daniel ↹ denial (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
downdowndown) wrote2020-01-23 06:29 am
downdowndown) wrote2020-01-23 06:29 am
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OOC INFORMATION
Name: Nigh
Contact: dendrite @ plurk
Age: 33
Other Characters: Aunamee
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Daniel
Age: 21
Canon: Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Canon Point: The Morgue
Character Information: here
Personality:
(cw: child abuse, child murder, torture, drug abuse, mental illness)
In Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the "descent" refers to two things. The first is the driving force behind the game: Daniel's downwards journey towards the Inner Sanctum, the room in which his former friend (and bitter enemy) Alexander is attempting to harness an ancient, otherworldly power.
The second is Daniel's descent into madness.
It’s like Orpheus descending into the underworld!
Daniel is a curious, driven man who is eager to learn new things. There's a boyish wonder in his voice when he first arrives at Castle Brennenburg, the main setting of the game. He asks his host, Alexander, questions about the architecture, the technology, the gardens, the sewage system -- you name it. Throughout the game, he references history and literature with an ease that suggests he spends his days reading, soaking up as much information as possible. He values knowledge tremendously, a trait that likely placed him at odds with his abusive father, a tradesman with little tolerance for questions.
Although it's not immediately obvious from his calm, well-mannered demeanor, this childhood abuse has left him with serious scars.
The fear had begun to drown him again. He reached once more for the empty bottle of Laudanum.
When Amnesia was first released, one of the major selling points was that Daniel couldn't fight back. There is no button for "punch," no weapons to equip, and no way to survive an enemy encounter without literally hiding in a corner. This inability to fight aligns with his fearful nature: he is plagued by bad dreams, terrified of the dark, and unable to look an enemy in the eye without hyperventilating. Throughout the game, you can hear him gnashing his teeth and gasping for breath. Sometimes, his panic is so intense that his vision grows blurry and he stumbles to the ground, leaving him open to attack.
In spite of this fear, Daniel is able to persevere in the harsh game environment, moving from room to room with pockets full of opiates to keep the pain at bay. For Daniel, survival is essential, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep himself breathing.
Unfortunately, these survival instincts can drive Daniel to do terrible things. When Alexander told Daniel that the only way to save his life was to kill other people, he barely hesitated. After all, what choice did he have? His life is at stake.
And besides: all the people he kills are criminals anyway.
Being around these degenerates makes me ill. None of them even tries to face their punishment with any kind of dignity.
Daniel has a strong sense of good and evil, although it's significantly skewed. He could torture a "guilty" man for hours without flinching, even going as far as to mock his pleas for mercy. During his time at Brennenburg, he butchers a rapist with a saw, breaks a kidnapper's shoulders (while she's "crying hysterically"), and repeatedly impales an arsonist until he's nearly -- but not quite -- dead. These are only a few of the people that he murders. If the bodies piled in the morgue are any indication, he kills dozens of people in just ten days, feeling no guilt for any of them.
This black and white thinking means that anything that puts his own goodness into question is devastating. When his actions result in the Shadow consuming the people he asked to help him, he drowns his guilt in Laudanum. When the young girl who escaped from the cells is afraid of him (for good reason), he stabs her to death in a blind fury. When the guilt from killing a child is too much for him, he condemns himself to death, changes his mind (because Alexander is "evil" and deserves to die with him), and then erases his own memories to cope with the pain.
Alexander, I will kill you for what you have done. If only the shadow had caught me in London or Algeria, I wouldn’t have to suffer this humiliation. You made me a murderer, a monster!
While Daniel is distressed about his evil actions, he never quite takes the blame for them. He laments his murderous behavior in one breath and then vows to kill Alexander in the next, fully unaware of the irony. In his mind, he is a helpless victim of another man's machinations, and the only way to redeem himself is to "crush his skull." This vengeance fuels him, guiding him towards the Inner Sanctum in what is all-but-guaranteed to be a suicide mission.
This is not the first time Daniel has sought revenge. He'd argue that the people he killed for the Orb deserved it, and even sometimes blames the little girl he murdered for fueling his rage. ("She deserved it. That... little... bitch!")
And as a child, he once beat his childhood bully with a rock.
The other children cheered him on. His name voiced in a steadily rising pace, urging him to do it. “Am I really doing this?”, the young boy thought and struck his victim with a rock.
Daniel is easily swayed by the opinions of other people, regardless of whether they deserve his trust. The locals are all frightened of Alexander (because he's objectively terrifying), but Daniel finds him "gracious" and "not at all as eccentric" as he feared he'd be. He trusts the other man quickly and completely -- five days after meeting him, he's already killing people at his insistence.
This fragile sense of self and tendency to follow other people is likely the result of his childhood abuse. Whenever he'd step out of line, his father would beat him or lock him in a pitch black basement. Following orders became an essential survival mechanism. It's no wonder he obeys Alexander so readily.
