Rita Mordio (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blahblahblah) wrote2014-04-13 10:41 pm
blahblahblah) wrote2014-04-13 10:41 pm
Entry tags:
Application: Holly Heights
I think this is all done! Just waiting for apps to open at the end of the month. Rita's heading to ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hollyheights.
OOC INFORMATION;
Player: MaxSalsa
Age: 25
Personal Journal:maxsalsa
Contact Info:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
MaxSalsa
Other Characters: None!
IC INFORMATION;
Character's Name: Rita Mordio
Age: 14
Canon: Tales of Vesperia
Canon Point: Post-canon, maybe a month or two
Species: Human
Gender: Female
Orientation: Lesbian. There are more than a few skits that demonstrate the only person she's close in anything near that way to is Estelle, and that she's pretty much okay with that. It doesn't hurt that the game pretty much gives us a ship name. That said... it may not come up for a while, so we'll see what happens. (I'm aware that I don't need to provide this, but if I'm prepared to, I may as well, right?)
History: (I'm going to start with Rita's and the game's pages on Aselia, the Tales wiki; these are a little light on Rita herself, though. I'm going to supplement with a little bit more of my own, pieces of which are pulled from her application to Exsilium.)
As a general rule, Rita's role in ToV is to give Yuri information on and insight into Terca Lumireis' resident magitech, blastia. Blastia themselves are various kinds of objects that can serve any number of functions; Yuri's slum in the capital has an aque blastia that purifies water, most large cities have barrier blastia that keep monsters out, ships have ceres blastia that make them operable... and perhaps most notably, adventurers carry bodhi blastia that let them manifest artes, special abilities running the gamut from sword beams to fireballs to physically-impossible instant movement. Rita herself works for the imperial blastia research laboratory at Aspio, where she lives, and where she is the top researcher at the young age of fourteen.
Rita originally leaves Aspio in the first place to clear her name with Yuri, who believes she stole the core from the aque blastia in the lower quarter of Zaphias. Their travels unveil a much larger problem, however, and she sticks with Yuri through discovery after threat after danger, because she's learning things she didn't know before - about the world, about the things she studies, and about herself. Perhaps the largest of these is her gradual discovery that blastia, and their ability to absorb aer to manifest strike and magic artes, is dangerous to the world. It starts out as a few small clues and hints that are easy to miss, and then is changed by a few big reveals into a major issue that must be addressed, especially when Estelle turns out to be a poison to the world because of how her body absorbs aer. This discovery goes on to create lots and lots of research for Rita to perform to find the true nature of blastia.
Eventually, she finds that blastia are created from crystals called apatheia, which are themselves the inert form of creates called entelexeia, powerful beings with great powers. They have the ability to affect the balance of aer in the world, and as her research develops further, she realizes that she could convert the souls of the entelexeia into a new kind of being: a spirit. Through the power of the Child of the Full Moon, whose abilities tie into the world itself - and who happens to be Estelle - and a lot of luck and math, Rita is able to convert the four remaining entelexeia into spirits, and starts to work out how to shift the existing magic artes she uses now, powered by aer, to tap into the spirits' power and convert aer in the atmosphere into mana, a much safer alternative. Once she realizes the power of the spirits, she comes up with a final gambit to free their world from the terror of a massive calamity called the Adephagos: converting all the world's blastia into spirits, and using their combined power to destroy the Adephagos once and for all, instead of sealing it away for some future generation to deal with. While it takes some diplomacy and a lot of work, Rita is able to bring together the formula into a small device she dubs "Vesperia No. 1", and deploys it after a final battle against a foe that insists the only way forward is to sacrifice all human life to power a massive weapon to destroy the Adephagos himself. Instead, through the power of all the world's blastia, Rita and the others are able to defeat the Adephagos and restore peace to Terca Lumireis.
Appearance: Rita's official appearance. Accurate except for the fact that she's smiling, which is largely uncommon.
Personality: (Borrowing from Rita's Exsilium app again, and her Destiny Strings app too.)
