evokethestarsabove (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
evokethestarsabove) wrote2025-08-17 05:39 pm
evokethestarsabove) wrote2025-08-17 05:39 pm
Entry tags:
rubi application
PLAYER
Player Name: Ammmy
Pronouns: she/her
Are you over 18? substantially
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
prettiestwhistles
Current Characters: invited by Libby
Triggers: sexual assault (not a total no-go, I’d just prefer not to run into it unwarned)
Pronouns: she/her
Are you over 18? substantially
Contact:
Current Characters: invited by Libby
Triggers: sexual assault (not a total no-go, I’d just prefer not to run into it unwarned)
STATISTICS
Character Name: Alasdair Mac an Rìgh
Character Canon: original
Character Age: 38
Canon Point: n/a
Link to History: Link
Skills:
Abilities:
Alasdair is a sorcerer; in his setting, this means he has an innate talent for magic combined with years of dedicated study. Because his family manages a major magical archive, he had both the adults setting him on the path and the study materials to make the most of his gifts. While he’s not the strongest raw talent of his generation, Alasdair has a strong knack for a few specific areas that he’s cultivated. These include wards (very involved to cast, designed to be permanent); protective charms (somewhat involved to cast, meant to last for a few uses/a few hours); shields (combat casting); and limited healing effects. More details on all of these over here.
With study and time, Alasdair could theoretically learn new spells; however, without access to his family’s library, this will be firmly restricted unless or until he finds an in-game substitute.
Curse Mark: Wilk, located on his left shoulder blade
Character Canon: original
Character Age: 38
Canon Point: n/a
Link to History: Link
Skills:
- Better-than average 16th-century education including...
- ...fluent literacy in Latin and French (though he doesn’t speak much of the latter)
- Curious and wide-ranging reader
- Comfortable with ledgers and accounting on the level of a large household
- Trained fencer
- Experienced in caring for children
- First-aid appropriate to his time (can stitch and bandage a wound, e.g. but germ theory? never heard of her)
Abilities:
Alasdair is a sorcerer; in his setting, this means he has an innate talent for magic combined with years of dedicated study. Because his family manages a major magical archive, he had both the adults setting him on the path and the study materials to make the most of his gifts. While he’s not the strongest raw talent of his generation, Alasdair has a strong knack for a few specific areas that he’s cultivated. These include wards (very involved to cast, designed to be permanent); protective charms (somewhat involved to cast, meant to last for a few uses/a few hours); shields (combat casting); and limited healing effects. More details on all of these over here.
With study and time, Alasdair could theoretically learn new spells; however, without access to his family’s library, this will be firmly restricted unless or until he finds an in-game substitute.
Curse Mark: Wilk, located on his left shoulder blade
CHARACTERIZATION
FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES:
PHILOSOPHY: Alasdair believes that most people — but not all — have an innate sense of right and wrong. While the specifics may vary, there are some big ones (don't break an oath, don't murder someone to take his stuff, etc.) that all honest people agree about. He also believes that the more stressed or frightened a person becomes, the less they’re inclined to listen to that inner sense. You can successfully guess what most people will do if you bear in mind that they first want to survive (and want the people they love to survive). To appeal to someone’s sense of morality, you have to make sure that person feels secure first. Alasdair also genuinely tends to believe in some level of noblesse oblige; while he predates Spider-Man by centuries, “with great power comes great responsibility” would feel like a decent summation to him. The thing he finds most repulsive morally in others is using power to abuse someone with substantially less.
DESIRES: Alasdair is not especially in touch with his own wants, especially as an individual and not his brother’s right-hand man. Security, certainly, both from threats to physical safety and threats to his family’s social position. Beyond that, he is a man who likes to understand the people around him and the systems they function in. He’s observant, and will go so far as interfering if something doesn’t make sense and he feels like it should. At a layer that’s not as conscious as the two previous desires, there’s a part of Alasdair that would love to be the one taken care of sometimes — not to give up his own responsibilities entirely, necessarily, but to have someone proactively offer help without him needing to ask for it first. A part of him may also want to build something for himself, but he hasn’t even got as far as admitting that, much less determining what that “something” might be.
FEARS: His primary and most conscious fear is failing his family, and especially his elder brother. While he doesn't think his father's death is in any way his fault, or that Keir is similar enough that the dangers involved are in any way the same, Alasdair does feel as if safety and stability needs active tending at all times. A hole in the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) net of protection he weaves around his loved ones could mean losing someone else without warning. Less present to him, but equally real in influencing his actions, is that his life is a zero-sum game. Anything he wants or reaches for himself feels as if he's taking resources away from the family as a whole. It's easier to just not want anything personal at all.
