Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:47 pm
Krish, we expect your presence in the game room.
Because sometimes even national leaders just want to hang out
https://forum.nationstates.net/
Hardened Pyrokinetics wrote:Krish, we expect your presence in the game room.
Nightkill the Emperor wrote:Ende wrote:96%? That's overkill.
My standard is set at 95%, and I think it's good, but 96% is a bit much.
96% for me is a sign something's wrong and that improvement should be made, but it is acceptable.
This is partially because Indian schooling is based around ranking and a 96% put you at the bottom 10% of the class.
Ende wrote:Nightkill the Emperor wrote:96% for me is a sign something's wrong and that improvement should be made, but it is acceptable.
This is partially because Indian schooling is based around ranking and a 96% put you at the bottom 10% of the class.
I'm only a little bit amused, because I have an average of 96 and I'm in the top 1% of my class.
America's education system is absolutely amaaaaazing.
Nightkill the Emperor wrote:Ende wrote:I'm only a little bit amused, because I have an average of 96 and I'm in the top 1% of my class.
America's education system is absolutely amaaaaazing.
To be honest, America needs to seriously improve, but India needs to change some things as well. Like how we did university examinations.
Maharashtra has over 100 million citizens, so there are a lot of people in school and the like. In a single year, only 1000 students will go onto an university.
It was fucking insane. People actually killed themselves over the pressure of that, especially since education is such a big deal over there. They've changed things so it's more sane now, but that was just crazy.
Zarkenis Ultima wrote:Nightkill the Emperor wrote:To be honest, America needs to seriously improve, but India needs to change some things as well. Like how we did university examinations.
Maharashtra has over 100 million citizens, so there are a lot of people in school and the like. In a single year, only 1000 students will go onto an university.
It was fucking insane. People actually killed themselves over the pressure of that, especially since education is such a big deal over there. They've changed things so it's more sane now, but that was just crazy.
Wow. Damn.
Here, university is free and anyone can get in as long as they got decent grades and pass an exam. At least as far as I know.
But then, our education sucks.
Nightkill the Emperor wrote:Ende wrote:I'm only a little bit amused, because I have an average of 96 and I'm in the top 1% of my class.
America's education system is absolutely amaaaaazing.
To be honest, America needs to seriously improve, but India needs to change some things as well. Like how we did university examinations.
Maharashtra has over 100 million citizens, so there are a lot of people in school and the like. In a single year, only 1000 students will go onto an university.
It was fucking insane. People actually killed themselves over the pressure of that, especially since education is such a big deal over there. They've changed things so it's more sane now, but that was just crazy.
Nightkill the Emperor wrote:Zarkenis Ultima wrote:
Wow. Damn.
Here, university is free and anyone can get in as long as they got decent grades and pass an exam. At least as far as I know.
But then, our education sucks.
You can get into Indian university with the money, but we have a poor country so that's not an option for most.
And you have an educational system?
Ende wrote:Nightkill the Emperor wrote:To be honest, America needs to seriously improve, but India needs to change some things as well. Like how we did university examinations.
Maharashtra has over 100 million citizens, so there are a lot of people in school and the like. In a single year, only 1000 students will go onto an university.
It was fucking insane. People actually killed themselves over the pressure of that, especially since education is such a big deal over there. They've changed things so it's more sane now, but that was just crazy.
Damnnnnnnnn.
Yeah, that should probably be fixed.
Hardened Pyrokinetics wrote:New game?
Nightkill the Emperor wrote:
Name: Rev. Daniel Andreas
Age (Actual): 499
Age (Appears): 51
Race: Human/Vampire hybrid, sort of; specifically, he is known one of those rare individuals known as a Sabbatanos, or a Hawthorn. And this is all actually Eastern European folklore (with some twists), so listen up! A Sabbatanos is a man or woman born on a Saturday; his father is a vampire, his mother a mortal woman (typically the vampire's widow. Have fun with that idea.) Anyway, these individuals are capable of seeing vampires, magic, and other supernal entities; in short, they perceive the intrusion of the supernatural into the physical world, however it manifests itself. Also, they stop aging at around fifty, and then live essentially forever unless they're killed. Since a Sabbatanos has one role - to protect the living from the threats which only he can see - they typically don't live that long. Vampire-hunting has a pretty high mortality rate. Incidentally, this is why the Sabbatanoi are also called Hawthorns; the pyre upon which one burns a vampire's body is built using hawthorn wood. Anyway, because of the problems with being violently slaughtered, Daniel is likely the oldest surviving Sabbatanos in the world. He is also one of the few remaining ones, period: vampires got wise around the time of the Industrial Revolution and started killing anyone who could see them while the Sabbatanoi were still children.