Rita is a little bit of an odd duck in canon. She starts out as an isolated, horribly snarky teen that seems to want nothing more than to get her job done so she can go back to her hut and ignore the world. She's been burned by people before, too; she states on at least one occasion that she prefers the company of the blastia she researches, as "blastia will never betray me". It takes a long time for Yuri, Estelle, and the others to get close enough to her for her to really let them in; it takes basically the entirety of Act 1 before Rita (accidentally) calls Estelle by her nickname rather than her stuffy given name. She also has a bad habit of being a little bit of a troll, especially to Karol. When she can't really express herself aloud, she tends to resort to violence, again mostly with Karol.
As time passes, Rita starts to mellow a little bit and her true feelings come to the front a little more often. Though she'll never admit it out loud (and especially not to Yuri), she doesn't want to go home. Nobody and nothing is waiting for her, and once she's gotten close to the party, it would kill her to be alone again. Her tendencies have made her a little unstable; she's a horrible tsundere once she's had some time to open up, and she's also a little bit crazy in her interactions, bordering on mild sociopathy. Her personal motto seems to be "shoot first, ask questions after shooting some more"; in almost any cutscene where a given NPC is resisting, her contribution is to call up a few fireballs as an open threat.
Once she's really started to bond with someone, Rita is an invaluable ally - she will happily follow you to the ends of the earth, and put herself in harm's way to make sure you'll be okay. She may deny it later, but in the heat of the moment, it's all she's concerned with. Over the course of the game, Estelle moves from a curiosity, to a friend, to a worrisome situation that Rita wants to solve before it kills the girl, and possibly into something more serious between the two of them down the line. Her relationship with Yuri changes over the course of the game too; she initially resents him for suspecting her of stealing the lower quarter's aque blastia core, but once that's recovered and Yuri doesn't blame her for it any longer, he starts to worry about her, and she begins to return that in kind, starting to honestly worry about him when he goes off on his usual suicide missions and dangerous tangents, and being horrified on his behalf when she starts to realize some of the things he's done to keep them all safe and to protect the Empire (and by extension, Flynn).
With more normal folk, Rita is a little bit snarky, but she isn't above calm, reasonable conversation. That said, though, she's also dangerously quick to anger, and isn't afraid to show it. Approach with caution. She'll also immediately perk up at mention of magical inconsistencies or danger to civilians. On a quest, Rita is all business, and focused on getting everything done without any problems. And if problems come up... well, when all you have is a fist, everything starts to look like a face. And by "fist", I of course mean "fireballs everywhere".
To that end, when she's working on research, either you're helping, out of the way, or in the way. She tends to charge headfirst into trouble, and through sheer stubbornness manages not to get herself killed, though occasionally she needs a little bit of help. Anything foolish enough to get in her way is likely to be burned to a crisp, unless she's feeling particularly charitable, in which case you'll experience something new that will probably make you wish you'd just stayed in bed today.
Abilities: Rita's abilities can be sorted into "magic" and "intelligence", because there's not a whole lot else there that isn't part of her personality. Rita has always been a prodigy, and it shows with exceptional capabilities in almost any area that doesn't require human contact. She's a whiz at math that leaves graduate-level concepts behind, can analyze formulae on the fly, can reprogram blastia on the fly, and generally is very good at math and science. She's not as strong with history and geography, and her social skills are terrible.
Her magic, though... that's a sight to behold. From the very beginning, Rita is the only character that manifests magic in the truest sense of the word, and all of her incantations are calls to various elements to obey her command. Magic artes in ToV are largely an expression of both the intelligence to assemble a spell and the power to bring it into being; Rita spends her off time working out the secrets of how to assemble a blastia formula, and also developing new formulae to manifest new and more powerful magic. This culminates in spells that border on absurd, like calling up massive waves of water anywhere, or summoning meteors from space. Of course... Rita can't actually cast artes in Holly Heights, so this entire paragraph is pretty much moot, except that the intelligence aspects here - the math involved in spellcraft, for example - are still very much relevant, and it would follow that Rita can still string together a formula, it just doesn't do anything without aer, mana, or spirits. Since the interface for reprogramming blastia brings up a holographic keyboard that Rita takes to immediately every time it happens, it's probably a good assumption that she'll take to computers right away, too - they're just inert blastia.
