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lukeoutbelow2012-12-07 02:11 am
joysweeper) wrote in lukeoutbelow2012-12-07 02:11 am
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Application for genderswapped John Raimi from Geist. Incomplete and I didn't get all the pronouns. Might have gone to edensphere.
CHARACTER NAME: John Raimi
SERIES: Geist
PERSONALITY: Raimi is a bit trusting and tends to see the world as black and white. She isn’t incurious, but she’ll take orders and explanations without question, if they come from someone who's helped her. She generally represses doubt in such people.
Not that she's unintelligent or likely to trust random people off the street.
The sense of self-preservation she has while in a host can warp into protectiveness towards them even when she doesn’t need them anymore, even if they are the enemy. Using people like this is fun, but when she stops to think about it she’s sickened. When survival is on the line she ignores the ethics of it, but she does try to keep a living host alive when possible.
Raimi is a neatnik who disapproves of messes, dirt, and places which are falling apart. She’s got a low-key, somewhat morbid sense of humor, usually showing up as deadpan observations. She has a playful side, and is unashamed to do a goofy-looking secret handshake in front of colleagues.
Before the events of the game, she was highly skeptical of the supernatural. She still isn't sure that what's happened can't be explained by science, but has reluctantly accepted various things as real.
After being separated from her body Raimi was rendered mute, unable to control anyone’s lips and tongue, including her own, well enough to speak properly - something like “Uh huh” is just within the limit of her ability. However, she was never that talkative in the first place. A nod and a smile, maybe a wave, served as well as a verbal greeting; she tended to be curt, to the point, and sometimes even monosyllabic when called on to speak.
She isn’t all that social, though she’s not unfriendly.
TIMELINE: End of the game. She has defeated Volk’s Demon, let the spirits of Alexander and Gigi Volks go free, gotten her body back, and escaped with Bryson, Anna, and Phantom.
CANON+AU BACKGROUND:
AU details here are basically making the character female, pre-game details, and adding some personality to your standard silent protagonist.
John Raimi was born in 1970 and named after an uncle. She didn't care for the name, but not to the point where she wanted to change it. Raimi was the name she preferred to be called by.
She enrolled at a US military academy, where she studied biological and chemical warfare. There she met and became friends with Thomas Bryson, nine years older and working on the same programs. After graduation she was made a part of the same counterterrorism team, CR-2.
Raimi did a fair amount of fieldwork, but normally didn't walk into a scene until after it had been secured. Still, she went through assault training and knew how to keep cool in a firefight.
In 2005, she was off duty when a superior, Juliao, called her to update her on an unfolding situation. Bryson had been undercover in France for months, investigating a Volks Corporation lab. Infrared telemetrics showed a massive underground complex beneath it, and they had reason to suspect that a biological or chemical weapon was being developed. Her old friend had been out of contact for ten days. His last, garbled transmission contained "virus" and what may have been "demon".
She volunteered to go with the team dropping in from helicopters in the dead of the night to retrieve him.
They found him easily enough, in a lab that was working on pieces of unknown animals and their cells, but then an alarm sounded and they were forced to fight their way out - the lab complex had its own mercenary army. This wasn't the first time Raimi had fired live rounds outside of training, but it was the first time she had killed anyone. On the way to the extraction point, Bryson and Raimi split off from the group and encountered a monster, a kind of... spider octopus worm which killed a team member and withdrew into a hole chewed into the rock after being shot a lot. Bryson promised to explain later. Raimi was shot on the way and suffered some serious blood loss, but kept going.
Mid extraction, Bryson screamed, convulsed, and then opened fire on the others. Raimi passed out and later came to bandaged, tattooed with a "17", with shunts or catheters in her chest and left shoulder, and strapped into a bizarre machine that was poised over a portal deep underground. The portal opened. Her soul was stripped from her body and flung into a containment chamber.
From there Raimi - meaning her soul - was taken to a brainwashing/conditioning device to make him suitable for Project Z. Volks had put others through the separation procedure before, but many of them went insane in the process. This captured infiltrator was healthy, might as well. It wasn’t like allegiance was an issue, when the brainwashing would pretty much remove her old life and give her all the skills she needed.
The device showed her a virtual reality playground and taught her some basics about being a ghost, also telling her, soothingly, that being one was awesome and he shouldn’t worry. Before it could finish, the machine broke as another ghost, one of a young girl named Gigi, possessed a part of it and made it blow up.
She helped Raimi adjust and taught her some more advanced basics, including how to possess objects, animals, and people. At that main lab at Volks Corp, employees were fed a compound that made them more susceptible to possession. Ghosts escaped often enough that there was a drill for it, involving barriers that loose ghosts couldn't pass through.
Gigi helped Raimi scare a janitor so she could pass through those barriers. Then Raimi scared and took a soldier who was guarding machinery alone. The first thing they did with that body and his gun was to shoot the janitor, something which she later regretted. From the soldier's recent memories and the info he had clearance to see, she learned that one other member of the team had survived - Bryson - and he was being prepped for the separation procedure.
Her first reaction was to try and go Rambo with her soldier body, blitzing through the other soldiers and the dogs, who were able to tell that this soldier was possessed. It didn't work so well. Raimi abandoned this body and was given directions by Gigi, who had decided to help her out.
She took Phantom, a dog who had been locked up for getting too close to the dogphobic lead mercenary. From there she was able to possess another soldier and at last a technician, who had clearance to get into the control room just as the procedure was starting.
