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dragonhaven
Oct. 23rd, 2013 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agestocomeName: Elle
Personal Journal:evildoers
Contact: Got Materia (AIM),![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
evildoers
Other Characters Played: Lightning, Konayuki
Character: Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad
Series: Assassin's Creed
Age: 28
History: "There is no greater glory than fighting to find the truth."
Canon Point: A year or so post-Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines. (1193ish)
Personality: Define an assassin.
A brutish killer, some would say. It's true: all assassins are trained to hunt and kill other human beings in whatever ways may be required from a young age. Altaïr knows the human body and what makes it cease functioning, what turns a person into a corpse, the infinite sensations of your blade sinking into another's body. To quote Wolverine, he's the best at what he does, and what he does isn't very nice. He thrills in the hunt, learning all he can about his targets; delights in the rush of battle. He kills guards and soldiers with no regret, in accordance to his own tenets of what comprises innocence. An assassin can appear and disappear; indeed, an assassin could be anyone. The mystique is as important to Altaïr's cause as the deed itself. He cultivates anonymity, a blank face, a nonthreatening posture. He doesn't make an impression until he needs to, and the vast majority of those who see more than the face in the crowd are dying at the time. No magic, just a knowledge of how he is perceived and what people expect.
None of this is really telling you anything about Altaïr. That isn't a coincidence; he is an intensely private person, blank-faced and cold to nearly everyone. He allows the idea that he is simply a dagger in a sheathe, one of many, because that fiction - that reputation, untainted by personality - is far more effective a threat than a single person could ever be.
Define a person, then.
Just two years ago, Altaïr was as arrogant a killer as the holy lands would ever see. The bright young boy had learned too fast and too well, was praised too highly, thought himself invincible. A Master Assassin so young, what else could he be? His pride was everything. And then he failed, got an ally killed and another maimed, led their enemies to his home. And was violently cast down from his lofty perch for his sins. In a way, all that was left to him when he was busted back to novice was his pride - that, and his skills, which he once again found he needed to use. A challenge, a puzzle, something to occupy him. Humility reappeared within him, as did caution and circumspection. It's inaccurate to say he was scared out of recklessness, but let it never be said that Altaïr doesn't learn from his mistakes.
Even as young as he is - relatively - he's a strong tactician and a natural leader. Whilst he had allowed his use of tactics to decay upon his first promotion to master, he has an instinct for planning and takes an almost reverent joy in doing so. Once he shed his reckless and arrogant nature, he became someone the other assassins were willing to follow - calm, restrained, yet as devoted to the cause as he had ever been under Al Mualim. He had needed to gain perspective. Altaïr at his best is someone others are willing to follow and risk their lives for. Altaïr at his best is trusted.
"But I have been ruined by curiosity, Maria. I want to meet the best minds, explore all the libraries of the world, and learn all the secrets of nature and the universe."
Beneath the killer and the leader lies Altaïr the scholar. A man who wants not just to know everything, but also to understand it. He observes people, animals, mechanisms and societies, hoping to gain insight. Although he arrives in the havens still a young man, he has already started along the path to becoming the ancient mentor of the Levantine Assassins, who wrote a library's worth of books and texts and brought innovations that would reform the order. The poet, the philosopher, as learned and taught as the murderer in his childhood. This manifests rather oddly at times; he doesn't look like the type, but Altaïr is fastidious and neat in his life and his writing both, and has been heard on occasion to berate someone for their sloppy recordkeeping or the careless treatment of a book.
The killer, the leader, the scholar; finally, the reformer. Altaïr has his own private ideas of what is right and just, and discrimination isn't one of them. For someone who can beat a man to within an inch of his life for information, he despises the oppression of human beings. One of the few things that can make him break his cover or inwittingly draw attention to himself is violence against an innocent. Sexism, racism, classism - all of these frustrate him. Not just the witnessing of them, but the knowledge that he cannot single-handedly change a system, categories, a prison of beliefs and prejudices that shelters under the concept of 'reality'. He does what he can, and that can backfire if he acts without context or too rashly, but it is perhaps poignant that a man whose near-fatal flaw is pride falls because he believes he can help more than is possible.
