fade rift: application

[apologist]

NATIVE APPLICATION

PLAYER

Name: MJ
Age: 29 30
Contact: circuitry
Other Characters: Alistair
Interests: Religion, politics, fake French accents. Druffy.

CHARACTER

Name: Brother Jehan Mercier d'Annecy, Jeannot to family and friends so inclined
Canon/OC: OC
Journal: apologist
Race: Human
Nationality: Orlesian
Occupation: Chantry cleric/scholar
Division: Diplomacy
Mage or Non-Mage: Non
Age: 28

History

Jehan is the fourth and youngest son of the Baron and Baroness of Annecy, a small town in central Orlais. Of his brothers, the first is the heir in training; the second, a Templar; and the third, presently an undisciplined layabout. The family was and is comfortably wealthy, with a home in Val Royeaux and apartment in Halamshiral. Meanwhile, Jehan's maternal grandmother hailed from the Anderfels and brought with her a more austere devotion to the Chant of Light than was common in Orlais, which his mother hated and his father humored and Jehan eventually embraced.

An early childhood injury--one involving one of his older brothers and an axe, purely unintentional, but blamed on an elven servant to avoid trouble--left him with permanent damage to his right leg, in particular his knee, even after his parents brought in a spirit healer to prevent full amputation. Jehan was five at the time. He recovered well and was never sickly, but his life did seem to become a list of things his brothers could do that he could not. He wound up spending a lot of time indoors reading or escorting his aging grandmother to the village Chantry, since they walked at about the same speed.

She died when he was nine. As a show of devotion in his grandmother's honor, Jehan's favorite brother, the one who occasionally made the others slow down to include him, was given to the Chantry to serve as a Templar. Two years and one long adolescent hunger strike later, Jeannot followed. He would never be a knight, obviously, but Chantry Brother was as good a job as any for a fourth son.

Jehan was schooled by the Chantry until he was sixteen, when he suffered a crisis of commitment born of boredom and restlessness and went back home to Annecy. He laid around being miserable and distant (teenagers!) with his family until they sent him to the University of Orlais to make him cut it out. It worked. He was challenged; he made wonderful, terrible friends; he grew up and his moods and impetuousness evened out, mostly.

He was twenty when the Fifth Blight threatened Ferelden. Soon after Brother Genitivi publicized the discovery of Andraste's ashes, and that example of how to serve without going stir crazy pushed Jehan back into the fold. He took his vows as a Brother when he was twenty-four. Before and after, he traversed Thedas with Val and Freddie, having scholarly adventures that would make me exceed my word count.

Most recently they attempted and mostly failed to visit Par Vollen and, after fleeing, determined they couldn't go back to the University—because Val might be conscripted, because Freddie had been expelled, because Jeannot goes where they go—and set their sights on the Inquisition instead.

Personality

Jehan is genial and soft-spoken, handling most people with a removed but cheerful imperturbability and a brisk, mischievous sense of humor—the sort shared quietly and straight-faced with a neighbor in the back of a lecture hall rather than announced to everyone, though the right company and the right amount of liquor can make him much louder. He's coolheaded in crises and arguments. Nine out of ten insults roll off his back. The one the doesn't still seems to, until there's an opportunity for revenge. The harmless kind. Probably.

The posture, table manners, and grammar that mark him as nobility have been stripped of flash and showmanship, but he maintains a level of crisp propriety that makes him stick out among the lower-born. Sometimes he's worn the same clothes for a month, sometimes he's lying out flat in the dirt and mud to get a good look at something, but he does it with dignity. As far as the Game goes—however peripheral his involvement—he has the weaponized good manners down, and humility and harmlessness are a decent enough defense.

That shell is fairly impenetrable, but beneath it he's fiercely loyal to his friends and his faith in equal, unwavering measure. He's entirely sincere in his religion, no less so for being learned and fairly experienced in the world. Meanwhile, his friends have jumped off bridges and he has jumped after them, so don't bother asking.

A childhood spent dragging himself after his siblings on crutches left him with something to prove--quietly but stubbornly--about his ability to keep up, physically and otherwise. He works hard. He possibly overcompensates with the adventurousness. He never asks for help from anyone with something he believes he can do on his own until he's tried it a dozen times and is probably bleeding. He doesn't like to let anyone do his thinking for him, either, not even the Chantry.

He makes an effort to live simply and keep his vows, with varying levels of success depending on peer pressure and the direction of the wind. He drinks more than his elders would approve of, and if someone is a funny blasphemer he's apt to laugh rather than tsk. He has a weakness for candied nuts and nice pillows. He forgives himself for those things and will tell anyone who doesn't that the Maker would like to see his children happy as well as penitent. But he also keeps a mental catalog of his sins, in particular the invisible ones like pride and desire, and after egregious slip-ups may suffer bouts of scrupulosity.

He's kind-hearted and compassionate, within the limits of his worldview, but often distant and academic about it. He's ashamed of his occasional flash of temper. The periodic meltdown is shared with close friends or with no one at all. He wants to be better than he is.

Opinions & Affiliations

The Chant: Jehan is an Andrastian; he has a vow of chastity to show for it and everything. On the scale of potential future Divines, he would most closely align with Cassandra's moderate reforms but wouldn't ragequit the faith over Leliana's revolution or Vivienne's restoration. The only thing he's markedly liberal about is academic freedom. Banned books and revised history make him sad, and the Chant--being true and correct--can only be made stronger by freely flowing criticism.

Other Religions: Wrong.

Magic: Circles are necessary, but it isn't something he has a personal stake in or gets emotional about. He's visited Circles in the past, on account of of all the books, and he isn't afraid of mages as long as they don't raise their voices or make any sudden moves.

Race Relations: He subscribes to the idea that nonhumans have turned further away from the Maker than humanity and has minimal experience with other races outside of elven servants and dwarven merchants. He isn't a mean-spirited racist--elves deserve pity, not beatings, and so on and so forth--but he is prone to paternalism, ignorance, staring, etc.

National Relations: A fan of Celene due to her support of the University but otherwise disinterested in politics, though he is a casual patriot. Orlais is the pinnacle of modern civilization, de toute évidence. Ferelden is... charmingly scrappy. The North is either a backwater or in need of Andraste, or both, depending on which way you turn, but terribly interesting.

Adaptation

N/A.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Jehan was educated by private tutors, then the Chantry, then the University of Orlais, and his foremost usefulness is as a scholar. He's sharp--though the people he spends his time with tend to be sharper--and as a writer he has a knack for communicating complex ideas simply and for slipping sly humor into dry material. He's a theologian and historian with a focus on pre-Chantry history, in particular the period between Andraste's birth and the Chantry's formation, but he dabbles all over the timeline and in a few other topics as a hobbyist, able to follow conversations about them or assist his friends but not contributing anything original, etc.

He speaks fluent Orlesian and Trade and basic Ander, and he can work through writings in Tevene and Antivan if they're simple or if he has time to sit down and puzzle for a bit. He's easy to get along with, at least for anyone who isn't prone to taking offense at the world's standard set of prejudices. And all vows and adventures aside, he's still a product of the Orlesian upperclass who understands the Game. He's gained some experience in diplomacy since joining the Inquisition and is unlikely to embarrass the organization in social situations, unless he's way out of his element, such as trying to talk to pirates.

Jehan's bad leg can be subtle: he can stand and walk unassisted (albeit with a limp) for moderate stretches of time, but to maintain a brisk pace without tripping or having his knee give out, especially on uneven terrain, he needs a crutch or a cane. But he gets around. He earns his stubbornness about not accepting help by really very rarely requiring it. And he's a good rider.

He carries a dagger and knows how to shoot an arrow in approximately the correct direction. In a pinch he can be helpful against wild animals or untrained aggressors. On three separate occasions he's knocked someone unconscious with his crutch. But if he's ever holding a sword, that's a good sign that the Plan has gone terribly Awry.

Inventory

↠ Clothes, mercifully.
↠ A dagger.
↠ A crutch and matching cane.
↠ Two books, three maps, several journals filled with indecipherable shorthand, ink, candles, no quills, can he borrow yours.
↠ A spyglass.
↠ A mare traded for in Rivain after the loss of his first, in need of a name and better training.
↠ A weird animal bought off a pirate, name changes regularly.
↠ A flask, tragically empty.
↠ Elfroot for chewing.

UPDATE: In addition to all the things he owned before, Jehan is returning from Orlais with gifts for his friends—including wine, fashionable cloth for new tailored clothes, a few fancy books, preserved foods from home, etc. Nothing magical or with plot attached. And also a collection of incense for Kirkwall's Chantry on behalf of some Orlesian Mother or another.

Motivation

He is here to BE A HERO. And because his friends are. He's returning from a long trip to Orlais, where he was partly visiting family and partly speaking to some of his Chantry connections on the Inquisition's behalf in a friendly, non-threatening, "they're not heretics really!" way. It wasn't entirely convincing.

THIS IS A RE-APP AND I DELETED MY SAMPLES I've played him all over the comms and can link those threads to myself in my head, whatever.