Opening the rift involved a powerful catalyst laser. Raimi possessed it and used it to destroy some of the machinery around the rift. It didn't close, but something about it changed, and the monitoring equipment didn't like it. Rourke, the lead mercenary and second in command, ordered someone to take Bryson back to the medical wing while they tried to salvage the situation.
Raimi got her technician into a Hazmat suit and got to the other side of the rift, having to kill some mercenaries to keep her host alive. In the mean time, a huge demon crawled out of the open rift and destroyed the separation chamber.
Gigi told her about the demon - said it was trying to talk to her - and updated Raimi on Bryson's condition. He was sick. Raimi left the technician and slipstreamed her way through faults and vents and such, possessed a bat and then a janitor, and then slipstreamed through a very classy peephole into a shower for female employees. There she possessed Anna Richardson, a doctor who'd just been told off for trying to administer an antidote to Bryson. Bryson had been prepped for separation and would die if not treated, but Rourke felt that with the chamber destroyed, he wasn’t worth keeping alive.
Anna!Raimi went to the locker room and found that Anna’s clothing had been taken away for cleaning, and there weren’t any people around to borrow from. They backtracked and found the laundry room, and the murdered body of the janitor.
Dressing Anna in her clothing and labcoat - and combing her hair out, for some reason - Anna!Raimi started going through this part of the facility, heard screaming, and found that some of the guards were being killed by small demons which had escaped from the rift. Thankfully they could be killed using a fire extinguisher, so Anna!Raimi was able to roam the medical wing until they found the antidote.
After they'd administered it to Bryson, he recovered consciousness. Anna!Raimi, unable to speak, gave him the secret handshake and nodded/shook Anna’s head at the right times to indicate that they weren’t sent by Raimi, they were Raimi. A soldier seeing this confronted them at gunpoint, and Bryson killed him with a scalpel. He assumed that whatever was going on had to do with that ghost business he’d been hearing about.
Anna!Raimi took a gun and escorted Bryson past various soldiers and demons until they got to an elevator. On the way down, Bryson played the twenty questions game to try and figure out what was going on until the elevator came to the lowest floor and was attacked by a monster.
The monster swallowed Bryson whole. Anna!Raimi beat on the monster until it spat him up and retreated, then fastidiously wiped their hands on their pants when the slime-covered Bryson proved to be unharmed. He was left in a storeroom to rest. Anna!Raimi went on ahead to scout after being given a handsign with which she could prove who she was, even if she was in another body.
Raimi possessed a rat, then the single cook on duty. Bryson had recovered but had to pass through a mess hall full of mercs. Cook!Raimi poisoned some soup before serving it. Unfortunately, the cook’s skill, if he’d had any, didn’t transfer over. No one would eat it. They did leave, at least, since everything else cook!Raimi made was similarly fail.
Raimi left the cook, took an elderly scientist, and used him to get herself and Bryson past a retinal scanner and into a computer room, where Bryson was interested in a Project Z he'd heard about.
Raimi found surveillance footage of the bodies of Spectral Operatives, people who'd gone through separation. The bodies were not killed, as she'd assumed, but kept in a ward somewhere. One of them was hers - but unlike the others, it opened its eyes and smiled when she saw it, before the camera feed cut out.
Bryson found that Volks was planning to infiltrate a major diplomatic summit. The Spectral Operatives were going to possess some leaders, kill others, and then capitalize on the mess using the countries whose leaders were being controlled. They had to get the intel out, which meant radioing for pickup and going to try to meet another CR-2 helicopter.
On the way out the alarm was sounded, and Raimi’s scientist was shot and killed. Raimi had to “escort” her friend by turning various objects against the soldiers targeting him, and once they’d reached an underground road, possessing a motorcycle which wouldn’t start and having a chase scene. They escaped pursuit eventually and found that there were antiaircraft units around the helicopter pad, and Bryson couldn't radio the copter. Raimi was able to possess a demolitions merc and take the units out in time.
The copter touched down and Bryson got in, but Raimi stayed behind. Bryson understood why and promised to come back later. After the copter had lifted off, though, Raimi's body - now possessed by a demon called Wraith - fired a rocket launcher at it. It spiraled out of sight but didn't explode. Raimi chased Wraith through canyons and wound up trapped in the abandoned Volks mansion just off of the lab site. Wraith escaped by leaping superhumanly high - clearly, something had happened to Raimi's body.
In the mansion, Raimi found a diary and learned about this place and its supernatural history - about the monks' catacombs underneath it, and their hints of some great evil under the ground. She also met Gigi in a child's room. Gigi explained her backstory. She'd been badly hurt and her brother Alexander, who'd been studying the occult, heard a whispering, took her deep into the tunnels, and opened the rift at the bottom. A demon - the same demon that escaped when Raimi sabotaged the containment machines - tried to get out. It touched Gigi, separating her from her body, and Alexander, scarring him, before he could seal the rift again. She thought it left part of itself in him, and asked Raimi to help stop him.
Raimi agreed to help her. Gigi showed her the way out of the mansion and back to the main facilities, also warning her about these new people who could see ghosts. She couldn’t stop them, but maybe Raimi could.
