vildiur_rp Application - Under Construction

[farsighted_guardian]

OOC:
Name: Zoharial
Personal LJ: akakuro_sama
Email: yami_no_antares@yahoo.com
Timezone: GMT -5 hours (Eastern Standard Time)
AIM/MSN/YIM: RedandBlack394 (AIM)

IC:
Character name: Citan Uzuki (b. Hyuga Ricdeau)
Fandom: Xenogears
Point of Origin: Just before the cast heads up the Tower of Babel.
Appearance: Official art
Citan stands 182cm and weighs 68kg (which is obviously a reasonable weight for his very lean build). He's 29 years old, and there are no sources that reveal the existence of any scars/tattoos/piercings that would be hidden in this particular piece of official art.

Background:
-World Background (specifically, Citan is from episode V, and born in the floating country of Solaris)
-Scanlation of Official Biography in Perfect Works
-Game Script

Citan was born Hyuga Ricdeau in Etrenank, the capital city of Solaris - a military state with an extremely rigid birth-based social hierarchy - in its lowest social level, the third-class citizen blocks, whose inhabitants consisted mainly of surface-dwellers abducted for the purpose of providing the menial labor necessary to keep the city running. Originally, he was one of nine sons, though it's probable that some were adopted into the family rather than being his biological siblings; there were always children in need of foster parents there, because individuals abducted from the surface weren't always adults, and the mortality rate among third-class citizens was high - not just because of the dangerous working conditions they often faced, but because most of their food supply consisted of the remains of laboratory test subjects "recycled" through the Soylent System.

It was the latter practice that led to an outbreak of a deadly disease in the block where Citan's family lived. Because of his unusually high ether rating - the innate "magic" abilities that some people in his world possess - he was the only one of his family to survive that outbreak. In addition, by analyzing the pattern of how the disease spread, he was able to determine not only that it was foodborne, but locate the contaminated batch it had originated from. Despite the fact that his research undoubtedly saved lives, and he was only twelve at the time, the oppressive conditions of the third class blocks made them an irrationally tense and volatile atmosphere, and soon, Citan fell under suspicion of creating the disease himself. Over the next few years, he was moved around to different blocks, but his reputation always followed him, making life difficult at best and dangerous at worst.

However, in the end, that reputation was what allowed him to rise within Solaris's ranks. It brought him to the attention of the star pupil of Jugend (Solaris's military academy) - Kahran Ramsus. His natural brilliance and high ether rating, coupled with his status as a social outcast, made him especially appealing to Ramsus, who, despite his monumental achievements, was highly insecure and sought to build a following from those whose loyalty he thought he could completely obligate, and whose abilities would be indispensable. In addition to Citan, he sponsored a former experimental subject, Sigurd Harcourt, for entry into Jugend. The three of them, along with an upperclassman named Jesiah Blanche, became known as the Elements; originally, one of their major focuses was on Ramsus's goal of effecting sweeping social change within Solaris and replacing its strict hereditary hierarchy with a military meritocracy, in which anyone with ability could achieve prominence.

Attractive though Ramsus's ideals sounded at first, Citan soon began to have his private doubts. From his insights into Solaris's administrative and sociopolitical structure at all levels, he believed that it was unlikely that Solaris would ever truly change; in an environment like Etrenank, even the kind of meritocracy Ramsus proposed would just turn into another mechanism for the powerful to oppress the weak. He kept his counsel on the matter, for the time being; however, eventually, Sigurd and Jesiah alluded to having similar doubts. Before they could even come up with a way to broach the matter with Ramsus, though, Sigurd ended up coming across information about his birth family, back on the surface. Due to trauma of being experimented on, he had forgotten a great deal about his life before Ramsus saved him, but learning about his family - and, moreover, that they were in danger - brought it all back. Though he owed Ramsus his life, Sigurd's obligation to his family came first, and with Citan and Jesiah's tacit assistance, he escaped from Solaris. Ramsus, however, was far less than understanding; he took Sigurd's departure personally, accusing him of betraying and abandoning their cause, and the incident only served to fuel Ramsus's insecurities. The Elements, who had originally bonded so closely over helping Sigurd recover from the aftermath of the experiments and his drug addiction, began to drift apart.