Appearance: Daniel Andreas is surprisingly physically unprepossessing (well, he was born in the sixteenth century, and people were smaller then). He is slightly under six feet tall, and quite thin, with fine bones and a runner's build: muscular but not burly. But there is something in how he holds himself that makes him seem much larger than he is. As you would expect, he has a ton of scars; the most immediately noticeable are on his face (faded burn scarring over the left cheek, ear, and neck) and hands (blade scars on the palms, knuckles like horn). He has fair skin, tanned to a pale gold; his hair is pure silver-white, worn short and neatly trimmed. He has what was once called a warrior's beard; thick but short, trimmed close to the jawline and lip - also entirely white. The eyes are startling: a pale and intense blue, almost electric-blue, large and brilliant and seemingly endless. Around the school, he typically wears a dark blue, double-breasted cassock with white clergy collar; this is one of the reasons why Daniel seems larger than he is, because a fitted cassock emphasizes one's chest and shoulders. In the outside world, he favors plain street clothes, usually of hard-wearing wool and canvas and leather.
Powergrid/Powers:
Powergrid
INT 4. Note: The equivalence scale suggests that this refers mainly to rational or analytical intelligence; in terms of emotional intelligence, Daniel is rather further along.
STR 5
SPD 5
DUR 5
FS 9. Note: He fought vampires and other supernatural uglies, continuously, for about 350 years. And lived.
CHA 5
Magic
Level 5 Perceptivity: Daniel can see magic, essentially. He can see magical beings, and he can see magic itself, where it enters into the physical world. It manifests itself in his vision as colors that defy description, wafting like smoke. Trippy, right? Things that are naturally invisible are simply visible to Daniel. So that's invisible creatures, and magic generally. Things that someone is actively attempting to hide, Daniel can see only vaguely, if at all. This is because he can see magic, and so magic whose purpose is to conceal something is itself visible to him, if only very slightly. By concentration, he may be able to penetrate the magical concealment itself and see what lies behind; this depends on his willpower, focus, and the relative strength of the concealment spell and his own Sabbatanos abilities.
Weaknesses: Daniel knows his way around all kinds of cutting-edge weapons, but he is pretty damned useless with every other kind of technology. He doesn't like it, and doesn't trust it. He also has a lingering distrust of magic generally (he doesn't include his own highly specific and genetically-linked abilities in this category); he regards it as dangerously seductive, a temptation to hubris and might-makes-right mentalities. It's not bad in and of itself, but it can have terrible effects on a soul. This is a clear limit on the ways in which he can deal with any given situation. More deeply, Daniel is a man who regards himself as having been saved from himself; his greatest fear is neither death nor failure, but lapsing back into being the person he once was. Accordingly, he holds to his principles - in most cases - with the fervor of a drowning man clutching a lifeline; to violate those principles would be to lose himself, and that is far worse - in Daniel's eyes - than death or failure. So in ninety percent of cases, Daniel will feel unable to take preemptive violent action, or to use more force than is absolutely necessary. He's that guy who walks into a trap, knowing that it's a trap, because he cannot do anything else and still be who he is.
Personality:
Really, you should just read the history. I write bios as a way of exploring my characters' mentalities, so this won't make sense unless you read the bio first. Equally, if you have read the bio, then there's less point in reading this section. But what the hell: let's go ahead anyway.
First off, an interesting and somewhat surprising fact. Daniel Andreas doesn't actually like violence. He doesn't have the suppressed bloodlust that, to varying extents, has characterized most warriors throughout history. He is phenomenally, superhumanly good at violence, but he does not enjoy it. And living such an unbelievably violent life has had a traumatizing effect upon him. He believes that his past actions, his centuries spent killing Catholics and vampires and werewolves and anyone else whom he felt to be an "enemy of God," have forever warped his soul - and he is probably right about that. He cannot simply embrace violence, and so he has needed - desperately, consumingly - to justify it to himself.
