Admiral Lord Aral Vorkosigan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
use_everything) wrote2016-01-31 09:07 pm
use_everything) wrote2016-01-31 09:07 pm
(no subject)
CW: This app will touch upon the subjects of rape, suicide, and abusive sexual relationships.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Lord Aral Vorkosigan
CHARACTER AGE: 45
SERIES: Vorkosigan Saga
CHRONOLOGY: After Barrayar, before the epilogue
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: If possible, I'd like to request DC 007 with Cordelia
BACKGROUND: A character specific history is here.
The Vorkosigan Saga follows the time, triumph and troubles of a particularly integral family to the politics and revolution of Barrayar - a feudalistic planet that was thrown violently into an advanced, mostly adversarial and wholly complicated galactic arena.
Aral Vorkosigan was born into a chaotic, war torn period of Barrayar's history. While his earliest years seem warm and idyllic, at 11, a politically driven massacre killed his mother, younger sister and older brother in front of him. He joined the civil war with his father for vengeance, and under the direction of the incoming Emperor, took the first cut on the man responsible for killing his family, disemboweling him by way of execution at 13 years old.
His military life, before and after he entered the military service officially at 18, was active in the many conflicts that troubled Barrayar and decorated with many honors. However, his personal life was tumultuous. He was given a beautiful wife in an arranged marriage, which he was quite happy with, but never seemed to know her, due to his long stretches in the service. She took two lovers, of whom he killed both when her brother informed him of the affair. When he told her what he did, she took his own weapon and killed herself with it. He was never charged for the two murders as it was assumed the lovers killed each other, and the lack of punishment/justice weighed on him.
He took to drinking and wild, aggressive action, for the first time breaking with the careful, conservative image he had built of himself in his father's image. He took Ges Vorrutyer as a lover, a sadist and brother of his late wife, who had deliberately broken up his marriage. There was, at the least, attraction there, though it is called an unhappy period of his life. Vorrutyer stepped over a line by attempting to introduce others to their relationship (the third was implied to be unwillingly so,) and Aral broke it off spectacularly and violently. Vorrutyer quickly became deranged and obsessive in Aral's absence.
He pulled his life back together and threw himself into military pursuits, becoming the youngest man to achieve the rank of Admiral. The capstone of this career was a 4 year venture, eventually conquering a strategically important planet with almost no bloodshed. This achievement was ruined at the very last moment when a Political Officer (secret service) killed the assembled political leaders who had surrendered to Aral in a large, bloody massacre. In what would be one of his famous rages, he called the Political Officer in front of him and broke his neck with his own two hands without trial or interrogation on the bridge of his ship.
The incident crowned him galactic infamy as the Butcher of Komarr, and on his home planet, destroyed his political and military reputation for murder without a court martial. He was demoted, given a ship of the worst crew that the Barrayaran military could offer, and sent out to patrol the far backwaters of Barrayaran controlled space.
On orders to peacefully detain a survey party from the liberal Beta Colony, Aral is caught up in a mutiny orchestrated by his ship's Political Officer .. of whom he had also threatened to murder. Disarmed and stranded on a dangerous, un-terraformed planet, he encounters (and takes prisoner) the sole survivor of the Betan Survey team, Commander Cordelia Naismith, an encounter that would change his life.
Travelling with her to a Barrayaran supply cache on the planet to reestablish his command, they grew to respect each other deeply and fell in love during the dangerous journey. In the midst of sorting out the mutiny, he explains to her that their planets will soon be at war, but nevertheless proposes to her. Due to the ridiculous complications of the situation, the answer is put off, Cordelia singlehandedly helps suppress the revolt and escapes back to her own ship.
They meet again at the height of the war. Now Captain, Cordelia pulls off a brilliant maneuver that introduces a new, deadly secret weapon into the fray that would end the war at the very next battle. Captured by the Barrayarans, she's brought before the commanding Vice-Admiral Ges Vorrrutyer who has taken to making sport of female prisoners of war and then delivering them to the similarly corrupt and perverted Prince Serg. He is killed by a troubled man loyal to Aral before he can rape her, and she is taken in and hidden by Aral, a subordinate of the high command on that ship.
Aral, on orders of the dying Emperor, is reluctantly orchestrating the failure of the war, routing the War Party of Barrayar and killing the demented prince and Vorrutyer - a politically complex, expensive and grand scale assassination at the cost of nearly 5000 uninvolved lives. Cordelia's arrival only cinches the plot, allowing him to 'gain' the information about the new weapon that will destroy the outgoing fleet but too late to stop the invasion plans. Successful in Barrayar's resounding defeat, Aral executes his retreat and salvage plan, saving as many lives and ships as possible in the aftermath.