Rita is also adept at wielding a whip. Because really, what is Tales weaponry? Her weapons of choice also make her a scarf nerd, and at least passably capable with a kendama (a Japanese ball-on-a-string toy). These skills, and her general flexibility (but not necessarily athleticism) lead me to think she'd be a good gymnast with a little practice, but that's another matter for a game where she'll not have her powers... like this one. It's not something the storyline explores at all, but with everything she can do, her general ability to pick herself back up from almost anything, her ability to literally spring to her feet when pushed back a dozen yards by a death laser, some of the aerobatic maneuvers she gets up to... it's not a huge leap.
Other: Tales of Vesperia got a PS3 release in Japan aside from its X360 release; I have neither a CFW-capable PS3 nor a copy of the PS3 game, so I don't know what's in it aside from whatever I can read online. That means I won't be doing anything that requires significant knowledge of the PS3 game (meaning no mention of the PS3-only party members or the new dungeons), except maybe the occasional information from skits that I can catch up on.
SAMPLES;
First Person: [voice (cell phone)]
So why the hell is it so important that I remember this world's history? If I need to know something, I'll look in a book. Or even better, I'll look it up on the internet, since I can find more resources that way. I don't understand why I need to know when Andrew Jackson was the president, or when this particular war happened. Why are those things as important as physics? Physics explains why the world works. History is a bunch of idiots that made stupid decisions, with an occasional bright spot in the sea of failures.
In fact, can I just trade out all my history and geography classes for more science classes? Not that I need them, but I want to make sure nothing's changed. If I ever have access to mana and I try to use an arte, I don't want it to blow up in my face because I got a constant wrong.
Third Person: Have a DDD post from just over a year ago. If that doesn't work, shout and I'll compose something else.
OTHER;
Housing Request?: No particular preference!
Did you read the rules and FAQ?: I sure did.
hollyheights.OOC INFORMATION;
Player: MaxSalsa
Age: 25
Personal Journal:
maxsalsaContact Info:
Other Characters: None!
IC INFORMATION;
Character's Name: Rita Mordio
Age: 14
Canon: Tales of Vesperia
Canon Point: Post-canon, maybe a month or two
Species: Human
Gender: Female
Orientation: Lesbian. There are more than a few skits that demonstrate the only person she's close in anything near that way to is Estelle, and that she's pretty much okay with that. It doesn't hurt that the game pretty much gives us a ship name. That said... it may not come up for a while, so we'll see what happens. (I'm aware that I don't need to provide this, but if I'm prepared to, I may as well, right?)
History: (I'm going to start with Rita's and the game's pages on Aselia, the Tales wiki; these are a little light on Rita herself, though. I'm going to supplement with a little bit more of my own, pieces of which are pulled from her application to Exsilium.)
As a general rule, Rita's role in ToV is to give Yuri information on and insight into Terca Lumireis' resident magitech, blastia. Blastia themselves are various kinds of objects that can serve any number of functions; Yuri's slum in the capital has an aque blastia that purifies water, most large cities have barrier blastia that keep monsters out, ships have ceres blastia that make them operable... and perhaps most notably, adventurers carry bodhi blastia that let them manifest artes, special abilities running the gamut from sword beams to fireballs to physically-impossible instant movement. Rita herself works for the imperial blastia research laboratory at Aspio, where she lives, and where she is the top researcher at the young age of fourteen.