Back in the tunnels, Raimi found soldiers being attacked by little demons. She possessed a soldier and fought the little demons off, followed by more spider octopus worms and some horrible giant spitting spider crab demons. Soon she entered an old monastery and found it was a trap; a grenade was thrown which ejected her from her host, barriers were put up, and superfast armored people shot her with special energy weapons. They herded her to where her body was lying behind another barrier.
Rather than trying to flee she lingered there for long enough that she was caught and sucked into a holding tank. Then she was put back in the repaired brainwashing/training machine, and sent into a practice run for the Paris summit. It trained her in weaponry but was again interrupted when giant spitting spider crab demons attacked and this part of the complex lost power, letting her escape a second time.
She possessed a hiding technician and found that Wraith was Volk’s friend and that the other spectral operatives were being gathered in a particular room. Technician!Raimi had to go turn the power back on, arming themself with a rivet gun and wearing a Hazmat suit with which to fight demons off while they did this. They then found a lab where three scientists were each working on their own weapon based on some different demon: the Hydra Beam Gun, the Imp Flamethrower, and the Tentacle Cannon. Raimi possessed one of the scientists, leaving the technician with the others.
Scientist!Raimi found that the guards were rallying and starting to fight off the spider crab demons. While helping them with that, they got through the area into the infested monastery region, and the catacombs beneath it. There they fought the demon that had eaten Bryson way back when, this time killing it, and Raimi dispossessed and found his way to the room with all the Spectral Operatives.
The demon in Volks manifested and told them all about the plan, which was basically just to take over the summit and make the world more fit for their kind. The lot of them would leave for the summit, which had just started, in an hour.
In a secured part of the facility, Rourke set up special measures, including making sure that nobody but himself and Volks could get to the helipad. Raimi set off on a long chain of scares and possessions that ended in getting Phantom near enough to Rourke that she could terrify and possess him. Rourke!Raimi was then able to get through security and found that Rourke's custom armor was ready - the same armor that had been used against Raimi before she was recaptured. It interfaced with some enhancements to grant superhuman speed and strength. Putting it on, they went into a part of the compound that Rourke had previously said was locked even to himself. Raimi, unable to speak and get out of that situation, had to kill all of the guards.
At which point Wraith, in Raimi’s body as per usual, showed up, slowclapped sarcastically, and ran, leading Rourke!Raimi out to the helicopter pad. Wraith abandoned Raimi’s body and made something heavy fall on it; of course Raimi dispossessed Rourke and went to possess her own body again, which led to Wraith taking Rourke, and a fight. Eventually Raimi killed both of them. It helped that her body was also in special armor.
She then shot down the helicopter taking the Spectral Operatives away, then fought the operatives themselves. After that she went back into the facility, having to fight mixed forces of mercenaries, Spectral Operatives, and random giant golems, until she reached Volks. He gave her the standard villain spiel and they fought. Despite Volks' tech and the last of the Spectral Operatives showing up, Raimi won.
Gigi went to her brother, crying, and the demon’s arm came out and hauled her into his body. Raimi immediately dispossessed her own body and dived in after her. This meant fighting as a ghost against the demon. When it died, all of the other demons died too.
Raimi left the dead body and went back to her own. Gigi and the ghost of young Alexander Volks thanked her and went to the afterlife; the place started rumbling and Raimi ran, expecting a base collapse. It really didn’t, though a rock did fall and nearly crushed her. And what do you know, a helicopter came to pick her up. Bryson, Anna, and Phantom were all in it.
ABILITIES: Normally, not many. She’s become reasonably good at combat with guns. She knows biological and chemical warfare. After going through the separation, she became so speech-impaired that she’d prefer to be considered mute. Raimi can also see ghosts and spirits. That’s it.
However, she can also disengage from her body at will. However, she can also disengage from her body at will. Without her, her body is... well, it’s not comatose. It stands on its own and tries to keep its balance if shoved, and sits if shoved hard enough to fall. It will eat and drink mechanically if food and drink are put into its hands, sleep if it collapses or is made to lie down for a while, and stand back up when it’s awakened. It can be led about by the hand and made to hold things. That’s about it. It’s a vessel. Scan for brain activity, and what shows up is very minimal.
Out of her body? She’s a floating humanoid spirit. She moves much faster - the world looks wasshed-out and seems to happen in slow motion - and can float upwards somewhat, but is affected by gravity. She can pass through cracks and small openings if there’s enough airflow - you could say she Amigira Faults through them and snaps back into her usual shape - but nothing solid - a regular table can be passed through, but one that’s been laid on its side has to be elevated over or gone around.
She’s intangible and invisible to most, though animals and those who can see or othiswise detect supernatural things will see her. While outside of a host, Raimi is continuously pulled towards the afterlife, slowly but steadily becoming distracted and losing track of what she was doing. she can refresh herself by taking a host or draining the vitality from plants. If she doesn’t, in fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on how strongly she wants to stay in the living world, living concerns fade completely from her mind and she passes into the spirit world, effectively “dying”.
There are two broad categories of hosts she can possess, inanimate objects - furthis categorized as simple items and electronics/things with moving parts - and creatures. Inanimate objects can be possessed at will, but creatures, including humans, must be drugged into a stupor or entirely terrified before she can take them. Her body is the exception; anything can possess it easily. there is a size or mass limit on what she can possess. Nothing with less mass than a bat, nothing with more than a large, tricked-out motorcycle.