Left drained and broken on this venture for the Emperor's vision of the greater good, he returns Cordelia to Beta Colony on a prisoner exchange, and returns to his own planet to give drinking himself to death a good, solid shot. He's later surprised when Cordelia returns to him, having escaped the confinement of her own planet, who believed she was a brainwashed spy for Barrayar in the wake of two captures.
She accepts his proposal as a free woman returning to him, having rejected it as a prisoner. They are married and soon with child on the way, when the dying Emperor calls Aral to appoint him Lord Regent of Barrayar - in charge of the governance of the planet for the next 15 years, while the Emperor's grandson, the only child of the prince Aral had assassinated, Gregor Vorbarra reaches his majority.
His first year of Regency is one of turmoil and some devastating mistakes. There are multiple assassination attempts - one of which poisoned their unborn son, confining him to a uterine replicator in hopes of saving his life, threats of rebellion from Komarr, an invasion from Cetaganda, an uprising from within, and Aral's own struggles with his personal honor versus what he sees as the need to uphold brutal, unforgiving laws of the planet.
The uprising swells quickly, throwing the planet into a brief civil war, with many hostages at stake, including his unborn son. Unable to send military force to free his son when he's asked all of the other high born families to wait on negotiation for their own loved ones, he holds the fort while Cordelia storms off with a crack team to not only rescue their son, but brings back the head of their enemy, effectively destroying the revolt.
In the aftermath, Cordelia and Aral both decide to push forward, setting policy, technology and education in the ways they believe is right, rather than what is traditional for Barrayar as they had both done, bringing forth a new era.
PERSONALITY: Aral Vorkosigan is a complicated man who spends most of his life struggling with his definition of himself and his personal honor, which he holds sacred when the Barrayaran social religions of war and power fail him. His conservative upbringing on the war-mad planet is at constant odds with his growing personal belief that progressive growth is the only way forward, and stability can only be held in peace.
Having grown up in the shadow of his father - a famous war general whose feats border on unimaginable and peerless - and his deceased older brother who he never seemed to measure up against, Aral's is most alive under crushing pressure from all angles. He lives on challenge, impossible situations and forward motion, for good or bad.
It also has given him something of an inflexible ego and a delicate, evolving sense of pride that masks a rather low self image. Offense of those no longer send him into deadly rages of his youth, but they still give him a very stilted, stiff and tightly held air about him.
Likewise, Ezar, the ruthless and manipulative old Emperor, has had a hand in Aral's history and development from a child, creating a man who values loyalty above all else - interpersonal and to the Imperium of Barrayar. He says himself that while a subject is being debated he will argue to his last breath, but when the order actually comes down, he will obey it to the full extent. It is also Ezar's influence that has made him absolutely adverse to the idea of being Emperor himself, which he has debatably better blood right to than Ezar himself.
Though he is possessed by extremely powerful emotions, and seems to decide his feelings - up to and including powerful concepts like love and hate - incredibly quickly, he is absolutely terrible at expressing them. He is painfully awkward when he tries to be kind, or openly connect with others, lacking that kind of charisma and generally socially inept. While he has deep empathy, and great political/longview comprehension, he lacks emotional intelligence. He often overlooks subtle (and sometimes enormous) emotional cues in others or rationalizes them away.
In fact, when dealing with situations that baffle, confuse or are simply so far out of his personal experience that he has no frame of reference at all, he has to reassign them military significance mentally to be able to come up with a strategy to deal with them. His courtship of Cordelia involved flirting with her by talking about politics and military maneuvers. This is not a sociallycompetent well-adjusted man.
When comfortable and alone with his loved ones, he can be unendingly warm, patient and careless about preserving little things like dignity. It's just getting there through all of the stiff awkwardness and deep consciousness of appearance.
On the other side of the coin, he exudes confidence and power in command, cowing some just out of sheer presence. His body language, when not tightly held in reserve, is often one of aggression and predatory in nature. He believes strongly that all battles are won or lost in the mind first, and that outward show is one facet of the tactical way he approaches most of his life.
When it does come to politics or the military, he is a tactical genius, even if he is unsubtle and bullish when it comes to his approach to politics. He uses his reputation for rage like a sword, either intimidating or misleading men who are susceptible to those approaches. He's easily able to factor multiple points at once, juggle multiple actions and in the end, engage along a winning path.