Rita originally leaves Aspio in the first place to clear her name with Yuri, who believes she stole the core from the aque blastia in the lower quarter of Zaphias. Their travels unveil a much larger problem, however, and she sticks with Yuri through discovery after threat after danger, because she's learning things she didn't know before - about the world, about the things she studies, and about herself. Perhaps the largest of these is her gradual discovery that blastia, and their ability to absorb aer to manifest strike and magic artes, is dangerous to the world. It starts out as a few small clues and hints that are easy to miss, and then is changed by a few big reveals into a major issue that must be addressed, especially when Estelle turns out to be a poison to the world because of how her body absorbs aer. This discovery goes on to create lots and lots of research for Rita to perform to find the true nature of blastia.
Eventually, she finds that blastia are created from crystals called apatheia, which are themselves the inert form of creates called entelexeia, powerful beings with great powers. They have the ability to affect the balance of aer in the world, and as her research develops further, she realizes that she could convert the souls of the entelexeia into a new kind of being: a spirit. Through the power of the Child of the Full Moon, whose abilities tie into the world itself - and who happens to be Estelle - and a lot of luck and math, Rita is able to convert the four remaining entelexeia into spirits, and starts to work out how to shift the existing magic artes she uses now, powered by aer, to tap into the spirits' power and convert aer in the atmosphere into mana, a much safer alternative. Once she realizes the power of the spirits, she comes up with a final gambit to free their world from the terror of a massive calamity called the Adephagos: converting all the world's blastia into spirits, and using their combined power to destroy the Adephagos once and for all, instead of sealing it away for some future generation to deal with. While it takes some diplomacy and a lot of work, Rita is able to bring together the formula into a small device she dubs "Vesperia No. 1", and deploys it after a final battle against a foe that insists the only way forward is to sacrifice all human life to power a massive weapon to destroy the Adephagos himself. Instead, through the power of all the world's blastia, Rita and the others are able to defeat the Adephagos and restore peace to Terca Lumireis.
Appearance: Rita's official appearance. Accurate except for the fact that she's smiling, which is largely uncommon.
Personality: (Borrowing from Rita's Exsilium app again, and her Destiny Strings app too.)
Rita is a little bit of an odd duck in canon. She starts out as an isolated, horribly snarky teen that seems to want nothing more than to get her job done so she can go back to her hut and ignore the world. She's been burned by people before, too; she states on at least one occasion that she prefers the company of the blastia she researches, as "blastia will never betray me". It takes a long time for Yuri, Estelle, and the others to get close enough to her for her to really let them in; it takes basically the entirety of Act 1 before Rita (accidentally) calls Estelle by her nickname rather than her stuffy given name. She also has a bad habit of being a little bit of a troll, especially to Karol. When she can't really express herself aloud, she tends to resort to violence, again mostly with Karol.
As time passes, Rita starts to mellow a little bit and her true feelings come to the front a little more often. Though she'll never admit it out loud (and especially not to Yuri), she doesn't want to go home. Nobody and nothing is waiting for her, and once she's gotten close to the party, it would kill her to be alone again. Her tendencies have made her a little unstable; she's a horrible tsundere once she's had some time to open up, and she's also a little bit crazy in her interactions, bordering on mild sociopathy. Her personal motto seems to be "shoot first, ask questions after shooting some more"; in almost any cutscene where a given NPC is resisting, her contribution is to call up a few fireballs as an open threat.
Once she's really started to bond with someone, Rita is an invaluable ally - she will happily follow you to the ends of the earth, and put herself in harm's way to make sure you'll be okay. She may deny it later, but in the heat of the moment, it's all she's concerned with. Over the course of the game, Estelle moves from a curiosity, to a friend, to a worrisome situation that Rita wants to solve before it kills the girl, and possibly into something more serious between the two of them down the line. Her relationship with Yuri changes over the course of the game too; she initially resents him for suspecting her of stealing the lower quarter's aque blastia core, but once that's recovered and Yuri doesn't blame her for it any longer, he starts to worry about her, and she begins to return that in kind, starting to honestly worry about him when he goes off on his usual suicide missions and dangerous tangents, and being horrified on his behalf when she starts to realize some of the things he's done to keep them all safe and to protect the Empire (and by extension, Flynn).
