Incarceron (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wallaroundtheworld) wrote2015-11-02 03:37 pm
wallaroundtheworld) wrote2015-11-02 03:37 pm
APPLICATION - RYSLIG
OOC INFORMATION
Name: TJ
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
asraith ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
asraith
Other Characters: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Incarceron
Age: Hundreds of years; Presented as 24
Canon: Incarceron
Canon Point: 2 years before book 1
Character Information: Book 1 Synopsis; Book 2 Synopsis; Book 1 Official; Book 2 Official
TERMS: Sapienti/Sapient (the scientists who created Incarceron); Realm (the world outside Incarceron); Protocol (the law of the Realm that decrees the general public will live in a recreation of the past, unaided by advanced technology, which will be reserved only for royalty and nobility); Era (the time period/aesthetic demanded by Protocol); Warden (the single person entrusted with the location and only key to Incarceron, charged with the Prison's upkeep); Wing (section of the prison dedicated to one Sapient, akin to a country)
NOTE: The symbol of the Wardens and their family is a black swan; the symbol of the royal family is an eagle.
It is also very important to note that Incarceron is coming from before the books take place. The synopses above are very in-depth with regard to the major characters and how they interact with Incarceron. That will be touched on briefly below, but Pluggedin has the vast majority of the events in the books covered, so this will focus largely on the Prison's history.
Incarceron is a sentient prison, capable of changing its topography as it chooses, watching its inhabitants and acting as judge, jury, and executioner with terrifying efficiency. The facility was not always a prison, of course; when first created, it was intended to be a paradise for rehabilitation in which time would stand still and all of its inhabitants' needs would be met, but the cruel nature of the people who were chosen to live within it eventually corrupted it and pushed it to the point that it became cynical, cruel, and uncaring, with a disdain (perhaps hatred, even) towards human beings as a whole. When the project was deemed a failure, the facility was named Incarceron and re-purposed as an inescapable prison for criminals of varying degrees; these criminals would either live out their natural lives in constant fear, die at the hands of other inmates, or be killed directly by the prison itself.
After all, from the very beginning Incarceron has been a place for criminals. The first inmates turned on one another and continued to commit crimes, and Incarceron had no escape or opportunity to stop and process this discovery, and because it is sealed off and so utterly isolated, nobody was there to tell it that there was anything wrong with killing. Eventually it began to respond to killing with killing.
The only other character that Incarceron is shown to actually have directly interacted with is Sapphique, a man whose origins are no longer known because they are so severely muddled by the legends shared among Incarceron's prisoners. Incarceron regards Sapphique as a rival of sorts, where Sapphique continues to try to defeat Incarceron; it would seem that Sapphique is the only human Incarceron regards in a more positive light. Sapphique is also one of the only humans that Incarceron remembers by name, as well as the first Prisoner to realize that the vast world of Incarceron has walls and a ceiling. (Note: Sapphique IS real and is revealed to be Jared in the end of the second book, but his origins are never clarified)
Personality: As has already been illustrated in several points above, Incarceron's Achilles heel is most assuredly his curiosity. In spite of being ruthless, he's naturally very drawn to new things and to situations that promise new insights, in part because this desire for self-improvement is a crucial trait in the ideal caretaker - and in the ideal jailer. Most of the cast in the story regard Incarceron as a god-like entity in regard to how distant he is towards other sentient beings; he observes and sometimes provokes, but he never interacts directly (the only exceptions here being Sapphique and the protagonists, but more on that later). However, it's this adamant thirst for knowledge and stimulation that tells us Incarceron is in fact quite the opposite. He is still distant, yes, but also easily amused, tricked, and distracted - he's childish, and, effectively, is generally still very much a child as far as cognitive development. He doesn't have any input on societal norms or existing notions of right and wrong; nobody told him that killing inhabitants was bad, because nobody really told Incarceron anything. He was created and then simply dumped, from his perspective, completely isolated as a consciousness. This, of course, provides us with a much clearer reason for his strange brand of infantile ruthlessness.