After Sigurd left, the self-centered motives behind Ramsus's seemingly noble cause became much more readily apparent, and it became clear that he cared about his own personal advancement far more than about genuine social change. Disillusioned, and having uncovered disturbing information about Solaris's ongoing experimentation on human subjects and the real purpose behind it, Jesiah left for the surface three years after Sigurd. That same year, Citan and Ramsus were promoted to the rank of Guardian Angel - the highest position of military command within Solaris. Though Citan had recognized by then that Ramsus's self-centeredness stemmed from deep emotional wounds, and tried to do what he could for his friend, he was ultimately unable to help him. Between the massive demands Citan's own work as a weapons engineer made on his time and Ramsus's increasing misanthropy and paranoia - fed, Citan suspected, by Ramsus's lover, Miang, though at the time he was unaware of what she was truly capable of - Citan lacked the ability to do anything for him. Though he tried to keep in contact with him, their differing assignments as military leaders - Ramsus was assigned command of Solaris's forces on the surface, while Citan was put in charge of preparing and carrying out a third invasion of the rival floating nation of Shevat - provided a convenient pretext for Ramsus to break off contact with him. Though it went against his nature to accept that there was nothing more he could do, Citan had to face the fact that Ramsus didn't want his help, and all he could do was move on as well.

Citan threw himself into preparing Solaris's forces for the invasion. It took just over two years to put the divisions he had been assigned into top condition, and prepare them for conducting operations while totally cut off behind enemy lines - the conditions they would be likeliest to face until Shevat fell - but, in the end, they were unprepared for the intensity and desperation of the resistance they faced.

Shevat's forces were better trained and prepared than Citan's intelligence had led him to suspect, and they were fighting for their lives on their home turf; almost immediately, Solaris's offensive lost momentum, and became bogged down in the fighting as casualties mounted on both sides. Even though Citan had designed weapons systems, and seen many deaths before, being in a real battle and ordering people to their deaths was something completely different; this was not the quick and tidy conquest he had hoped for, and so when the enemy general, Gaspar, challenged him to single combat to settle the matter without further loss of life, he accepted. However, their skills were evenly matched, and neither could gain the advantage; finally, unwilling to stand by the sidelines any longer, Gaspar's granddaughter, Yui, joined in the fight, effectively bringing it to a halt. However, it was less what she did than what she said to Citan afterward that affected the outcome of the invasion: she called him out on the fact that the compassion he'd unwittingly betrayed, not just for his own troops, but for Shevat's as well, was ill befitting a Solarian general. Citan had gotten so used to hiding his true feelings and acting only for the sake of duty or self-preservation that he was amazed anyone could see through the mask; already, he had been critically examining what remained of the awe of Solaris that his upbringing had left him with, but this encounter brought it home to him that Solaris's rigid and dogmatic way of thinking was even more lacking than he had consciously realized. He recognized in Yui all the humanitarian traits he'd had to suppress in himself, and discovered that already, he was falling in love with her.

Though the invasion was unsalvageable, Citan had already accomplished much of what he had intended with the assault - Shevat's military power had been completely crippled, and they wouldn't pose any significant threat to Solaris for quite some time afterward - so he ordered his forces to withdraw before the death toll could mount any further. However, he later returned in secret on his own - mostly, to get to know Yui better, but also to broaden his understanding of the world outside Solaris. To the latter end, he often engaged in philosophical debates with Gaspar, and finally came to realize that he didn't have to bury who he truly was for the sake of serving his country; after this realization, he put aside his sword, which was meant only for killing, and began training in hand to hand combat under Gaspar.

Eventually, Citan and Yui married and had a child, and he was considering the possibility of leaving Solaris for good; however, Emperor Cain approached him with a special mission of vital importance not just to the future of Solaris, but to that of all of mankind. Given the changes he had observed in Citan since the Third Invasion, Cain regarded him as the ideal person to entrust this mission to. Citan's duty was to determine whether it was possible for humanity to survive without Solaris's control, and whether the latest advent of the "Contact," Fei, was suitable as "Anonnelbe" - the one who would free humanity from the shackles of destiny and lead them after Solaris's fall.