He tends to also play the long game. He believes that the greater good overwhelmingly outweighs his personal good and personal comfort. His style of governance reflects that in extremes. Which has leant him a particularly complicated relationship with grief, guilt and remorse. While he internalizes most of these, he can also be blunt about them to a fault. While he can be poetic, he rarely sugar coats issues.
And finally, while Aral doesn't disabuse misconceptions of himself, and in some cases, actively uses them to advance other's agendas, he VERY rarely ever directly lies. His word, when given, is as good as law.
POWER: All powers are non canon
Iron Guard Aral has the ability to summon up to two iron golems in the shape of faceless soldiers. They can only follow simple commands that require no special skills or critical thinking. (Break down that door? YEP. Pick that lock? NOPE). If not dismissed, broken past function, or told to stop a task, they will singlemindedly continue. When dismissed, they will dissolve. He can only summon them once a day and never maintain more than two at a time.
Null Power This is a strictly tactile skill that can nullify supernatural powers in one target at a time. It can be maintained as long as Aral is in physical skin to skin contact with the target. When let go, the target will recover their abilities within 15 minutes. Aral can dismiss that after effect sooner, if needed. There will be a permission post for this skill, as well as contact with other players in any situation where it would be used.
Liege Relationships Aral will have a telepathic link with those he has sworn to or is sworn to him. The link is entirely open or closed by all parties discretion and cannot be forced open or closed by him. He can swear new people to him, forming new links, and in the case that he does, there will be a permission post. The oath sworn to him must be sincere, informed in advance as to what it means and without deception for it to work.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[The man that appears on the network, with folded hands and a sharp, pensive gaze into the camera, seems to have picked his environment for the broadcast carefully. The background is all harsh light and cinderblock walls, giving a very sharp look to the man in a green undress military uniform. When he speaks, his accent seems to be some near neighbor to Russian.
He begins without preamble or introduction.]
I have two requests.
The first is to speak with any central authority we, as foreigners, have established. [There's a pause here and a sardonic hint of a nod. ] Provided, of course, that any has been developed.
The second is for information, specifically, any research on how this dimension relates to the others we have come from. Any information is welcome.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: A test post thread with Miles
FINAL NOTES: Aral will be arriving with two ceremonial dueling swords, a regulation stunner (a powerful taser), and a few pieces of technology that he would be carrying: a commlink, a few datacubes (highly compressed data storage devices with holographic playback capabilities) and his military issue tool/medkit. (Think swiss army knife/basic first aid/pain med/stimulants.)
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Lord Aral Vorkosigan
CHARACTER AGE: 45
SERIES: Vorkosigan Saga
CHRONOLOGY: After Barrayar, before the epilogue
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: If possible, I'd like to request DC 007 with Cordelia
BACKGROUND: A character specific history is here.
The Vorkosigan Saga follows the time, triumph and troubles of a particularly integral family to the politics and revolution of Barrayar - a feudalistic planet that was thrown violently into an advanced, mostly adversarial and wholly complicated galactic arena.
Aral Vorkosigan was born into a chaotic, war torn period of Barrayar's history. While his earliest years seem warm and idyllic, at 11, a politically driven massacre killed his mother, younger sister and older brother in front of him. He joined the civil war with his father for vengeance, and under the direction of the incoming Emperor, took the first cut on the man responsible for killing his family, disemboweling him by way of execution at 13 years old.
His military life, before and after he entered the military service officially at 18, was active in the many conflicts that troubled Barrayar and decorated with many honors. However, his personal life was tumultuous. He was given a beautiful wife in an arranged marriage, which he was quite happy with, but never seemed to know her, due to his long stretches in the service. She took two lovers, of whom he killed both when her brother informed him of the affair. When he told her what he did, she took his own weapon and killed herself with it. He was never charged for the two murders as it was assumed the lovers killed each other, and the lack of punishment/justice weighed on him.
He took to drinking and wild, aggressive action, for the first time breaking with the careful, conservative image he had built of himself in his father's image. He took Ges Vorrutyer as a lover, a sadist and brother of his late wife, who had deliberately broken up his marriage. There was, at the least, attraction there, though it is called an unhappy period of his life. Vorrutyer stepped over a line by attempting to introduce others to their relationship (the third was implied to be unwillingly so,) and Aral broke it off spectacularly and violently. Vorrutyer quickly became deranged and obsessive in Aral's absence.
He pulled his life back together and threw himself into military pursuits, becoming the youngest man to achieve the rank of Admiral. The capstone of this career was a 4 year venture, eventually conquering a strategically important planet with almost no bloodshed. This achievement was ruined at the very last moment when a Political Officer (secret service) killed the assembled political leaders who had surrendered to Aral in a large, bloody massacre. In what would be one of his famous rages, he called the Political Officer in front of him and broke his neck with his own two hands without trial or interrogation on the bridge of his ship.