This leads to the second major aspect of Daniel's personality. For hundreds of years, he justified his violent actions - and therefore held at bay the psychological trauma inflicted by those actions - by believing that he was one of God's elect, chosen to defend the anointed of the Lord and to purge the world of God's enemies. When this justification finally fell apart - when Daniel realized that he could not, in fact, justify what he'd done - the accumulated psychological trauma accumulated in the course of this naturally gentle man's centuries of bloody murder hit him all at once. He concluded that he deserved damnation. This has left him with two very important convictions: first, that people are naturally and entirely sinful. They do nothing good by themselves. Even when they believe that they are doing good things, they are actually acting out their sinful desires under a cloak of self-congratulatory piety. So Daniel feels himself and others to be continually and entirely reliant upon God's love and forgiveness, because by their own actions they can do nothing good. Second, Daniel is profoundly reluctant to pass hard-and-fast moral judgment on the actions of others. While he believes that he knows right from wrong in a worldly, practical sense, Daniel does not believe that he - as an equally sinful being - has the right to declare that anyone else's actions are against God's will. For Daniel, it's taken for granted that more or less everyone's actions are against God's will, his own as much as everyone else's.
Finally, there is faith. Daniel's belief in God is grounded in a classic convert's experience, familiar to Paul, Augustine, and Luther. Having despaired of his own righteousness, having realized that by any standard of justice he deserved hellfire, Daniel was shocked to experience, suddenly and irresistibly, the love of God just the same. For Daniel, God's unconditional and irresistible love is the only hope which any human being - or angel, or demon - has of true peace, true happiness. And because God's love comes in spite of sin, forgiveness and mercy are of critical importance in Daniel's psyche. Having been saved despite himself, he feels an obligation to respond to God's love and forgiveness with his own love and forgiveness - not in order to earn God's love, but as a natural response to it - to love as he is loved. He is a caregiver, a nurturer, a protector. He lives by a code, but it is not the warrior code of honor and justice; it is the code of gratitude, sacrifice, and forgiveness. To the extent that violence enters the picture, it grows out of that experience; Daniel still remembers and values the "sheepdog" analogy which Stefan Petrascu taught him (see below), but it now is less about duty for him, and more about compassion.
Daniel knows firsthand how seductive self-righteous anger can be. For him, certainty in oneself - certainty that one is right, that one is pure, that one's actions are just or meet with God's approval - is the most dangerous thing in the world. And so Daniel's faith is in God, not in himself; in forgiveness of wrongs, not in certainty of righteousness; in love, not in judgment. This serene gentleness, born out of trauma and spiritual crisis, lies at the heart of his character.
History:
RP Sample: Heh.
Nationstatelandsville wrote:Some kid at my school (Catholic Republican who supports Christendom, for reference - is Christendom even still a movement?) said Africa never "did anything".
And then he removed Egypt because "it's not Africa".
Egypt became the entire Middle East.
Egypt became the entirety of Northern Africa.
And then he said that it didn't count "if it was in Africa".
Night, destroy him please.
Agritum wrote:Nationstatelandsville wrote:Some kid at my school (Catholic Republican who supports Christendom, for reference - is Christendom even still a movement?) said Africa never "did anything".
And then he removed Egypt because "it's not Africa".
Egypt became the entire Middle East.
Egypt became the entirety of Northern Africa.
And then he said that it didn't count "if it was in Africa".
Night, destroy him please.
One can't be Catholic and support Christ.
Nationstatelandsville wrote:Some kid at my school (Catholic Republican who supports Christendom, for reference - is Christendom even still a movement?) said Africa never "did anything".
And then he removed Egypt because "it's not Africa".
Egypt became the entire Middle East.
Egypt became the entirety of Northern Africa.
And then he said that it didn't count "if it was in Africa".
Night, destroy him please.
Nationstatelandsville wrote:Some kid at my school (Catholic Republican who supports Christendom, for reference - is Christendom even still a movement?) said Africa never "did anything".
And then he removed Egypt because "it's not Africa".
Egypt became the entire Middle East.
Egypt became the entirety of Northern Africa.
And then he said that it didn't count "if it was in Africa".
Night, destroy him please.