Alexander became silent. He didn't know what to say. He could no longer recognize his friend sitting across the carriage.
Daniel is one of the only Frictional Games protagonists with a sanity meter. (Justine also has one, but hers is far less reactive.) As this game mechanic suggests, his grasp on his sanity is very tenuous. He's prone to hallucinations, oftentimes seeing enemies where there are none, hearing voices, and feeling insects crawling on his body. Paintings distort into nightmarish versions of themselves when he looks at them, and he sometimes talks aloud to himself without realizing it. In one of his flashbacks, he kills a man while having a loud, crazed conversation with himself, seemingly unaware that Alexander isn't in the room with him.
Daniel's instability is enough to worry Herbert (he sends Daniel home early from Algeria after he has a panic attack), the prisoners in Brennenburg, and even Alexander himself. His madness makes him dangerous and unpredictable, a threat to his allies and enemies alike.
Hazel spent all summer in bed. He used to read to her after helping father with his work. In his mind he was like Scheherazade, and as long as he kept telling the story, she would not die.
In spite of the evil things he's done, Daniel is not strictly a bad person. Out of the four possible endings to the game, three involve him redeeming himself. In two of them, he chooses to die, haunted by the voices of the people he's killed. In another one, he sacrifices himself to save Agrippa, a man Alexander trapped in a lifeless body. (The fourth ending involves him killing Alexander and talking about how murder redeemed him, so, uh, not an improvement.)
This potential for redemption is reflected in his flashbacks with his younger sister, Hazel. Not only did he spend his evenings tending to her, but he also kept her safe from their father's abuse, letting her hide while he absorbed the worst of it. When he first begins looking for the little girl (that he ultimately kills), it's because he's afraid she'll hurt herself. When he kills her, he's so distraught that he can't stop crying. There is definitely goodness within him, although it's hidden under layers of fear and mental instability.
Important Note: Daniel is an amnesiac. While his personality is unchanged, he doesn't remember any of the terrible things he did, and believes that he is a nice, normal person. He very much thinks of himself as a hero in an extreme situation... rather than Alexander's partner-in-torture who lost his cool after murdering a child.
Throughout the game, he remembers snippets of his past and needs to piece them together. In Ryslig, he will also experience the occasional flashback, but he will always have large holes in his memory.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- curious
- intelligent
- fearful
- determined
- self-righteous
- self-deceptive
- vengeful
- easily manipulated
- unstable
- protective
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs:
- shade
- minotaur
- pooka
- manticore
- troll
- harpy
Daniel was previously assigned faerie.
Roleplay Sample: Sample
Name: Nigh
Contact: dendrite @ plurk
Age: 33
Other Characters: Aunamee
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Daniel
Age: 21
Canon: Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Canon Point: The Morgue
Character Information: here
Personality:
(cw: child abuse, child murder, torture, drug abuse, mental illness)
In Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the "descent" refers to two things. The first is the driving force behind the game: Daniel's downwards journey towards the Inner Sanctum, the room in which his former friend (and bitter enemy) Alexander is attempting to harness an ancient, otherworldly power.
The second is Daniel's descent into madness.
It’s like Orpheus descending into the underworld!
Daniel is a curious, driven man who is eager to learn new things. There's a boyish wonder in his voice when he first arrives at Castle Brennenburg, the main setting of the game. He asks his host, Alexander, questions about the architecture, the technology, the gardens, the sewage system -- you name it. Throughout the game, he references history and literature with an ease that suggests he spends his days reading, soaking up as much information as possible. He values knowledge tremendously, a trait that likely placed him at odds with his abusive father, a tradesman with little tolerance for questions.
Although it's not immediately obvious from his calm, well-mannered demeanor, this childhood abuse has left him with serious scars.
The fear had begun to drown him again. He reached once more for the empty bottle of Laudanum.
When Amnesia was first released, one of the major selling points was that Daniel couldn't fight back. There is no button for "punch," no weapons to equip, and no way to survive an enemy encounter without literally hiding in a corner. This inability to fight aligns with his fearful nature: he is plagued by bad dreams, terrified of the dark, and unable to look an enemy in the eye without hyperventilating. Throughout the game, you can hear him gnashing his teeth and gasping for breath. Sometimes, his panic is so intense that his vision grows blurry and he stumbles to the ground, leaving him open to attack.
In spite of this fear, Daniel is able to persevere in the harsh game environment, moving from room to room with pockets full of opiates to keep the pain at bay. For Daniel, survival is essential, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep himself breathing.
Unfortunately, these survival instincts can drive Daniel to do terrible things. When Alexander told Daniel that the only way to save his life was to kill other people, he barely hesitated. After all, what choice did he have? His life is at stake.
And besides: all the people he kills are criminals anyway.
Being around these degenerates makes me ill. None of them even tries to face their punishment with any kind of dignity.