In order to accomplish this, Citan was sent to the surface; his mission allowed him progressively less time to visit his family, but given the circumstances, he dared not bring them to the surface: the Contact's personality had split, and the dominant one was a virtually unrestrainable force of destruction. Citan was witnessing the battle for his soul between Grahf - the hate-filled, destruction-seeking remains of the Contact's last incarnation, Lacan - and Kahn, Fei's father. Finally, Kahn gained what seemed at first like a limited and Pyrrhic victory: on the one hand, he managed to seal away the Contact's destroyer personality, Id, behind a third, artificially created personality, and mortally wound Grahf; on the other hand, he ended up being possessed by Grahf, and it was questionable how long his attempt to restrain Id would last. However, there was nothing further he could do at the time; he left Fei with the residents of a small village called Lahan, and left to deal with his own injuries. For some time after that, it was unclear what had happened to Kahn; even Citan didn't know whether he'd survived. However, what was important was that seeing to it his sacrifices had not been in vain.

In order to keep an eye on Fei, Citan entered Lahan, presenting himself as a traveling doctor; the townsfolk welcomed him, as there had also been a recent outbreak of the flu. Citan settled in and, once he'd determined that the threat posed by the Contact had been neutralized for the time being, he brought his family to Lahan as well.

The next three years were largely uneventful. During that time, Citan befriended Fei, not just to make him easier to keep under observation, but so he could protect him from anything that might destabilize his still delicate psyche and allow Id to regain control - and to try to instill in him the kind of moral compass that would allow him, in time, to overcome Grahf and Id's influence and become Anonnelbe; in the end, however, it was Fei's guardian, the village elder Lee, who did most of that.

Much to his surprise, Citan found that he enjoyed living a normal life on the surface; much of that had to do with finally having the chance to stay with his family, rather than visiting them intermittently, but treating the relatively minor medical complaints of the villagers and repairing pieces of fairly primitive (by comparison to Solaris's) pieces of landside tech on the side was oddly fulfilling as well. He was beginning to genuinely enjoy the prospect of living like this indefinitely until, like a comet, Grahf crashed back into Fei's life, destroying everything.

Kislev - one of two major warring nations on the surface; their enemy, Aveh, controlled Lahan and the area around it - had found Id's Gear (mecha), Weltall, and refurbished it for their own military use. However, even their highest ether-rated pilots had failed to unlock one tenth of its potential; just as it was about to be placed in storage indefinitely, an expeditionary force fielded by Gebler (Solaris's military forces on the surface, nominally backing Aveh) were able to steal it. Grahf had offered his services to Kislev not long after Weltall's testing had failed, anticipating what was to come; he led the force sent to recover Weltall, though his intention was far from bringing it back. His attack forced the Gear and its guard to land in Lahan, where he figured that Id's connection to Weltall would compel Fei to attempt to pilot the machine, and perhaps even allow Id to regain control of the Contact's mind.

Without his own Gear on hand, Citan could do nothing except evacuate as many of the villagers as possible, and watch as the cataclysm unfolded. When one of Grahf's soldiers shot a close friend of Fei's, the sense of helpless rage it incited triggered a partial manifestation of Id, wiping out what was left of Lahan and killing the residents who had been unable to evacuate in time.

Though Citan's doubts about what he had really been able to do for the Contact had been mainly subconscious, this incident brought them to the forefront; seeking to test how stable Fei's persona really was, Citan encouraged him to set out on his own, planning to meet up with him later. In the meantime, Yui contacted Shevat, and convinced them to offer asylum to what remained of the villagers; Citan stayed behind long enough to make sure the villagers understood just what was going on before he set off after Fei, with Weltall in tow. He considered the Gear possibly the best test of how stable Fei really was; if he could learn to use it on his own terms, without triggering another manifestation of Id, then that would provide him with another bulwark against Grahf's influence, as well as a source of the power he would have to call upon if he was to become all that Cain and Citan hoped of him.

He hadn't anticipated that Fei would need the Gear's combat power immediately, nor had he expected that Fei would meet up with a fellow traveler along the way. Fei had met up with a young woman named Elly - whom Citan would later discover was a high-ranking Gebler officer, Solarian citizen first class, and Weltall's pilot when it had been forced to make an emergency landing in Lahan - and both of them had stumbled into the path of a Rankar dragon. Though Fei was able to use the machine to kill the monster and save them both, he immediately tried to reject its power; however, Citan pressured him to keep using it - just not immediately, because the knee joint damaged during the battle against Kislev's forces had failed completely after the Rankar attack.

After discovering the identity of Fei's newfound traveling companion, Citan encouraged her to be on her way and resume contact with Gebler as soon as possible, thinking that her influence might destabilize Fei; in the long run, it would turn out to be just the opposite, but he was unable to confirm the significance of Fei and Elly's meeting until much later.