Raimi can go full-out poltergeist on simple objects. The kibble in a dog bowl can explode outwards and swerve to pelt something. Paint cans can roll, hop upwards, and explode. Items in general can levitate, and ladders can fall or hold steady when they shouldn’t. The reflections in mirrors can change, and the mirror can shatter. Water can turn the color of blood. Things will catch on fire.
In contrast, electronics and things with moving parts, when possessed, can’t do much that’s abnormal, beyond move autonomously. Sock’Em Bop’Em Robots will fight without hands moving them. A machine gun turret will ignore the guy on the other end and turn and fire at different targets. A computer monitor will display whatever she wants it to display.
She can’t make a corded phone try to strangle someone, but she can make it ring and utter sinister-sounding nonsense from the earpiece, a combination of mixed signals, when picked up. She can cause unresponsive motorcycles to start up and get running. she can also cause most machinery to break itself. Electronics may explode.
And creatures? She can control them as easily as her own body, but they can’t do anything unusual, though she can’t speak coherently as anything or anyone.
They can only be made into hosts they are in a stupor, have no wills of their own, are specially medicated, or are sufficiently terrified - as in outright panicked, all restraint and reason lost. Otherwise they successfully resist possession. Not everyone can be drawn into a state of blind terror with poltergeist tricks, but some can. A creature she’s possessed, when released, has no memory of the possession - they were terrified, and now they’re in a different place, which does not usually help them calm down.
Her hosts are not aware of what she’s done with them, but their minds still influence the actions she takes. She can’t do something that they would absolutely, flat-out refuse to do, like directly kill someone greatly loved or make them face some incredible fear - which is often something she’s just used to scare them into letting her in. Similarly, there’s some attraction towards things the host really really likes, and their muscle memory is hers, although if she took a gymnast, say, she wouldn’t be nearly as good as them.
Sometimes she gets a glimpse of their recent memories when she possesses someone. When it’s her body, she gets a clip show of what it’s gone through without her, but with everyone else it’s purely things which have happened in the past hour.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Ghost; or Volks, or Juliao, or Rourke. If I played her, I’d pick one.
DREAM:
Something horrible had just happened. He couldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t.
The world was featureless and white. Somewhere very far away, someone was talking, but their voice was slowed down, comically deep, and much less important than the other voice, the bright one, which came from everywhere at once.
Don’t worry. Everything is fine. In fact... everything is perfect. The whiteness started to resolve, easily. You have ascended to something greater than what you were. Explore your new surroundings. You’re safe, and free.
The world had become a bright, surreal playground, trees, grass, sky, and equipment almost candylike in hue. He found it far more appealing than he should have, but that thought came slowly and with difficulty. He was safe now, and could float about freely over the grass... Did it matter, what had happened before? It was easier not to think about it.
Time passed blissfully, but eventually he became aware of something. This was nice and all, but... well, it wasn’t very important. He was feeling vaguely unwell - not sick, quite, but distracted, drifting in an entirely different way. Wasn’t there somewhere he should be? He stopped.
The bright voice returned, instantly drawing his attention back to the here and now. Plants are good for you. They make you healthy. Try one.
Obediently he turned to - well, some kind of plant with large, flat, pointed leaves, a little like if lettuce spiked itself and then relaxed. ...He didn’t know anything about plants. Still, it seemed natural to draw on it, and do what felt like taking a deep, steadying breath.
Strange, now that he thought about it. He wasn’t breathing. Drawing on the plant felt like a breath, but it wasn’t. What did tha-
That’s better, the bright voice said, soothingly, and he forgot what had been bothering him. He understood now, though: draw on plants to keep himself on the present, and keep that vague unease away.
Soon enough the bright voice came back again, coaxingly. Oh look. A beautiful animal. See how slowly the world moves now. No need to hurry any more. There was a rabbit on the grass, bounding in slow motion. Graceful. He caught up to it easily and followed. When it can’t resist, you can possess the animal. Try it.
He came to the rabbit, matching its speed, and - it was hard to describe. He shrank himself, changed his shape, and entered it, that was part of it, but it felt as easy and natural as floating. The rabbit bucked and squealed -
And then he was on all fours, breathing, a tiny heart beating rapidly in a tiny ribcage, staring up out of wide-set, blurry eyes at a world that wasn’t moving so slowly anymore. He was the rabbit.
You can now experience life in ways you never imagined. See what you can do now.
He ran! He ran, jumped, chewed plants, and just in general enjoyed the novel sensation of being embodied.
It was nice.
Very good. Now try leaving the animal. Another action that was hard to describe. He pulled or peeled away and grew back to what he was. Whatever that was. The rabbit faded out of existence. Good. You’re doing very well. Go explore. All is well.
There were no questions anymore. Following the bright voice was soothing. He started to drift about, exploring.
And then things fell apart. The playground started to fade, flickering, into a wireframe environment; the bright voice stuttered and hissed irregularly. The world - is - peaceful. Reload Your Weapon! This is - Kill them. - your new - Kill them all. home.
The world became white again, and then darkened. He had the impression that he was looking out of a window, sort of. That distant voice was speaking again, still distorted and slow, but he could follow it again. “- all the skills he needs. When they are complete, he won’t even remember his name.”
It was probably important, but he was having trouble focusing. There was something he should be doing, totally unrelated to any of this. That was a bad thought, wasn’t it? Were there any plants or animals around?