WRONGS: Alasdair’s two most prominent flaws are interlinked: His devotion to his family and his tendency to rank his own wants and needs last within that framework. As such, (as mentioned in the philosophy section above), there are the ideal ethics he would cite if asked, and then there are the very good exceptions that his work for his family and their archive necessitate. Wrongs springing from the “devotion to family” motive are fairly straightforward: While it doesn’t come up often, he has stolen from, lied to, threatened and injured those who have posed a threat to his siblings or their home. (He has never actively killed anyone outright, but there are definitely a few situations where he declined to save someone from a situation that was almost certainly fatal.) The wrongs springing from deprioritizing himself tend more toward emotional damage, but they are also real. As discussed above, Elizabeth de Vere was certainly hurt by his inability to carve out any space for what he might have wanted if he thought it took resources from his siblings. In smaller and more consistent cases, he’s failed to let people he loves get truly close to him because he consistently downplays his own fatigue, anger, or fear. This has led to an undercurrent of strain in some relationships, and the outright dissolution of others.
- FIRST EVENT: Alasdair’s father commits suicide when Alasdair is 12. Despite the late duke’s attempts to hide his depression from his children, Alasdair was both old enough and observant enough to notice that his father had black moods that usually prompted him to withdraw from his family. Even so, he wasn’t braced for his father’s death by his own hand. This event created a sense that Alasdair’s world was suddenly precarious and needed active tending to remain stable. This feeling was increased by his mother’s effective withdrawal from family life, leaving 14-year-old Keir to figure out his role as duke, along with the care and education of his younger siblings. Alasdair felt both capable and compelled to help, and the two of them held the duchy together by force of will for the first few years following their father’s death.
- SECOND EVENT: Keir almost dies. When Keir and Alasdair reached their mid-20s, they resumed the work of expanding the family’s magical archive. On one of their first attempts to retrieve an artifact from a potentially dangerous situation, Keir tried to shrug off Alasdair’s attempts to get him to wear a magically protected vest, dismissing Alasdair’s worries as excessive. During the acquisition, a magical bolt that could have been lethal if not deflected hit Keir squarely in the chest. This taught Alasdair that he is right to insist on caution even when those around him disagree.
- THIRD EVENT: Duncan is the first of his siblings to marry. Alasdair had no objections when his brother decided to marry, even if he was a bit surprised that Duncan married before Keir. Alasdair did, however, have to navigate the sensation of inducting a new person into their family, something that had not happened before (other than the birth of younger siblings). Duncan’s wife Margaret took the news that magic was real incredibly well and quickly adjusted to being part of the Mac an Rìghs. Even so, the marriage led Alasdair to the conclusion he would be very sure about “fit” before he proposed.
- FOURTH EVENT: Alasdair does not marry Elizabeth de Vere. In his late 20s, Alasdair grew close to a woman named Elizabeth, to the point where the gossip strongly tended toward his proposing. Elizabeth was an intelligent and practical young woman and the closeness between them wasn’t feigned. Yet Alasdair proactively broke things off with her before they reached a point that would damage her future prospects. He cared about Elizabeth, was attracted to her, was even convinced she would “fit” as per the previous point. However, in the end, he decided that marrying anyone at all would be a detriment (and possibly a danger) to the family that needed his undivided attention.
PHILOSOPHY: Alasdair believes that most people — but not all — have an innate sense of right and wrong. While the specifics may vary, there are some big ones (don't break an oath, don't murder someone to take his stuff, etc.) that all honest people agree about. He also believes that the more stressed or frightened a person becomes, the less they’re inclined to listen to that inner sense. You can successfully guess what most people will do if you bear in mind that they first want to survive (and want the people they love to survive). To appeal to someone’s sense of morality, you have to make sure that person feels secure first. Alasdair also genuinely tends to believe in some level of noblesse oblige; while he predates Spider-Man by centuries, “with great power comes great responsibility” would feel like a decent summation to him. The thing he finds most repulsive morally in others is using power to abuse someone with substantially less.
DESIRES: Alasdair is not especially in touch with his own wants, especially as an individual and not his brother’s right-hand man. Security, certainly, both from threats to physical safety and threats to his family’s social position. Beyond that, he is a man who likes to understand the people around him and the systems they function in. He’s observant, and will go so far as interfering if something doesn’t make sense and he feels like it should. At a layer that’s not as conscious as the two previous desires, there’s a part of Alasdair that would love to be the one taken care of sometimes — not to give up his own responsibilities entirely, necessarily, but to have someone proactively offer help without him needing to ask for it first. A part of him may also want to build something for himself, but he hasn’t even got as far as admitting that, much less determining what that “something” might be.
