Application (High Seas)

[sparkplasma]

[Name]: Kae
[Age]: 26
[Contacts]:
♦ DW: tafkae
♦ AIM: Sennen Tafkae
♦ Plurk: tafkae you can tell how creative i am on usernames
[Timezone]: US/Mountain
[Other Characters]: none



[Name]: Ivan
[Canon]: Golden Sun
[Age]: 15
[Gender]: male
[Canon Point]: just after The Lost Age

[History]:
Ivan's adopted. He was born in the remote town of Contigo, but when he was still a baby, his parents entrusted him and his then ten-year-old sister to the care of a struggling merchant named Hammet, in line with an oddly specific prophecy. Hammet was reluctant at first, but when convinced it was for the good of the whole world (and given a large amount of money and prophetic business advice), he acquiesced. The sister, Hama, chose not to stay with them when they returned to Tolbi, and moved on to study kung fu at the semi-nearby Lama Temple. Ivan was raised by Hammet and his wife Layana as their own, but he grew up with no memory of his sister, their parents, or his origins.

Meanwhile, acting on the prophetic business advice, Hammet's business grew by leaps and bounds, soon allowing him to found the town of Kalay. Trade, trust, and low taxes caused the new city to boom, and soon Hammet could safely call himself one of the richest men in all Weyard. It's in this environment that Ivan grew up, but he was far from spoiled; instead, Hammet taught him the values of hard work, honesty, and perseverence - and, importantly, using what you're given to its fullest advantage, because let's be honest, it's a waste not to.

Ivan's Psynergy manifested very early in his life, although nobody really understood what it was, himself least of all. His adoptive parents did their best to keep his strange powers under wraps, but it didn't really work.

His real adventure - the one predicted in the oddly specific prophecy mentioned above - began during a fairly routine trading visit to the town of Vault. Soon after they'd arrived, the nearby volcano of Mt. Aleph erupted, and in the chaos that followed, the caravan was burglarized. For the most part, Hammet was too spooked from the eruption to care, and intended to cut his losses and return to Kalay before things got any worse, except for one little problem - one of the items stolen was an artifact called the Shaman's Rod, and although Ivan didn't know it, it also figured prominently in the prophecy. Figuring his powers would help him in the search, Hammet left Ivan in Vault to find the rod, and skipped town with the rest of the caravan.

Willing but unable to corner the thieves on his own, Ivan enlisted the help of two teenagers who'd just come from Vale, up on the mountain - Isaac and Garet, who he was surprised to find had powers similar to his own. Together they caught the thieves and recovered the rod, after which Ivan went to follow the caravan back to Kalay, only to find that, with the bridge washed out, Hammet had actually gone the other direction entirely and wound up in Lunpa, a renowned city of thieves. Since he couldn't do anything to get him out, Ivan opted to stick with Isaac and Garet instead, reasoning that he'd rather do what he could to help them save the world than sit around outside Lunpa and feel guilty for not helping.

Thus, he followed his new friends on their journey around most of the continent of Angara, also joined later by the Mercury Adept, Mia. Together they had their first fight with Isaac and Garet's enemy Saturos, saved a town whose people had been turned into trees, fought their way through two evil forests, learned to convincingly fake knowing kung fu, and saved a town from flooding. They even passed through Lama Temple at one point, where Hama passed on the skill of Reveal to him, but didn't tell him who she really was (and to his credit, Ivan didn't pry).

When they reached Kalay, the group learned that Hammet was (as they'd feared) being held for ransom in Lunpa. With Lady Layana's assurance that the situation would soon be under control, they continued on their quest toward the second of four Lighthouses, but Ivan felt terrible having to leave his family in such a predicament.

They continued on to Tolbi, where they inadvertently ended up saving the life of its ruler, Lord Babi. In gratitude, Babi "allowed" (read: forced) Isaac to join the finals of the ongoing Colosso tournament. Thanks to his Psynergy - and Ivan's idea to cheat and fix the competition in their favor - Isaac won, and as a prize, Babi let them borrow an artifact that allows the user to turn invisible, on the condition that they use it to search for the ancient land of Lemuria (thus allowing Babi to prolong his already overextended life even further).

