Mask or Menace: Application

[applewatcher]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉

NAME: Spider

AGE: definitely over 18

JOURNAL: applewatcher

IM / EMAIL: Discord: CellarSpider#9984

PLURK:

RETURNING: No


〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉

CHARACTER NAME: Lucien Lachance

CHARACTER AGE: 40s-50s

SERIES: The Elder Scrolls

CHRONOLOGY: TES IV: Oblivion, Just before Lucien enters the plot

CLASS: Villain/member of an illegal death cult

HOUSING: Let's make it harder for him to start out. Sure!



BACKGROUND: The Elder Scrolls is set on the fictional world of Nirn, which sits in balance between deities of order and chaos. Chief among these are the Nine Divines and the Daedric Princes, but many others exist. On the continent of Tamriel where the games take place, a variety of peoples coexist, including beasts, mer (elves), and men. Magic is relatively common, but not ubiquitous. Mortals know about the gods, and can call to them for blessings. The Divines do not directly speak to mortals, but may walk among them in disguise. The Daedric Princes are usually barred from entering Nirn, but their voices and influence are still felt.

The player meets Lucien during the events of the Oblivion Crisis: Followers of the daedric prince Mehrunes Dagon have killed the Cyrodilic Emperor Uriel Septim VII, and all his known heirs. The empty throne weakened a crucial barrier between Nirn and the chaotic planes of Oblivion, permitting Dagon to send his armies into Cyrodiil. Unless an heir can be found, nothing can stop the invasion.

Lucien seemingly has no interest in the Crisis. He is a Speaker for the Dark Brotherhood, an illegal cult of assassins that worship the ancient god Sithis and his ascended bride, the Night Mother. The true history of the Dark Brotherhood is mysterious even to its members. Consensus says that the Night Mother was a mortal who became the wife of Sithis, founded the Brotherhood, and bore five children. She sacrificed each of them to Sithis, and upon her death she achieved apotheosis. She now acts as an interpreter between Sithis and their symbolic children: the current members of the cult.

Sithis is a more complicated figure, and a full description of him would stray into the weeds of Elder Scrolls' complicated cosmology. In brief, it is believed that he is an aspect of primordial chaos itself, and is incapable of speaking in a way that mortals can understand. Depictions of him by his devotees vary wildly, from skeletal figures to abstract concepts. 

The Brotherhood is enjoying a period of paradoxical stability during the Oblivion Crisis: Their closest rivals are distracted by the invasion, as is law enforcement. Their only known splinter sect was hunted down and destroyed thirteen years prior. They are now united and taking advantage of the turmoil.

The Brotherhood is led by the Black Hand, a council of five living family members: four Speakers, and one Listener who communicates directly with the Night Mother herself. As a Speaker, Lucien receives his assignments from the Listener, to negotiate assassination contracts with those who have prayed to the Night Mother, and to recruit new murderers that she has selected. He has a long history with the Brotherhood, traveling across the continent, killing many before ascending to his position upon the death of his predecessor. 

He seeks out the player character if and only if they commit a murder. He appears beside the murderer's bed and offers a place in their "Family". They are presented with a test: Kill a certain old man. There is no motive or explanation given, only a dagger as a gift. He leaves peacefully regardless of whether the murderer agrees to kill again.

If the task is not completed, Lucien will never be seen again. If the murderer commits the act, he will find them the next night, and welcome them as a Brother or Sister. They are then sent to a hidden Sanctuary, to begin their life as an assassin.

Lucien does not accompany them, but those within the Sanctuary are more than willing to talk about him: A pair of twins are practically his adopted children, another thinks of him as a savior who brought her from the brink of death. He even convinced one to join after she killed her father, despite the fact he'd hired Lucien to kill her. They all seem to be in agreement that he is a good man, but all know that Lucien has publicly killed those who break the tenets of the Brotherhood. 

Once the murderer has reached a sufficient rank, Lucien requests their presence again at one of his safe houses: There he reveals that the Brotherhood contains a traitor, someone who joined the Sanctuary before them. To root out the traitor and appease Sithis, the murderer must kill everyone within the Sanctuary in an act of unholy Purification.

Once the deed is done, Lucien commends the murderer for their actions and declares them his new Silencer, an apprentice and eventual heir to his position. From that point on, they are expected not to contact him directly without his approval: he will give them assignments and payment via dead drops around the country of Cyrodiil. Before they leave, "as a token of [his] trust and love", he gifts them his horse, an unnaturally red-eyed mare named Shadowmere.

For a while, everything seems normal. But one day a dead drop goes uncollected, and Lucien loses track of his Silencer. Soon he comes to a horrible realization: the Silencer has started killing other Speakers and their Silencers. The rest of the Black Hand are now hunting him. These killings are framing Lucien as the traitor to the Brotherhood, casting his Silencer as an unwitting accomplice. He chases them down, but is only minutes too late to stop them from killing the Listener himself.

