Application for Synodiporia
Jan. 8th, 2018 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firstcreedP L A Y E R;
NAME: Bear
AGE: 34
PLAYER JOURNAL:naturalcyber
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: realisticfakefish @ gmail![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
naturalcyber
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Lupa, Pod, Thace
C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Bayek
CANON: Assassin's Creed: Origins
POINT IN CANON: post-game
AGE: 40s (probably 42-44ish. Game isn't clear exactly when in the 40s BCE the epilogue happened)
APPEARANCE: pic!
CANON HISTORY: here
That cuts off partway through the game, so a quick and dirty summary of what happens after is:
Bayek finds out from Aya and her contacts that Eudoros wasn't the last responsible party, and his quest continues. Through Aya he meets and begins working for Cleopatra, and is tasked with discovering and killing the other members of the Order of Ancients. The first four are the Scarab, Hyena, Lizard, and Crocodile, and he must traverse most of Egypt to reach their seats of power. Bayek realizes too late that the Scarab's portrayal of himself as a family man masks ruthlessness and is nearly killed for it, but with the help of Senu and his loyal mount, is freed from being buried alive in the desert. He assassinates the man, but the man's family is present. Bayek does not regret making the kill, but is also pained to have left a child fatherless. The Hyena turns out to be a mother grieving a lost daughter and grasping at the Order's promised power to revive her child. Bayek ends her life outside of the pyramids of Giza.
The Lizard's nest is in Memphis, and Bayek teams up with Aya for the final stages of the investigation. The man is a priest, and is poisoning and polluting much of the city, directly and indirectly. During the investigation, Bayek meets and proceeds to help the high priest's wife, who's pregnant, but has suffered from multiple miscarriages (implied to be from the Lizard's poisoning). He ends up drugged and sent on a dream/vision quest where he fights Apep and sees his son. It's probably just a dream. Probably.
After killing the Lizard, and Aya heading off to aid Cleopatra again, Bayek goes after the Crocodile. His main informant has a young daughter who Bayek bonds with, but in the course of trying to keep hold of important evidence, the girl gets caught in the crossfire and is captured and drowned by the Crocodile. Bayek does what he can to help the grieving parents, and on the information they do have, sets off to infiltrate the gladiatorial arena.
There he meets up with an old acquaintance from his home, but can't let sentiment get in the way of his mission when his old friend ends up becoming the Crocodile's bodyguard.
After killing Crocodile, Bayek returns to Aya's side, and gets drawn into politics again. He helps foil an assassination attempt on Cleopatra and then helps smuggle her to Alexandria to meet Julius Caesar. Things go sort of well in some respects, but very poorly in others, resulting in a pitched battle. During the chaos, Bayek finds and kills another member of the Order, but is prevented from killing a different member of the Order by Caesar himself.
Shortly thereafter, Bayek and Aya find themselves without a job, and realize that the Order has gained sway over both Caesar and Cleopatra. Although it's entirely possible that one or both of them had been part of the Order all along and are only just then revealing their true faces. Regardless, the result is that both of them end up discarded by the rulers in power when they're no longer needed. In their efforts to combat this, another ally dies, and the result is a headlong rush back to Siwa and the vault hidden beneath it.
It's too late. Siwa is overrun with inhabitants in thrall and Bayek's close friend is killed and body desecrated. Bayek delays pursuit to see to his friend's funerary rites and then heads north in pursuit of the Order's Leader. He does what he can to help with the chaos left behind after the leader's use of the ancient artifact, and eventually comes to confront the leader and even with the artifact used against him, emerges victorious.
Bayek returns to Aya, but the death of their son, and all the events following have opened a gulf between them. Although they both agree to it, the decision to end their romantic relationship is still painful, and at the same time, they set themselves on a new path together. Using their skills and experiences as a guide, they found a new group, the Hidden Ones, to combat corruption and other evils from the shadows. Aya heads to Rome, where she will eventually take care of the remaining Order member involved in their son's death and assassinate Caesar, but spare Cleopatra for the time being. Aya also founds a Bureau in Rome, and writes letter(s) to inform the others of events happening there.
Back in Egypt, Bayek heads to Memphis and founds a Bureau there with his remaining allies and some new recruits. The symbol of their new order is the shape left behind after their son's favorite trinket (an eagle's skull) is pressed into sand, combined with the eye of Horus, so their son's legacy lives on.
CANON PERSONALITY:
Bayek is a man of many facets, and faces he presents. He can be gentle and compassionate, playful and fun-loving, sassy, a serious and ruthless murder machine, or pretty much anything in between. What his most basic trait is, is that he has good control and good instincts most of the time, so he knows which part of himself to let show, and which parts to keep to the background. Different people get to see different faces of Bayek, and sometimes he'll present one face to a person, and immediately show another once their back is turned.
With his family and very close friends he's affectionate, and quick to smile and laugh. He's playful when teaching his son, for example, quick to make jokes, but also quick to offer useful advice and stories. He knows how when to step in and give guidance, and when to let someone make their own mistakes and discover how to do things on their own. But he's not just playful. When something needs seriousness and dedication he can do that too. Bayek also has a tendency to get loud and raise his voice if he fears for his friends' and family's safety. He does so when he realizes that something is very wrong in a flashback, and takes to yelling at Khemu to get the hesitation gone and the boy to run to what Bayek thinks is safety. His family and friends are the most important things in the world to him, and he will do almost anything to keep them safe and happy. It's emotionally painful for him when they're upset, because the urge to protect and provide is so strong in him.