They agreed to his terms, but first went and used it for their own purposes. Namely, they took a side trip to Lunpa, and used the artifact to sneak in and free Hammet and his men. (How exactly the timetable works here is ambiguous, since it's an optional quest in the game - presumably the villains they were chasing decided to wait for them for a couple weeks.)

Now having all their loose ends and loyalty missions in Angara tied up, the party proceeded to the Venus Lighthouse. They defeated Saturos and Menardi, but couldn't prevent them from lighting it (which was their whole reason for pursuing them, incidentally). Still, at least it was over... until Felix, who'd grown up in Vale with Isaac and Garet, announced his intention to finish what Saturos had started and light the remaining two beacons and then jumped off the building. Unsure what to do about this, the party returned to Tolbi. Babi then gave them a ship that could only be operated by Adepts, making them promise, again, to find Lemuria for him as soon as possible. However, he went and died before they could get around to it.

Determined to get to the next lighthouse before Felix did, anyway, they set sail to Contigo, and managed (for once!) to get there first. As they waited in town, Ivan learned not only that this was his birthplace, but that he had an older sister. He didn't have a great deal of time to wonder about all that, though, as Felix's party soon arrived as well.

Isaac's party hurried to beat them to the lighthouse and stop them, but there was one thing they hadn't counted on - Menardi's sister Karst and her partner Agatio, hell-bent on revenge. They very nearly knocked Garet and Mia off the lighthouse, and would have killed Isaac and Ivan outright if not for the intervention of Felix's group at the last moment. Surprised at being saved by the ones they'd thought were their enemies, Isaac's party finally heard them out and learned that lighting the lighthouses, not keeping them dark, was the surest way to keep the world from destroying itself. It came down to a choice between letting the world wither without Alchemy, or releasing Alchemy so that man could potentially destroy the world anyway. Eventually they agreed with Felix that Possible Doom was slightly better than Certain Doom, and joined his side.

On the plus side, Karst and Agatio both had the last Elemental Star and were en route to the last lighthouse, so all was well, or so they thought. Before they could leave Contigo, Master Hama arrived and told them two very important things: firstly, that she was Ivan's sister, and secondly, that Karst and Agatio were going to get screwed over at the Mars Lighthouse by something even more powerful than they were. To make sure the lighthouse actually would get lit, the new larger party set off in Piers's ship (which the Contigoans equipped with wings, for some reason) toward the Northern Sea and Prox.

They reached the Mars Lighthouse all right, defeated Karst and Agatio (who had been turned into dragons somehow, so the party didn't recognize them until it was too late to save them), and confronted the Wise One, who informed them that Alex (Felix's friend and Mia's cousin) had, out of nowhere, gone maniacally evil and was waiting at Mt. Aleph for them to light the final beacon so that he could personally harness the power of Alchemy when it was unsealed. After beating yet another dragon the Wise One loosed on them (which turned out to be made from Isaac's father and Jenna and Felix's parents), they lit the Mars Lighthouse anyway (thereby saving the aforementioned parental units) and returned to Vale... only to find that the town had been destroyed by the force of Alchemy being released so close by.

Fortunately, no one was hurt (although, despite what the Wise One had said, Alex was nowhere to be found), and joyous reunions were had all around. But before everyone could gather the shattered remains of their material lives and set about the arduous task of finding a new, less irradiated place to live - and, in Ivan's specific case, before he could return to Kalay and tell Hammet and Layana how things went - Davy Jones decided this would be a great time to suck him into a crazy alternate pirate world. And no regrets were had by anyone.


[Personality]:
The first impression people usually take away from Ivan is that he’s a very polite, considerate young man – sometimes excessively so. He tends to overestimate his level of formality with strangers, since he’d rather be too formal than come off as rude. He’s highly intelligent and curious, always asking questions and trying to find out more. Sometimes, he seems to know more than he should, which, given his ability to read minds, is frequently the case. Because of this, it’s not unusual for people he’s just met to find him sort of creepy.