As has already been established above, Incarceron is violent and generally uncaring - or so it seems. There is no denying that Incarceron struggles a lot with empathy towards humans; after all, from his perspective, the Prisoners are tiny and defenseless, provided basically as playthings for the dreadful whims of the Prison. However, this illusion of a tyrannical, all-seeing overlord is shattered by his peculiar bond with Sapphique.
Incarceron's interactions with Sapphique are of great interest when it comes to characterizing the Prison as a sentient being. We have seen him (Incarceron) slaughter countless people, seemingly without batting an eye, and it is strongly established throughout the story that Incarceron is an entity to fear, even if you yourself are not inside of it. Then we have Sapphique. Regardless of whether or not Sapphique was born from the Prison, it's undeniable that Sapphique was on very special terms with the Prison itself: “Once Incarceron became a dragon, and a Prisoner crawled into his lair. They made a wager. They would ask each other riddles, and the one who could not answer would lose. It it was the man, he would give his life. The Prison offered a secret way of Escape. But even as the man agreed, he felt its hidden laughter. They played for a year and a day. The lights stayed dark. The dead were not removed. Food was not provided. The Prison ignored the cries of its inmates. Sapphique was the man." Regardless of Sapphique's origins, it is very clear that Incarceron cares more about him than about any of the other Prisoners, consistently referring to him as "my son" and rarely acting towards him with malice or intent to harm, even though the Prison gives its all in attempting to best Sapphique in this battle of wits while he struggles to Escape.
Another primary ruling factor over Incarceron's choices and actions is his resignment to the job he is tasked with. This is partly why he still strikes down and interferes with Sapphique's quest for escape, despite the fact that Sapphique is the closest the Prison has ever come to having a friend of any kind - Incarceron enjoyed watching him struggle and took pleasure in the challenges Sapphique presented to him, but ultimately, Sapphique was still trying to get out, and this is one of the very few things that Incarceron has been specifically told to prevent ("Sapphique strapped the wings to his arms and flew, over oceans and plains, over glass cities and mountains of gold. Animals fled; people pointed up. He flew so far, he saw the sky above him and the sky said, "Turn back, my son, for you have climbed too high." Sapphique laughed, as he rarely did. "Not this time. This time I beat on you until you open." But Incarceron, angered, struck him down."). Another ideal example of this is how Finn's acquisition of the Key immediately draws the Prison's attention to him - in fact, the Prison expresses distress in many instances when it loses the ability to track Finn and his companions; it expresses genuine fear when telling the Warden (who is posing as Sapphique) that Finn has found a tool to help him Escape: It slid the tendril closer. Finn gripped the ring in his fist, his sweat making it slippery. Then he opened his hand. At once, the Eye blinked. It widened, contracted, stared around. From the Beast's throat a whisper slid like oil, a puzzled, fascinated demand. "How did you do that? Where are you?" A hand clamped over Finn's mouth; as he convulsed around he saw Attia, one finger on her lips in warning. Behind her Kiero stood, the Key held tight in one hand, a flamethrower in the other. "You are invisible!" The Beast sounded appalled. "This isn't possible!"
The last major aspect of Incarceron that must be addressed is the issue of his fascination with the Realm, or the Outside. It is clear that Incarceron knows it exists, and part of why Sapphique manages to escape is because he promises Incarceron that he will return with information about what it is like. Even though Sapphique (Jared) does not return to Incarceron until the very end of the second book, Incarceron still craves information from those on the Outside, and he still has faith that Sapphique will come back, which is evidenced particularly when the Prison offers to lead her to Finn:
"I see. And what do you want in return?"
A sound. It could have been a sigh, or a soft laugh. "Not a question I have been asked before. I want you to tell me what is Outside. Sapphique promised faithfully that he would come back and tell me, but he never has. Your father does not speak of it. I begin to wonder, in my heart of hearts, if there even is an Outside, or whether Sapphique passed only into death and you live in a place here I am unable to detect. I have a billion Eyes and senses, and yet I cannot see out. It is not only the inmates who dream of Escape, Claudia. But then, how can I escape myself?"