There - okay, good, there was a body. He slid into it without the slightest resistance. It felt right, like coming home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0cN9f4E
JOURNAL SAMPLE:
ASPIRATIONS:
edensphere.CHARACTER NAME: John Raimi
SERIES: Geist
PERSONALITY: Raimi is a bit trusting and tends to see the world as black and white. She isn’t incurious, but she’ll take orders and explanations without question, if they come from someone who's helped her. She generally represses doubt in such people.
Not that she's unintelligent or likely to trust random people off the street.
The sense of self-preservation she has while in a host can warp into protectiveness towards them even when she doesn’t need them anymore, even if they are the enemy. Using people like this is fun, but when she stops to think about it she’s sickened. When survival is on the line she ignores the ethics of it, but she does try to keep a living host alive when possible.
Raimi is a neatnik who disapproves of messes, dirt, and places which are falling apart. She’s got a low-key, somewhat morbid sense of humor, usually showing up as deadpan observations. She has a playful side, and is unashamed to do a goofy-looking secret handshake in front of colleagues.
Before the events of the game, she was highly skeptical of the supernatural. She still isn't sure that what's happened can't be explained by science, but has reluctantly accepted various things as real.
After being separated from her body Raimi was rendered mute, unable to control anyone’s lips and tongue, including her own, well enough to speak properly - something like “Uh huh” is just within the limit of her ability. However, she was never that talkative in the first place. A nod and a smile, maybe a wave, served as well as a verbal greeting; she tended to be curt, to the point, and sometimes even monosyllabic when called on to speak.
She isn’t all that social, though she’s not unfriendly.
TIMELINE: End of the game. She has defeated Volk’s Demon, let the spirits of Alexander and Gigi Volks go free, gotten her body back, and escaped with Bryson, Anna, and Phantom.
CANON+AU BACKGROUND:
AU details here are basically making the character female, pre-game details, and adding some personality to your standard silent protagonist.
John Raimi was born in 1970 and named after an uncle. She didn't care for the name, but not to the point where she wanted to change it. Raimi was the name she preferred to be called by.
She enrolled at a US military academy, where she studied biological and chemical warfare. There she met and became friends with Thomas Bryson, nine years older and working on the same programs. After graduation she was made a part of the same counterterrorism team, CR-2.
Raimi did a fair amount of fieldwork, but normally didn't walk into a scene until after it had been secured. Still, she went through assault training and knew how to keep cool in a firefight.
In 2005, she was off duty when a superior, Juliao, called her to update her on an unfolding situation. Bryson had been undercover in France for months, investigating a Volks Corporation lab. Infrared telemetrics showed a massive underground complex beneath it, and they had reason to suspect that a biological or chemical weapon was being developed. Her old friend had been out of contact for ten days. His last, garbled transmission contained "virus" and what may have been "demon".
She volunteered to go with the team dropping in from helicopters in the dead of the night to retrieve him.
They found him easily enough, in a lab that was working on pieces of unknown animals and their cells, but then an alarm sounded and they were forced to fight their way out - the lab complex had its own mercenary army. This wasn't the first time Raimi had fired live rounds outside of training, but it was the first time she had killed anyone. On the way to the extraction point, Bryson and Raimi split off from the group and encountered a monster, a kind of... spider octopus worm which killed a team member and withdrew into a hole chewed into the rock after being shot a lot. Bryson promised to explain later. Raimi was shot on the way and suffered some serious blood loss, but kept going.
Mid extraction, Bryson screamed, convulsed, and then opened fire on the others. Raimi passed out and later came to bandaged, tattooed with a "17", with shunts or catheters in her chest and left shoulder, and strapped into a bizarre machine that was poised over a portal deep underground. The portal opened. Her soul was stripped from her body and flung into a containment chamber.
From there Raimi - meaning her soul - was taken to a brainwashing/conditioning device to make him suitable for Project Z. Volks had put others through the separation procedure before, but many of them went insane in the process. This captured infiltrator was healthy, might as well. It wasn’t like allegiance was an issue, when the brainwashing would pretty much remove her old life and give her all the skills she needed.
The device showed her a virtual reality playground and taught her some basics about being a ghost, also telling her, soothingly, that being one was awesome and he shouldn’t worry. Before it could finish, the machine broke as another ghost, one of a young girl named Gigi, possessed a part of it and made it blow up.
She helped Raimi adjust and taught her some more advanced basics, including how to possess objects, animals, and people. At that main lab at Volks Corp, employees were fed a compound that made them more susceptible to possession. Ghosts escaped often enough that there was a drill for it, involving barriers that loose ghosts couldn't pass through.
Gigi helped Raimi scare a janitor so she could pass through those barriers. Then Raimi scared and took a soldier who was guarding machinery alone. The first thing they did with that body and his gun was to shoot the janitor, something which she later regretted. From the soldier's recent memories and the info he had clearance to see, she learned that one other member of the team had survived - Bryson - and he was being prepped for the separation procedure.
Her first reaction was to try and go Rambo with her soldier body, blitzing through the other soldiers and the dogs, who were able to tell that this soldier was possessed. It didn't work so well. Raimi abandoned this body and was given directions by Gigi, who had decided to help her out.
She took Phantom, a dog who had been locked up for getting too close to the dogphobic lead mercenary. From there she was able to possess another soldier and at last a technician, who had clearance to get into the control room just as the procedure was starting.