Of course, he really doesn’t try to be. Although Ivan’s politeness is a mask he wears consciously, it’s a thin one. He is genuinely kind and considerate of others, and willing to sacrifice his personal goals in favor of the greater good, even when it hurts to do so. He tries to help where help is needed, and feels terrible if he can’t. That said, he doesn’t actually know much of suffering, relatively speaking; his world was dying a slow, languishing death, not a violent, bloody one. Nonetheless, though, he’s acutely empathetic even without the benefit of his powers.

His image of himself is a little more complicated. Nearly everyone worries about what other people think of them, but as a mind reader, Ivan doesn’t have to wonder – for better and for worse. He’s used to early reactions to him being “that weird kid,” followed shortly by “that weird kid with the freakish powers,” if they should find out about those. So he’s always felt like the odd one out. For people he doesn’t know well, he’s quick to put up that extra barrier of formality, habitually trying to make himself as inoffensive as possible. He hasn’t quite made the connection yet that this is overcompensation, and that he’d seem a little less weird if he’d just act natural.

Most of what he wants from other people is that they accept him. Meeting Isaac and Garet, and traveling among fellow Adepts for a long time, has finally helped him feel like he belongs, since they just treat him like a regular guy. Around his close friends, he’s rather more laid-back, and these are the people most likely to catch a glimpse of Ivan at his snarkiest and most devious. (After all, cheating in the Colosso tournament was his idea.) Even when his inner “cheeky little snot” shows through, though, it’s still couched in the same polite language and pleasant disposition as usual. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

In any case, Ivan’s very intelligent and insatiably curious. He learns and adapts to new concepts remarkably quickly, and has a good head for mathematics, partly natural and partly because he was raised by a businessman. He’s very much an introvert, but perhaps surprisingly, not that voracious a reader; he prefers to learn by doing things himself rather than just reading about them. As a result, he takes to engineering like a duck to water, and later in his life he’ll invent Weyard’s first personal flying machine – although at present, he has roughly zero inventing experience, nor in fact has he even considered it.

Although he was brought up in a wealthy household, Ivan’s adoptive parents did their best to instill in him a strong set of values. Unfortunately, said values don’t apply in real life half the time. They taught him the value of hard work, but at the same time, Hammet’s business success came about largely due to luck; they stressed honesty above all, but still hid from him the truth about his origins and biological family for most of his life. As it turns out, the real world isn’t as black-and-white as a fable. So practically speaking, what Ivan ended up with was a slightly wobbly moral compass. One of the few lessons that really stuck was about compassion and forgiveness, but it stuck a little too hard. Like Hammet, Ivan can be kind of a doormat; he doesn’t earnestly want harm to come to anyone, even enemies who directly wronged him thirty seconds ago, and he’s perfectly willing to forgive them as long as they don’t try and stab him again.

It’s important to note, he’s never exactly learned that it’s impolite or a gross invasion of privacy to listen in on other people’s thoughts. He rarely does it to his friends, of course, because 1) they’ve asked him not to and 2) they can tell when he’s doing it, but as far as he’s concerned, strangers or acquaintances are fair game. He hasn’t quite made the connection that it’s still intrusive even if you don’t get caught, and nobody’s really corrected him on this. To him, it’s not too different from, say, casually listening to snippets of conversation at a crowded restaurant, and often the content’s far more interesting.

Ivan can use his telepathy to communicate with animals as easily as with people, so he gets along remarkably well with them. His favorite food is pickles. And finally, he gets pretty awkward on the subject of romance, because he is a mind reader, and people think about sex a lot.


[Abilities / Strengths & Weaknesses]:
Ivan is a Jupiter Adept, which basically means he's very psychic. Psynergy is a mental power that allows its users to manipulate the four classical elements, of which Jupiter is aligned with wind and lightning, so he can manipulate those at will, and to great effect. He's primarily a mage-type character, calling down powerful electric bolts and tornadoes on his enemies, though his finesse could use improvement. Although his elemental alignment grants him a higher-than-usual resistance to Jupiter Psynergy, he's by no means immune to it, and it's entirely possible for him to injure himself with his own powers if he screws up badly enough.

His Psynergy also allows him some miscellaneous but related abilities:

• Mind Read: What it says on the tin; i.e. reading minds. Works on both people and animals. And trees that used to be people. He can use it from short-to-medium distance, but having physical contact with the target helps.
  
