https://thediadem.dreamwidth.org/5340.html April 1st

[lastdecember]

Player Information

Player: Joe
Contact: notJoe @ Plurk
Invitation OR characters played: Invited by the lovely Sipp!
Are you over 18?: Yes


Character Information

Character: Nicholas D. Wolfwood
Canon: (& canon point) Trigun Maximum, end of volume 10 (right after he dies)
Age: He's probably about 20, but he looks like he's in his late 30s.
History: Link
Additional history: Wolfwood was orphaned at a young age, and is shown to be compassionate (if somewhat rough around the edges) as a kid. Around age 12 he’s taken by a cult and trained to be an assassin. He’s also subjected to medical experimentation that prematurely ages him, so by the time we meet him in canon he’s barely 18 but looks like he’s in his early 30s.

As part of his training, and then on assignment after that, Wolfwood has killed a lot of people. It’s heavily implied that he killed other children during his training, and given that the cult he’s working with is an apocalypse cult that sees humans as trash, it’s easy to assume that he’s killed non-combatants (including children) since then.

About age 18, at the end of his training, Wolfwood shoots his mentor (codenamed Chapel) and steals the man’s identity. He takes an invitation issued to Chapel to travel to a little town for a meeting with the other leaders of the cult. Wolfwood’s plan is to kill them, and prevent the cult from taking any more children and turning them into monsters like he is. However, when he arrives the other assassins there are terrifyingly strong, and the man the cult is built around (Millions Knives) is basically a god. He can’t do anything but stand back and watch as the friendly idiot (one Vash the Stampede) he met on the road transforms into a nightmare, and in the ensuing fight there’s such a big explosion that a new crater is blasted into one of the moons.

Wolfwood is then sent by Millions Knives to track down Vash and drag him back to Knives’s base. It takes him two years to find the man, and then they travel together for about a year. At first, the plan is simple enough – he will deliver Vash to Knives, and the two superpowered beings will fight and kill each other. But as he and Vash travel together, he gets to like Vash against his better judgment, and so by the end of the journey he’s wracked with guilt for his part in Vash’s certain death. He’s spend his entire ‘adult’ life doing awful things to keep himself alive, though, so in the end Vash is a prisoner and Wolfwood is back under the boot of his (surprise!) not-dead mentor, Chapel.

All the moral gains of the past year are washed away as Wolfwood is forced to return to killing, and even worse, into helping to steal the power and water generators from town after town, condemning the residents there to certain death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people die because of him during this time, while a good man is tortured. This guilt eats at Wolfwood until he can’t bear it any longer and he breaks Vash out of prison, nearly dying in the process.

As soon as he’s recovered from his injuries Wolfwood leaves again without telling anyone where he’s going. Knives’s ship has been seen turning toward the orphanage Wolfwood was raised in, so he goes alone to defend the place. Vash chases after him, but Wolfwood’s mortally wounded before Vash can arrive. During this fight, Wolfwood allows himself to be grievously injured so that the man he’s fighting – who, it turns out, is a little boy named Livio he’d known from the orphanage years ago – can have the time he needs to come to his senses. He saves Livio, and lives just long enough himself to have a touching final moment with Vash, where absolutely nothing of consequence is said.


Possessions: Nothing but the clothes on his back -- a tattered black suit with a white shirt underneath and a pair of tan wingtips. There's a crushed pack of cigarettes in his pocket with only a handful of smokes left, and a Zippo-style lighter that's nearly out of fluid. Everything he's wearing is bloodstained and dirty.

Weapon: He's got one of his 9mm Grader pistols in a shoulder holster. The clip is about half full.

Powers/Abilities: At full strength Wolfwood is Winter Soldier strong -- he can punch through a brick wall or throw a motorcycle. He's got fantastic endurance, which allows him to go without food or water for longer than an ordinary human hould be able to, and he's got excellent endurance for pain. If he's shot, you'll only know about it if he wants you to.

And, since his other superpower is his rapid healing, that gun shot won't be a problem for very long anyway. Wolfwood's been surgically modified to heal faster than a normal human (broken bones heal in days instead of months), and he also used to have a magic potion that would allow him to heal any kind of damage. He doesn't have the potions anymore, though, and couldn't use them even if he had one, but his rate of healing is still accelerated.

Beyond superpowered stuff, he's been trained extensively in combat so he's an excellent fighter, and his aim with any firearm is unmatched.


Application Questions

Who is the most important person in their life and why? What might be different if this person hadn't been around?
The most important person in Wolfwood's life is Vash "Bad Decisions" Stampede (and yes, that's his middle name. Wolfwood changed it for him).

In Wolfwood's world, those with power don't hesitate to use that power for personal gain, stepping on the weak and only looking out for themselves. Vash is one of the two most powerful people on the planet, with abilities that approach divine, but instead of using his strength to mold the world to his will, Vash puts himself between the weak and those who would harm them. He refuses to kill, doesn't even like hurting people, and to Wolfwood's complete shock Vash is proven to be right. People can change, nobody is born bad and everyone is deserving of good things and kindness. It was a life-altering realization, and Wolfwood ultimately committed so much to Vash's worldview that he died upholding it.

Plus, aside from all that deep stuff, he and Vash are friends and Wolfwood doesn't have many friends.