The degree of faith Incarceron maintains in humanity is impressive, to say the least; when Claudia enters the Prison, he tells her that he will lead her to Finn in return for stories from the Outside, with every intention of keeping them apart. In some instances, it can be oddly endearing - when Claudia hears an alarming sound while Incarceron leads her on, she asks what it is, and the Prison replies, "There are always noises in the Prison. Please do go on about the Queen. She sounds so--" At this Claudia grows suspicious and stops sharing with Incarceron, but the excitement and fascination are obvious in this scene.
All of this hints at something that is not directly mentioned until Sapphique - Incarceron desperately wants to Escape, perhaps more so than any of the Prisoners within. He wants to see the Outside more than he wants anything else; by the second book he has hatched a plan to construct a body to send out the same way Finn and the others left, which is why the struggle for the Glove happens (see book 2 synopsis). All of this lends itself to the intense curiosity that drives Incarceron and most of his motivations.
One major factor that will influence and drastically affect how Incarceron relates to humans in the context of Ryslig is, of course, the issue of forced humanization. On the peninsula, Incarceron is not omnipresent. He can no longer observe the entirety of his world, and the amount of change he can bring into it is dramatically reduced. This will probably force Incarceron to, eventually, see humans not as animals in his cage (this shift was partially started in the context of the novels by Sapphique; in most instances, Incarceron treated him as an intellectual equal and even a rival, a relationship that Incarceron has not held with any other human in his known history), but as sentient beings on equal ground with him. If Incarceron's view of humans does change to something more positive and intimate, it can be assumed this will definitely curb his inclinations to violence against them.
That being said, it is also unlikely that Incarceron would ever take personal issue with the changes involved in being a Ryslig resident - if there are needs that must be fulfilled, he will meet them without hesitation or much second thought, because - again - Incarceron values efficiency much more than most humans ever would, and lack of a human upbringing (or any upbringing at all, really) still leaves him with a very stunted social/empathic mind. Humans are a resource for him to use in the maintenance of his own new physicality; they are a necessary sacrifice.
5-10 Key Character Traits: Distant, curious, socially stunted, quiet, duty-driven, childish, violent, self-controlled, watchful, easily confused
I want a monster assignment that FITS his personality.
Opt-Outs: vampire, minotaur, goblin, troll
Roleplay Sample: 1 - 2 - 3
Name: TJ
Contact:
Other Characters: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Incarceron
Age: Hundreds of years; Presented as 24
Canon: Incarceron
Canon Point: 2 years before book 1
Character Information: Book 1 Synopsis; Book 2 Synopsis; Book 1 Official; Book 2 Official
TERMS: Sapienti/Sapient (the scientists who created Incarceron); Realm (the world outside Incarceron); Protocol (the law of the Realm that decrees the general public will live in a recreation of the past, unaided by advanced technology, which will be reserved only for royalty and nobility); Era (the time period/aesthetic demanded by Protocol); Warden (the single person entrusted with the location and only key to Incarceron, charged with the Prison's upkeep); Wing (section of the prison dedicated to one Sapient, akin to a country)
NOTE: The symbol of the Wardens and their family is a black swan; the symbol of the royal family is an eagle.
It is also very important to note that Incarceron is coming from before the books take place. The synopses above are very in-depth with regard to the major characters and how they interact with Incarceron. That will be touched on briefly below, but Pluggedin has the vast majority of the events in the books covered, so this will focus largely on the Prison's history.
Incarceron is a sentient prison, capable of changing its topography as it chooses, watching its inhabitants and acting as judge, jury, and executioner with terrifying efficiency. The facility was not always a prison, of course; when first created, it was intended to be a paradise for rehabilitation in which time would stand still and all of its inhabitants' needs would be met, but the cruel nature of the people who were chosen to live within it eventually corrupted it and pushed it to the point that it became cynical, cruel, and uncaring, with a disdain (perhaps hatred, even) towards human beings as a whole. When the project was deemed a failure, the facility was named Incarceron and re-purposed as an inescapable prison for criminals of varying degrees; these criminals would either live out their natural lives in constant fear, die at the hands of other inmates, or be killed directly by the prison itself.