His compassion extends to everyone else too, although it's naturally less personal. When people need help, Bayek will stop what he's doing and help them. It means putting aside his quest to avenge his son for the moment, but help he still does. Also unlike so many in Egypt in the time period, he doesn't exhibit hate or prejudice. He treats Greeks and Romans exactly the same as native Egyptians, and men with the same respect as women. The difference for Bayek is how people act. The cruel, careless, and dominating earn his scorn and ire, and many end up dead at his hands. The innocent, he rushes to protect. Those he sees as fellow protectors earn his respect, and he treats them as equals regardless of age or sex. Bayek is glad to join these protectors and help them complete their goals.
In conjunction with his compassion, Bayek also has some peacemaking tendencies. Seeing hatred and prejudice bother him, and several times in the game he will attempt to point out or find common ground between people who are at odds with each other for one reason or another. It doesn't always work, but he tries.
He also has the biggest soft spot in the world for children. His whole demeanor softens when dealing with them, and he will take the time to play with them and patiently follow along with their games. In Cyrene he spends quite a bit of time being led around the city by a gang of children, and essentially performing for them, because they've seen his parkour and leaps of faith and want to watch him do it again and again. The one time he expresses regret for killing one of the Order, it's because the man had a child, and it hurts Bayek that he had to deprive a son of his father. He doesn't regret killing the man, but he does regret that the son and family now must grieve. He feels empathy for the member of the Order who lost a child too, but still kills her, because the way she's hurting other innocent people because of it is unacceptable. But he does express the sincere hope that she'll be reunited with her daughter in the afterlife, where he has very little sympathy or positive wishes for any of the others.
Because of this, harming children is one of the guaranteed ways to make Bayek very, very angry. The few times he really loses control of his temper (and in one case goes into a violent rage) is when it's over the death of a child. Bayek is particularly violent and angry with the first members of the Order that he kills after the prologue, entirely because of the death of his son, and expresses anger at every single one of them. The other member that particularly earns his ire is the Crocoldile, who tied a heavy stone around a small girl's ankle and dropped her in the river to drown with the surface just a short swim away but entirely unreachable. Bayek had bonded with the girl, Shadya, and one of his most deeply grieving moments on screen is when he returns her body to her mother. His rage afterwards is equally potent.
The face he shows most often, though, is the face of serious business. When Bayek has a mission, he doesn't fool around. He approaches everything he does with dedication and focus and doesn't let opposition or hardship shake his determination to finish the thing. He can get especially dogged about things at points, and when he's in that serious mode, it takes more work to get him to relax than at any other time. Considering how much time he spends in this mode, it goes without saying that he relaxes very little at all during the game.
Bayek isn't without a good dose of sass though. He will happily trade banter with someone, and one of the first ways he'll show mild displeasure with people is to make a veiled insult as a sassy remark. At one point he encounters a group of tomb robbers, who claim to see each other as brothers and are after a valuable ring that one of them found, and letting greed lead them into fighting for it. Bayek almost immediately realises what's up and gives the impression of alternately hiding the urge to eye-roll and facepalm during the mission. It comes out in remarks about how they're supposed to be brothers, and by the end of the mission he's had enough to the point that he just tosses the ring up onto an awning and is basically "squabble over it, then." After that he actually hangs out a bit to watch them scramble to get the ring, and eggs them on with comments about how the other one just found it, and similar.
When he meets Cleopatra, he does much the same. He's told to keep his eyes down, speak when spoken to, etc, but the first thing he does is look her in the eye and say his wife is more attractive than she is. That's not only sass, but shows off that Bayek has got balls of steel and also doesn't see rulers as being more important than the common folk. That attitude remains, and is actually one of the things that helps drive Bayek and Aya apart. Aya is devoted to the ideals that the Pharaoh represents, and Bayek has little trust or admiration of the office. He follows Cleopatra for a while more because Aya is than because he believes that she really will be the good ruler he and Aya want. (It should be said that she isn't incompetent as a ruler by any means but she's also very ruthlessly focused on gaining and maintaining power, and not on her subjects. The last is very much a sticking point for Bayek in terms of where he'll place his loyalty.)
One last important thing about Bayek is how he interacts with religion. The Egyptian gods aren't just distant figures to Bayek. Instead they are very real and present in the world around him, and nothing shakes his faith. Likewise, his belief in the afterlife and how it functions is also unshakeable. Bayek is absolutely certain that his actions of vengeance are helping Khemu reach the field of reeds, and he takes priests and the idea of curses and blessings very seriously. In fact, when he finds a priest who's corrupt or part of the Order, it especially upsets him.
Likewise with his respect for his native religion, Bayek feels that one's roots are very important. He keeps his respect and care for Siwa, even when he's moved to Memphis by the end, and at one point during the game he meets an old friend who's completely abandoned Siwa and his roots as a native Egyptian to the point of taking a Greek name and slandering the village and people. Bayek starts out just dismayed and annoyed by this, but by the end of that encounter ends up in a fist fight with the man over his abandonment of his home and ways.
POINT OF DEPARTURE:
VETERAN?:
Bayek came in just after Belljar. He spent most of the liminal before, and the first jaunt, Ace of Spades in Liminal angrily yelling at the foreign gods about bringing him here and taking him away from discovering his son's killers, but when he was out, he did kill a couple of people in the background who were causing harm to innocents. He infiltrated as a Gryphon Knight who'd just lost family and mount in Cursed Kingdom, and who alternated between grieving and very angry at the entire world. He investigated again in Ivory Tower and walked off into the wasteland in a "screw this; I'll find my own way home" move. Que dungeon, which he'll need to be rescued from on his return. Skills kept: Questing Sense, Portal Creation: stationary, Teleportation I
As a note to mods: the info that characters can keep skills from being a veteran seems to have disappeared from the most intuitive/accessible places for appers? I'm thinking it might be prudent to add a note about it into the applications page.