Opening the rift involved a powerful catalyst laser. Raimi possessed it and used it to destroy some of the machinery around the rift. It didn't close, but something about it changed, and the monitoring equipment didn't like it. Rourke, the lead mercenary and second in command, ordered someone to take Bryson back to the medical wing while they tried to salvage the situation.
Raimi got her technician into a Hazmat suit and got to the other side of the rift, having to kill some mercenaries to keep her host alive. In the mean time, a huge demon crawled out of the open rift and destroyed the separation chamber.
Gigi told her about the demon - said it was trying to talk to her - and updated Raimi on Bryson's condition. He was sick. Raimi left the technician and slipstreamed her way through faults and vents and such, possessed a bat and then a janitor, and then slipstreamed through a very classy peephole into a shower for female employees. There she possessed Anna Richardson, a doctor who'd just been told off for trying to administer an antidote to Bryson. Bryson had been prepped for separation and would die if not treated, but Rourke felt that with the chamber destroyed, he wasn’t worth keeping alive.
Anna!Raimi went to the locker room and found that Anna’s clothing had been taken away for cleaning, and there weren’t any people around to borrow from. They backtracked and found the laundry room, and the murdered body of the janitor.
Dressing Anna in her clothing and labcoat - and combing her hair out, for some reason - Anna!Raimi started going through this part of the facility, heard screaming, and found that some of the guards were being killed by small demons which had escaped from the rift. Thankfully they could be killed using a fire extinguisher, so Anna!Raimi was able to roam the medical wing until they found the antidote.
After they'd administered it to Bryson, he recovered consciousness. Anna!Raimi, unable to speak, gave him the secret handshake and nodded/shook Anna’s head at the right times to indicate that they weren’t sent by Raimi, they were Raimi. A soldier seeing this confronted them at gunpoint, and Bryson killed him with a scalpel. He assumed that whatever was going on had to do with that ghost business he’d been hearing about.
Anna!Raimi took a gun and escorted Bryson past various soldiers and demons until they got to an elevator. On the way down, Bryson played the twenty questions game to try and figure out what was going on until the elevator came to the lowest floor and was attacked by a monster.
The monster swallowed Bryson whole. Anna!Raimi beat on the monster until it spat him up and retreated, then fastidiously wiped their hands on their pants when the slime-covered Bryson proved to be unharmed. He was left in a storeroom to rest. Anna!Raimi went on ahead to scout after being given a handsign with which she could prove who she was, even if she was in another body.
Raimi possessed a rat, then the single cook on duty. Bryson had recovered but had to pass through a mess hall full of mercs. Cook!Raimi poisoned some soup before serving it. Unfortunately, the cook’s skill, if he’d had any, didn’t transfer over. No one would eat it. They did leave, at least, since everything else cook!Raimi made was similarly fail.
Raimi left the cook, took an elderly scientist, and used him to get herself and Bryson past a retinal scanner and into a computer room, where Bryson was interested in a Project Z he'd heard about.
Raimi found surveillance footage of the bodies of Spectral Operatives, people who'd gone through separation. The bodies were not killed, as she'd assumed, but kept in a ward somewhere. One of them was hers - but unlike the others, it opened its eyes and smiled when she saw it, before the camera feed cut out.
Bryson found that Volks was planning to infiltrate a major diplomatic summit. The Spectral Operatives were going to possess some leaders, kill others, and then capitalize on the mess using the countries whose leaders were being controlled. They had to get the intel out, which meant radioing for pickup and going to try to meet another CR-2 helicopter.
On the way out the alarm was sounded, and Raimi’s scientist was shot and killed. Raimi had to “escort” her friend by turning various objects against the soldiers targeting him, and once they’d reached an underground road, possessing a motorcycle which wouldn’t start and having a chase scene. They escaped pursuit eventually and found that there were antiaircraft units around the helicopter pad, and Bryson couldn't radio the copter. Raimi was able to possess a demolitions merc and take the units out in time.
The copter touched down and Bryson got in, but Raimi stayed behind. Bryson understood why and promised to come back later. After the copter had lifted off, though, Raimi's body - now possessed by a demon called Wraith - fired a rocket launcher at it. It spiraled out of sight but didn't explode. Raimi chased Wraith through canyons and wound up trapped in the abandoned Volks mansion just off of the lab site. Wraith escaped by leaping superhumanly high - clearly, something had happened to Raimi's body.
In the mansion, Raimi found a diary and learned about this place and its supernatural history - about the monks' catacombs underneath it, and their hints of some great evil under the ground. She also met Gigi in a child's room. Gigi explained her backstory. She'd been badly hurt and her brother Alexander, who'd been studying the occult, heard a whispering, took her deep into the tunnels, and opened the rift at the bottom. A demon - the same demon that escaped when Raimi sabotaged the containment machines - tried to get out. It touched Gigi, separating her from her body, and Alexander, scarring him, before he could seal the rift again. She thought it left part of itself in him, and asked Raimi to help stop him.
Raimi agreed to help her. Gigi showed her the way out of the mansion and back to the main facilities, also warning her about these new people who could see ghosts. She couldn’t stop them, but maybe Raimi could.
Back in the tunnels, Raimi found soldiers being attacked by little demons. She possessed a soldier and fought the little demons off, followed by more spider octopus worms and some horrible giant spitting spider crab demons. Soon she entered an old monastery and found it was a trap; a grenade was thrown which ejected her from her host, barriers were put up, and superfast armored people shot her with special energy weapons. They herded her to where her body was lying behind another barrier.