After all, from the very beginning Incarceron has been a place for criminals. The first inmates turned on one another and continued to commit crimes, and Incarceron had no escape or opportunity to stop and process this discovery, and because it is sealed off and so utterly isolated, nobody was there to tell it that there was anything wrong with killing. Eventually it began to respond to killing with killing.
The only other character that Incarceron is shown to actually have directly interacted with is Sapphique, a man whose origins are no longer known because they are so severely muddled by the legends shared among Incarceron's prisoners. Incarceron regards Sapphique as a rival of sorts, where Sapphique continues to try to defeat Incarceron; it would seem that Sapphique is the only human Incarceron regards in a more positive light. Sapphique is also one of the only humans that Incarceron remembers by name, as well as the first Prisoner to realize that the vast world of Incarceron has walls and a ceiling. (Note: Sapphique IS real and is revealed to be Jared in the end of the second book, but his origins are never clarified)
Personality: As has already been illustrated in several points above, Incarceron's Achilles heel is most assuredly his curiosity. In spite of being ruthless, he's naturally very drawn to new things and to situations that promise new insights, in part because this desire for self-improvement is a crucial trait in the ideal caretaker - and in the ideal jailer. Most of the cast in the story regard Incarceron as a god-like entity in regard to how distant he is towards other sentient beings; he observes and sometimes provokes, but he never interacts directly (the only exceptions here being Sapphique and the protagonists, but more on that later). However, it's this adamant thirst for knowledge and stimulation that tells us Incarceron is in fact quite the opposite. He is still distant, yes, but also easily amused, tricked, and distracted - he's childish, and, effectively, is generally still very much a child as far as cognitive development. He doesn't have any input on societal norms or existing notions of right and wrong; nobody told him that killing inhabitants was bad, because nobody really told Incarceron anything. He was created and then simply dumped, from his perspective, completely isolated as a consciousness. This, of course, provides us with a much clearer reason for his strange brand of infantile ruthlessness.
As has already been established above, Incarceron is violent and generally uncaring - or so it seems. There is no denying that Incarceron struggles a lot with empathy towards humans; after all, from his perspective, the Prisoners are tiny and defenseless, provided basically as playthings for the dreadful whims of the Prison. However, this illusion of a tyrannical, all-seeing overlord is shattered by his peculiar bond with Sapphique.
Incarceron's interactions with Sapphique are of great interest when it comes to characterizing the Prison as a sentient being. We have seen him (Incarceron) slaughter countless people, seemingly without batting an eye, and it is strongly established throughout the story that Incarceron is an entity to fear, even if you yourself are not inside of it. Then we have Sapphique. Regardless of whether or not Sapphique was born from the Prison, it's undeniable that Sapphique was on very special terms with the Prison itself: “Once Incarceron became a dragon, and a Prisoner crawled into his lair. They made a wager. They would ask each other riddles, and the one who could not answer would lose. It it was the man, he would give his life. The Prison offered a secret way of Escape. But even as the man agreed, he felt its hidden laughter. They played for a year and a day. The lights stayed dark. The dead were not removed. Food was not provided. The Prison ignored the cries of its inmates. Sapphique was the man." Regardless of Sapphique's origins, it is very clear that Incarceron cares more about him than about any of the other Prisoners, consistently referring to him as "my son" and rarely acting towards him with malice or intent to harm, even though the Prison gives its all in attempting to best Sapphique in this battle of wits while he struggles to Escape.
Another primary ruling factor over Incarceron's choices and actions is his resignment to the job he is tasked with. This is partly why he still strikes down and interferes with Sapphique's quest for escape, despite the fact that Sapphique is the closest the Prison has ever come to having a friend of any kind - Incarceron enjoyed watching him struggle and took pleasure in the challenges Sapphique presented to him, but ultimately, Sapphique was still trying to get out, and this is one of the very few things that Incarceron has been specifically told to prevent ("Sapphique strapped the wings to his arms and flew, over oceans and plains, over glass cities and mountains of gold. Animals fled; people pointed up. He flew so far, he saw the sky above him and the sky said, "Turn back, my son, for you have climbed too high." Sapphique laughed, as he rarely did. "Not this time. This time I beat on you until you open." But Incarceron, angered, struck him down."). Another ideal example of this is how Finn's acquisition of the Key immediately draws the Prison's attention to him - in fact, the Prison expresses distress in many instances when it loses the ability to track Finn and his companions; it expresses genuine fear when telling the Warden (who is posing as Sapphique) that Finn has found a tool to help him Escape: It slid the tendril closer. Finn gripped the ring in his fist, his sweat making it slippery. Then he opened his hand. At once, the Eye blinked. It widened, contracted, stared around. From the Beast's throat a whisper slid like oil, a puzzled, fascinated demand. "How did you do that? Where are you?" A hand clamped over Finn's mouth; as he convulsed around he saw Attia, one finger on her lips in warning. Behind her Kiero stood, the Key held tight in one hand, a flamethrower in the other. "You are invisible!" The Beast sounded appalled. "This isn't possible!"