ABILITIES:
Power cap??? Hammerspace: I have no idea how the hell he manages it, but Bayek has one hell of a lot of stuff that is somehow always accessible but without an overburdened pack animal trailing behind, including multiple weapons (some quite heavy and/or large: heavy blades, maces, spears, etc), crafting materials (everything from leather to wood to metal ingots to carbon and silica crystals), remains of his hunting trips, important bits and bobs of either sentimental or investigative value, and then all his actually equipped equipment. In short, how do video game mechanics??? I'll list what he very definitely has regardless of potential hammerspace down in his inventory.
Mundane (ish) abilities:
--Languages: Bayek almost certainly speaks with full fluency Egyptian (Demotic, specifically) and Greek, while he's reasonably fluent in late BCE Latin. He can certainly read Demotic, Greek, and Hieratic, and has limited literacy (needs to resort to "looking up" some of them) in Hieroglyphics. He also can read Latin, but not great or speedy at it. He almost certainly has had exposure to both his contemporary dialect of Aramaic and Old Arabic, but not to the point of any kind of fluency. At best he can recognize that that's what's being spoken, and knows a couple words and/or phrases.
--Fighting skills: The game has a set of skill trees and I did get it mostly filled in during the course of just playing the game, but most of those skills amount to: really, really good at melee and ranged combat with a very wide range of weapons. He's shown able to use: short swords (a standard straight blade usually similar to the gladius), khopesh (ie sickle swords), paired swords, staves, spears, heavy blunts (maces, etc), heavy blades (halberds etc), a variety of different shapes and sizes of shields, and a variety of bows. Of the bows in particular, was a standard longbow for hunting, a very precise and powerful long range bow (Predator Bow: an assassin's best friend), a bow capable of firing multiple arrows at a time (warrior bow), and a light bow for use on horseback, or in melee combat with a very quick draw/firing rate, but low power. During my play, I favored khopesh paired with shields and heavy blades/blunts as a back-up, with a standard sword as a backup-to-my-backup, and used the Predator and Hunter bows almost exclusively, so in Syn Bayek will also favor those weapons. Some weapons in game have special effects, most of which kind of won't work in RP, but I did love the poisoned weapons, and those effects do carry over easily enough.
--Trick shot: in game there is a skill that allows the player to control an arrow’s path in flight to get it around obstacles but I'm going to say that Bayek can just make very difficult trick shots.
--Reflexes : in game there are skills that give the player advantage of slow motion or extra attacks and for RP purposes I'll say that Bayek has nearly superhuman reflexes.
--Hidden Blade: Every assassin has one. Bayek will only use this for stealth kills though, unlike later assassins in his canon which also use it as a melee weapon.
--Parkour: What would an assassin be without it? Bayek isn't quite as graceful at it as other assassins are, but he can do it, and also somehow survive doing swan dives off of very high places, so long as there's something "soft" to land in below.
--Tools: Bayek has the skill to use to best effect a variety of tools and compounds. He can poison living opponents through darts and set a flesh decay toxin on fresh corpses which will not only kill those who come into close contact but spread to others through each infected individual. He also has a compound that will send someone into a berserker rage and attack allies. Last of his compounds is a sleep drug which he applies through darts and when applied to animals allows Bayek to use another skill to tame them. Bayek also has fire bombs and smoke bombs, the latter of which has been altered to severely incapacitate foes for a minute or two (in game it knocks them down and drains health).
--Crafting : Bayek has the skill to craft upgrades to his armor, quiver, pouches and hidden blade when given the proper materials and I maxed crafting. Given that he can make upgrades he can also perform repairs.
--Regeneration : another game mechanic that doesn't translate well, so I'll say this means Bayek doesn't fatigue as much as he should even during high stress activities and recovers much faster than normal.
--also Bayek can hold his breath a really long time
Supernatural skills (with a little headcanon on how game mechanics would function outside of a video game):
The mechanic in-game: The player takes control of Senu for scouting, and the game will identify and highlight enemies (with levels, and identify captains and commanders), targets (either objects or people vital to a mission) and rare treasure. These highlighted enemies/objects remain visible when back in control of Bayek, even through walls or in the dark. Senu's scouting mode can also be used to place marks, and the game will present an icon pointing in the correct direction with a distance counter. One of the additional skills will present the movement pattern of moving enemies/targets as a white line over the ground so their position can be predicted for ambushes, etc. Another will allow Senu to attack enemies as a distraction, or take down prey (antelope etc) for Bayek while hunting.
Headcanon on how it would work without convenient video game mechanics:
--Senu: Bayek’s Bonelli's eagle that he has a supernatural bond with. I'll cover that bond from Bayek's end in more depth in a minute because she has a couple skills of her own through the bond. First is the ability to anticipate what Bayek needs to focus on and remain as close to the appropriate area as possible without needing commands. She also has perception well beyond a normal eagle and the intelligence to aid Bayek in battle by distracting foes and recognize the usual hiding places for valuables. She can also take down prey much larger than she should through precision strikes.
--Eagle vision: Bayek’s version is done entirely in concert with Senu and is a two step process. The first and most important is scouting where Bayek literally sees through Senu’s eyes and relies on her perception to spot enemies and important objects. Bayek must put his full attention on the task and so must remain still and in a secure area. The second step is more passive. Once identified, Senu’s continued flying over the area allows Bayek to keep track of those objects and enemies while on the move, even in bad visibility or out of line of sight. He can even use this to orient himself by a particular spot or object in order to find it unerringly even if he must take a roundabout or complicated path to it. A recently mastered extension of this allows Bayek to predict the path of a moving target with very high accuracy in conjunction with Senu.
