(no subject)

[lastdecember]

PLAYER INFO

---

Player Name:
• Player Contact:
• Player Age: I am very much 18+
• Permissions: We ask that all players fill out a permissions form for both OOC/IC. Link it Here.


CHARACTER INFO

---

• Character Name: Nicholas D Wolfwood
• Character Age: Uh... this is a complicated question for this character. He's probably in his mid 20s, but looks 40.
• Canon Point: Immediately post-death (end of vol 10)
A note on his death: technically, he's being brought in right before he fully died. His heart had stopped, he wasn't breathing, his body was going cold, but the resurrection drugs that he'd taken were still trying to rebuild him, so there was the faintest spark of activity in his brain still. He was basically dead, essentially dead, mostly dead, dead enough to be buried, and if he hadn't been brought to Milton he would have been fully dead within minutes.

• Character History: https://trigun.fandom.com/wiki/Nicholas_D._Wolfwood

• Character Personality:

— Positive Trait: Protective He's a human shield, by choice. His entire life has been sacrificing himself to protect others -- as a young child he took on babysitting responsibilities in the orphanage he was raised in, then he was taken by a cult and trained to be an assassin. He murdered his instructor in part to protect the kids at the orphanage from having to follow in his footsteps. While traveling with Vash he argues with the man constantly about keeping himself safe, and kills people several times to protect Vash and others. His entire story arc is putting himself in danger to save others, up to and including his death, protecting the orphanage from the cult who originally made him an assassin.
— Positive Trait: Pragmatic There's not a lot of hope in Wolfwood's worldview, but this just means that he can make hard decisions when everyone else around him is struggling to accept what has to be done. He's very much a glass half empty kind of person, who sees things "as they are", rather than as they could be. A bad person should be killed, in his view, rather than risking them causing more pain in the future, and he's willing to be the one to do the killing.
— Positive Trait: Big brother Even as a child, Wolfwood was a caretaker for the littler kids. He was denied a childhood himself, and so it's important to him that kids get to be kids -- he wants to protect them from danger, but also, to a degree, from responsibility. Childhood, to Wolfwood, should be a time of playing and goofing off, and children should be protected from seeing the cruelty of the world for as long as possible.

— Negative Trait: Pessimist Both hopeful and a pessimist? It's true! He really wants the world to be a better place and to believe in the best of people, but deep down he doesn't think that's possible. He thinks that most people are selfish, violent, and cruel, and he also believes for a very long time that people can't change. Vash changes his mind on this eventually, but not entirely – Wolfwood stops believing that everyone is awful as deserving of their fate, but he still thinks that some people don't deserve forgiveness.
— Negative Trait: Violent When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Wolfwood doesn't have a hammer but he does have a really big gun. His response to most difficult situations is to shoot his way out – this is what he was trained to do by the Eye of Michael, and it even bleeds over into his personal life. When arguing with Vash he very often yells and hits him, sometimes with significant violence (he knocks Vash down more than once during an otherwise rather mild argument).
— Negative Trait: Self-loathing Wolfwood is a bad person who has done bad things, and he doesn't think that his hands can ever be clean again. Even though so many of the things he's done have been things he didn't have a choice in (being raised in a cult to be an assassin meant that he's been killing for a very long time), he still believes that he had a choice in the matter. He could have refused to kill. He could have run away. But he chose to stay, and stay alive, because he was afraid to die. This choice stained his soul, and he'll carry the guilt forever.

Revisions requested 01/01/2024
While you have highlighted Wolfwood's positive and negative traits, we feel that your personality section is a little lacking. That it is disproportionate to the amount of content regarding Wolfwood in canon and his prominence in canon. We would like to see a little more exploration of his character, including canon examples.

Please make your revisions within 72 hours and respond to this comment with them and your updated application! If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to reply to this comment or send a PM.

Expanded Personality Section:

Even as a child, Wolfwood is a compassionate and caring person who conceals his soft heart behind brusque mannerisms and rough speech. The manga doesn't show any of his life before he came to the orphanage, but in his first meeting with Livio (beginning of Trimax vol 9), young Wolfwood tells a crying Livio that all the kids in that orphanage have been abandoned, “tossed about”, that they're all unwanted and alone. Back in Trimax vol 2 he says of himself that he was “born in a ditch”, so whatever his early life, it wasn't easy or kind. Young Wolfwood initially doesn't come off as particularly kind in this first meeting with Livio either – he confronts a crying child and tells them to knock it off, offering Livio half of a loaf of bread (the other half is stuck into Wolfwood's mouth, implying that this is his lunch that he's sharing). A few pages later the flashback continues, with Wolfwood this time beaning Livio in the head with a can of soda. Livio's been crying for longer than three days at this point, and Wolfwood's come to pull him out of his funk with some hard truths and labor in the orphanage kitchen. “Living with others is better than the alternative,” Wolfwood says, and sure enough, some companionship was exactly what Livio needed to shake off his grief. Wolfwood, even as a child, wasn't the kind of caregiver who showed love with hugs and gentle words (except when dealing with infants). He's possibly the oldest child in the orphanage and certainly the one who is relied on the most by the only adult in the place, Miss (sometimes “Aunt”) Melanie. Wolfwood's given a fussy baby to care for (vol 8, Free Bird) because he's reliable and because he's gentle with the little ones. He's the one woken up in the middle of the night because a younger child needs an escort to the toilet. Years later, when the orphanage is under attack by Chapel and the Eye of Michael, it's Wolfwood that the kids wish was there to protect them. He was only a child himself when he left the orphanage (somewhere around 12, most likely, based on the ages of the other kids), but when dangerous men with guns attack the place, even though they haven't seen him in years the children wish for their caretaker to return.

Around age 12, Wolfwood is taken by a church group called the Eye of Michael and raised to be an assassin. He's made to hide that compassionate caring nature deep down – in Trimax vol 9, his master Chapel bemoans the fact that Wolfwood was never able to cut his ties to his “family” here at the orphanage. The Eye wants him to put aside “humanity, ideology, class” as weaknesses. He's a killer, and nothing else should matter to him. Given the option of dying (something that he's terrified of, from the first time he's shot as a child) or pushing down his nature and becoming a monster for the Eye, Wolfwood chooses to become a monster. He trades in his own humanity in exchange for fighting ability and incredible strength (Trimax vol 2, during the fight with Rai-Dei), and is rewarded with a giant cross gun, one of only ten to ever have been made, and the title Nicholas the Punisher (Trimax vol 9 ch 5).

Wolfwood despises himself for the path he's chosen, but he justifies it as necessary in order to protect the orphanage (Trimax vol 2, on the gondola to the hidden ship). “I can't change the way I live,” he tells Vash, repeating a conversation they've had three times by this point. In order to protect “the kids”, he has to stay alive, and staying alive for him means killing others. “When I sense danger, I don't hesitate to pull the trigger.” For all the modifications done to his body by the Eye, he's still mortal, “only human, after all”, and he can't take the time that Vash does to try and change the minds of those he disagrees with. People don't change – this is a core tenent of Wolfwood's worldview at this point (stated at beginning of the fight with Ninelives in Trimax vol 3) – and trying to get bad people to change their minds only ends with more suffering. Vash is covered in scars from trying to get bad people to change their minds, but Vash is inhuman, supernatural, possibly immortal in Wolfwood's understanding during the time this conversation is happening. Vash can spare the time and the blood to try and convince people to be kinder to each other – Wolfwood doesn't have that luxury. Anyone would pick up a gun, he says in vol 2, to protect their loved ones when they're in danger. Most people have that capacity for violence in them, and they have to be expected to behave violently when pushed. Humanity, in Wolfwood's view, are selfish, violent, often cruel. Vash is the first person he's ever met, he says at one point, who puts the lives of others before his own... but he doesn't recognize that he's been doing the same thing all this time, letting himself be turned into a killer in order to protect the kids in the orphanage. He only sees himself as stained with blood, and doesn't believe that he can be forgiven for his sins (Trimax vol 8, during the escape from the ark).

Iin the Free Bird story (Trimax vol 8), Wolfwood talks to a young orphan about a wild bird that's out hunting in the yard. “If you could look deep into its heart,” he says to her, “you would find that all it wants is a safe place to sleep, a sufficient amount of food, and a peaceful life.” He doesn't want to be a hero, and her certainly doesn't want to be a killer. He just wants a quiet life with no suffering, without any of the responsibilities that have been put onto his shoulders. Being a killer is bad enough – he suffers from nightmares throughout the series, to the point where he wakes up crying once (Trimax vol 4, after the fight with Ninelives and all the time he spends during that fight thinking about the orphanage and the kids there). But Wolfwood is also a human trapped in a war between two supernatural beings, surrounded by killers who, like him, have been modified to be faster, stronger, deadlier than normal humans. He's terrified of dying – Vash says so himself, during the escape from the ark (Trimax vol 8). He's scared of the other Gung-Ho Guns, and the faithful of the Eye of Michael. “I know if I run,” he thinks, in Trigun 2, before Knives is resurrected and Vash blows a hole in the moon, “I'll be eaten alive” by the “monsters” who surround him. He's frightened of Knives and the impossible power that the man possesses: after Vash is assaulted by Knives and explodes in a nuclear blast, Wolfwood tries to shoot Knives, just like he shot Chapel, to rid the world of a monster. Knives is too powerful, though, and just with his presence frightens Wolfwood so much that his gun trembles in his hand as he thinks about how much he wants to live (Trimax 6 ch 2). And Wolfwood is frightened of Vash, too, for most of the series. He's frightened of what he sees at Jeneora Rock (Trigun 2) when Vash destroys part of the moon. He's frightened of Vash's endurance and ability to function even when exhausted, dehydrated, injured (Trimax 3) and his unaging nature. The original plan, between himself and another of the Gung-Ho Guns, is to try and get Vash and Knives to kill each other (Trimax 5, when he's talking with Midvalley before the fighting starts), because he can't see another way to reduce the threat posed by the twins. When he's frightened, when he's threatened, he attacks and kills without mercy.