The incident crowned him galactic infamy as the Butcher of Komarr, and on his home planet, destroyed his political and military reputation for murder without a court martial. He was demoted, given a ship of the worst crew that the Barrayaran military could offer, and sent out to patrol the far backwaters of Barrayaran controlled space.
On orders to peacefully detain a survey party from the liberal Beta Colony, Aral is caught up in a mutiny orchestrated by his ship's Political Officer .. of whom he had also threatened to murder. Disarmed and stranded on a dangerous, un-terraformed planet, he encounters (and takes prisoner) the sole survivor of the Betan Survey team, Commander Cordelia Naismith, an encounter that would change his life.
Travelling with her to a Barrayaran supply cache on the planet to reestablish his command, they grew to respect each other deeply and fell in love during the dangerous journey. In the midst of sorting out the mutiny, he explains to her that their planets will soon be at war, but nevertheless proposes to her. Due to the ridiculous complications of the situation, the answer is put off, Cordelia singlehandedly helps suppress the revolt and escapes back to her own ship.
They meet again at the height of the war. Now Captain, Cordelia pulls off a brilliant maneuver that introduces a new, deadly secret weapon into the fray that would end the war at the very next battle. Captured by the Barrayarans, she's brought before the commanding Vice-Admiral Ges Vorrrutyer who has taken to making sport of female prisoners of war and then delivering them to the similarly corrupt and perverted Prince Serg. He is killed by a troubled man loyal to Aral before he can rape her, and she is taken in and hidden by Aral, a subordinate of the high command on that ship.
Aral, on orders of the dying Emperor, is reluctantly orchestrating the failure of the war, routing the War Party of Barrayar and killing the demented prince and Vorrutyer - a politically complex, expensive and grand scale assassination at the cost of nearly 5000 uninvolved lives. Cordelia's arrival only cinches the plot, allowing him to 'gain' the information about the new weapon that will destroy the outgoing fleet but too late to stop the invasion plans. Successful in Barrayar's resounding defeat, Aral executes his retreat and salvage plan, saving as many lives and ships as possible in the aftermath.
Left drained and broken on this venture for the Emperor's vision of the greater good, he returns Cordelia to Beta Colony on a prisoner exchange, and returns to his own planet to give drinking himself to death a good, solid shot. He's later surprised when Cordelia returns to him, having escaped the confinement of her own planet, who believed she was a brainwashed spy for Barrayar in the wake of two captures.
She accepts his proposal as a free woman returning to him, having rejected it as a prisoner. They are married and soon with child on the way, when the dying Emperor calls Aral to appoint him Lord Regent of Barrayar - in charge of the governance of the planet for the next 15 years, while the Emperor's grandson, the only child of the prince Aral had assassinated, Gregor Vorbarra reaches his majority.
His first year of Regency is one of turmoil and some devastating mistakes. There are multiple assassination attempts - one of which poisoned their unborn son, confining him to a uterine replicator in hopes of saving his life, threats of rebellion from Komarr, an invasion from Cetaganda, an uprising from within, and Aral's own struggles with his personal honor versus what he sees as the need to uphold brutal, unforgiving laws of the planet.
The uprising swells quickly, throwing the planet into a brief civil war, with many hostages at stake, including his unborn son. Unable to send military force to free his son when he's asked all of the other high born families to wait on negotiation for their own loved ones, he holds the fort while Cordelia storms off with a crack team to not only rescue their son, but brings back the head of their enemy, effectively destroying the revolt.
In the aftermath, Cordelia and Aral both decide to push forward, setting policy, technology and education in the ways they believe is right, rather than what is traditional for Barrayar as they had both done, bringing forth a new era.
PERSONALITY: Aral Vorkosigan is a complicated man who spends most of his life struggling with his definition of himself and his personal honor, which he holds sacred when the Barrayaran social religions of war and power fail him. His conservative upbringing on the war-mad planet is at constant odds with his growing personal belief that progressive growth is the only way forward, and stability can only be held in peace.
Having grown up in the shadow of his father - a famous war general whose feats border on unimaginable and peerless - and his deceased older brother who he never seemed to measure up against, Aral's is most alive under crushing pressure from all angles. He lives on challenge, impossible situations and forward motion, for good or bad.
