the diadem application

[surpriseitsclarence]

Player Information

Player: Nigh
Contact: dendrite
Invitation OR characters played: Aunamee
Are you over 18?: Yes!


Character Information

Character: Clarence
Canon: Penumbra: Black Plague, right after Philip administers the cure
Age: His consciousness is less than twenty four hours old, but his mind and body belong to a man in his early 30s.
History: Clarence's History | Penumbra: Black Plague Plot (for context)
Possessions: A flashlight, a glow stick, several road flares, and some painkillers
Weapon: None.

Powers/Abilities:

Clarence is a non-corporeal, viral entity that is capable of hijacking a host's nervous system and, with time, smothering their consciousness down into a speck. He will arrive in the Diadem inside of the body of Philip Buchanon. Philip's consciousness is minimal to absent, but he will have access to his memories and general knowledge about the world.

Clarence inhabits bodies, but he isn't a body. Because of this, his bodily sensations are always a little bit off, like they're coming to him via radio static. If the body he is inhabiting is destroyed, he will be forcibly ejected and must find another host within 30 minutes before his consciousness dissolves permanently. He can only inhabit freshly dead bodies (within hours of death), unconscious hosts, or those who are mentally compromised. This process is violent, painful, and desperate. Death will force him out of any new body, but so can cosmic storms, diffusion zones, the host fighting back, magical resistance, etc.

Once inside a body, he can communicate mentally with the host, cause them to hallucinate or move against their will. Clarence can also flip through their memories and generally make himself at home in their nervous system. His infection is progressive, meaning that over time, he will gain full control of the body and make it his home.


Application Questions

Who is the most important person in their life and why? What might be different if this person hadn't been around?

Clarence is neither a man nor an ancient entity -- he's a skittering, incomplete consciousness derived from both, a not-quite person who fills his brain with memories and sensations that don't belong to him. All of those messy human bits come directly from Philip's nervous system. His speech is patched together through movies Philip has seen, giving him a harsh, inconsistent American accent that occasionally veers into Britishisms. His personality is built from Philip's personality but twisted slightly, as if someone rotated all of his traits until they became dark and dangerous renditions of their former selves.

For this reason, Philip is -- without a doubt -- the person who has made the greatest impact on Clarence's life. The Tuurngait consciousness leaves no room for personality or memories. Clarence simply didn't exist before he found himself wedged in Philip's mind and so, without Philip, he would be literally nothing.

He hates Philip. He loves Philip. He thinks Philip is behaving stupidly, and ah man, why did you go quiet all of a sudden? His relationship with Philip is both antagonistic and deeply dependent. He craves his voice and the soft buzz of his neurons but, like a schoolyard bully, he'll kick him when he's down. In the Diadem, Philip’s consciousness is finally suppressed -- and Clarence will never feel more alone.

Is there an event in your character's life that they'd do differently? How so and why?

One of the major turning points in the game is when Clarence forces Philip to kill Dr. Amabel Swanson, a surviving scientist within the Shelter. Amabel promises Philip that she can cure him of his infection, an act that would almost certainly kill Clarence. When Philip finally meets her in person, Clarence makes Philip believe that she's an infected enemy trying to kill him. Philip kills her first.

When the hallucination clears, Philip is shattered and Clarence doesn't understand it. What's the big deal? She was going to ruin their fun! Their relationship shifts then, with Philip beginning to truly hate Clarence with a numb, quiet fury. Clarence hates that. If he could do it again, he would've found a different way to stop Philip from receiving the cure. He lacks the emotional framework to understand why Philip’s grief mattered so much. All he knows is that he hates the silence afterwards.

What's the greatest challenge you foresee your character facing in the setting? How might this impact their ability to adapt and in what ways will they confront this challenge?

Clarence has only had consciousness for the last twenty-four hours, and while he understands how to infect a human body, he's barely had time to figure out how to drive one. Making his host hallucinate? Easy. Making his host walk in a straight line? Significantly harder. In a survival-focused setting, his inability to operate Philip’s body instinctively puts him at a severe disadvantage. He can’t trust his reflexes in a fight, can’t drive reliably, and he experiences constant sensory delays that make even basic tasks exhausting. Maintaining a human body will be a struggle as well -- remembering to regularly drink fluids, eat food, and get enough sleep are all completely new skills to him. Finally, Clarence will be lonely. His entire existence before now has involved "sharing a brain space" with Philip, and so he won't be accustomed to silence. He'll hate it.

He'll fill the silence by talking to himself, keeping up a running commentary or even feigning conversations with Philip when he feels particularly rough. As for his physical shortcomings, he'll rely on other people to drive him around (hitchhiking is quite apt for a viral consciousness) and, slowly but surely, develop a sense of how his body moves in space. In the meantime, he'll likely resort to activities that don't require physical coordination: see gambling, running cons, etc. In spite of how he behaves, he's deeply intelligent (he's born from the brain of a physics professor) and eerily observant, making him quite adept at blackmail and social engineering.

What's the easiest thing you foresee your character adapting to in the setting?

Clarence's morality is minimal to absent. This means that, when it comes to the less savory parts of the Diadem, he will not hesitate. Someone needs a sketchy package dropped off somewhere? He'll do it! Motel manager won't fix his broken sink? He'll figure out what the manager wants more than anything and make a deal. (Or he'll figure out what the manager doesn't want and make another, much less pleasant deal.) He has no moral framework preventing him from blackmail, manipulation, or destabilization. The only thing he cares about is his survival, which is a valuable skill in a place as rough and tumble as the Diadem.


Samples

Sample: Link