Rather than trying to flee she lingered there for long enough that she was caught and sucked into a holding tank. Then she was put back in the repaired brainwashing/training machine, and sent into a practice run for the Paris summit. It trained her in weaponry but was again interrupted when giant spitting spider crab demons attacked and this part of the complex lost power, letting her escape a second time.
She possessed a hiding technician and found that Wraith was Volk’s friend and that the other spectral operatives were being gathered in a particular room. Technician!Raimi had to go turn the power back on, arming themself with a rivet gun and wearing a Hazmat suit with which to fight demons off while they did this. They then found a lab where three scientists were each working on their own weapon based on some different demon: the Hydra Beam Gun, the Imp Flamethrower, and the Tentacle Cannon. Raimi possessed one of the scientists, leaving the technician with the others.
Scientist!Raimi found that the guards were rallying and starting to fight off the spider crab demons. While helping them with that, they got through the area into the infested monastery region, and the catacombs beneath it. There they fought the demon that had eaten Bryson way back when, this time killing it, and Raimi dispossessed and found his way to the room with all the Spectral Operatives.
The demon in Volks manifested and told them all about the plan, which was basically just to take over the summit and make the world more fit for their kind. The lot of them would leave for the summit, which had just started, in an hour.
In a secured part of the facility, Rourke set up special measures, including making sure that nobody but himself and Volks could get to the helipad. Raimi set off on a long chain of scares and possessions that ended in getting Phantom near enough to Rourke that she could terrify and possess him. Rourke!Raimi was then able to get through security and found that Rourke's custom armor was ready - the same armor that had been used against Raimi before she was recaptured. It interfaced with some enhancements to grant superhuman speed and strength. Putting it on, they went into a part of the compound that Rourke had previously said was locked even to himself. Raimi, unable to speak and get out of that situation, had to kill all of the guards.
At which point Wraith, in Raimi’s body as per usual, showed up, slowclapped sarcastically, and ran, leading Rourke!Raimi out to the helicopter pad. Wraith abandoned Raimi’s body and made something heavy fall on it; of course Raimi dispossessed Rourke and went to possess her own body again, which led to Wraith taking Rourke, and a fight. Eventually Raimi killed both of them. It helped that her body was also in special armor.
She then shot down the helicopter taking the Spectral Operatives away, then fought the operatives themselves. After that she went back into the facility, having to fight mixed forces of mercenaries, Spectral Operatives, and random giant golems, until she reached Volks. He gave her the standard villain spiel and they fought. Despite Volks' tech and the last of the Spectral Operatives showing up, Raimi won.
Gigi went to her brother, crying, and the demon’s arm came out and hauled her into his body. Raimi immediately dispossessed her own body and dived in after her. This meant fighting as a ghost against the demon. When it died, all of the other demons died too.
Raimi left the dead body and went back to her own. Gigi and the ghost of young Alexander Volks thanked her and went to the afterlife; the place started rumbling and Raimi ran, expecting a base collapse. It really didn’t, though a rock did fall and nearly crushed her. And what do you know, a helicopter came to pick her up. Bryson, Anna, and Phantom were all in it.
ABILITIES: Normally, not many. She’s become reasonably good at combat with guns. She knows biological and chemical warfare. After going through the separation, she became so speech-impaired that she’d prefer to be considered mute. Raimi can also see ghosts and spirits. That’s it.
However, she can also disengage from her body at will. However, she can also disengage from her body at will. Without her, her body is... well, it’s not comatose. It stands on its own and tries to keep its balance if shoved, and sits if shoved hard enough to fall. It will eat and drink mechanically if food and drink are put into its hands, sleep if it collapses or is made to lie down for a while, and stand back up when it’s awakened. It can be led about by the hand and made to hold things. That’s about it. It’s a vessel. Scan for brain activity, and what shows up is very minimal.
Out of her body? She’s a floating humanoid spirit. She moves much faster - the world looks wasshed-out and seems to happen in slow motion - and can float upwards somewhat, but is affected by gravity. She can pass through cracks and small openings if there’s enough airflow - you could say she Amigira Faults through them and snaps back into her usual shape - but nothing solid - a regular table can be passed through, but one that’s been laid on its side has to be elevated over or gone around.
She’s intangible and invisible to most, though animals and those who can see or othiswise detect supernatural things will see her. While outside of a host, Raimi is continuously pulled towards the afterlife, slowly but steadily becoming distracted and losing track of what she was doing. she can refresh herself by taking a host or draining the vitality from plants. If she doesn’t, in fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on how strongly she wants to stay in the living world, living concerns fade completely from her mind and she passes into the spirit world, effectively “dying”.
There are two broad categories of hosts she can possess, inanimate objects - furthis categorized as simple items and electronics/things with moving parts - and creatures. Inanimate objects can be possessed at will, but creatures, including humans, must be drugged into a stupor or entirely terrified before she can take them. Her body is the exception; anything can possess it easily. there is a size or mass limit on what she can possess. Nothing with less mass than a bat, nothing with more than a large, tricked-out motorcycle.
Raimi can go full-out poltergeist on simple objects. The kibble in a dog bowl can explode outwards and swerve to pelt something. Paint cans can roll, hop upwards, and explode. Items in general can levitate, and ladders can fall or hold steady when they shouldn’t. The reflections in mirrors can change, and the mirror can shatter. Water can turn the color of blood. Things will catch on fire.