He's not always surly, though. There's a lot of comedy in this series, and Wolfwood's day to day mannerisms with strangers is professional, polite, even friendly. In combat he's direct, rude, angry... and with those he's close to, the people he travels with and those he spends a lot of time with, he's at his most mocking and abrasive. He rags on Vash in a way he never does with inn keepers, or bartenders, or any of the other 'ordinary' people he encounters. He hides his affections behind that surly demeanor, to try and keep some distance between himself and people he can see himself growing closer to. One example of this is Wolfwood's suggestion at the start of the Dragon's Nest arc that he and Vash ditch the insurance girls before heading into this dangerous situation. “They're our traveling companions,” Wolfwood admits, before suggesting that they get left behind as revenge for a previous slight. Vash points out here how Wolfwood always phrases things so negatively – Wolfwood's intent here is clearly to keep the girls safe, but he can't just come out and say that. He has to claim that it's for petty, mean reasons, rather than admitting that he's worried about their safety.

That avoidance of attachments (or the attempt to avoid attachments, because Wolfwood seems to make lifeling friends every time he spends more than a few days with somebody) is ultimately what gets him killed. For all that he's quick to jump to the defense of others, sacrificing so much to try and protect those he cares for, he doesn't assume that others will care for him in the same way. In Trimax 8, Wolfwood breaks onto Knives's ark and rescues Vash, nearly dying in the process. Immediately afterward, arguably as short as two days later, he takes off to go defend the orphanage without telling anyone where he's going or asking for help. “You tried to do it all by yourself again,” laments Miss Melanie, as Wolfwood lies bloody and beaten in the courtyard of the orphanage, just seconds away from being killed by his former master. I made a friend, he thinks at the end. Together they could have protected the orphanage, but he didn't ask Vash for his help. He went off to fight on his own, and that choice cost him his life.

So, to recap, Wolfwood is a lonely, miserable person, who uses violence and a glass-half-empty mindset to push others away. The choices he's been given in life made him a murderer, but beneath all that self-loathing is a man who just wants a quiet life with his family.



• Character Skills: Does your character have any particular skills that might help them in game? Maybe they have knowledge of firearms, carpentry, fishing, maybe foraging or how to make clothes. List them here in bullet-point form:

• firearms both big and small, including use of and maintenance
• field medic
• excellent babysitter (no really)
• can cook a little?
• he's actually not a bad priest either

• Character Inventory: Characters may bring THREE items with them. These can be items a character owns, but might not happen to have on their person when they are brought to this world. They may bring tools they may already own to help them survive, or cherished personal items. The clothes they're wearing do not count as a slot, but if they have really good winter coat at home, that would count as a slot.

He's only coming with the things he's got on him!

— ITEM ONE: A black suit, white shirt, and brown shoes, all bullet-shot and crusted with dried blood. He's also wrapped in a blood-stained and dirty bedsheet.
— ITEM TWO: A Grader .45 hand gun. The clip in the gun currently is nearly empty, but he's got a couple (2-3?) full clips in a pocket.
— ITEM THREE: A single .45 bullet, of a different make than the ones in his clips

• Important Notes: Wolfwood here has been surgically modified to be a human+ (he heals 4x faster than a regular human, is 4x stronger, faster, etc.) If these abilities need to be nerfed down to human normal I'm happy to do so.

• Writing Samples: Players must provide TWO prose writing samples. These both must be log threads. Due to the fact there is no network in this game, 'network' or 'texting'-style threads will not be accepted.

— SAMPLE ONE: Here
— SAMPLE TWO: Here