gynvael: (Default)
Geralt z Rivii ([personal profile] gynvael) wrote2021-06-04 01:35 am

abraxas:: APPLICATION

OOC INFORMATION

Player Name: Noa
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: [plurk.com profile] discontinued
Other Characters in Game: N/A

IC INFORMATION

Character Name: Geralt of Rivia
Canon: The Witcher (Netflix)
Canon Point: End of S1, just before he finds Ciri.
Background: Canon wiki | Interactive timeline. (The first season follows his story over approx. 30 years through the course of 8 episodes.)

Suitability: Although Geralt deliberately avoids politics and power struggles, he has a knack for winding up doing the exact opposite. Eventually, there will be a personal reason he gets dragged in, whether out of old regrets in his past, his relationships with others, because he cares more than he wants to admit, or simply because he took a contract that became something much bigger than he anticipated. A part of Geralt’s development in canon is him learning that declining to be involved does not make him as neutral as he wants to believe, and his inaction can carry consequences of their own. It’s a lesson that’ll invariably follow him into this setting, too, where he’s going to be surrounded by a lot of turmoil and will sooner or later find himself on one side or the other—even if it’s a decision undertaken strictly for his own survival.

Most likely, his involvement will be on the ground level, or at least it’ll start that way. Geralt’s not going to actively have big plans to sabotage a faction from the outset—but if they’re pulling some shit and kidnapping children or something, he will probably step in somewhere and thus help sabotage an entire faction in the process, whether that was his main intention or not.

Powers:

  • enhanced strength, speed, and endurance. the mutations that created him were specifically designed for him to fight monsters much stronger and faster than a normal human. This makes him a formidable opponent, but he's not invincible and rough fights can leave him deeply wounded.

  • enhanced senses such as hearing and smell. his sense of smell is sensitive enough to identify someone by their scent alone, even if that scent is many years old, and he's capable of seeing in the dark (as he's never seen using a light source at night and mentions his eyesight was improved as part of the process).

  • increased healing and durability. Though he doesn't heal instantaneously—he still needs bandages/stitches and he gets scars like everyone else—his ability to recover and withstand damage is more robust. His slower heartbeat aids him in surviving venoms and poisons, and he's highly resistant to disease.

  • resistance to magical influence. Yennefer tells him he has a strong will when trying to bewitch him, which implies if his defenses are lowered and the caster is powerful enough, he can still fall under someone's magical sway (which he does to her), but in general it's more difficult.

  • an extended lifespan. Although he ages, he does so very slowly. At 103, he appears about in his mid-30s.

  • can ingest potions to enhance his abilities further; these would poison or kill a human if they tried to drink it. Though there are few specifics, it seems to allow him to fight longer and endure more, as well as increase the power of his Signs (the minor magic that Witchers use). They wear off after a time. He also has healing potions that help with his already quick healing abilities. Only useful if the ingredients or equivalent substitutes are available around the world for him to gather and brew.

  • minor magic known as Signs. These are the ones he’s seen using in the show thus far:

    • Aard, a physical force that's capable of pushing people back or breaking weaker structures. He make use of this one the most.

    • Yrden, a magical barrier or ward, strong enough to hold back a monster but it can be broken and will wear off after a time. Can also be used to seal doors or other openings.

    • Axii, minor mind control. He can do things like tell someone to leave a town or answer a question. He can't give complicated instructions or hold them under his control for an extended period. It is much closer to a hypnotic suggestion than full on taking over. Naturally, player permission will always be obtained before he uses it on anyone, and because canonically magic users can pretty easily resist this, Abraxas being full of mages means he’ll just assume it’s not gonna work. Can also work on animals.

    These are the ones he uses in the books, which are likely to appear on the show at some point:
    • Igni, which can set things alight. He's not described using it in combat, which suggests it has limited use in action. Instead, it looks to be more for things like soldering, lighting campfires, or burning ropes.

    • Somne, to put people to sleep. Like Axii, it seems to leave them a bit suggestible, as well. Again, permission will be obtained if it ever comes up.

    • Heliotrop, an instant barrier that cushions or protects from impacts of magic, physical blows, or falls.

    • Quen, a protective shield that lingers until dispelled. It's only for magical types of attacks, and doesn't seem effective against physical strikes.

  • this is not a power, but it's worth noting cats really do not like him or Witchers in general. They will recognize he's a Witcher immediately and hiss at him.

PERSONALITY QUESTIONS

Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.

One of the most defining moments in Geralt's life is the incident at Blaviken, which is also our first introduction to his character in the series. Geralt enters a town looking to fulfill a contract posted by the alderman, but upon his arrival, the townsfolk are all almost immediately hostile towards him. There, he meets Renfri, a woman who steps in to defend him. As early as here, he seems to find her intriguing. Shortly after, a chatty and friendly young girl leads him to a sorcerer's tower, whom the townsfolk believe is another mage who died 200 years ago but who is actually named Stregobor. Geralt quickly deduces Stregobor is in hiding. Stregobor explains that he wants Geralt to kill Renfri, who he says is a princess who was cursed during her birth under an eclipse (the Black Sun). He readily admits to having imprisoned "cursed" girls just like Renfri and tells Geralt she's killed dozens of people, saying her death would be the lesser of two evils.

Geralt turns down the job, noting he'd rather not choose between levels of evil in the first place. Renfri finds him not long after, and Geralt catches on pretty quickly that she's here to get him to kill Stregobor. He advises her to leave town instead and to let go of her need for revenge, suggesting she will never truly have a life when it's consumed by vengeance. When she returns later to tell him she's agreed to leave, they end up sleeping together in the woods. It's clear he feels something towards her, finding a kinship in their mutual status as outcasts. She also gives him a prophecy, telling him that the girl in the woods will be with you always.

When he wakes up the next morning alone, though, he realizes Renfri has lied and has no plans of leaving town. He returns to Blaviken to find her band of brigands confronting him, who inform him she's taken the young girl from earlier hostage, intent on making Stregobor come out of his warded tower by killing everyone until he does. Geralt makes short (and brutal) work of her men before trying to convince Renfri to leave again. She refuses, though her finishing of his sentence implies she's already aware of both his future and her own fate. Throughout the fight, Geralt gives her several openings to back off. Eventually, she pushes far enough that he finally ends her life before she takes his, despite his efforts to avoid this very thing.

Stregobor arrives not long after to collect her body for autopsy. It's clear he has no care for her death, though when Geralt threatens to kill him, too, if he takes her body, Stregobor turns the already fearful townsfolk on him easily. Not even the girl he saved is on his side, and Geralt ends up chased out of town—as Renfri predicted.

The ripple effect of this incident is several:

1) Geralt earns his reputation as The Butcher of Blaviken, for the 8 men he'd slaughtered in the town square. Whether they deserved it or not is up for debate, but the scene was still fairly gruesome for townsfolk who had probably never seen a Witcher until now and who find their fears justified. When we see him a decade later in 1x02, he's pretty broke and obviously is struggling even more to get contracts out of people who mistrust and fear him even more than they do most Witchers. Only when he meets Jaskier the bard does his reputation begin to turn for the better, thanks to Jaskier's extremely stretched truths in his catchy songs that paint Geralt's adventures in a heroic light. Even so, 30 years down the road in 1x08, he's once again called Butcher by a merchant. It's a piece of his history that some still remember no matter how much time has passed.

2) To this day, Geralt regrets the princess he couldn't save and seeks to make up for it where he can, first curing another princess cursed to be a Striga when anyone else would've simply killed the monster, and then later returning to search for Ciri, the princess of Cintra and his accidentally claimed Child of Surprise. In fact, he keeps Renfri's brooch on the hilt of his steel sword so that it's visible whenever he draws it. It's a reminder, according to one interview, that getting involved with others "will always lead to his own personal pain." (The irony is that Geralt can't help getting involved, again and again, sometimes because his regret over Renfri lingers.)

3) Renfri's prophecy comes back to him, time and again, in both his dreams and hallucinations. Geralt likely believes "the girl in the woods" to be Renfri herself, up until the very end of 1x08 when he overhears a merchant say that they found a young girl lost in the woods. It's here that he realizes the girl may actually be Ciri, and it's what drives him to go into those woods to look for her despite previously believing she was lost in the fall of Cintra.

Geralt harbors many regrets in his life, probably too many to count. But Blaviken is one that seems to leave its mark the most, informing a number of his choices and decisions later on.

Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?
You know what Vesemir would say? Witchers shouldn't play at being white knights. We shouldn't try to uphold the law. We don't show off. We get paid in coin. And he's right.
On the surface, Geralt tries to live his life by the standard that all Witchers (or at least those who come from the School of the Wolf, where he was trained) are taught: he kills monsters, he collects his payment, and he doesn't take it upon himself to exact justice on others, whether in a legal or moral capacity. Nor does he act as a mercenary; he's not for hire for just anything simply because the money's good enough, a fact he makes known quite firmly when he rejects a queen's attempt to enlist him during her banquet. He's a Witcher: they're highly trained for the very specific profession of killing monsters. If you want a sellsword, look elsewhere; if you want a heroic rescuer, look elsewhere, too.

Deep down, things are more complicated. Geralt as a boy is shown to be the opposite of who we see in present day: cheerful, chatty, and, most notably, dreams of becoming a knight. A character once brings up the concept of him being a knight (ironically and yet not), which Geralt never responds to but which suggests some remnant of this desire lives on inside him. Though time and experience has made him grow jaded to the notion that honorable knights exist—and if they do, he's certainly not one of them—Geralt finds himself coming to people's rescue even when there's no money involved and when it risks his life: from Yennefer to the princess in Temeria to Jaskier to a random merchant on the road, he's gotten involved in saving or helping all of them with little benefit to himself. He won't admit it, but there's a part of him that won't let him turn his back on those who need it.

At his core, Geralt is as much a protector as he is a survivor. These two tendencies frequently come into conflict: he knows nothing good will come of him stepping in, but he also can't sit and watch terrible things happen. Ideally, he'd never have to make this choice at all. Life just doesn't work that way, though, and it's a major part of why he constantly finds himself tangled up in sticky situations. He understands, perhaps more than most, that often the real monsters are the humans around him.

That said, Geralt's insistence on not getting involved or passing judgment does not mean he is a pacifist. He might try to avoid spilling blood, but when push comes to shove, he's willing to kill men just as much as he's willing to kill monsters. At one point he doesn't hesitate to use a man as bait for a monster. The man arguably deserved it, but his death was certainly avoidable. Geralt just chose to sacrifice him as a tool. Still, Geralt avoids trouble where he can. He's more likely to pack up and leave a tense situation behind before it turns into an all-out fight. People already don't like him and his kind. He prefers not to stir up any unnecessary bad blood. As he says to the elves about humans, he's learned to live with them so that he can live.

Ultimately, Geralt's morals can be summed up as complex and contradictory: a mix of wanting to do the right thing, wanting to live his life in peace, and the occasional darker desire to see those who wronged him or others get their due.

What quality or qualities do they admire most?

Geralt most values honesty and straightforwardness. He has little patience for those who try to manipulate or dance around a subject. (He's visibly annoyed by Stregobor’s inability to get to the point.) Part of this is the nature of his work, wherein people lying makes it more difficult for him to get a job done, but the other part is simply his preference for cutting through bullshit. He’s a blunt man himself and he’ll take bluntness over superficial politeness any day in return, especially if that politeness is meant to hide one's intentions.

He also appreciates courage and boldness, though this needs to be tempered with a degree of caution and care. Those who rush in without a second thought not only endanger themselves but those around them. Often, too many mistake arrogance or foolishness for courage, but to Geralt there's a significant difference between them.

Finally, strength of character is important to him, too, however one may individually find that strength. Geralt moves through a world that can be incredibly harsh, and he not only admires the resilience of those who survive nonetheless but also finds in them a kindred spirit. It's a large part of why he empathizes with Yennefer so quickly and finds himself falling in love with her.

Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?

This is a complicated question because Geralt's relationship with himself and his being a Witcher is multilayered. It's not wholly accurate to say he hates being a Witcher—on the show, it seems to be a fact he's simply come to accept—but he obviously didn't volunteer, either, and holds a lot of unprocessed grief and anger towards his mother abandoning him as a child to undergo the traumatic Witcher Trials. Still, as he says at one point, it's hard to regret something he didn't choose. In Geralt's mind, it almost doesn't matter how he feels, whether he does or doesn't like it. This is what he is and there's no point in wishing for something that will never change.

Beyond that, he also has conflicting feelings about, well. Having feelings. Rumors say that Witchers are incapable of human emotion, as they're stripped away due to the mutation process. Many Witchers maintain this rumor for their own benefit (to hold firmer ground when negotiating a contract, for example); Geralt, for his part, makes no effort to dissuade these rumors, either, as he sees little reason to when people will think what they want of him in the end, but said rumors are obviously not true. The thing is, it'd be easy if they were true, if things are really as simple for him as many believe them to be: if he doesn't know what it is to suffer a broken heart because he can't fall in love; if the massacre of his people carries no weight on him because his emotions are non-existent.

He does, however, feel all these things. Geralt is aware emotions exist within him. Each time he's confronted with the idea that Witchers feel nothing, he tends to stay silent and even once makes a remark denying it. But there are also times where he claims he neither wants nor needs anyone in his life, usually to deflect a conversation that's getting too personal or when he's afraid of what growing too close to someone might do. When he's rejected by Yennefer, his instinct is not to turn to another for comfort or support. Instead, it's to push everyone away altogether (notably Jaskier, his closest non-Witcher friend). His awareness of his ability to grow close to others is precisely what makes him hesitant to let people in. If he actually did feel nothing, he wouldn't care about people growing close to him—but he does. They can and do become important to him, and that's something he's struggling to learn how to handle, especially when loss and tragedy has been such a common theme in his life.

Would it be easier if he genuinely couldn't feel and didn't have to deal with things like hurt and guilt and loss? Probably. Is that what he actually wants? That's less straightforward to answer. It's not so much Geralt desires being an emotionless monster. Rather, he desires simplicity and quiet in his life, and sometimes it seems like his emotions are what often gets in the way of that.

What is their sign, and why?

The Hanged Man most suits Geralt’s status as an outcast. Although initially forced upon him, it’s also something he’s come to lean into. He’s unwilling to tone down or mince his words solely for the sake of not making those around him uncomfortable or to gain their approval. (This is not to say he has no restraint: Geralt can be fairly restrained, casually ignoring insults and people trying to pick a fight with him—but that’s not about fitting in and more about avoiding unwanted bloodshed.)

SAMPLES & ARRIVAL

Samples: Sample 01 | Sample 02

Arrival Scenario: Imprisoned. Ironically, he'd be more uncomfortable if they treated him as an honored guest. Getting chucked in prison for being himself is what he's used to, and I feel like it'll also give him an opportunity to rely on others and interact more rather than just lurking in a castle.