Lucien stops just short of killing his Silencer when he realizes that they were ignorant of what they'd done. The real traitor was not caught in the Purification, and had switched out one of Lucien's dead drops with orders of their own. The Silencer had no idea who they were killing. With the remaining Speakers and Silencers still after him, he orders the Silencer to race to the next dead drop, intercept the traitor and retrieve proof of their guilt. He will reconvene with at a remote farm named Applewatch, the site of one of the Silencer's assassination contracts.

The Silencer soon finds Lucien was telling the truth. The real traitor is a man who as a child saw his mother murdered by Lucien, and resolved to kill the Brotherhood's mother in revenge. The traitor eventually joined the Brotherhood, and Lucien, ignorant of the man's intentions, eventually recommended him to another Speaker for apprenticeship. 

Unfortunately, this news never reaches Lucien: Before the Silencer can reach Applewatch, the Black Hand catches up with him. He is tortured in an attempt to extract a confession, but he insists upon his innocence until he succumbs to his wounds and dies, and the traitor has succeeded at his first goal. The Night Mother, however, cannot be destroyed. She watches the Silencer kill the traitor, and proclaims them to be the new Listener.

However, this is not the end of Lucien's involvement in the series: his loyalty is acknowledged by the Night Mother, and he joins her and Sithis in the Void. Two hundred years later, he returns to Nirn as a spectral assassin, summoned by a new Listener of the Brotherhood. While his impact on the story is limited at this point, he will happily aid this new sibling in their work, reunite with the seemingly immortal Shadowmere, and reminisce about his life. If destroyed, he will return again the next day, to forever serve his beloved Family.




PERSONALITY: Lucien is, to put it mildly, not the most well-adjusted person. While he doesn't have extensive backstory, he has at least been in the Brotherhood for the majority of his adult life, and they have defined what he sees as acceptable behavior. He cares very deeply for his family, but does not feel killing them conflicts with this, if it's done in the name of Sithis. This even extends to the twins he trained: he appears to have nurtured them to the best of his ability, but he still orders their deaths without pause.

This may have something to do with his faith in their gods: every murder and every dead Brother and Sister is a sacrifice sent to the Void, joining their eternal Family. He is deeply religious and can speak at length on the subject, but does not attempt to convert the player character. Members of the Dark Brotherhood can join for entirely secular reasons, and he seems fine with this.

In fact, he is surprisingly accommodating towards the player character. Rejection of Brotherhood membership is accepted without complaint: he just gives you the tools you need, should you change your mind. Notably, Lucien responds equally favorably to religious zeal or complete silence: he interprets a murderer's silence as innate connection to the faith, and will speak with a non-verbal player character in a respectful tone.

Lucien very much stands in contrast to that. He enjoys the sound of his own voice, and can sometimes be rambling and over-dramatic. He certainly has a bit of an ego: If you ask him what rumors he's heard, his response is "Dear [Brother/Sister], I do not spread rumors. I create them."

Despite enjoying his rank, he seems to take his role seriously. He has absolute authority over subordinate siblings, but does not exploit this for personal gain. Due to the secretive nature of the Brotherhood, he must stay apart from most of his siblings unless on official business. He hasn't completely withdrawn from society, though. He carries a set of civilian clothes with him, and he likely spends much of his time incognito, as an ordinary citizen of the Empire. However, we don't know how well he actually manages it: The only thing we know about his interactions with others outside Brotherhood business is a long-ago incident in which he blinded a thief for stealing his purse. He thought it was a fair exchange. His phrasing implies he didn't take the purse back.

To the average outsider, especially when he's on the job, he can come across as an intensely creepy individual. Given his skewed upbringing, he may not entirely be able to turn that off. Still, he has to try to act normal: The tenets of the Brotherhood impose a religious obligation to maintain the secrecy of the cult. He will always attempt to conceal his identity, and maintain a (somewhat) respectable a public persona. However, a Speaker can break the tenets without consequence, if it serves their order. It is strongly implied by senior members of the Sanctuary that Lucien has directly manipulated the local lord to remain complacent.

Lucien may be faithful to the Brotherhood, but that doesn't mean he's without fear for his own life: When he is hunted by the Black Hand, his first concern is exonerating himself to escape punishment. Despite his belief in their dark gods, he is not ready to die for them, not yet at any rate. Still, the Night Mother declares that he was loyal to the end.

Beyond the Brotherhood, the only affection he ever shows is towards Shadowmere: If he sees the horse again after his death, he refers to her as "my old and dear friend", and seems sincere about it. As a ghost, he seems to have relatively good humor about his painful death, treating it as a lesson for the living, and gleefully declaring he's suffered worse if struck in combat.

Given the point at which he was taken, he will be at a relatively low level of stress. This is intentional, because I am interested to see how long he can keep from revealing his true nature to other players, under baseline conditions. Taking him from later in the plot would limit his character, given its affect on his mental state. A calm Lucien is a more interesting Lucien, at least to start with.

In the context of MoM, he will experience a degree of culture shock, coming from a civilization with a renaissance level of technology and a very different cosmos. What will concern him most is his separation from the rest of the Family. He may be able to rationalize that since his Dread Father and Unholy Matron are eternal and always watching from the Void, being transported to another world won't place him beyond their reach. But there will still be nagging worries: Maybe he won't go to the Void if he dies here. Maybe he's been pulled into one of the more maddening realms of Oblivion, and he should guard his soul more fiercely against those who might trick him into signing over his promised eternity. To that end, he will not be pleased with the nanites, especially if he is conscious when they are administered.

Complicating this further, I am aware of one other Dark Brotherhood member in the current cast of MoM, taken from the time period when Lucien is summonable as a ghost (Finn- player character from TES V: Skyrim). Lucien is older and more experienced than Finn is, but Finn holds the rank of Listener, making him Lucien's superior. While this is not uncommon for Listeners and Speakers throughout the Brotherhood's history, it's believed that Lucien has always been junior to the Listener of his time period, therefore he is not familiar with this dynamic. Further complicating their relationship is the fact of Finn's chronology: He knows Lucien as the ghost of a famous assassin, long-dead and happy with it. Living Lucien isn't that person yet.

With regards to the general population, Lucien will try to blend in as fast as possible: going to coffee shops or pubs and listening to the people around him, making small talk, trying to build up a new identity that will be innocuous to others, especially other imPorts. Maybe that he's a middle manager in charge of public relations for a business back home. He has two adult kids and sends his mom and dad gifts while he's travelling for work.

He's totally normal, pay no attention to the slightly unnerving smile.




POWER: These are mostly fan speculation based on game mechanics, and so should be labeled non-canon but plausibly so. I have numbers and everything!

Power #1: Racial abilities (non-canonical)- All races in The Elder Scrolls have some unique abilities. Lucien is a somewhat special case: His name is Breton, but he looks and sounds like an Imperial. A mother's race has a greater effect on a child than their father's, whose contributions are less pronounced. This canonically extends to racial abilities, as seen in others of mixed heritage.
Lucien therefore likely has a major and minor racial abilities, available once per day.
From his mother's side (major):

• Star of the West- absorb stamina from another. The target will feel fatigued. An average person can still move and fight, but feats of strength or athleticism will not be possible. More hardy individuals will tire more quickly than they otherwise would. Lucien, meanwhile, will feel reinvigorated and get a second wind from the energy absorbed.

• Voice of the Emperor- The ability to magically charm a person into a better disposition towards him, which wears off in fifteen minutes. Those who hate him will soften their dislike for him, those who dislike him will feel neutral towards him, those who like him will love him, and those who love him will do extremely inadvisable things for him.

From his father's side (minor):

• Breton Enhanced Magicka & Magic Resistance- A slight resistance to magic and slightly greater reserves of magical power. This is always active.
• Dragon Skin- A partial increase in resistance to non-magical injury for thirty minutes per day. This is enough to prevent most bruising, but won't stop a knife or other weapons. It may lessen how much damage they do, however (bullets and shrapnel won't travel as far or as traumatically through flesh, wounds won't bleed as much, etc).

Power #2: Dark Brotherhood Magic (partially canonical)- Magic is performed by drawing on a person's supply of magicka, which recharges over time. The rate depends on the person, and Lucien is likely to take a full day to go from drained to fully restored. Different spells sap different amounts of magicka, and thus can only be cast a limited number of times per day. For the numerically inclined, I have a spreadsheet!
The Dark Brotherhood makes certain spells available to all its members. These are themed around ice (the Void is described as a cold place) and tools to see and avoid being seen. Lucien has enough magicka to cast the following:

• Void Gazer- See in the dark for 75 minutes, with the downside of monochrome blue vision and losing the ability to discern the difference between dark and light: you have to guess where shadows are if you're trying to hide.
• Deathly Visage- Total invisibility for 17.5 minutes, but the moment you interact with an object, the effect is gone. You can walk, climb and move freely, but you cannot open doors, pick up or manipulate objects you don't already have in-hand when the spell begins, or attack someone.
• Black Winter- Paralyze a target for one minute and give them frostbite at the same time, because of course that's necessary.
• Baronoff's Bloody Icicle- A doofily-named spell that launches a fairly large icicle at a target. Strikes with significant force, pointy end first.
• The Unwelcome Guest- Open easy locks with a touch: window latches, cheap padlocks, old, simple door locks and the like. Nothing more complicated than that.
• Detect Pulse/Bloodhunt- Hear the pulse of living creatures within thirty feet (9.14 meters) for half an hour, or within 50 ft (15.24 m) for 75 minutes at increased cost. Those who do not have a heartbeat will not be detected by this spell.
• Night Mother's Caress- Heal light wounds over a period of one minute. Moderate bruises, scrapes and strains will heal, anything worse will be helped, but not cured.