With more normal folk, Rita is a little bit snarky, but she isn't above calm, reasonable conversation. That said, though, she's also dangerously quick to anger, and isn't afraid to show it. Approach with caution. She'll also immediately perk up at mention of magical inconsistencies or danger to civilians. On a quest, Rita is all business, and focused on getting everything done without any problems. And if problems come up... well, when all you have is a fist, everything starts to look like a face. And by "fist", I of course mean "fireballs everywhere".
To that end, when she's working on research, either you're helping, out of the way, or in the way. She tends to charge headfirst into trouble, and through sheer stubbornness manages not to get herself killed, though occasionally she needs a little bit of help. Anything foolish enough to get in her way is likely to be burned to a crisp, unless she's feeling particularly charitable, in which case you'll experience something new that will probably make you wish you'd just stayed in bed today.
Abilities: Rita's abilities can be sorted into "magic" and "intelligence", because there's not a whole lot else there that isn't part of her personality. Rita has always been a prodigy, and it shows with exceptional capabilities in almost any area that doesn't require human contact. She's a whiz at math that leaves graduate-level concepts behind, can analyze formulae on the fly, can reprogram blastia on the fly, and generally is very good at math and science. She's not as strong with history and geography, and her social skills are terrible.
Her magic, though... that's a sight to behold. From the very beginning, Rita is the only character that manifests magic in the truest sense of the word, and all of her incantations are calls to various elements to obey her command. Magic artes in ToV are largely an expression of both the intelligence to assemble a spell and the power to bring it into being; Rita spends her off time working out the secrets of how to assemble a blastia formula, and also developing new formulae to manifest new and more powerful magic. This culminates in spells that border on absurd, like calling up massive waves of water anywhere, or summoning meteors from space. Of course... Rita can't actually cast artes in Holly Heights, so this entire paragraph is pretty much moot, except that the intelligence aspects here - the math involved in spellcraft, for example - are still very much relevant, and it would follow that Rita can still string together a formula, it just doesn't do anything without aer, mana, or spirits. Since the interface for reprogramming blastia brings up a holographic keyboard that Rita takes to immediately every time it happens, it's probably a good assumption that she'll take to computers right away, too - they're just inert blastia.
Rita is also adept at wielding a whip. Because really, what is Tales weaponry? Her weapons of choice also make her a scarf nerd, and at least passably capable with a kendama (a Japanese ball-on-a-string toy). These skills, and her general flexibility (but not necessarily athleticism) lead me to think she'd be a good gymnast with a little practice, but that's another matter for a game where she'll not have her powers... like this one. It's not something the storyline explores at all, but with everything she can do, her general ability to pick herself back up from almost anything, her ability to literally spring to her feet when pushed back a dozen yards by a death laser, some of the aerobatic maneuvers she gets up to... it's not a huge leap.
Other: Tales of Vesperia got a PS3 release in Japan aside from its X360 release; I have neither a CFW-capable PS3 nor a copy of the PS3 game, so I don't know what's in it aside from whatever I can read online. That means I won't be doing anything that requires significant knowledge of the PS3 game (meaning no mention of the PS3-only party members or the new dungeons), except maybe the occasional information from skits that I can catch up on.
SAMPLES;
First Person: [voice (cell phone)]
So why the hell is it so important that I remember this world's history? If I need to know something, I'll look in a book. Or even better, I'll look it up on the internet, since I can find more resources that way. I don't understand why I need to know when Andrew Jackson was the president, or when this particular war happened. Why are those things as important as physics? Physics explains why the world works. History is a bunch of idiots that made stupid decisions, with an occasional bright spot in the sea of failures.
In fact, can I just trade out all my history and geography classes for more science classes? Not that I need them, but I want to make sure nothing's changed. If I ever have access to mana and I try to use an arte, I don't want it to blow up in my face because I got a constant wrong.
Third Person: Have a DDD post from just over a year ago. If that doesn't work, shout and I'll compose something else.
OTHER;
Housing Request?: No particular preference!
Did you read the rules and FAQ?: I sure did.