FEARS: His primary and most conscious fear is failing his family, and especially his elder brother. While he doesn't think his father's death is in any way his fault, or that Keir is similar enough that the dangers involved are in any way the same, Alasdair does feel as if safety and stability needs active tending at all times. A hole in the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) net of protection he weaves around his loved ones could mean losing someone else without warning. Less present to him, but equally real in influencing his actions, is that his life is a zero-sum game. Anything he wants or reaches for himself feels as if he's taking resources away from the family as a whole. It's easier to just not want anything personal at all.
WRONGS: Alasdair’s two most prominent flaws are interlinked: His devotion to his family and his tendency to rank his own wants and needs last within that framework. As such, (as mentioned in the philosophy section above), there are the ideal ethics he would cite if asked, and then there are the very good exceptions that his work for his family and their archive necessitate. Wrongs springing from the “devotion to family” motive are fairly straightforward: While it doesn’t come up often, he has stolen from, lied to, threatened and injured those who have posed a threat to his siblings or their home. (He has never actively killed anyone outright, but there are definitely a few situations where he declined to save someone from a situation that was almost certainly fatal.) The wrongs springing from deprioritizing himself tend more toward emotional damage, but they are also real. As discussed above, Elizabeth de Vere was certainly hurt by his inability to carve out any space for what he might have wanted if he thought it took resources from his siblings. In smaller and more consistent cases, he’s failed to let people he loves get truly close to him because he consistently downplays his own fatigue, anger, or fear. This has led to an undercurrent of strain in some relationships, and the outright dissolution of others.
GAMEPLAY
SUITABILITY: The immediate appeal of Alasdair in Rubi in particular is pushing a man who is in love with control, mostly self-control, into a situation where his own willpower isn’t sufficient to ensure that. Alasdair has been repressing a lot of emotions for a long time, and he’s been very good at it, but the game is well-designed to force him to confront (or at least feel) them. In addition, he so fully defines himself as a component of his family that he’s not entirely sure who he is apart from them anymore. I’d love the chance to tease out how he changes and how he’s different when he’s apart from them with no control over getting back. I think it’s intriguing to imagine who he’d be in a world where his name isn’t famous and his siblings don’t have his back; let’s find out.
SAMPLE: Test Drive Meme top-level (cw to be added if necessary)
MONSTER: Alasdair’s monstrous form is large, midnight black except for a white spot on its chest: feline with piercing yellow eyes that permit the monster to see in the dark. It also has better-than-human hearing and the ability to pinpoint nearby vibrations that don't rise to the level of making audible sound. The fur on the creature's back is permanently raised into sharp bristles that can cut skin if touched. The monster can move on its hind legs or all fours, doing so eerily silently in either position. This silent approach allows the monster to draw near to and curse its targets. This curse makes them vulnerable to accidental or intentional harm, or it may amplify the target’s existing fears to put them in a state of terror. The curse is applied via breath, so the monster must draw quite close. Its black color and silent movement facilitate this, as it’s nearly invisible at night to those without supernaturally keen vision. The creature can be distracted from its quarry by means such as loud music or dancing in the vicinity, but it cannot be reasoned with or placated directly. It is intelligent but does not speak.
The form is drawn from/inspired by the legend of the Cat Sìth, which depending on the specific source, may be fae creatures or witches in disguise. In either case, Alasdair’s monstrous form reflects a solitary (read: selfish) nature that he actively fears allowing himself to indulge. Where Alasdair is committed to protecting and calming those around him, sometimes at the expense of his own desires, his monstrous form does precisely the opposite. The monstrous cat walks alone and with ill intent.
SAMPLE: Test Drive Meme top-level (cw to be added if necessary)
MONSTER: Alasdair’s monstrous form is large, midnight black except for a white spot on its chest: feline with piercing yellow eyes that permit the monster to see in the dark. It also has better-than-human hearing and the ability to pinpoint nearby vibrations that don't rise to the level of making audible sound. The fur on the creature's back is permanently raised into sharp bristles that can cut skin if touched. The monster can move on its hind legs or all fours, doing so eerily silently in either position. This silent approach allows the monster to draw near to and curse its targets. This curse makes them vulnerable to accidental or intentional harm, or it may amplify the target’s existing fears to put them in a state of terror. The curse is applied via breath, so the monster must draw quite close. Its black color and silent movement facilitate this, as it’s nearly invisible at night to those without supernaturally keen vision. The creature can be distracted from its quarry by means such as loud music or dancing in the vicinity, but it cannot be reasoned with or placated directly. It is intelligent but does not speak.
The form is drawn from/inspired by the legend of the Cat Sìth, which depending on the specific source, may be fae creatures or witches in disguise. In either case, Alasdair’s monstrous form reflects a solitary (read: selfish) nature that he actively fears allowing himself to indulge. Where Alasdair is committed to protecting and calming those around him, sometimes at the expense of his own desires, his monstrous form does precisely the opposite. The monstrous cat walks alone and with ill intent.