Application for empatheias

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⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Seto
Contact: Arystar
Age: 25
Current Characters: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Dist the Rose
Age: 35
Canon: Tales of the Abyss
Canon Point: After his defeat at the Tower of Rem.

Background: Tales of the Abyss | Tales of the Abyss Timeline | Dist

Dist's Wiki page covers his backstory pretty well, but doesn't really go into his role in the main story, so I'm just going to go into a little more detail. I'm going to be a bit general on the details, but the major points are there.

Dist is one of the six God-Generals, an elite group of leaders within the Oracle Knights. He also heads the Science Division for the Oracle Knights. The Oracle Knights are like a third party between the two main countries of Auldrant, the world where Tales of the Abyss takes place. The God-Generals report directly to the Commandant, Van Grants.

However, Dist isn't exactly loyal to the Oracle Knights or Van. He's more interested in his own personal goal: reviving Professor Nebilim. Having access to the Oracle Knights' and Van's resources, he is able to freely work on these things in the background. It's revealed that he's also working with Grand Maestro Mohs, a very high-ranking member of the Order of Lorelei. Mohs wants to start a war, and Dist is happy to help as long as he gets the information from Mohs that he is after.

So while two-timing both Van and Mohs, Dist comes into contact with the main party multiple times and battles with them, usually trying just straight-up get in their way of thwarting the plans of Van, Mohs or his own. Despite how badly he gets defeated, he is pretty relentless in coming back again and again. Things get pretty serious near the game's end where Van and Mohs are going all-out to realize their goals, with Dist giving Mohs incredible power at the cost of his sanity and body. Dist is eventually taken out for good(?) when the main party confronts him at the Tower of Rem, where he's trying to take out replicas created by Van. In a last-ditch effort he tries to get Jade to come back on board with reviving Nebilim again, but with Jade's refusal he just goals all out on the party until he is near defeat. At this point, he tries to self-destruct his robot to take out the main party with him. However, Luke launches him far away from the tower where he explodes with his robot alone.

...You'd think that'd be the end of him, but nope. He does come back for a last-ditch effort to revive Nebilim by releasing the original replica of her from her imprisonment with the help of the main party (without their knowing of course). His efforts lead to him promptly getting blasted in the face with a laser from replica Nebilim, injuring him a great deal. How nice.

However, his knowledge will only be up to him getting wrecked at the Tower of Rem.

Personality:

Dist the Rose is...certainly something, that's for sure. Or to put it concisely, let's look at a good description of him from Anise Tatlin, one of the main party members: "A stupid, rotten, friendless, ugly, snotty, poor excuse for a human being." It's really not wrong either, but Dist is a bit more complicated than just that at the same time.

To start though, it's immediately obvious that Dist is the designated comic relief villain from his very first scene, coming onto the scene in his gaudy floating chair and ridiculous outfit, claiming in a condescending tone that he should have been called into deal with the main party all along because clearly he is the only one competent enough to know how to deal with Jade Curtiss. His ego is hilariously out of control, from the way he claims that he's basically the best God-General and that his intelligence and battle robots can handle anything. However, just as quickly, the other God-Generals immediately ignore him, much to his chagrin. And oh does he let them know he's pissed, too. But this is a common theme with Dist. He talks himself up, but from his over the top and flamboyant mannerisms and desperate attempts at grabbing attention with his flowery speeches about how great he is, absolutely no one takes him seriously. And it's not like he doesn't notice this, so he's prone to throwing violent tantrums when things don't go his way. Let's put it this way: the man is so vindictive, he has a revenge journal. With that in mind, it's pretty easy to see why people are more than happy to avoid Dist if they can help it. That, or at least make fun of him. Because he makes it way too easy.

It's so easy to get caught up in how ridiculous is, that the more serious aspects of him really don't present themselves as strongly at first. But oh are they there. Looking deeper, there's a genuine genius within Dist. When he talks up his intelligence, it's not exactly all him blowing steam. He's actually really smart, even considered a prodigy where he grew up. And his intelligence really shines in the technology he develops. Very adept with machines from a young age, Dist is responsible for for some pretty serious stuff within the story: namely the machines that aid Fomicry, which is a now-forbidden art of replicating things such as objects and even humans, which became forbidden because the replicated humans often came with a lot of physical and mental defects, and often died horribly not long after their creation. The existence of Fomicry and Dist's desire to continue pursuing it despite it being illegal is a good indicator of where his morals stand. He's pretty morally ambiguous, willing to conduct unethical practices for his own goal, and his ruthlessness in that regard has earned him the nickname Dist the Reaper (which he despises). The goal in question happens to be reviving his long-dead professor, and he is more than happy to use and manipulate others to achieve it. Everything is a means to an end to resurrect Professor Nebilim. This gets pretty extreme later on in the story when he even performs an experiment on Mohs to give him the powers of the Fon Master in the form of the Seventh Fonon. Mohs ended up turning into a horrible monster because his body couldn't handle the foreign fonons, but Dist claimed that Mohs got what he asked for. He pretty much knew it was going to go bad, but hey, a little experimenting never hurts, right? It certainly had interesting results!