INVENTORY: (if necessary I can go get specific names/ stats and effects etc but for now I'm just giving a basic rundown. Most of my endgame equipment caused poison or bleeding out, or gave me health. I had a theme going. Plus health doesn't really make sense without claiming ~magic~ so I'll count that effect as surprisingly easy to handle for size/weight instead.)
Equipped :
--khopesh +poison and bleed
--heavy blade +poison
--rectangular shield
--predator bow (9 arrows ) +bleed
--hunter bow (33) +fire (I figure the arrows come pre-equipped to be easy to set alight)
--flesh decay toxin (15)
--smoke bombs (15)
--sleep darts (10)
Other stuff :
--Hepzefa’s sword (regular sword) +fire (less idea how that works with a sword, but even without the skill, it's the sword of Bayek's now-dead best friend) This is one item he very definitely has, even if other things are taken away by item-capping.
--a mace +health
--round shield
--a light bow w/ arrows
--a warrior bow w/arrows +health
--poison darts (10) (also something he definitely has because darts are small and his tool pouch is large)
--berserk darts (10) (ditto the above)
--fire bombs (10) (likewise)
--a bunch of papyri with riddles (these would be useless in Syn, and can be dumped if necessary)
--quest items (Mostly clues or evidence with no actual use but some have important personal meaning like Aya’s letter or Shadya’s doll. He definitely has the few sentimental items; rest can poof)
--infinity several torches
--lots of crafting supplies including hard and soft leather, animal pelts, wood, copper and iron ingots, carbon crystals, silica crystals and similar (can poof if necessary, although Bayek would be annoyed at the carbon and silica disappearing as those are very rare finds)
--hunting leftovers such as claws, meat, feathers, etc with little practical use but worth coin or useful in ritual, jewelry (or other quests) (these can also poof if necessary)
--a pretty impressive stash of cash for 40something BCE
--a bunch of random trinkets (jewelry, statuettes, decorative stuff) (these can also poof if necessary)
--additional clothes and outfits
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
M A R K S;
JUSTIFICATION:
Death-- Death is probably the most dead-on (I can make a pun if I want and no mods can stop me) for Bayek. He's both an end of things and a beginning, and has experienced a deep shifting in beliefs and priorities.Granted, this was traumatic enough for Tower, but Tower's not in the game right now Bayek is the last Medjay, and at a time and place to be first hand witness to the crumbling of Egypt's last dynasty and the beginning of the slow death of the old ways of Egyptian life and religion. He's also at an ending point in the driving quest of his life right now. He's grieving his son, has just parted ways with his (now ex) wife, and has killed almost all of the active members of an organization seeking domination and control of the world. But he's also a beginning, changing from one way of life to a new and very different. Before he was a very public protector, limited in scope and stomping grounds. Now he's becoming a protector in a very different way. Rather than public defense, he's eliminating threats and abusers in a private and hidden way. He's not just defending people from physical threats, but from the ideals that lead to them, albeit by way of killing the people who tout and spread said ideas. Basically, Death is kind of his everything.
Judgement-- While Death focuses a little more on the endings and changes themselves, Judgement focuses on the new beginnings. Bayek is the Founder of a new order, has remade himself into something different from what he was, and has been released from his self-imposed obligations to avenge his son. He's accepted the death, that it couldn't have been stopped and his own part in it, and while forgiveness isn't exactly something he's good at, he has found his calling and recently made some very big decisions. So not as good as Death but still up there.
Magician-- Bayek is all about determination and (single-minded, at points) focus, and taking action. Not as good as Death or Judgement, I'd say, but I can see it.
Chariot-- Basically, see my reasoning for Magician. A lot of the same traits that make Bayek good for Magician make him good for Chariot too.
VETO: No actual veto but Emperor, Strength, and Justice would all be a little awkward on account of "I already play characters Marked by them."
S A M P L E S;
ACTIONSPAM SAMPLE
Listen closely. Under the meanings you can hear words not in your native tongues. I hear many languages I do not know. If not for the blessings of these gods, I do not think most of us would be able to understand more than a handful of the other Travelers. This is a problem we need to fix. Others may trust their magnanimity and powers but I cannot.
With concentration we can hear and see the actual words so learning to communicate directly is possible for even the oldest and youngest among us. And if we can agree on a common tongue to use with each other, only one needs to be learned by the unmotivated.
I plan to start with the most common and I am happy to teach too, if anyone wants to learn Demotic, Greek, or Latin. Just be warned that my accent in Latin is atrocious according to reputable Roman sources.
PROSE SAMPLE: Test Drive
Since that's a little short on the comment count, an additional prompt:
He was back. Senu whistled from her perch on his arm, and Bayek fought the urge to feel at his face. Aya had helped him shave it all clean what seemed like so long ago now. Aya-- No, Amunet now.
And that was what made Bayek sure that he was back. Even in his worst nightmares, Aya never left. She died, and he was helpless to stop it, or he dreamed of her shattered expression watching him die, but in his dreams, even now, they were not apart by choice. Oh, how he missed her. She was doing good work in Rome, necessary work, just as he was, but even with time to soothe it, the loneliness and ache was strong. Bayek regretted the chasm that had opened up between them after Khemu's death, and knowing that parting was the right choice didn't make it an easy one.