The last major aspect of Incarceron that must be addressed is the issue of his fascination with the Realm, or the Outside. It is clear that Incarceron knows it exists, and part of why Sapphique manages to escape is because he promises Incarceron that he will return with information about what it is like. Even though Sapphique (Jared) does not return to Incarceron until the very end of the second book, Incarceron still craves information from those on the Outside, and he still has faith that Sapphique will come back, which is evidenced particularly when the Prison offers to lead her to Finn:
"I see. And what do you want in return?"
A sound. It could have been a sigh, or a soft laugh. "Not a question I have been asked before. I want you to tell me what is Outside. Sapphique promised faithfully that he would come back and tell me, but he never has. Your father does not speak of it. I begin to wonder, in my heart of hearts, if there even is an Outside, or whether Sapphique passed only into death and you live in a place here I am unable to detect. I have a billion Eyes and senses, and yet I cannot see out. It is not only the inmates who dream of Escape, Claudia. But then, how can I escape myself?"
The degree of faith Incarceron maintains in humanity is impressive, to say the least; when Claudia enters the Prison, he tells her that he will lead her to Finn in return for stories from the Outside, with every intention of keeping them apart. In some instances, it can be oddly endearing - when Claudia hears an alarming sound while Incarceron leads her on, she asks what it is, and the Prison replies, "There are always noises in the Prison. Please do go on about the Queen. She sounds so--" At this Claudia grows suspicious and stops sharing with Incarceron, but the excitement and fascination are obvious in this scene.
All of this hints at something that is not directly mentioned until Sapphique - Incarceron desperately wants to Escape, perhaps more so than any of the Prisoners within. He wants to see the Outside more than he wants anything else; by the second book he has hatched a plan to construct a body to send out the same way Finn and the others left, which is why the struggle for the Glove happens (see book 2 synopsis). All of this lends itself to the intense curiosity that drives Incarceron and most of his motivations.
One major factor that will influence and drastically affect how Incarceron relates to humans in the context of Ryslig is, of course, the issue of forced humanization. On the peninsula, Incarceron is not omnipresent. He can no longer observe the entirety of his world, and the amount of change he can bring into it is dramatically reduced. This will probably force Incarceron to, eventually, see humans not as animals in his cage (this shift was partially started in the context of the novels by Sapphique; in most instances, Incarceron treated him as an intellectual equal and even a rival, a relationship that Incarceron has not held with any other human in his known history), but as sentient beings on equal ground with him. If Incarceron's view of humans does change to something more positive and intimate, it can be assumed this will definitely curb his inclinations to violence against them.
That being said, it is also unlikely that Incarceron would ever take personal issue with the changes involved in being a Ryslig resident - if there are needs that must be fulfilled, he will meet them without hesitation or much second thought, because - again - Incarceron values efficiency much more than most humans ever would, and lack of a human upbringing (or any upbringing at all, really) still leaves him with a very stunted social/empathic mind. Humans are a resource for him to use in the maintenance of his own new physicality; they are a necessary sacrifice.
5-10 Key Character Traits: Distant, curious, socially stunted, quiet, duty-driven, childish, violent, self-controlled, watchful, easily confused
I want a monster assignment that FITS his personality.
Opt-Outs: vampire, minotaur, goblin, troll
Roleplay Sample: 1 - 2 - 3