Average" rating for many IQ tests. What he lacks in social skills Nicholas more than makes up for in tactical and strategic savvy, as well as book smarts - one of the defining characteristics of his form of high functioning autism is a marked increase in pattern recognition, something which strongly compliments his ability.
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Weaknesses/Physical Flaws/Psychological Flaws:
- Only Human - While it may not sound like much of a weakness in and of itself, Nicholas is incredibly vulnerable physically, at least compared to many of the other students and graduates of the University. While he heals at a moderately fast pace and is in much better physical shape than many of his species, his rate of healing is by no means regeneration nor is he able to physically keep up with trained athletes or other super humans. Wounds that would cripple, disable or kill any other human would likewise have a similar effect on him.
- Lone Wolf - While debatably a strength under the right circumstances, the fact of the matter is that Nicholas does not work well in groups unless he is vrey familiar with his team mates - if placed under the leadership of someone that he does not trust, know or respect he is highly liable to simply go and do whatever the hell he wants to or feels would benefit the team. While this would make him the ideal saboteur or operative under the right conditions and can possibly work to his side's favor in that the enemy can't truly predict what he'll do, it more often than not simply makes him a liability.
- What the hell is this thing made of? - As mentioned in the above section, his ability plain will not work unless Nicholas knows of and understands a material (in short, he at least needs a context to place what he wants to transmute in).
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History:
Born in the northeastern USA, Nicholas lived a mostly normal childhood with his parents and two younger sisters. The son of two academics of military lineage (both work for the US government), Nicholas's intelligence soon became apparent as he progressed through primary school, although his social skills left a bit to be desired with Nicholas often wandering off completely seperate from the other children most of the time. This trait was even further exacerbated when he learned to read - rather than going outside, Nicholas would often spend most of his lunch and recess periods in the library. It was also at the age of five that he was enrolled in a local dojo for Aiki Ken Ai Kido lessons by his father, both as a means of learning self defense and as a possible way to connect with other people his age.
As time continued on Nicholas's antisocial traits would fade somewhat, but not vanish completely. As he moved up to middle school his thirst for knowledge would grow even more, and while he would now interact with classmates and teachers on a fairly normal basis Nicholas still found even more time to devote to his self teachings, often reading late into the nights and clear into the mornings. While he never really cared much for the structured learning environment of the school, he didn't dislike the acquisition of the knowledge. It was also during these years that he discovered his knack for tinkering with mechanics and natural interests in metallurgy, biology and geology, and began focusing most of his private studies in those fields.
While his thirteenth year alive was spend much the same as his previous ones, the next one would drastically change the course of his life. Within a few weeks of his fourteenth birthday his ability would manifest itself, at first in subtle ways, but becomming increasingly more apparent as the days went on. As it was very few people around him noticed any change - already having become infamous for his apparent anti social tendencies and stoicism both around school and town alike, and his further withdrawal from social life hardly came as a surprise to anyone. Nicholas himself was unaware of the significance of the changes until he accidentally used his ability when tinkering with a radio he'd obtained from a recycling center, a hobbie his. Not entirely aware of the ramifications but having worked out how to use it within the same day via experimentation, Nicholas reasoned that all it would do is draw unwanted attention to himself, and resolved only to use it in private and when he was unable to accomplish his goals any other way. Continuing through high school in a mostly normal fashion and still unidentified as a metahuman by either government or private agencies, Nicholas graduated with honors from high school.
As the new reality came to dawn with the formation of the University of New Masaba and confronted with the fact that he wasn't able to control his abilities (as he was still changing materials at random with little to no control) and that the rest of his family was still unaware of his change, Nicholas spent several weeks after graduation contemplating which direction to take in his life before deciding to enroll at the university, figuring that he could decide what he wanted to do after gaining a certain degree of control over his own life. As his first and second years at the University passed, with Nicholas majoring in chemistry and physics with a minor in geology and material sciences and quickly learning to control his ability to a startling degree, Nicholas decided to continue with his education on the island rather than transfering to a school on the mainland.
RP Sample:
It was always a bit of a quandary, something of a contradiction, and the irony did not go unnoticed by Nicholas as he sat towards the back of the lecture hall, the concentric rows of desks going lower with each layer until the room converged in an amphitheatre like arrangement with the class professor standing at the front of the room. Really no different from any other college classroom, and that was part of the problem. While he had absolutely no problem with learning for its own sake - having spent a considerable chunk of his free time up to and prior to high school doing just that for no other reason apart from because he enjoyed it - Nicholas did take issue with being told what to learn, which unfortunately was the point of an organized educational system. It made sense from a unbiased viewpoint in that grade, middle and high school had more or less given him the minimal amount of knowledge needed to survive on his own, but Nicholas had always felt to a certain extent that what understanding he did possess of the world was far from complete, something that had only been reaffirmed after applying to New Masada. At first he'd been delighted to find that many of his classmates were his intellectual peers, something that had been almost nonexistant back in his hometown, spurred on by the fact that each day allowed him to improve his understanding of things he thought he'd already known..... only to lapse once more into boredom and apathy once he realized that not much had changed beyond being able to choose what he learned to a certain extent, which was why he now occupied himself by modifying the pigments in his pen, appearing to be paying close attention to the professor but much more focused on maintaining the concentration needed to use his ability. No mess, no fuss - while useful, the usage of the ability was far from flashy unless he wanted it to be, which meant it was an ideal way to kill time, allowing him to both simultaneously improve the amount of control he had as well as acting as a good mental excercise in both concentration and trivia. Dimly aware of the professor's voice and that of a student's exchanging words, Nicholas continued to simply rotate the pen in his hand until he noticed the movement among the students below him, closer to the professor - most of them were gathering up their belongings and standing from their seats, with a small handful walking to the front of the room to speak with the teacher as the class ended. Gathering up the few papers on his desk and placing them in his bag, Nicholas likewise got up from where he sat, ready to repeat the same charade within the next hour.
Creator/Player Comments:
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