Senri App for In the Night

[bear_necessities]

PLAYER INFO

Player Name: Ket
Player Contact: flutterpony
Character(s) In-Game: None

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Senri
Age: 15
Canon: +Anima

World Description: To Wikipedia!!

History: And another Wiki!

CRAU: N/A

Death: He doesn't die in the manga, but there are some close calls. In this case I'm going with volume 8, when the kids are sneaking into the castle in Sailand and are caught by the guards. Except in this case, Senri fought back a little too hard and Lady Marein didn't intervene quickly enough. The guards killed him.


What are your plans for this character in-game?

Actually I'm curious to see how he develops in this game. He's very easily influenced by the people around him, so a lot will depend on who he gets close to. I'd really like for him to meet someone patient enough to teach him to read and write. Also, Senri has been left to survive on his own before, but never in such a hostile environment. So that'll be fun.


What aspects of this game and/or its setting are you most interested in having this character engage with?

Exploration. Although this is mostly because that's the sort of thing I enjoy as a player. Although I would love to see a scenario where Senri had to explain something he found considering communication difficulties.


How does your character generally get along with other people?

Very well. He can be a little hard to talk to thanks to his preference for non verbal communication, but he's kind and helpful. And as long as he doesn't actively dislike someone, he's also disturbingly obedient. And trusting. So he's very easy to take advantage of.

Conflict presents an interesting issue. If the conflict is between a friend and someone who isn't, whether because he doesn't know them or because they've been hostile in the past, then the one he considers a friend is right. Obviously. But when two or more people he considers to be friends disagree with each other, it's almost impossible for him to pick a side. In this case he's usually reduced to hovering near one or both of them awkwardly until things are settled.


What is your character's mental state upon entering the game?

Confused. But honestly that is frequently his mental state. He won't quite understand that he's dead right away and will be missing his friends, but he'll get back on his feet pretty quickly.


Skills/Abilities:

+Anima: Senri is a +Anima, someone with the spirit of an animal in them. In his case the spirit of a bear makes him stronger, tougher, and grants him better physical senses (especially smell) than a normal person. It also allows him to transform his arms into a bear's claws. Usually he just uses one at a time, but he can do both if he has to. When not in use, his anima appears as a tattoo that runs the length of Senri's right arm.

The downside is that Senri's anima came from the spirit of a deranged man eating bear. This, combined with his peculiar blend of psychological damage, results in Senri being more feral than most +Anima. And under the right kinds of emotional stress, or just plain losing his eye patch, Senri can lose control and undergo a more dangerous werebear-like transformation. In this state, he has no recognition of friend or foe and just attacks everyone.

As far as other abilities, Senri is very good with various wilderness survival skills such as hunting and cooking. He's also a skilled woodcarver.


Flaws/Weaknesses:

Oh geez, this will get long. And be very hard to explain without some context, but I'll try to pare it down as much as possible.

First, Senri has been through an awful lot of trauma in his fifteen years. His father losing control of his anima and trying to kill Senri, the spirit of a mad bear granting him an anima just in time to kill his father in self defense, his tribe being decimated and the survivors sold into slavery, etc. The resulting psychological damage has left him with difficulties communicating with others and retaining memories of those he meets. And his anima is troublesome and difficult to control. He also has two more or less effective work arounds to these problems that are problematic in their own right.

Crystala gave him a book and told him that if he kept a memento of anything important in it, then he would be able to remember. She added a flower to represent herself and from that point on, he was able to remember her. And when she discovered that he had trouble controlling his anima when he was angry, she solved that in essentially the same way. She gave him an eye patch and told him that as long as he wore it he'd retain his humanity. Sounds great, right?

Except that if he loses his book, all his memories go with it. And Senri goes berserk whenever the eye patch is removed. But the fact that either of these worked at all is significant because there is nothing special about the book or the eye patch. They're not magic, they aren't made of special materials, and there's no charms on them. Totally normal. They only work because Senri believes they do.

No real phobias to speak of, and really there are a lot of people you could use to mess with his head. Cooro, Husky, and Nana are the obvious ones, but Crystala and his father are pretty mean options too.

Other than that, I did mention before that he's illiterate, so that always presents some problems. And he's extremely naive, and thus very easy to trick.


Personality:

When people first meet Senri, the impression they tend to get is is a very serious, stoic young man. It's a partially correct assumption. It is almost impossible to tell what Senri is thinking and his face rarely betrays much expression. He rarely loses his composure in a crisis, and isn't prone to any extreme emotional reaction. It has been suggested that he keeps his emotions in check to better control his anima, but Senri has neither confirmed nor denied this suspicion. This image is aided by the fact that Senri is generally very quiet, speaking only when necessary. Cooro and the others usually have to prompt responses from him. And even then, it's rare to get more than a word or two out of him. That said, he has no real problem answering question or giving opinions if you ask for them. Expect honesty though, because it really wouldn't occur to him to lie.

But despite first impressions, Senri actually is pretty emotional. The problem is that he doesn't display his emotions the way most people do. The clues are more subtle. He is an extremely kind and gentle person, and often goes out of his way to help others. When he saw Pinion running away from the researchers, he didn't hesitate to come to the child's aid. And at the time, he was unaware that the boy he'd saved was Rose's brother. He also has a strong protective streak, and was willing to stay in the field at Abon village for months just to defend their crops from bandits. And he never expects to get anything in return. He helps people because he can. He's very loyal to the people he cares about. He was willing to fight for Crystala after years of separation and with no concern for who her opponents were. If Crystala didn't like them, then they were bad. Simple as that.

Another common misconception about Senri is that he's stupid. This is not true. He's uneducated and illiterate, but actually has learned a number of useful skills. And he can be taught new things by a patient teacher. He is a little slow on the uptake, but that has a lot more to do with the severe psychological trauma he's been dealing with for most of his life. While Senri's anima is fairly well controlled thanks to Crystala, traces of it will always surface. Senri growls when he's angry, and tends to examine new things by smelling or tasting them. He will also lick wounds before even thinking about things like bandages.


Items:
Clothing, a leather shoulderbag, The shawl Nana made for him, a machete, a small whittling knife, and the aforementioned book and eyepatch.

SAMPLES

Log Sample: From the previous TDM. Also here and here.
Network Sample: Sort of here, but also this:

dak
shidsa
xk

[Okay, it takes him several tries, but Senri manages to remember which buttons start up the audio function of the tablet. He holds it out in front of himself gingerly, still unsure if he's doing this right. He doesn't use the tablet often, preferring to deal with people face to face, but some things are easier if you can talk to everybody at once.]

Necklace.... blue flower. Pretty.

[That's about everything, right? Oh.. wait.]

Not mine.

[He found a lost item. Which probably should be the first thing he said but at least he's trying. He knows how important mementos of the past can be and something this pretty is surely missed by someone. He'd take a picture of it... if he could figure out how that function worked. Maybe someone can show him later? Baby steps.]