So, he was back, and now Bayek had to figure out what to do about it. He remembered this place, but not as well as he'd like. He'd been so pained, so angry, Khemu's murder weighing heavily on every thought and motion, and had spent more time trying to get out than trying to get to know the place.
First, he would scout, and this time Senu was by his side. Bayek remembered a few faces, and some names. He would seek them out first. So with a click of his tongue, Bayek sent Senu up, and threw himself into the wind after her. His own body went dim and distant, and the world turned to impossibly sharp relief in alien angles. With Senu's eyes, Bayek knew he'd find what he was looking for.
NAME: Bear
AGE: 34
PLAYER JOURNAL:
naturalcyberTIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: realisticfakefish @ gmail
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Lupa, Pod, Thace
C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Bayek
CANON: Assassin's Creed: Origins
POINT IN CANON: post-game
AGE: 40s (probably 42-44ish. Game isn't clear exactly when in the 40s BCE the epilogue happened)
APPEARANCE: pic!
CANON HISTORY: here
That cuts off partway through the game, so a quick and dirty summary of what happens after is:
Bayek finds out from Aya and her contacts that Eudoros wasn't the last responsible party, and his quest continues. Through Aya he meets and begins working for Cleopatra, and is tasked with discovering and killing the other members of the Order of Ancients. The first four are the Scarab, Hyena, Lizard, and Crocodile, and he must traverse most of Egypt to reach their seats of power. Bayek realizes too late that the Scarab's portrayal of himself as a family man masks ruthlessness and is nearly killed for it, but with the help of Senu and his loyal mount, is freed from being buried alive in the desert. He assassinates the man, but the man's family is present. Bayek does not regret making the kill, but is also pained to have left a child fatherless. The Hyena turns out to be a mother grieving a lost daughter and grasping at the Order's promised power to revive her child. Bayek ends her life outside of the pyramids of Giza.
The Lizard's nest is in Memphis, and Bayek teams up with Aya for the final stages of the investigation. The man is a priest, and is poisoning and polluting much of the city, directly and indirectly. During the investigation, Bayek meets and proceeds to help the high priest's wife, who's pregnant, but has suffered from multiple miscarriages (implied to be from the Lizard's poisoning). He ends up drugged and sent on a dream/vision quest where he fights Apep and sees his son. It's probably just a dream. Probably.
After killing the Lizard, and Aya heading off to aid Cleopatra again, Bayek goes after the Crocodile. His main informant has a young daughter who Bayek bonds with, but in the course of trying to keep hold of important evidence, the girl gets caught in the crossfire and is captured and drowned by the Crocodile. Bayek does what he can to help the grieving parents, and on the information they do have, sets off to infiltrate the gladiatorial arena.
There he meets up with an old acquaintance from his home, but can't let sentiment get in the way of his mission when his old friend ends up becoming the Crocodile's bodyguard.
After killing Crocodile, Bayek returns to Aya's side, and gets drawn into politics again. He helps foil an assassination attempt on Cleopatra and then helps smuggle her to Alexandria to meet Julius Caesar. Things go sort of well in some respects, but very poorly in others, resulting in a pitched battle. During the chaos, Bayek finds and kills another member of the Order, but is prevented from killing a different member of the Order by Caesar himself.
Shortly thereafter, Bayek and Aya find themselves without a job, and realize that the Order has gained sway over both Caesar and Cleopatra. Although it's entirely possible that one or both of them had been part of the Order all along and are only just then revealing their true faces. Regardless, the result is that both of them end up discarded by the rulers in power when they're no longer needed. In their efforts to combat this, another ally dies, and the result is a headlong rush back to Siwa and the vault hidden beneath it.
It's too late. Siwa is overrun with inhabitants in thrall and Bayek's close friend is killed and body desecrated. Bayek delays pursuit to see to his friend's funerary rites and then heads north in pursuit of the Order's Leader. He does what he can to help with the chaos left behind after the leader's use of the ancient artifact, and eventually comes to confront the leader and even with the artifact used against him, emerges victorious.
Bayek returns to Aya, but the death of their son, and all the events following have opened a gulf between them. Although they both agree to it, the decision to end their romantic relationship is still painful, and at the same time, they set themselves on a new path together. Using their skills and experiences as a guide, they found a new group, the Hidden Ones, to combat corruption and other evils from the shadows. Aya heads to Rome, where she will eventually take care of the remaining Order member involved in their son's death and assassinate Caesar, but spare Cleopatra for the time being. Aya also founds a Bureau in Rome, and writes letter(s) to inform the others of events happening there.
Back in Egypt, Bayek heads to Memphis and founds a Bureau there with his remaining allies and some new recruits. The symbol of their new order is the shape left behind after their son's favorite trinket (an eagle's skull) is pressed into sand, combined with the eye of Horus, so their son's legacy lives on.
CANON PERSONALITY:
Bayek is a man of many facets, and faces he presents. He can be gentle and compassionate, playful and fun-loving, sassy, a serious and ruthless murder machine, or pretty much anything in between. What his most basic trait is, is that he has good control and good instincts most of the time, so he knows which part of himself to let show, and which parts to keep to the background. Different people get to see different faces of Bayek, and sometimes he'll present one face to a person, and immediately show another once their back is turned.
With his family and very close friends he's affectionate, and quick to smile and laugh. He's playful when teaching his son, for example, quick to make jokes, but also quick to offer useful advice and stories. He knows how when to step in and give guidance, and when to let someone make their own mistakes and discover how to do things on their own. But he's not just playful. When something needs seriousness and dedication he can do that too. Bayek also has a tendency to get loud and raise his voice if he fears for his friends' and family's safety. He does so when he realizes that something is very wrong in a flashback, and takes to yelling at Khemu to get the hesitation gone and the boy to run to what Bayek thinks is safety. His family and friends are the most important things in the world to him, and he will do almost anything to keep them safe and happy. It's emotionally painful for him when they're upset, because the urge to protect and provide is so strong in him.