When Fei and Citan neared the front lines between Aveh and Kislev, Citan set off into the desert to scavenge suitable replacement parts for Weltall's busted knee; it was only after he had found the replacements and returned to inform Fei of his success that he realized Fei had wandered off without him. When he found Fei, things were even worse than he had anticipated: Grahf was with him, and making another attempt to reawaken Id. In the end, all he could do was place Weltall in Fei's hands, and hope that he had assessed the situation correctly and Fei would have the strength not to succumb to Grahf's stratagems a second time.

This time, the battle played out far better than it had in Lahan. Out in the desert, there was no collateral damage for Grahf to inflict that could drive Fei over the edge; thus, he was able to destroy the autonomous "Sandworm" Gear that Grahf sicced on him without drawing on Id's power, albeit at the expense of the temporary repairs Citan had made to Weltall. With the Gear once again rendered unfit for combat, they were unable to drive off Aveh's military when it arrived to capture them.

The force sent to recover Weltall happened to have the proper repair parts on hand, though it didn't seem that Fei and Citan would have the opportunity to appreciate the lucky coincidence, until the convoy bringing them back to Aveh's capital fell under attack by pirates - led by the survivors of what had been Aveh's royal line before Solaris's puppet dictator Shakhan overthrew it. Their second-in-command was Citan's old friend, Sigurd, but before they could resume contact, Fei had already been engaged in combat by the pirates' leader, Prince Bartholomew - Sigurd's half-brother - and their Gears had fallen through a pit of quicksand into the desert's subterranean caverns.

By the time Fei and Bart emerged, they had managed to bond, somewhat. Though Citan was relieved that Fei had continued to remain stable and even more resilient than he had hoped for through all of this, he realized that at this point, any attempts he made to shelter Fei would only fall apart, so the only option he had was to push him harder and truly put his moral fiber to the test. Citan volunteered them both for a mission Bart was leading into the Aveh capital, Bledavik, to rescue Bart's fiancee, Holy Mother Marguerite of Nisan, who had been taken prisoner by Shakhan. Fei initially tried to back out; Bart and Sigurd tried to talk him around, but he remained undecided until later, when Gebler forces attacked the pirates' base. With Citan's encouragement, Fei finally realized that his power could be used to protect others rather than just for killing - and, moreover, that because he couldn't deny or reject his power, using it for the right ends was the only way he would find real meaning in life. This development greatly heartened Citan, who was finally seeing in him the emergence of the traits he would need if he was to become Anonnelbe.

With Fei's assistance, the mission to rescue Margie was a success, and they left Aveh for Nisan, to return Margie to her home and evade any potential counterattacks by Gebler. Now that he no longer had a hostage to use against them, Bart's contingent could lay plans to overthrow Shakhan. Bart, being somewhat quicker off the mark than Fei, noted that Sigurd seemed not only to know Citan well, but was suspiciously knowledgeable about Gebler's commander, Ramsus, whom they had run into while rescuing Margie. It was then that Sigurd revealed some of the details of their time in Solaris; Citan obfuscated rather than reveal anything further about their past, but he used the opportunity of what Sigurd had already shared to move into the active phase of his plan. After Fei's first encounter with Elly, Citan had briefly made contact with Gebler to obtain records on her; her data indicated that she was a potential Antitype, and now, Fei had not only run into her again during the infiltration of Bledavik, but he had found himself suddenly in the company of one, possibly two, more potential Omnigear users. It was early to call it more than coincidence, but the possibility of the conditions prior to the Diabolos War of 500 years ago being replicated could not be overlooked. He floated the possibility of taking on Solaris, as a cover for the fact that he would need to bring them to his own laboratory there to remove their "Limiters" - sections of genetic code that Solaris had bred into the land dwellers to restrain their abilities and give them an instinctive fear and awe of Solaris and its leaders - if Cain's concerns seemed as though they would come to pass. However, that was a matter to be dealt with far in the future; of more immediate concern, at least to the others, was regaining control of Aveh and driving out Gebler's presence there.

Citan laid out a plan of attack against Aveh; however, Ramsus saw through it, and set up ambushes for Bart's forces. While the party sent to assassinate Shakhan failed, they were able to extricate themselves with no casualties, and left to link back up with the group attacking Aveh's border fleet; however, on the way, they were hit hard by Ramsus's forces. Their flagship, the Yggdrasil, was damaged, and while they were still able to offer some resistance, the situation looked grim.