Daniel has a strong sense of good and evil, although it's significantly skewed. He could torture a "guilty" man for hours without flinching, even going as far as to mock his pleas for mercy. During his time at Brennenburg, he butchers a rapist with a saw, breaks a kidnapper's shoulders (while she's "crying hysterically"), and repeatedly impales an arsonist until he's nearly -- but not quite -- dead. These are only a few of the people that he murders. If the bodies piled in the morgue are any indication, he kills dozens of people in just ten days, feeling no guilt for any of them.
This black and white thinking means that anything that puts his own goodness into question is devastating. When his actions result in the Shadow consuming the people he asked to help him, he drowns his guilt in Laudanum. When the young girl who escaped from the cells is afraid of him (for good reason), he stabs her to death in a blind fury. When the guilt from killing a child is too much for him, he condemns himself to death, changes his mind (because Alexander is "evil" and deserves to die with him), and then erases his own memories to cope with the pain.
Alexander, I will kill you for what you have done. If only the shadow had caught me in London or Algeria, I wouldn’t have to suffer this humiliation. You made me a murderer, a monster!
While Daniel is distressed about his evil actions, he never quite takes the blame for them. He laments his murderous behavior in one breath and then vows to kill Alexander in the next, fully unaware of the irony. In his mind, he is a helpless victim of another man's machinations, and the only way to redeem himself is to "crush his skull." This vengeance fuels him, guiding him towards the Inner Sanctum in what is all-but-guaranteed to be a suicide mission.
This is not the first time Daniel has sought revenge. He'd argue that the people he killed for the Orb deserved it, and even sometimes blames the little girl he murdered for fueling his rage. ("She deserved it. That... little... bitch!")
And as a child, he once beat his childhood bully with a rock.
The other children cheered him on. His name voiced in a steadily rising pace, urging him to do it. “Am I really doing this?”, the young boy thought and struck his victim with a rock.
Daniel is easily swayed by the opinions of other people, regardless of whether they deserve his trust. The locals are all frightened of Alexander (because he's objectively terrifying), but Daniel finds him "gracious" and "not at all as eccentric" as he feared he'd be. He trusts the other man quickly and completely -- five days after meeting him, he's already killing people at his insistence.
This fragile sense of self and tendency to follow other people is likely the result of his childhood abuse. Whenever he'd step out of line, his father would beat him or lock him in a pitch black basement. Following orders became an essential survival mechanism. It's no wonder he obeys Alexander so readily.
Alexander became silent. He didn't know what to say. He could no longer recognize his friend sitting across the carriage.
Daniel is one of the only Frictional Games protagonists with a sanity meter. (Justine also has one, but hers is far less reactive.) As this game mechanic suggests, his grasp on his sanity is very tenuous. He's prone to hallucinations, oftentimes seeing enemies where there are none, hearing voices, and feeling insects crawling on his body. Paintings distort into nightmarish versions of themselves when he looks at them, and he sometimes talks aloud to himself without realizing it. In one of his flashbacks, he kills a man while having a loud, crazed conversation with himself, seemingly unaware that Alexander isn't in the room with him.
Daniel's instability is enough to worry Herbert (he sends Daniel home early from Algeria after he has a panic attack), the prisoners in Brennenburg, and even Alexander himself. His madness makes him dangerous and unpredictable, a threat to his allies and enemies alike.
Hazel spent all summer in bed. He used to read to her after helping father with his work. In his mind he was like Scheherazade, and as long as he kept telling the story, she would not die.
In spite of the evil things he's done, Daniel is not strictly a bad person. Out of the four possible endings to the game, three involve him redeeming himself. In two of them, he chooses to die, haunted by the voices of the people he's killed. In another one, he sacrifices himself to save Agrippa, a man Alexander trapped in a lifeless body. (The fourth ending involves him killing Alexander and talking about how murder redeemed him, so, uh, not an improvement.)
This potential for redemption is reflected in his flashbacks with his younger sister, Hazel. Not only did he spend his evenings tending to her, but he also kept her safe from their father's abuse, letting her hide while he absorbed the worst of it. When he first begins looking for the little girl (that he ultimately kills), it's because he's afraid she'll hurt herself. When he kills her, he's so distraught that he can't stop crying. There is definitely goodness within him, although it's hidden under layers of fear and mental instability.
Important Note: Daniel is an amnesiac. While his personality is unchanged, he doesn't remember any of the terrible things he did, and believes that he is a nice, normal person. He very much thinks of himself as a hero in an extreme situation... rather than Alexander's partner-in-torture who lost his cool after murdering a child.
Throughout the game, he remembers snippets of his past and needs to piece them together. In Ryslig, he will also experience the occasional flashback, but he will always have large holes in his memory.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- curious
- intelligent
- fearful
- determined
- self-righteous
- self-deceptive
- vengeful
- easily manipulated
- unstable
- protective
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either!
Opt-Outs:
- minotaur
- pooka
- manticore
- troll
- harpy
Daniel was previously assigned faerie.
Roleplay Sample: Sample