His compassion extends to everyone else too, although it's naturally less personal. When people need help, Bayek will stop what he's doing and help them. It means putting aside his quest to avenge his son for the moment, but help he still does. Also unlike so many in Egypt in the time period, he doesn't exhibit hate or prejudice. He treats Greeks and Romans exactly the same as native Egyptians, and men with the same respect as women. The difference for Bayek is how people act. The cruel, careless, and dominating earn his scorn and ire, and many end up dead at his hands. The innocent, he rushes to protect. Those he sees as fellow protectors earn his respect, and he treats them as equals regardless of age or sex. Bayek is glad to join these protectors and help them complete their goals.
In conjunction with his compassion, Bayek also has some peacemaking tendencies. Seeing hatred and prejudice bother him, and several times in the game he will attempt to point out or find common ground between people who are at odds with each other for one reason or another. It doesn't always work, but he tries.
He also has the biggest soft spot in the world for children. His whole demeanor softens when dealing with them, and he will take the time to play with them and patiently follow along with their games. In Cyrene he spends quite a bit of time being led around the city by a gang of children, and essentially performing for them, because they've seen his parkour and leaps of faith and want to watch him do it again and again. The one time he expresses regret for killing one of the Order, it's because the man had a child, and it hurts Bayek that he had to deprive a son of his father. He doesn't regret killing the man, but he does regret that the son and family now must grieve. He feels empathy for the member of the Order who lost a child too, but still kills her, because the way she's hurting other innocent people because of it is unacceptable. But he does express the sincere hope that she'll be reunited with her daughter in the afterlife, where he has very little sympathy or positive wishes for any of the others.
Because of this, harming children is one of the guaranteed ways to make Bayek very, very angry. The few times he really loses control of his temper (and in one case goes into a violent rage) is when it's over the death of a child. Bayek is particularly violent and angry with the first members of the Order that he kills after the prologue, entirely because of the death of his son, and expresses anger at every single one of them. The other member that particularly earns his ire is the Crocoldile, who tied a heavy stone around a small girl's ankle and dropped her in the river to drown with the surface just a short swim away but entirely unreachable. Bayek had bonded with the girl, Shadya, and one of his most deeply grieving moments on screen is when he returns her body to her mother. His rage afterwards is equally potent.
The face he shows most often, though, is the face of serious business. When Bayek has a mission, he doesn't fool around. He approaches everything he does with dedication and focus and doesn't let opposition or hardship shake his determination to finish the thing. He can get especially dogged about things at points, and when he's in that serious mode, it takes more work to get him to relax than at any other time. Considering how much time he spends in this mode, it goes without saying that he relaxes very little at all during the game.
Bayek isn't without a good dose of sass though. He will happily trade banter with someone, and one of the first ways he'll show mild displeasure with people is to make a veiled insult as a sassy remark. At one point he encounters a group of tomb robbers, who claim to see each other as brothers and are after a valuable ring that one of them found, and letting greed lead them into fighting for it. Bayek almost immediately realises what's up and gives the impression of alternately hiding the urge to eye-roll and facepalm during the mission. It comes out in remarks about how they're supposed to be brothers, and by the end of the mission he's had enough to the point that he just tosses the ring up onto an awning and is basically "squabble over it, then." After that he actually hangs out a bit to watch them scramble to get the ring, and eggs them on with comments about how the other one just found it, and similar.
When he meets Cleopatra, he does much the same. He's told to keep his eyes down, speak when spoken to, etc, but the first thing he does is look her in the eye and say his wife is more attractive than she is. That's not only sass, but shows off that Bayek has got balls of steel and also doesn't see rulers as being more important than the common folk. That attitude remains, and is actually one of the things that helps drive Bayek and Aya apart. Aya is devoted to the ideals that the Pharaoh represents, and Bayek has little trust or admiration of the office. He follows Cleopatra for a while more because Aya is than because he believes that she really will be the good ruler he and Aya want. (It should be said that she isn't incompetent as a ruler by any means but she's also very ruthlessly focused on gaining and maintaining power, and not on her subjects. The last is very much a sticking point for Bayek in terms of where he'll place his loyalty.)
One last important thing about Bayek is how he interacts with religion. The Egyptian gods aren't just distant figures to Bayek. Instead they are very real and present in the world around him, and nothing shakes his faith. Likewise, his belief in the afterlife and how it functions is also unshakeable. Bayek is absolutely certain that his actions of vengeance are helping Khemu reach the field of reeds, and he takes priests and the idea of curses and blessings very seriously. In fact, when he finds a priest who's corrupt or part of the Order, it especially upsets him.
Likewise with his respect for his native religion, Bayek feels that one's roots are very important. He keeps his respect and care for Siwa, even when he's moved to Memphis by the end, and at one point during the game he meets an old friend who's completely abandoned Siwa and his roots as a native Egyptian to the point of taking a Greek name and slandering the village and people. Bayek starts out just dismayed and annoyed by this, but by the end of that encounter ends up in a fist fight with the man over his abandonment of his home and ways.