That was when 'he' appeared.

The battle with Aveh's border fleet had been a grueling one, but it seemed like Bart's forces, led by Fei, had won it; they had incapacitated much of the fleet and badly damaged the Gear piloted by Vanderkaum, its commander. However, Grahf appeared on the scene, and lent his power to Vanderkaum, allowing him to destroy Fei's team effortlessly. Overwhelmed by this turn of events and fighting for his life, Fei lost control, and Id was able to manifest completely. He tore a swath of destruction through what remained of the fleet, heading straight into the middle of the battle between the Yggdrasil and Ramsus's forces. Ramsus went out to meet him, to settle a past score; however, Id ripped his Gear apart like it was made of tinfoil, and then turned his attention to Bart.

Bart managed to last a little longer against him, but only because Id was toying with him; he was just as outmatched as Ramsus, and might have met an even worse fate (Ramsus's Gear had taken the worst of the damage, and his troops had retrieved him before leaving the field), had it not been for Sigurd. He managed to 'jump' the damaged Yggdrasil out of the sand and land it atop Weltall; this didn't go quite as well as planned, as in its transformed state, Weltall was monstrously powerful. Id was actually able to catch the Yggdrasil and toss it back onto Bart's Gear. As the cruiser sank beneath the sand, Sigurd insisted that Citan evacuate in one of the escape pods.

The escape pod was carried by the winds to the border with Kislev, near where the attack on the border fleet had occurred; he landed just in time to hide before Id, screaming across the border into Kislev in search of something new to murder, might have taken notice of him. When he retrieved his Gear from the staging area in the mountains, he discovered, unsurprisingly, that none of the attack team had returned.

By the time Citan returned to the border and was able to hack into Kislev's military communications, Id's rage had run its course, and Fei and Weltall had fallen into enemy hands, though figuring out what had been done with him after that was considerably harder to discover. It took him several days to find out that Fei had been transferred to "D Block" - the Kislev capital Nortune's prison district - and arrange to join him there - as D Block's new doctor, to make it easier for Citan to move freely and gather information. He had also learned that, for some reason, Weltall hadn't been taken back by the Kislev military, but had been put into the competitor pool in the Battling Arena - Kislev's arena for mecha-gladiatorial competitions between prisoners - likely because the difficulties associated with piloting it had led them to try to pair it back up with Fei in a controlled environment, where the data they gained on its operation could serve a number of functions. Nonetheless, Citan encouraged Fei to become a Battler, as it would give him the best chance to retrieve his Gear and earn his freedom: the most valuable prize at stake for prisoners was the chance of a full pardon.

Fei took his advice, and soon, had unseated the reigning champ, Rico Banderas - and it seemed as though the defeat had gotten to Rico, as he later allegedly attempted to assassinate the leader of Kislev, Kaiser Sigmund. Rico managed to evade custody and broke into Nortune's administrative block in an attempt to find something to prove he had been framed - where he was captured and sentenced to execution. However, as Rico had helped Fei clear his name when he was accused of a string of murders during the Battling competitions, Fei felt obligated to save him - and inadvertently wound up saving all of Nortune at the same time.

Solaris had ordered a "purge" of Nortune - an attack on a reactor near the city that would leave the area devoid of life and uninhabitable for decades. Putting aside his hatred of the country that had given him nothing but a raw deal his entire life, Rico retrieved his Gear and joined Fei in fighting off the Gebler attack force, while Citan helped to evacuate the city.

Elly was part of the Gebler force escorting the bomb meant to be used on the reactor; however, Fei brought her down into the city, to see how many lives would be lost if she carried out her orders, and finally convinced her to desert. With her assistance, the attack on the reactor was foiled. However, they couldn't stay in Kislev; in the aftermath of the attack, a would-be regicide, the ex-con who prevented him from being brought to justice, and a former enemy officer were better suited to becoming scapegoats than the heroes of the hour, after all. Because Kislev's border defenses had been heavily reinforced following the attack, there was no sneaking through, so Citan decided that the best way to leave the country was to fly over them, disguised as a force sent to counterattack Aveh in Kislev's experimental super-bomber the Goliath, which they would need to steal from the base Elly had infiltrated to take Weltall.