The serious parts of Dist don't necessarily have to mean the more villainous side of him either. While he is comic relief in a way, it's actually shows him in a pitiable light in a lot of those moments, to the point where the main party begins to feel sorry for him because he consistently allows Jade to walk all over him. He actually is shown as a pretty lonely person, and his attention-seeking is his way of trying to get people to actually pay attention to him. Even though he acts all high and mighty, a friend would actually be pretty great! However, his personality is just constantly working against him there. Even when someone actually does give him the time of day, he...doesn't even know what to do with that, so he tends to get overly chatty (usually while still boasting and rambling about himself) and overwhelms the other person. He has a bad habit of forcing people away from him, whether it's intentional or not, and rather than try to analyze why that is, he simply reacts with anger and resentment toward those who wrong him or ignore him. From the way he acts around others, and from the way he doesn't know how to emotionally deal with others properly, one might get the impression that he's pretty socially stunted.

So...why is Dist like this? Why is he the way he is? There's actually a very clear indicator for it. It all goes back to his past, back when he was known as Saphir. There was previously mention of a person known as Jade Curtiss, along with a professor that Dist is trying to revive in the present. Well, they are the two most important people in Dist's life, and when Dist was a child, he worshiped Jade because Jade was a prodigy even above himself. The two of them were taught by their professor, Professor Gelda Nebilim, and they were quite fond of her- Jade especially. Tragedy struck one day when Jade accidentally got the Professor killed when he was experimenting with fonons that he could not control. Jade tried to revive her with the use of his new invention: Fomicry. He intended to create a perfect copy of Nebilim in order to "fix" the dead one, but it went horribly wrong. The replica Nebilim was in fact not complete, and only knew destruction. After that though, Dist did not want to lose the perfect life he was living with Jade and the Professor. He knew things would never the same, so he managed to talk Jade into trying to find a way to create that perfect Nebilim clone so they could be "complete" again, in a way. Despite their best efforts, and many failed replicas later, Jade finally gave up his ambitions when he very nearly died during one of their attempts. Dist was adamant though, refusing to give up on this goal despite the fact that Jade almost died.

That is when the turning point began: Jade abandoned Dist. He officially shut down the experiments and ruled Fomicry illegal. And Dist never forgot. That is when Dist began to turn more vindictive, more filled with hate and resentment that the person he revered so deeply abandoned him and the Professor. He pushed Jade away, and continued that cycle with most others. But despite being formally abandoned, he never gave up on the goal he once shared with Jade. Because even though he hates Jade for what he did, he still wants to go back to the old days when they were friends and the Professor was alive, because that was when Jade was happy too. Jade being happy means he gets to be happy. He still has something of an obsession with Jade to this day, and it's why he allows Jade to treat him so badly. His obsession with Jade and his goals is the reason why he never really learned how to deal with anyone else. It's why he cloaks his insecurities in his egocentric speeches and a condescending demeanor. Dist is a man caught up in the past who thinks that reviving his beloved Professor Nebilim will solve all his problems.

With all of that said, it cannot be said that Dist doesn't have some good qualities to him. While he is really bad at the whole social thing, he doesn't forget when someone does something nice for him. Anise states that despite how awful he is, he made her battling doll Tokunaga for her. He did that because Anise was one of the very few people to actually give him a chance and was kind to him. He followed up that kindness by creating Tokunaga for her. And although the two of them don't exactly get along anymore (if her description of him is anything to go by), they still appreciate one another for that. So what's to be learned from that is...basically, those who are genuinely willing to put up with Dist's...Dist-ness are a blessing, and Dist doesn't forget when people are actually nice to him. He is capable of being nice in return! ...If you stroke his ego, apparently.

So that is Dist the Rose. Or Dist the Reaper, if you would like to set him right off by calling him that atrocious nickname (as if he current one isn't also atrocious). While he comes off as absolutely ridiculous, he is a very tenacious man who will do anything to achieve his goals, even if he's cheating death in the process. No matter how many times he is knocked down or defeated, he'll keep coming back. Call him delusional all you want, he absolutely does not care. His opinion is the only one that matters after all, because he is the genius, the super ultra gorgeous Dist the Rose!

Please take him seriously.

Abilities:

Fonic Artes. "Artes" are the Tales equivalent of special attacks, basically. And "fonic" means that fonons, the building blocks of matter in Tales of the Abyss, are used to create these attacks. They can be physical or magic-based, with magic-based ones utilizing glyphs to perform. Dist is able to use these as well, though they aren't particularly powerful. He's much better with the following...

Fonic Technology. Fonic Technology, or "Fontech" for short, is the development of machines or devices that use fonons for various processes. Dist is highly skilled at this, even considered a genius by his peers (...former peers) when it comes to his work with machines. He is credited with the creation of several key bits of Fontech that come into play in the story, such as his giant robots that he uses to fight with, Anise's Tokunaga (a doll that she battles with and can grow in size), and more infamously, the machines used to perform Fomicry (the replication of items or humans) later in its development. Even his floaty chair is a piece of Fontech!

All that said, from what I understand, these abilities would translate into emotion magic in Empatheias. Dist would likely catch on to how magitech and elemental cores work pretty quickly, since it seems to work similarly to Fontech. No doubt this would be one of his main areas of interest within the game!

Other than that, Dist is practically less than average when it comes to physical ability, so he's totally normal in that regard.

Alignment: Elios. The emotion that Dist is absolutely known for is his anger, though it's definitely a hateful sort of anger. He has a lot of hate and resentment for what happened in his past and for how he is treated in the present. On the opposite of Elios' spectrum, it's a twisted form of love for the "golden days" of the past that drives Dist to accomplish his goals in-canon.

Other: N/A


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: Test drive threads! If this isn't sufficient enough, I'd be more than cool with writing out a secondary sample to further demonstrate my writing with Dist!

Questions: N/A