POINT OF DEPARTURE:
VETERAN?:
Bayek came in just after Belljar. He spent most of the liminal before, and the first jaunt, Ace of Spades in Liminal angrily yelling at the foreign gods about bringing him here and taking him away from discovering his son's killers, but when he was out, he did kill a couple of people in the background who were causing harm to innocents. He infiltrated as a Gryphon Knight who'd just lost family and mount in Cursed Kingdom, and who alternated between grieving and very angry at the entire world. He investigated again in Ivory Tower and walked off into the wasteland in a "screw this; I'll find my own way home" move. Que dungeon, which he'll need to be rescued from on his return. Skills kept: Questing Sense, Portal Creation: stationary, Teleportation I
As a note to mods: the info that characters can keep skills from being a veteran seems to have disappeared from the most intuitive/accessible places for appers? I'm thinking it might be prudent to add a note about it into the applications page.
ABILITIES:
Power cap??? Hammerspace: I have no idea how the hell he manages it, but Bayek has one hell of a lot of stuff that is somehow always accessible but without an overburdened pack animal trailing behind, including multiple weapons (some quite heavy and/or large: heavy blades, maces, spears, etc), crafting materials (everything from leather to wood to metal ingots to carbon and silica crystals), remains of his hunting trips, important bits and bobs of either sentimental or investigative value, and then all his actually equipped equipment. In short, how do video game mechanics??? I'll list what he very definitely has regardless of potential hammerspace down in his inventory.
Mundane (ish) abilities:
--Languages: Bayek almost certainly speaks with full fluency Egyptian (Demotic, specifically) and Greek, while he's reasonably fluent in late BCE Latin. He can certainly read Demotic, Greek, and Hieratic, and has limited literacy (needs to resort to "looking up" some of them) in Hieroglyphics. He also can read Latin, but not great or speedy at it. He almost certainly has had exposure to both his contemporary dialect of Aramaic and Old Arabic, but not to the point of any kind of fluency. At best he can recognize that that's what's being spoken, and knows a couple words and/or phrases.
--Fighting skills: The game has a set of skill trees and I did get it mostly filled in during the course of just playing the game, but most of those skills amount to: really, really good at melee and ranged combat with a very wide range of weapons. He's shown able to use: short swords (a standard straight blade usually similar to the gladius), khopesh (ie sickle swords), paired swords, staves, spears, heavy blunts (maces, etc), heavy blades (halberds etc), a variety of different shapes and sizes of shields, and a variety of bows. Of the bows in particular, was a standard longbow for hunting, a very precise and powerful long range bow (Predator Bow: an assassin's best friend), a bow capable of firing multiple arrows at a time (warrior bow), and a light bow for use on horseback, or in melee combat with a very quick draw/firing rate, but low power. During my play, I favored khopesh paired with shields and heavy blades/blunts as a back-up, with a standard sword as a backup-to-my-backup, and used the Predator and Hunter bows almost exclusively, so in Syn Bayek will also favor those weapons. Some weapons in game have special effects, most of which kind of won't work in RP, but I did love the poisoned weapons, and those effects do carry over easily enough.
--Trick shot: in game there is a skill that allows the player to control an arrow’s path in flight to get it around obstacles but I'm going to say that Bayek can just make very difficult trick shots.
--Reflexes : in game there are skills that give the player advantage of slow motion or extra attacks and for RP purposes I'll say that Bayek has nearly superhuman reflexes.
--Hidden Blade: Every assassin has one. Bayek will only use this for stealth kills though, unlike later assassins in his canon which also use it as a melee weapon.
--Parkour: What would an assassin be without it? Bayek isn't quite as graceful at it as other assassins are, but he can do it, and also somehow survive doing swan dives off of very high places, so long as there's something "soft" to land in below.
--Tools: Bayek has the skill to use to best effect a variety of tools and compounds. He can poison living opponents through darts and set a flesh decay toxin on fresh corpses which will not only kill those who come into close contact but spread to others through each infected individual. He also has a compound that will send someone into a berserker rage and attack allies. Last of his compounds is a sleep drug which he applies through darts and when applied to animals allows Bayek to use another skill to tame them. Bayek also has fire bombs and smoke bombs, the latter of which has been altered to severely incapacitate foes for a minute or two (in game it knocks them down and drains health).
--Crafting : Bayek has the skill to craft upgrades to his armor, quiver, pouches and hidden blade when given the proper materials and I maxed crafting. Given that he can make upgrades he can also perform repairs.
--Regeneration : another game mechanic that doesn't translate well, so I'll say this means Bayek doesn't fatigue as much as he should even during high stress activities and recovers much faster than normal.
--also Bayek can hold his breath a really long time
Supernatural skills (with a little headcanon on how game mechanics would function outside of a video game):
The mechanic in-game: The player takes control of Senu for scouting, and the game will identify and highlight enemies (with levels, and identify captains and commanders), targets (either objects or people vital to a mission) and rare treasure. These highlighted enemies/objects remain visible when back in control of Bayek, even through walls or in the dark. Senu's scouting mode can also be used to place marks, and the game will present an icon pointing in the correct direction with a distance counter. One of the additional skills will present the movement pattern of moving enemies/targets as a white line over the ground so their position can be predicted for ambushes, etc. Another will allow Senu to attack enemies as a distraction, or take down prey (antelope etc) for Bayek while hunting.
Headcanon on how it would work without convenient video game mechanics:
--Senu: Bayek’s Bonelli's eagle that he has a supernatural bond with. I'll cover that bond from Bayek's end in more depth in a minute because she has a couple skills of her own through the bond. First is the ability to anticipate what Bayek needs to focus on and remain as close to the appropriate area as possible without needing commands. She also has perception well beyond a normal eagle and the intelligence to aid Bayek in battle by distracting foes and recognize the usual hiding places for valuables. She can also take down prey much larger than she should through precision strikes.