The plan was less insane than it sounded - the hangar where it was being stored was in the heart of Kislev; given both the mass transfer of troops to the border and the fact that the Kislev brass considered something as subtle as sabotage extremely unlikely in the wake of so bold an attack, the hangar was more lightly guarded than ever, and Elly still knew every inch of it. The plan was a success, and they made it out of Kislev - despite an in-flight attack by Grahf. However, as they were passing over a patch of ocean where neither Kislev nor Aveh had warships stationed, they were shot down.

Not only had Bart and the others survived, but they had stumbled onto a secret dock containing an amphibious sister ship to the Yggdrasil. Thinking that Kislev was retaliating for Solaris's attack, Bart decided that, naturally, the best way to head it off was a surprise missile attack on the Goliath. It proved all too effective.

Citan had the others bail out while he wrestled with trying to safely ditch the badly damaged airship; with the damage to the stabilizers, and the fact that the Goliath lacked an autopilot, there was no way whoever left last would have the time to bail out safely, and Citan was the only one with the experience to make a survivable water landing. He bailed out shortly after the Goliath hit the water, just in time to avoid being killed, as the Goliath clipped the Yggdrasil II - which escaped major damage, due to having already begun an emergency dive - and exploded.

The Yggdrasil rescued Citan, Rico, and Hammer (a demihuman who had aided them by providing information and materiel support ever since Fei's arrival into D Block); however, they were unable to locate Fei and Elly. Sigurd set a course for the salvage vessel/corporation known as the Thames, to request their help in the search, but on the way there, the Yggdrasil II came under attack by Ramsus's officers, the Elements - the leader of whom, Dominia, had been in charge of carrying out the purge of Nortune. Fortunately, Fei and Elly had already been picked up by the Thames, and when they caught sight of the battle from the Thames's beer hall, they immediately came to offer their assistance.

Together with Bart, they managed to repel the attack; however, Elly was kidnapped by the enemy. Before the others could gauge whether she needed rescuing, let alone how best to go about it, she returned; seemingly nothing was amiss, until she scrammed the Yggdrasil II's main reactor, leaving the ship vulnerable to a second attack; Citan only had time to determine that she had been brainwashed into carrying out the attack before Ramsus arrived to try to challenge Fei again. This time, it was Ramsus who got the best of the battle: he breached Weltall's armor, causing the cockpit to flood and nearly killing Fei in the process, but Elly - who had quickly recovered and demanded to join the battle, to prove that she really could be relied on - managed to drive him off before he could finish it.

Fei was unconscious when he was brought back aboard the Yggdrasil II. However, even after his lungs were drained, he still didn't regain consciousness. Because his injuries seemed fairly minor and the cold water had slowed his vital functions enough to prevent brain damage, Citan suspected that it was because the near-death experience had destabilized his mind. However, this wasn't something he could share with the others, and it was entirely possible that he had more severe injuries that the Yggdrasil's comparatively primitive diagnostic technology had been unable to detect, so he encouraged it when the others decided to take Fei to the headquarters of the 'Ethos' - a humanitarian and religious organization whose supposed purpose was to preserve the world's culture - for treatment.

As it turned out, a delegation of Etone - priests who dispensed salvation in the form of large quantities of hot lead to monsters known as the 'Wels' - were aboard the Thames, and their leader, named Billy, was the son of Citan's old friend Jesiah.

With Billy vouching for them, they were able to have Fei's condition assessed at the Ethos headquarters, where Citan's suspicions were confirmed - namely, that Fei would make a full physical recovery, and his unconsciousness was due at least in part to exhaustion from charging straight into battle while still suffering the effects of exposure and dehydration from the time before he had been rescued by the Thames. They were cleared to resume his treatment aboard the Yggdrasil.

Out of gratitude for Billy's assistance, Elly and the others volunteered to join him on a mission to clear out a ship that had been taken over by the Wels. The mission was largely uneventful; however, on returning to the Ethos headquarters, they discovered it had been attacked.

They explored the building in hopes of finding any survivors; they found a few, and the remnants of the attack force - but even more interesting, beneath the Ethos headquarters, they found a massive computing facility built entirely from Solarian tech. It wasn't a revelation to Citan that Ethos was nothing more than another arm of Solaris's presence on the surface, and the source of most of Etrenank's laborers; however, he hadn't known about the organization's attempt to go rogue, to use the technology that they had acquired through the Thames's underwater excavations to buck Solaris's control.