• Reveal: Sort of a "true sight," it allows him to see through illusions and mirages, find hidden objects and pathways, find his way in the dark, and so on.
  
• Precognition: Although his sister is an accomplished prophet, the power to see the future is weak and undeveloped in Ivan's case. So far, it's only manifested in unusually strong gut feelings that turn out to be right.
  
• Impact, Ward, Sleep, Bind: Impact increases physical attack power, Ward increases Psynergy resistance, Sleep puts a single target to sleep, and Bind prevents them from using Psynergy.

Part of the reason his Psynergy is so abnormally strong is because of the Djinni he's picked up in his travels. Djinni are small, unusual creatures, the true natures of which aren't fully known; they can subsist on their own, but when found or defeated by an Adept, they join them and add to the Adept's power. Ivan has a full roster of nine Djinni by the end of the game, of which four will be coming with him to High Seas:

• Kite - Very briefly doubles one ally's speed (allowing two attacks in one turn).
  
• Zephyr - Increases all party members' agility (i.e. speed and evasion rate).
  
• Luff - Seals an enemy's Psynergy with 100% success.
  
• Aroma - Restores a little Psynergy to all party members.

After one use, the Djinni go into "standby" and he can't use them again until he takes a full round each to re-set them. When he has at least one or up to four in standby, he can combine their powers for especially hard-hitting summon attacks. With each Djinn he sets, his physical strength, Psynergy, speed, and stamina rise a little; without any of the four set, his power and endurance are effectively cut by a quarter to a half.

On a more mundane note, he's unusually quick and has very good reflexes for his size. However, his physical strength is pretty lacking, and although he can use light swords, he doesn't have the build to handle heavier weapons. His fighting strategy relies on evasion and distance attacks, because a couple of sufficiently heavy blows will still knock him flat. Also, his Psynergy is a finite resource - if he runs out, he'll become mentally exhausted and unable to use it at all, and it's heavily implied that having it forcibly drained all at once can cause severe pain, incapacitation, and possibly even worse consequences.

As mentioned in the Personality section, he's intelligent, good at math, and intellectually open-minded. He was raised in the merchant's trade, so he's also pretty good with money and has a more than basic understanding of economics.


[Limited Powers]:
Mainly, that he'll have only four Djinni instead of nine. This is actually a pretty dramatic power cut by the end of the game, as it cuts him off from not only the five Djinni's abilities, but also the stat boosts that come with them. Like Piers and Sheba, he also won't have access to their summon sequences. And as with Sheba, his Mind Read and Reveal may not work 100% reliably either, because permissions.


[Other Important Facts]:
His eyebrows are purple. Not even joking.

- Oh, right. It should also be noted that in his canon, non-Adepts can't detect the use of Psynergy (apart from seeing the physical results - Adepts, by contrast, can see a sort of glow around the person using it), and in most cases can't tell their minds are being read. The only people who have caught him at it have been Adepts themselves. Since Psynergy is basically a psychic power, and not precisely magical, it seems most likely to me that people with psychic abilities of their own would count as "Adepts" for detection purposes, where magic-users might or might not, depending. Of course, this rule of thumb is probably open for alteration.


[Samples]:
♦ Thread: At the Test Sail, and again

♦ Post:
[This entry is written in neat, precise print. Ivan's still a little weirded out by this magic long-distance book, but he's finally getting the hang of how things operate around here, at least.]

Good morning. I hope everyone is doing well? The sea's been pretty quiet up near us. The reason I'm writing is, I was wondering if anyone could answer a few questions for me... Sorry if any of these have been answered already, but I couldn't find them.

First, is there a way we can access a more complete map of the area? Even just the waters around Isla Empieza would be helpful. If not, it might be a good idea to make one. We spotted an uncharted shoal on our way out, so it'd be helpful to catalog things like that before they run someone aground.

Second, and I suppose related: Does anyone know how far the ocean goes? Mainly I wonder whether there's a mainland to run into, or if anyone's run across the world's edge. Even the latter would make a good reference point, at least.

Thank you in advance for your help.

- Ivan