It also has given him something of an inflexible ego and a delicate, evolving sense of pride that masks a rather low self image. Offense of those no longer send him into deadly rages of his youth, but they still give him a very stilted, stiff and tightly held air about him.
Likewise, Ezar, the ruthless and manipulative old Emperor, has had a hand in Aral's history and development from a child, creating a man who values loyalty above all else - interpersonal and to the Imperium of Barrayar. He says himself that while a subject is being debated he will argue to his last breath, but when the order actually comes down, he will obey it to the full extent. It is also Ezar's influence that has made him absolutely adverse to the idea of being Emperor himself, which he has debatably better blood right to than Ezar himself.
Though he is possessed by extremely powerful emotions, and seems to decide his feelings - up to and including powerful concepts like love and hate - incredibly quickly, he is absolutely terrible at expressing them. He is painfully awkward when he tries to be kind, or openly connect with others, lacking that kind of charisma and generally socially inept. While he has deep empathy, and great political/longview comprehension, he lacks emotional intelligence. He often overlooks subtle (and sometimes enormous) emotional cues in others or rationalizes them away.
In fact, when dealing with situations that baffle, confuse or are simply so far out of his personal experience that he has no frame of reference at all, he has to reassign them military significance mentally to be able to come up with a strategy to deal with them. His courtship of Cordelia involved flirting with her by talking about politics and military maneuvers. This is not a socially
When comfortable and alone with his loved ones, he can be unendingly warm, patient and careless about preserving little things like dignity. It's just getting there through all of the stiff awkwardness and deep consciousness of appearance.
On the other side of the coin, he exudes confidence and power in command, cowing some just out of sheer presence. His body language, when not tightly held in reserve, is often one of aggression and predatory in nature. He believes strongly that all battles are won or lost in the mind first, and that outward show is one facet of the tactical way he approaches most of his life.
When it does come to politics or the military, he is a tactical genius, even if he is unsubtle and bullish when it comes to his approach to politics. He uses his reputation for rage like a sword, either intimidating or misleading men who are susceptible to those approaches. He's easily able to factor multiple points at once, juggle multiple actions and in the end, engage along a winning path.
He tends to also play the long game. He believes that the greater good overwhelmingly outweighs his personal good and personal comfort. His style of governance reflects that in extremes. Which has leant him a particularly complicated relationship with grief, guilt and remorse. While he internalizes most of these, he can also be blunt about them to a fault. While he can be poetic, he rarely sugar coats issues.
And finally, while Aral doesn't disabuse misconceptions of himself, and in some cases, actively uses them to advance other's agendas, he VERY rarely ever directly lies. His word, when given, is as good as law.
POWER: All powers are non canon
Iron Guard Aral has the ability to summon up to two iron golems in the shape of faceless soldiers. They can only follow simple commands that require no special skills or critical thinking. (Break down that door? YEP. Pick that lock? NOPE). If not dismissed, broken past function, or told to stop a task, they will singlemindedly continue. When dismissed, they will dissolve. He can only summon them once a day and never maintain more than two at a time.
Null Power This is a strictly tactile skill that can nullify supernatural powers in one target at a time. It can be maintained as long as Aral is in physical skin to skin contact with the target. When let go, the target will recover their abilities within 15 minutes. Aral can dismiss that after effect sooner, if needed. There will be a permission post for this skill, as well as contact with other players in any situation where it would be used.
Liege Relationships Aral will have a telepathic link with those he has sworn to or is sworn to him. The link is entirely open or closed by all parties discretion and cannot be forced open or closed by him. He can swear new people to him, forming new links, and in the case that he does, there will be a permission post. The oath sworn to him must be sincere, informed in advance as to what it means and without deception for it to work.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[The man that appears on the network, with folded hands and a sharp, pensive gaze into the camera, seems to have picked his environment for the broadcast carefully. The background is all harsh light and cinderblock walls, giving a very sharp look to the man in a green undress military uniform. When he speaks, his accent seems to be some near neighbor to Russian.
He begins without preamble or introduction.]
I have two requests.
The first is to speak with any central authority we, as foreigners, have established. [There's a pause here and a sardonic hint of a nod. ] Provided, of course, that any has been developed.
The second is for information, specifically, any research on how this dimension relates to the others we have come from. Any information is welcome.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: A test post thread with Miles
FINAL NOTES: Aral will be arriving with two ceremonial dueling swords, a regulation stunner (a powerful taser), and a few pieces of technology that he would be carrying: a commlink, a few datacubes (highly compressed data storage devices with holographic playback capabilities) and his military issue tool/medkit. (Think swiss army knife/basic first aid/pain med/stimulants.)