Knowing that most of the members of the Ethos had been unwitting pawns in Solaris's plot, Jesiah had attempted to head off the attack; he met back up with Billy, Citan, and the others after they were confronted by a party led by Bishop Stone - Billy's mentor within the Ethos - who had, in fact, ordered the attack. Though Jesiah attempted to soften the blow for his son, there was nothing he could do when Stone revealed the truth - that the Wels had once been human, but had been transformed into something far worse by Solaris's experiments.

Stone sacrificed his followers and used the information about the true nature of the Wels to buy himself the chance to escape and return to the Ezekiel, the flagship of Solaris's forces on the surface; from there, he released the Wels in an attack on the Thames, to destroy anything the Thames had already taken possession of that might be used against Solaris. Meanwhile, Krelian, the scientist in charge of Solaris's human experimentation program and the country's de facto leader, came in person to retrieve what he considered the most promising piece of technology from the ruins: a 'living' nanomachine colony.

After they had defeated the Wels attacking the Thames, Citan and the others descended into the excavation site to find out what Solaris was after and, if possible, stop them. However, they managed to discover the location of the nanomachine colony - which appeared in the form of a young girl with green hair - before Solaris's forces did, and Bishop Stone and the Elements promptly appeared on the scene to ambush them and take it.

They defeated the Elements and caught up with Stone as he was leaving the ruins; before they could stop him, however, Id appeared and attacked them, seeming strangely possessive over the nanomachine colony (because, as it was revealed later, one of Fei's prior incarnations had created it). He was intercepted by Wiseman - an individual whom Fei had encountered twice before, and whom Citan thought was suspiciously familiar - before he could do any major damage, after which Id lost control and returned to the Yggdrasil, where Fei was able to reemerge. However, Stone took advantage of the diversion to escape with the nanomachine colony. By the time they caught up with him and, with Jesiah's assistance, killed him, he had already transferred it to Krelian.

After the battle, they returned to the Yggdrasil, where Jesiah revealed what he had learned about the "M Plan" - the codename for Solaris's ongoing human experimentation - during his time on the surface. While Citan had not been directly involved with the M Plan, his rank and the fact that he had worked on a project peripheral to it meant that much of the information wasn't news to him; however, Jesiah spoke of a cache of information left by one of the scientists central to the M Plan which had been loaded into an experimental Gear that had ultimately made its way to Shevat. As Fei also wanted to go to Shevat to find out as much information as possible about his family, they began preparing to travel there.

However, that was when Citan vanished from his world.

Personality: In his canon, Citan seems like the embodiment of the absentminded professor archetype; when he has a personal project to indulge in, he pursues it seemingly to the exclusion of paying attention to the world around him, and in general, he always seems to be putting information together just after it would become relevant. However, this is because he's pretty bad at lying, so just feigning cluelessness is a better way to hide the fact that not only is he generally much better than those around him at putting things together, but he also usually has far more information to work with in the first place. On the island, he'll probably be hiding his brilliance less, because he doesn't need to maintain his cover, and what's most important is getting everyone home.

Either way, it's clear that he is a compassionate individual with a strong moral compass - his priority is always to protect those weaker than himself. He also believes that saving mankind, by necessity, means keeping as many of them alive and able to live as they choose as possible - one on which he has no doubt been challenged many times by the Gazel Ministry and Krelian, who believe mankind's "salvation" lies in their union with the sentient weapons system that created them on this world and who have forgotten what it means to be human, but on which he still stands firm.

Citan has always had a particularly strong sense of duty, and because his mission is to save the world, he views any personal sacrifices he has to make toward that end as completely worthwhile - while he doesn't consider fate as something immutable, he understands perfectly that there is only so much that one can do about the circumstances that one is born into, and sometimes people are called on to make extraordinary sacrifices. Of course, this isn't always the easiest thing for his family to deal with - Yui knows about his mission and its importance, but the fact they're living at so crucial a juncture of mankind's history and there's only so much she can do gets under her skin more than she'd ever admit. However, it's in Citan's relationship with his daughter, Midori, that the strain shows the most; because she's a telepath, there's no hiding the details of his mission from her. One of the reasons why he doesn't keep anything from his wife is so that she can help their daughter try to cope with the harsh realities that she's still too young to understand, and that it pains Citan not to be able to protect her from - as difficult as his own childhood was, there's nothing he wants for her more than to be able to shield her from any hardship.


Skills/Powers: Citan's most useful skill basically boils down to pattern recognition. If he already understands at least some of its components, it's not that difficult for him to analyze a system, determine how it works, and even improve on its efficiency. This doesn't just extend to mechanical systems; it also manifests as an aptitude for political and battlefield strategy, though in the latter he's merely competent and effective rather than a true genius, and irregular warfare is not among his specialties. He also has a prodigious memory - perhaps even a photographic one, given the massive numbers of weapons designs he cranked out over the period of a few years and how quickly he seems to have picked up a knowledge of medicine. The major factor that will be slowing him down in his analysis of the Sophie Basana is that many of its systems (the propulsion system, the worldshift system, and the Feinberg cages) are completely alien technology to him, some of them are based off entire disciplines of physics that haven't been invented in his world, and even the composition of many of the related parts is a mystery.

He's a skilled martial artist - back in his own world, he'd be able to destroy a cheap heavy labor mecha with his bare hands, but on the island, his raw power will be limited to about 150% of that of a similarly skilled martial artist of the same weight and build from the real world - that is, despite being a beanpole, he hits like a heavyweight boxer. Also, he has support magic that follows similar rules to those of the world in which the island is located (he has the Arcana listed here for up to level 42).


What is your character bringing to the table?: As far as immediate survival goes, Citan is going to be a lot of use to have around. He's a medical doctor and, unlike most Solarians, has had to live in the boonies and travel through the wilderness, so he knows the basics of survival in the wild and how to establish livable conditions without an abundance of modern niceties (this includes practical skills like soapmaking).

As a Solarian high official and a former military commander and weapons engineer, he's also got a lot of skills that can help move plot. Aside from just being the voice of reason in delicate or potentially dangerous situations, he's got a lot of diplomatic background that will help him navigate those situations to a resolution that's in the crew's favor - and if things go wrong despite his best efforts, his skill at thinking on his feet and tactical skill will help make sure everyone else makes it out alive. Because of his background as an engineer and overall high mechanical competence, he will be able to contribute, potentially significantly, toward repairing the Sophie Basana. He's also going to be the one constructing and programming the communicators that everyone will use to access vildiur_channel and the Sophie Basana's records, once the storage areas that have the necessary materials become accessible.

Gear: A day's worth of food, a few restorative potions (Aquasol S x10 - restore 150 HP apiece, Rosesol x15 - restore 10 MP apiece), and the clothes on his back. The only possession he's bringing that's not washing up with him is his Omnigear (kickass giant robot), Fenrir, which will later be found in the Sophie Basana's hangar.

How will you be bringing your character into the game?: He'll just be turning up on the beach.

If you're joining with or because of a friend, do you plan to import CR?: N/A

Third Person Writing Sample: The sun was setting as Citan finally made his way out of the jungle; there were several suitable places along the island's freshwater streambeds to establish camps, but he had only stayed long enough to lay out signs that he hoped would persuade anyone else following his tracks to do what he hadn't and stay there. But something about the strange geometry of the island's peaks had lured him onward, and when he reached the southern beach, he understood why at last. Briefly, he wondered if something had gone horribly wrong.

The external structure of the visible portion of this strange craft was nearly identical to that of the Ezekiel.

He tried to rule out the possibility that, somehow, something had happened that had ended with him awakening thousands of years in his own world's future; however, no alternative that seemed any more logical presented itself. At this point, he couldn't rule out anything.

He had assumed it was only the subconscious recognition of the craft's shape that had drawn him onward, up until he spotted the dark space beneath the lip of the craft. The compulsion to enter it was almost overwhelming; it seemed like the craft itself was generating some kind of subconscious effect.

It was probably inevitable that he would have to explore the craft - he had made much of the trek along the cliffs, to watch for ships or aircraft, and spotted neither; this Solarian-lookalike craft was the only sign that this area had ever been inhabited, and possibly the best chance of making contact with the outside world. However, now wasn't the time to investigate - not when it was already getting dark, and who knew what dangers awaited inside. His best bet for now would be to head back to the sites he had marked; if he wasn't alone on this island, he stood a better chance out in the open if the locals were less than friendly.

He hadn't yet allowed himself to consider the possibility that he was alone here, or lay plans for what to do if he was.