--Eagle vision: Bayek’s version is done entirely in concert with Senu and is a two step process. The first and most important is scouting where Bayek literally sees through Senu’s eyes and relies on her perception to spot enemies and important objects. Bayek must put his full attention on the task and so must remain still and in a secure area. The second step is more passive. Once identified, Senu’s continued flying over the area allows Bayek to keep track of those objects and enemies while on the move, even in bad visibility or out of line of sight. He can even use this to orient himself by a particular spot or object in order to find it unerringly even if he must take a roundabout or complicated path to it. A recently mastered extension of this allows Bayek to predict the path of a moving target with very high accuracy in conjunction with Senu.
INVENTORY: (if necessary I can go get specific names/ stats and effects etc but for now I'm just giving a basic rundown. Most of my endgame equipment caused poison or bleeding out, or gave me health. I had a theme going. Plus health doesn't really make sense without claiming ~magic~ so I'll count that effect as surprisingly easy to handle for size/weight instead.)
Equipped :
--khopesh +poison and bleed
--heavy blade +poison
--rectangular shield
--predator bow (9 arrows ) +bleed
--hunter bow (33) +fire (I figure the arrows come pre-equipped to be easy to set alight)
--flesh decay toxin (15)
--smoke bombs (15)
--sleep darts (10)
Other stuff :
--Hepzefa’s sword (regular sword) +fire (less idea how that works with a sword, but even without the skill, it's the sword of Bayek's now-dead best friend) This is one item he very definitely has, even if other things are taken away by item-capping.
--a mace +health
--round shield
--a light bow w/ arrows
--a warrior bow w/arrows +health
--poison darts (10) (also something he definitely has because darts are small and his tool pouch is large)
--berserk darts (10) (ditto the above)
--fire bombs (10) (likewise)
--a bunch of papyri with riddles (these would be useless in Syn, and can be dumped if necessary)
--quest items (Mostly clues or evidence with no actual use but some have important personal meaning like Aya’s letter or Shadya’s doll. He definitely has the few sentimental items; rest can poof)
--
--lots of crafting supplies including hard and soft leather, animal pelts, wood, copper and iron ingots, carbon crystals, silica crystals and similar (can poof if necessary, although Bayek would be annoyed at the carbon and silica disappearing as those are very rare finds)
--hunting leftovers such as claws, meat, feathers, etc with little practical use but worth coin or useful in ritual, jewelry (or other quests) (these can also poof if necessary)
--a pretty impressive stash of cash for 40something BCE
--a bunch of random trinkets (jewelry, statuettes, decorative stuff) (these can also poof if necessary)
--additional clothes and outfits
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
M A R K S;
JUSTIFICATION:
Death-- Death is probably the most dead-on (I can make a pun if I want and no mods can stop me) for Bayek. He's both an end of things and a beginning, and has experienced a deep shifting in beliefs and priorities.
Judgement-- While Death focuses a little more on the endings and changes themselves, Judgement focuses on the new beginnings. Bayek is the Founder of a new order, has remade himself into something different from what he was, and has been released from his self-imposed obligations to avenge his son. He's accepted the death, that it couldn't have been stopped and his own part in it, and while forgiveness isn't exactly something he's good at, he has found his calling and recently made some very big decisions. So not as good as Death but still up there.
Magician-- Bayek is all about determination and (single-minded, at points) focus, and taking action. Not as good as Death or Judgement, I'd say, but I can see it.
Chariot-- Basically, see my reasoning for Magician. A lot of the same traits that make Bayek good for Magician make him good for Chariot too.
VETO: No actual veto but Emperor, Strength, and Justice would all be a little awkward on account of "I already play characters Marked by them."
S A M P L E S;
ACTIONSPAM SAMPLE
Listen closely. Under the meanings you can hear words not in your native tongues. I hear many languages I do not know. If not for the blessings of these gods, I do not think most of us would be able to understand more than a handful of the other Travelers. This is a problem we need to fix. Others may trust their magnanimity and powers but I cannot.
With concentration we can hear and see the actual words so learning to communicate directly is possible for even the oldest and youngest among us. And if we can agree on a common tongue to use with each other, only one needs to be learned by the unmotivated.
I plan to start with the most common and I am happy to teach too, if anyone wants to learn Demotic, Greek, or Latin. Just be warned that my accent in Latin is atrocious according to reputable Roman sources.
PROSE SAMPLE: Test Drive
Since that's a little short on the comment count, an additional prompt:
He was back. Senu whistled from her perch on his arm, and Bayek fought the urge to feel at his face. Aya had helped him shave it all clean what seemed like so long ago now. Aya-- No, Amunet now.
And that was what made Bayek sure that he was back. Even in his worst nightmares, Aya never left. She died, and he was helpless to stop it, or he dreamed of her shattered expression watching him die, but in his dreams, even now, they were not apart by choice. Oh, how he missed her. She was doing good work in Rome, necessary work, just as he was, but even with time to soothe it, the loneliness and ache was strong. Bayek regretted the chasm that had opened up between them after Khemu's death, and knowing that parting was the right choice didn't make it an easy one.
So, he was back, and now Bayek had to figure out what to do about it. He remembered this place, but not as well as he'd like. He'd been so pained, so angry, Khemu's murder weighing heavily on every thought and motion, and had spent more time trying to get out than trying to get to know the place.
First, he would scout, and this time Senu was by his side. Bayek remembered a few faces, and some names. He would seek them out first. So with a click of his tongue, Bayek sent Senu up, and threw himself into the wind after her. His own body went dim and distant, and the world turned to impossibly sharp relief in alien angles. With Senu's eyes, Bayek knew he'd find what he was looking for.