Beyond the standard spells, Lucien has canonically demonstrated affinity with Chameleon spells: he can warp light around himself, making him transparent. The effect is not perfect, and light is distorted as it passes through him. He can lessen the distortion effect by half. An example can be seen here.

When the spell is active, he will be extremely hard to spot while in favorable conditions, but is not 100% invisible. He can interact with objects without breaking the effect, but he can only extend the effect to objects small enough to hold. He could hide someone's wallet or a sword, but he cannot invisibly abscond with a whole person or a famous painting (unless it's a very small famous painting).

Power #3: Nightmare on Chapel Street (non-canonical but funny)- Due to one of Oblivion's many wondrous bugs, Lucien is noted for sometimes turning up in your dreams to recruit you. I'd like to make that an actual power: Lucien is capable of entering the dreams of another person, but only if they are a murderer.

For game mechanics theological purposes, a murder is counted as causing a death, except in self-defense, defense of other's lives, war, and the lawful administration of justice by an appointed authority. A person is a murderer if they commit the act themselves, not if they order another to do so. The distinction is decided by Sithis and the Night Mother, and so the killer's perception of their actions does not matter, only the act: if a killing is justified as self-defense and the killer is legally exonerated, they may still be counted as a murderer if the deceased was not posing a mortal threat. Mental impairment, mind control, and altered perception of reality do not affect if a death is counted as a murder.

Lucien will likely use this power for the purposes of communication, but it is possible to cause physical harm to him or the sleeper while within the dream. Powers remain the same within the dream as the waking world, unless negotiated in advance between all involved. If the sleeper wakes up, the connection will be broken.




〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉

COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[He's not looming over the communicator. Not intentionally, at any rate, his bemused expression should make that clear. After a moment, he adjusts it to a more respectable angle. The thing looks like a mirror again, he can see a miniature picture of himself. And those little symbols signify he's…?]

Aha. Finally. I hope the other three didn't work. If they did, my apologies. I'm not familiar with the workings of this… [He settles on a word] device. It's been quite the menace all morning.

To introduce myself: I am Adamus Phillida, [he smiles brightly, easing into a more relaxed barritone,] and as you can no doubt guess, I am very new here. I would like to learn more about my new neighbors, this fascinating new world… everything, really.

[His smile falters, though his voice remains smooth. Why hide that some of the cheerfulness is forced?] Especially regarding how long we might expect to stay here. I'm sure it's a wonderful adventure for a little while, but… Well, I am a family man. I must confess, I miss them already. I'm sure many of you here know that feeling. Any advice on how to make the most of all of this in spite of it would be most appreciated.

I look forward to getting to know you all.




LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
What a mess. He can't entirely blame the unfamiliar knives, restrictive clothes, noisy shoes (these people are obsessed with these inflexible rubber soles! He would kill for good, worn leather), he can't even blame it on the stars not being right, not under this utterly nonsensical zodiac full of farm animals. No, he's rarely made such of hash of it since his early days. Blood everywhere that he didn't want blood to be. The man wasn’t even dead yet, but he couldn't risk staying any longer to help him the rest of the way. Such a shame.

Oh well. The man didn't see his face, and he did lose a prodigious amount of blood (mostly onto his killer, thank you very much). In all likelihood, death will find him within minutes. It should, if there's anything good and right about this world. A gift for Mother and Father, to let them know he still cares, no matter the circumstance.

The gurgling noises are long gone, and he hasn't heard any of those abominable, clamoring machines the guards whizz about in around here, at least not yet. Once he's retreated far enough through the alleyways, it'll just take a couple minutes of invisibility to reach his safehouse, and then he can change and wash.

It is appropriate, though. This is his first killing here, and he's handled it with all the grace of a young, freshly scrubbed murderer.

It's going to take more than scrubbing to get these stains out of this shirt.

FINAL NOTES: Lucien will be arriving in a set of spiffy black robes--please ignore the game's tendency to make faces look like potatoes--which hide an extra change of clothes, some pocket change (gold alloy coins), and a lockpick. He is openly carrying a silver shortsword.