In contrast, electronics and things with moving parts, when possessed, can’t do much that’s abnormal, beyond move autonomously. Sock’Em Bop’Em Robots will fight without hands moving them. A machine gun turret will ignore the guy on the other end and turn and fire at different targets. A computer monitor will display whatever she wants it to display.
She can’t make a corded phone try to strangle someone, but she can make it ring and utter sinister-sounding nonsense from the earpiece, a combination of mixed signals, when picked up. She can cause unresponsive motorcycles to start up and get running. she can also cause most machinery to break itself. Electronics may explode.
And creatures? She can control them as easily as her own body, but they can’t do anything unusual, though she can’t speak coherently as anything or anyone.
They can only be made into hosts they are in a stupor, have no wills of their own, are specially medicated, or are sufficiently terrified - as in outright panicked, all restraint and reason lost. Otherwise they successfully resist possession. Not everyone can be drawn into a state of blind terror with poltergeist tricks, but some can. A creature she’s possessed, when released, has no memory of the possession - they were terrified, and now they’re in a different place, which does not usually help them calm down.
Her hosts are not aware of what she’s done with them, but their minds still influence the actions she takes. She can’t do something that they would absolutely, flat-out refuse to do, like directly kill someone greatly loved or make them face some incredible fear - which is often something she’s just used to scare them into letting her in. Similarly, there’s some attraction towards things the host really really likes, and their muscle memory is hers, although if she took a gymnast, say, she wouldn’t be nearly as good as them.
Sometimes she gets a glimpse of their recent memories when she possesses someone. When it’s her body, she gets a clip show of what it’s gone through without her, but with everyone else it’s purely things which have happened in the past hour.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Ghost; or Volks, or Juliao, or Rourke. If I played her, I’d pick one.
DREAM:
Something horrible had just happened. He couldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t.
The world was featureless and white. Somewhere very far away, someone was talking, but their voice was slowed down, comically deep, and much less important than the other voice, the bright one, which came from everywhere at once.
Don’t worry. Everything is fine. In fact... everything is perfect. The whiteness started to resolve, easily. You have ascended to something greater than what you were. Explore your new surroundings. You’re safe, and free.
The world had become a bright, surreal playground, trees, grass, sky, and equipment almost candylike in hue. He found it far more appealing than he should have, but that thought came slowly and with difficulty. He was safe now, and could float about freely over the grass... Did it matter, what had happened before? It was easier not to think about it.
Time passed blissfully, but eventually he became aware of something. This was nice and all, but... well, it wasn’t very important. He was feeling vaguely unwell - not sick, quite, but distracted, drifting in an entirely different way. Wasn’t there somewhere he should be? He stopped.
The bright voice returned, instantly drawing his attention back to the here and now. Plants are good for you. They make you healthy. Try one.
Obediently he turned to - well, some kind of plant with large, flat, pointed leaves, a little like if lettuce spiked itself and then relaxed. ...He didn’t know anything about plants. Still, it seemed natural to draw on it, and do what felt like taking a deep, steadying breath.
Strange, now that he thought about it. He wasn’t breathing. Drawing on the plant felt like a breath, but it wasn’t. What did tha-
That’s better, the bright voice said, soothingly, and he forgot what had been bothering him. He understood now, though: draw on plants to keep himself on the present, and keep that vague unease away.
Soon enough the bright voice came back again, coaxingly. Oh look. A beautiful animal. See how slowly the world moves now. No need to hurry any more. There was a rabbit on the grass, bounding in slow motion. Graceful. He caught up to it easily and followed. When it can’t resist, you can possess the animal. Try it.
He came to the rabbit, matching its speed, and - it was hard to describe. He shrank himself, changed his shape, and entered it, that was part of it, but it felt as easy and natural as floating. The rabbit bucked and squealed -
And then he was on all fours, breathing, a tiny heart beating rapidly in a tiny ribcage, staring up out of wide-set, blurry eyes at a world that wasn’t moving so slowly anymore. He was the rabbit.
You can now experience life in ways you never imagined. See what you can do now.
He ran! He ran, jumped, chewed plants, and just in general enjoyed the novel sensation of being embodied.
It was nice.
Very good. Now try leaving the animal. Another action that was hard to describe. He pulled or peeled away and grew back to what he was. Whatever that was. The rabbit faded out of existence. Good. You’re doing very well. Go explore. All is well.
There were no questions anymore. Following the bright voice was soothing. He started to drift about, exploring.
And then things fell apart. The playground started to fade, flickering, into a wireframe environment; the bright voice stuttered and hissed irregularly. The world - is - peaceful. Reload Your Weapon! This is - Kill them. - your new - Kill them all. home.
The world became white again, and then darkened. He had the impression that he was looking out of a window, sort of. That distant voice was speaking again, still distorted and slow, but he could follow it again. “- all the skills he needs. When they are complete, he won’t even remember his name.”
It was probably important, but he was having trouble focusing. There was something he should be doing, totally unrelated to any of this. That was a bad thought, wasn’t it? Were there any plants or animals around?
There - okay, good, there was a body. He slid into it without the slightest resistance. It felt right, like coming home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0cN9f4E
JOURNAL SAMPLE:
ASPIRATIONS: