Dillon Cole || Scorpion Shard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
orderfromchaos) wrote2012-07-04 11:30 am
orderfromchaos) wrote2012-07-04 11:30 am
PERMISSIONS POST
Dillon Cole is from an obscure YA series, Star Shards by Neal Shusterman, which follows the basic plot of 'A bunch of teenagers have superpowers, shenanigans ensue'. In this case, however, all of the shards have seriously vast powers than they can't entirely control. They're basically gods, and Dillon's powers are the strongest and most fundamental, in terms of how they interact with the universe. So here's a great big TLDR perms post where I try to explain everything he can do.
What he is:
If your character has any ability to see or sense souls/true nature/energy or anything of that sort, Dillon is, literally, (most of) a reincarnated star several times the size of Earth's sun. He has an incredible amount of power crushed into his little human form, and he can't quite keep all of it inside his skin. He's not quite the entire star, however: five smaller pieces of his soul splintered away when the star went nova, and became the souls of other people. Anybody with a reason to is free to pick up on any/all of this. If your character can see his power in a visual way, it reads a bright, burning green.
What he can see:
Canonically, Dillon can learn a great deal about a person just by observing them. It's not a psychic power - he can simply read the rhythm of a person's breath, the dips in their voice, a thousand minute and ordinary details, and his ability can use that to effortlessly deduce everything from the precise nature of childhood trauma to what sort of car someone drives. It doesn't happen all at once, and more detailed/deeply buried things are only apparent if he is actually paying attention/trying to figure them out, but over the course of an ordinary conversation he could pick up quite a lot. Because this is based on his external senses, it will work over the NV for video posts, and to a lesser extent for voice posts. Limiting his range of vision will mostly cut him off from this ability. This ability is not perfect - sometimes he will make a close but incorrect guess/deduction/miss a vital detail. It's also not instantaneous; he generally learns more over time, as he observes more reactions.
In addition to the past, he can also see the pattern of future possibilities surrounding a person, but only when he's specifically looking for it/concentrating on it, which he doesn't do very often. More on this later.
What he CAN'T see:
Anyone who is literally soulless shows up blank for him, especially their futures. He just can't figure it out without that spark there. He can't read his own future pattern, and sometimes he can be very blind to the patterns closely surrounding him. Dillon also couldn't read anything from the Vectors, creatures of pure spirit from another dimension who took human hosts. If your character has powers that should obscure them, or is something altogether different from human, then Dillon probably won't get much out of them. If they're different but similar - humanoid aliens, people with powers that make them more than human but were raised on earth with human culture, etc - then he can probably get some information, but less and with more effort than normal, and he may not understand all of what he perceives. Lastly, if you want to keep your characters' secrets safe from him but can't think of another reason, core interference/his own inattention can always keep him from noticing things.
What he does without trying (and can't really turn off):
Dillon reverses entropy, the fundamental decay of the universe, the law that says that things become more chaotic unless energy is added. Around him, that's not true anymore. If you're in his immediate sphere of influence, random things will produce very ordered results. Everything will become neat and whole, returning to an earlier, pre-deterioration state, minus any pieces that are missing. (Peeling paint, for example, will seem completely fresh - except for the chips of it that are gone, that he can't replace.) People feel rejuvenated, refreshed, full of energy, because for a short time the inexorable process of aging is suspended. Messy things will be neat, worn or wrinkled clothes will become new and pressed. Wounds heal much more quickly. Unless he's having a power spike, it's mostly little things, and it's not immediate. Touch WILL magnify this effect, so keep that in mind if your character tries to touch Dillon. (He generally won't initiate touch.) Dillon himself heals from almost all damage quite rapidly, but in really messy cases he will scar, as he can't retrieve or regenerate lost tissue.
What he can do if he tries:
- All the stuff in the previous section? If he concentrates, he can do a lot more of it, a lot faster. He can bring back the dead and make rivers flow uphill.
- He can manipulate systems to get very ordered results, no matter how improbable. For example, in a game of pool, he can sink all the colored or striped balls in order, followed by the 8-ball, with a single break shot.
- Conversely, he can find fault lines in patterns and destroy the order in a system, setting off elaborate, expanding series of consequences with very simple nudges. He shatters the Hoover Dam to rubble with a pebble tap, at just the right place and rhythm.
- He can do these things to people and their lives/patterns/future systems. Once, he makes one comment to another boy, that triggers him to a short, brutal life of alcoholism and crime, when he otherwise would have gone on to be a successful basketball player. Obviously, it doesn't have to be this huge or ominous. If you want to explore a character's potential but don't know how to make it happen, Dillon is a great Deus Ex Machina for setting off unlikely chains of events.
- He can do this to the pattern of a person's mind as well. With a sentence or two, he can bring a person sharp clarity or deep peace, "as if everything wrong in your life had suddenly fallen into place." Or he can send someone completely off the deep end, mind shattered, marked with one pupil swollen wide and one contracted to a pinprick. This is reversible, but not easily.
None of this is stuff I would ever do in game without plotting and negotiating permissions individually first.
If you have ANY questions about how the heck Dillon's powers work, or their limits, or whatever, please ask me! You can leave a comment here, or hit me up on AIM as vibishantheshiny, or on plurk as shipoftheseus.
ACTUAL PERMISSIONS TIME
What he is:
If your character has any ability to see or sense souls/true nature/energy or anything of that sort, Dillon is, literally, (most of) a reincarnated star several times the size of Earth's sun. He has an incredible amount of power crushed into his little human form, and he can't quite keep all of it inside his skin. He's not quite the entire star, however: five smaller pieces of his soul splintered away when the star went nova, and became the souls of other people. Anybody with a reason to is free to pick up on any/all of this. If your character can see his power in a visual way, it reads a bright, burning green.
What he can see:
Canonically, Dillon can learn a great deal about a person just by observing them. It's not a psychic power - he can simply read the rhythm of a person's breath, the dips in their voice, a thousand minute and ordinary details, and his ability can use that to effortlessly deduce everything from the precise nature of childhood trauma to what sort of car someone drives. It doesn't happen all at once, and more detailed/deeply buried things are only apparent if he is actually paying attention/trying to figure them out, but over the course of an ordinary conversation he could pick up quite a lot. Because this is based on his external senses, it will work over the NV for video posts, and to a lesser extent for voice posts. Limiting his range of vision will mostly cut him off from this ability. This ability is not perfect - sometimes he will make a close but incorrect guess/deduction/miss a vital detail. It's also not instantaneous; he generally learns more over time, as he observes more reactions.
In addition to the past, he can also see the pattern of future possibilities surrounding a person, but only when he's specifically looking for it/concentrating on it, which he doesn't do very often. More on this later.
What he CAN'T see:
Anyone who is literally soulless shows up blank for him, especially their futures. He just can't figure it out without that spark there. He can't read his own future pattern, and sometimes he can be very blind to the patterns closely surrounding him. Dillon also couldn't read anything from the Vectors, creatures of pure spirit from another dimension who took human hosts. If your character has powers that should obscure them, or is something altogether different from human, then Dillon probably won't get much out of them. If they're different but similar - humanoid aliens, people with powers that make them more than human but were raised on earth with human culture, etc - then he can probably get some information, but less and with more effort than normal, and he may not understand all of what he perceives. Lastly, if you want to keep your characters' secrets safe from him but can't think of another reason, core interference/his own inattention can always keep him from noticing things.
What he does without trying (and can't really turn off):
Dillon reverses entropy, the fundamental decay of the universe, the law that says that things become more chaotic unless energy is added. Around him, that's not true anymore. If you're in his immediate sphere of influence, random things will produce very ordered results. Everything will become neat and whole, returning to an earlier, pre-deterioration state, minus any pieces that are missing. (Peeling paint, for example, will seem completely fresh - except for the chips of it that are gone, that he can't replace.) People feel rejuvenated, refreshed, full of energy, because for a short time the inexorable process of aging is suspended. Messy things will be neat, worn or wrinkled clothes will become new and pressed. Wounds heal much more quickly. Unless he's having a power spike, it's mostly little things, and it's not immediate. Touch WILL magnify this effect, so keep that in mind if your character tries to touch Dillon. (He generally won't initiate touch.) Dillon himself heals from almost all damage quite rapidly, but in really messy cases he will scar, as he can't retrieve or regenerate lost tissue.
What he can do if he tries:
- All the stuff in the previous section? If he concentrates, he can do a lot more of it, a lot faster. He can bring back the dead and make rivers flow uphill.
- He can manipulate systems to get very ordered results, no matter how improbable. For example, in a game of pool, he can sink all the colored or striped balls in order, followed by the 8-ball, with a single break shot.
- Conversely, he can find fault lines in patterns and destroy the order in a system, setting off elaborate, expanding series of consequences with very simple nudges. He shatters the Hoover Dam to rubble with a pebble tap, at just the right place and rhythm.
- He can do these things to people and their lives/patterns/future systems. Once, he makes one comment to another boy, that triggers him to a short, brutal life of alcoholism and crime, when he otherwise would have gone on to be a successful basketball player. Obviously, it doesn't have to be this huge or ominous. If you want to explore a character's potential but don't know how to make it happen, Dillon is a great Deus Ex Machina for setting off unlikely chains of events.
- He can do this to the pattern of a person's mind as well. With a sentence or two, he can bring a person sharp clarity or deep peace, "as if everything wrong in your life had suddenly fallen into place." Or he can send someone completely off the deep end, mind shattered, marked with one pupil swollen wide and one contracted to a pinprick. This is reversible, but not easily.
None of this is stuff I would ever do in game without plotting and negotiating permissions individually first.
If you have ANY questions about how the heck Dillon's powers work, or their limits, or whatever, please ask me! You can leave a comment here, or hit me up on AIM as vibishantheshiny, or on plurk as shipoftheseus.
ACTUAL PERMISSIONS TIME
no subject
Race: He's a replica! Made from the memory 'data' of Riku
World Information: He comes from Castle Oblivion, which is located in the in-between realm of light and darkness. The castle's rooms are usually sterile and white, but can be tranformed by floor to represent worlds visited in memories.
How much can he know about your character? Canon stuff here, anything having happened in the port is ok.
What kind of effects would your character feel from his ordering/neatening/rejuvenating presence? He's very proud of his originality, and has had his memories tinkered around with before, so anyone's outside attempts to 'fix' him up would be met with hostility.
Is it okay for Dillon to ease some of your character's trauma/internal conflicts/old physical ailments/whatever? The only thing he's really interested in settling right now is some way out of his Puella Magi contract- this will need Kyubey-mun's agreement.
How much can he divine about your character's future/possible futures? lol, I really don't like to plan too far ahead for my characters, so I'm really not too interested in exploring this route.