App for Pines

[girlexmachina]

PLAYER

NAME: Jessie
CONTACT: sunnjessie @ gmail.com, zerothlaw, zerothlaw#8479 on discord
OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE PINES: No

CHARACTER

NAME: Aloy
CANON: Horizon Zero Dawn
CANON-POINT: Post game

DOSSIER

HISTORY: Spoilers, of course, for which I apologise. On Earth in the far future where giant robot dinosaurs roam the wilds, Aloy was found as a newborn baby in front of All-Mother in the Sacred Mountain of the Nora tribe, where none but the matriarchs are permitted to go. The high matriarchs could not agree on whether the infant was a blessing given to them by All-Mother or a motherless abomination and a curse upon them. In the Nora tribe, breaking a law or violating a taboo is often punished with a term of being Outcast, when one must live in the wilds alone and it is forbidden to speak with any Nora. As a compromise, Aloy was made Outcast, and was given to a man named Rost to raise, a man who was permanently Outcast but who held the tribal law in high regard. As a child, Aloy was frustrated by her Outcast status, the reason for which neither she nor Rost knew, but when told that the matriarchs did know, she formed a plan: if she competed in and completed the annual test of strength and skill called the Proving, by which young men and women are made Braves, she would become a Nora. If she won the Proving, she would be granted a boon by the matriarchs, and she could ask to know where she came from.
Aloy trained many years; Rost was a skilled hunter and taught her to fight and track everything from small animals to the machines that lived in the Sacred Valley. She was aided by a device called a Focus, a small triangular object worn on the ear, that she had found as a child in an underground ruin of the Metal World, the remnants of the Old Ones who had died so long ago. The year she was nineteen, Aloy bid goodbye to Rost and attended the Proving; there, she met a man named Olin, who had travelled with a group from the Sunking of the Carja as a peacemaking initiative between the groups. Olin also had a Focus, the first Aloy had ever seen someone else with, as the Nora are superstitious and have a great taboo on entering the ruins of the Old Ones. Aloy won the proving, but immediately upon being declared the victor, a group of strangers appeared and attacked, killing most of the new young Braves. Their leader nearly did kill Aloy, but she was rescued by Rost, who had been watching the Proving in secret. Rost saved her life by pushing her off the mountain top with the single word “survive,” before their attackers set off an explosion meant to kill her.
The Nora found Aloy, and under the instruction of a sympathetic high matriarch named Teersa, was brought into the Sacred Mountain to either recover or die. She recovered, and upon waking learned from the Focus that she had taken from one of the fallen attackers that the attack had been meant to kill her in particular, and that it had something to do with a woman who looked much like her, but older and with short hair. Aloy thought perhaps this was her mother, but Teersa explained to Aloy her mysterious origin and brought her to the All-Mother. Aloy recognised the “goddess” as actually being a door deeper into the mountain, but though the door scanned her, it would not open due to a data corruption. Teersa interpreted this as a task for Aloy, informing her that she must fix the corruption in the world before she could return to All-Mother. Aloy was made a Seeker, which gave her permission to leave the Nora lands and also to enter the ruins that could be found in the world, both of which were taboo. She accepted this, wanting to know more about where she had come from and why these strange men wanted her dead, and why they seemed able to control machines.
Over many hours of game time and a bazillion quests and wandering all over what used to be Colorado and Utah delving into ancient ruins, along with the guidance of a man who called himself Sylens who had hacked into her Focus to speak with her, Aloy learned that the Old Ones of the Metal World had created autonomous machines to wage war on each other. These robots were capable of using any biological material to refuel, could make more of themselves, and were capable of overriding other robots to their side. Through a glitch, a group of them broke free of control and began building more and spreading over the world, eating whatever biomass they get in order to power themselves. If not stopped, it was determined, Earth would be completely devoid of life of any kind in less than two years. The woman whose image Aloy had seen, who looked so much like her, was Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, regarded as being the greatest mind of her generation and a pioneer in “green robots” designed to help clean up the environment and improve the world. Elisabet determined that there was no way to stop Earth’s extinction, but she created Project Zero Dawn. It consisted of a sophisticated AI named GAIA, which would work out a code to shut down the deadly robots, rebuild the world afterwards using organically inspired robots (the dinosaur-like machines of Aloy’s world) to gather materials and detoxify the environment, seed it with new life, and when it was ready, reintroduce humans grown from frozen embryos, educated from a library of human knowledge. The library was lost, however, and the new wave of humanity was reduced to a primitive state of life. Other than this, all went well for nearly a thousand years before GAIA was attacked by a virus of unknown origin which splintered her into her constituent sub-minds. She lost control of the terraforming machines, and the part of her mind known as HADES which had been meant as a way for the life-valuing GAIA to wipe the planet clean and start again if necessary, was in particular free to act uncontrolled. The attackers who had sought to kill Aloy were a cult called Eclipse that had risen up around HADES, who ordered them to dig up old machines from the war and reactivate them. Unable to act to save herself or to prevent a second annihilation of Earth, GAIA used the equipment in one of the Cradles that the first generation of new humans had been born in to create a clone of her creator, Elisabet Sobeck, and to place the infant where humans would find her. Aloy, as Elisabet’s clone, was able to pass genetic scans to enter locked areas, and to retrieve the code that would force GAIA (and HADES) to reboot, returning the world to the safe equilibrium it had known. HADES had seen Aloy through Olin’s Focus, recognised her as Elisabet Sobeck, and identified her as a threat to his goal, but in the end, she was able to lead the combined forces of several tribes to a victory against HADES and his ancient-machine-and-cultist army.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S STRENGTHS?: Aloy is a remarkably determined young woman, compassionate and insightful. She is highly intelligent (taught herself to read in a culture without a written language, correctly intuited that the world is round from the shadow on the moon before having it confirmed for her, etc), very curious about all things, and generally fearless. She has a good sense for why people act the way they do, and an appreciation for strength and courage. She will also call people out for being selfish or acting disingenuously, regardless of rank or prestige or importance. She's aware of what she can do for people, and recognises that not everyone can do what she does and so may have need of her skill and perspective, and while she might sometimes become frustrated with that, she also doesn't resent it, being a kind person in general.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S WEAKNESSES?: Her intensity in the face of what she perceives as injustices is not always tactful, particularly when it’s on the behalf of someone else who may not feel it’s an injustice at all. She can be too direct, and sometimes judgemental. She’s also not always the best at letting herself be dependant on others, used to really only having herself to rely on. Things intentionally being kept from her frustrated her greatly, and she can be impatient on this point. She rarely bothers to hide her emotional responses to things, and wears her heart on her sleeve.

WHAT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR CHARACTER'S PAST HAVE IMPACTED THEM THE MOST?: Aloy was raised an outcast, something she feels was wrong and unfair, and this has greatly shaped her sense of what is right or wrong. She becomes angry about injustices, and works to right them when she can. She doesn’t truly belong in any tribe, as the Nora rejected her for most of her life and other tribes reject her as being a savage from the strange matriarchal Nora tribe, so she remains solitary to a degree while also wanting to help people. The other great influence in her life was the discovery of where she came from and who Elisabet Sobeck was. Aloy sees Elisabet as a sort of mother, who was brilliant and who saw beauty in the world that was worth saving, and Aloy aspires to this as well. She tends to flat-out ignore compliments that aren’t about her skill, not having received many of them in her life.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CHARACTER?: Aloy seeks out to uncover mysteries and help people who cannot help themselves. She’s generally fascinated by how things work and the mysteries of the world, and she seeks to find them. Generally, she looks to protect and help where she can, and learn everything about everything on the way.

WHAT IMPRESSION DO OTHERS TEND TO HAVE OF YOUR CHARACTER?: She is the sort of person who says what’s on her mind, and this can be intimidating to some people and attractive to others. She comes across as very serious and intense, and perhaps a little merciless.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES THAT IMPRESSION DIFFER FROM WHO YOUR CHARACTER REALLY IS?: Though she is serious, Aloy also is a deeply empathetic person. She has experienced personal loss and is supportive when she finds that someone else has as well. As fierce and direct as she can be, she has a lot of love and passion for people.

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER HANDLE CRISIS OR ADVERSITY?: She grits her teeth and doubles down. Note that at the age of six she determined she would learn about her past by winning the Proving, committing to years of hard training. Fear and doubt are experienced privately only. If someone doubts her, rather than argue with them she will go ahead and prove them wrong without comment.

WHICH 5 THINGS WILL YOUR CHARACTER REMEMBER UPON ARRIVAL, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?: 1. Rost, the man who raised her. He was essentially the only person in her life for most of her childhood, and his death is something she carries with her.
2. The name “Elisabet Sobeck,” without knowing who that is. Aloy's quest to learn who she is and where she came from has been a major driving force for her.
3. The word “HADES.” Like the name "Elisabet Sobeck," it represented a secret she had to uncover, if a far more terrible one.
4. How to hunt and kill machines. She's spent most of her life learning and training to do this, and she wouldn't forget easily.
5. The log house on the mountain of the Embrace she grew up in. It was her home for most of her life, even if she doesn't consider it home anymore.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER?:


SKILLS, ABILITIES, & PHYSICAL WEAKNESSES: Aloy is a skilled hunter and tracker; she’s aided in part by her Focus, but even without it she’s a force to be reckoned with. She’s skilled with bows and slings, is capable of making arrows or simple explosive with the right materials, and has a fierce spear-arm. She’s extremely stealthy and silent when she needs to be. She can climb rock faces and mountain cliffs more or less effortlessly, and is basically a skilled parkour artist, leaping and rolling to cross a gap or avoid a giant robot attacking her or what have you. Aloy is also extremely smart, if that counts as a skill, and is good at figuring out how things work.


INVENTORY: Her Focus: a small triangular object that sits on her ear. It’s a small but relatively powerful computer, capable of a holographic augmented reality interface visible only to her. It can highlight a trail or an enemy’s weak points, scan or record or store a text or audio document, translate a language, mark a spot of interest, all sorts of useful things. It’s the 2060’s version of the smart phone.
Her bow: made of metal scavenged from machines, sturdy and strong, decorated with feathers. Also, a quiver full of arrows at her waist with sharp metal tips.
Her spear: also machine-scavenged metal. Strong enough to take down giant robots, can be used to slash or stab, also decorated with feathers. On the butt end is a device scavenged from an ancient machine which allows her to override and control computer systems or non-sapient robots.
An amulet: a small carved necklace that used to belong to Rost’s deceased daughter. Sentimental value.
A small decorative globe: fits in the palm of her hand, taken from the corpse of Elisabet Sobeck when Aloy found her final resting place.

SAMPLES

PROSE-HEAVY: Here
DIALOGUE-HEAVY: Here