If Vash and Wolfwood had never met, Wolfwood would still have been taken from the orphanage as a kid and turned into an assassin. He still would have killed other children as part of his training, and would still have been medically experimented on to make him tougher, stronger, faster, and able to be healed almost instantly with a special potion that also aged him prematurely. He still would have been under the thumb of Chapel, his mentor in assassin school, and still would have shot Chapel and fled when the horrors of the place got to be too much for him to handle.

He still would have taken Chapel's identity, and the man's invitation to attend a very special gathering of killers and monsters. Without running into Vash, he might have died in the desert on the way to that meeting, after his motorcycle broke down and he was forced to travel on foot. If he'd survived that journey, though, he would have watched the devil being resurrected, and would have seen a second demon, the devil's twin, shoot a hole into the moon.

The devil then commanded Wolfwood to track Vash down, and in canon that's what he did. But if he hadn't been able to find Vash then he just would have wandered the world alone. He would have killed without compassion, would have lent a hand to the locals in good times but would have left when things got bad, because other people's problems were never his responsibility. He would have been terrified that some day he might stumble across Vash the Stampede, the demon from hell who could summon enough power to blast a city off the face of the planet. He wouldn't have tried very hard to find Vash, even if his failures came with consequences.

And eventually, years later, the devil he served would have been fully healed, and without Vash to stand in his way, he would have wiped humanity out, and Wolfwood, frightened of dying himself, would have helped in the massacres. He would have been able to keep the kids at the orphanage alive, but not forever. Eventually he would have outlived his usefulness to the devil, and he would have been disposed of.


Is there an event in your character's life that they'd do differently? How so and why?
There's no point in regretting things that have happened. The decisions he's made kept him alive, and to regret them would be the same as wishing that he'd died years ago. He's done horrible things, made terrible decisions, and he's hurt more people than he can count... but if he undid any of those actions, then he wouldn't have survived to meet Vash, he wouldn't have been able to be of use to him, and the world would have actually ended.

Although maybe, maybe, he should have told Vash that he was leaving to go fight Chapel. Maybe he should have asked for help. Maybe. Because while he still thinks that going on his own was the right decision for a couple reasons (Vash had more important things to worry about, and a man takes care of his own messes), his death had to have been upsetting for Vash. It's hard to fight when you're hurting, and so if he could have spared Vash that hurt, then the final battle that's still looming on the horizon might have been easier for Vash to deal with.

When Wolfwood left to fight Chapel, though, he didn't go with the expectation that he was going to die. The risk was there, sure, but he'd only recently fought both Chapel and Livio, and it's part of Wolfwood's training to learn his enemy's tactics while fighting them. He was well prepared for that fight, and honestly thought that he'd be able to killed Chapel on his own. He didn't really think much about what was going to happen with Livio (and Razlo), though, and that was definitely a mistake.

If he'd told Vash that he was going to the orphanage because he was certain that Chapel and Livio were there waiting for him, then Vash would absolutely have come with him. Vash would have stopped him from killing Chapel, though, and Chapel had to die. Wolfwood's come a long way in his belief that people can change and that death takes away their ability to redeem themselves, but Chapel tortured him for years. Chapel tortured Livio for years. Chapel was responsible for putting the gun in Wolfwood's hand and making him kill so many people -- so many children. Wolfwood's a monster because he had no choice, but Chapel was a true believer, and if left alive it would only be a matter of time before he hurt someone else. For some crimes, death is the only correct consequence.

So maybe he should have brought Vash with him, to spare Vash the pain of having to carry on alone. But maybe sneaking out in the middle of the night to have his revenge and to save his brother was the right choice after all.



What's the greatest challenge you foresee your character facing in the setting? How might this impact their ability to adapt and in what ways will they confront this challenge?
Well, he's dead... or he was dead, but now he's not? It's going to take some time (and maybe some familiar faces) to convince Wolfwood that any of this is real... and if he doesn't think it's real, he's not going to concern himself too much with following the rules. Somebody wants to give him a car, and tells him he owes a debt for the gift? Sure! Don't expect him to have any plans to pay off that debt until he's able to be convinced that he really does need to. For the first time in his life he gets to be selfish and not follow any else's rules, and he doesn't really know what to do with that freedom. He's never been off leash before! But since he's dead, the worst they can do is kill him again, right? So he might as well figure out what he wants to do... and paying off a debt or listening to anyone who thinks they're an authority figure isn't going to make that list.


What's the easiest thing you foresee your character adapting to in the setting?
He's spent a lot of his life traveling in a desert environment, so driving long distances for work will be familiar. Plus, with the environment here being more green and wet than he's used to, driving long distances will be a joy!

...Okay, maybe not a joy, exactly, but there's trees! And grass! And the breeze has water in it, and the clouds aren't made of dust, and the single sun is warm and bright and really, this is about as close to paradise as he'd ever expected to get. And it is paradise, because he's dead.




Samples

Sample: (Samples must contain a combined 10 log-style comments from you. Samples do not need to precisely match your character's canon point, but should mostly reflect your character's personality at that canon point. Inbox spam (TFLN, texting memes, game networks, etc.) will not be accepted.)

Wolfwood's TDM top level.

Sing: chopping wood with Raju (an ancient thread! two years old!)

Mnemosyne: Murderbot won't leave the lights alone. This one was an AU game, but the personality's still the same.