Skills and Abilities: Altaïr is highly trained to have every advantage in battle and on the streets that his order can provide. He's strong, unnervingly fast, and moves with little to no fear of harm, and being trained from childhood to wield any number of blades hasn't hurt his chances in a fight either. He can disguise himself and travel unnoticed through crowds, aided by excellent observation skills and a bizarre skill known as 'eagle vision' that identifies other humans in their relation to Altaïr. In a sense it acts as an extremely shallow clairvoyancy, identifying ill intent and sympathy both.
So, throwing knives, swords, daggers. Crossbows, if the occasion calls for it. The ability to scale buildings like a cat with its tail on fire, and to then jump back down with as little damage to his person.
He can't swim for toffee, though. Maybe if he stopped carrying his weight around in sharp metal objects... (No, he can. If he had to fill in a school health and safety swimming form he'd be the guy who wrote 'far enough' in the how far can you swim section.)
It's worth mentioning that he is still in possession of an artefact called the Apple of Eden, which contains alien knowledge and the unnerving ability to control the minds of those who look upon it. Suffice to say he'll be keeping it hidden, unmentioned and extremely safe. If you don't want this around, I'm happy for a dragon to confiscate it or something. :Ib
First Person Sample: books tho
Third Person Sample: in which altair is a decent assassin not!dad
Personal Journal:
evildoersContact: Got Materia (AIM),
Other Characters Played: Lightning, Konayuki
Character: Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad
Series: Assassin's Creed
Age: 28
History: "There is no greater glory than fighting to find the truth."
Canon Point: A year or so post-Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines. (1193ish)
Personality: Define an assassin.
A brutish killer, some would say. It's true: all assassins are trained to hunt and kill other human beings in whatever ways may be required from a young age. Altaïr knows the human body and what makes it cease functioning, what turns a person into a corpse, the infinite sensations of your blade sinking into another's body. To quote Wolverine, he's the best at what he does, and what he does isn't very nice. He thrills in the hunt, learning all he can about his targets; delights in the rush of battle. He kills guards and soldiers with no regret, in accordance to his own tenets of what comprises innocence. An assassin can appear and disappear; indeed, an assassin could be anyone. The mystique is as important to Altaïr's cause as the deed itself. He cultivates anonymity, a blank face, a nonthreatening posture. He doesn't make an impression until he needs to, and the vast majority of those who see more than the face in the crowd are dying at the time. No magic, just a knowledge of how he is perceived and what people expect.
None of this is really telling you anything about Altaïr. That isn't a coincidence; he is an intensely private person, blank-faced and cold to nearly everyone. He allows the idea that he is simply a dagger in a sheathe, one of many, because that fiction - that reputation, untainted by personality - is far more effective a threat than a single person could ever be.
Define a person, then.
Just two years ago, Altaïr was as arrogant a killer as the holy lands would ever see. The bright young boy had learned too fast and too well, was praised too highly, thought himself invincible. A Master Assassin so young, what else could he be? His pride was everything. And then he failed, got an ally killed and another maimed, led their enemies to his home. And was violently cast down from his lofty perch for his sins. In a way, all that was left to him when he was busted back to novice was his pride - that, and his skills, which he once again found he needed to use. A challenge, a puzzle, something to occupy him. Humility reappeared within him, as did caution and circumspection. It's inaccurate to say he was scared out of recklessness, but let it never be said that Altaïr doesn't learn from his mistakes.
Even as young as he is - relatively - he's a strong tactician and a natural leader. Whilst he had allowed his use of tactics to decay upon his first promotion to master, he has an instinct for planning and takes an almost reverent joy in doing so. Once he shed his reckless and arrogant nature, he became someone the other assassins were willing to follow - calm, restrained, yet as devoted to the cause as he had ever been under Al Mualim. He had needed to gain perspective. Altaïr at his best is someone others are willing to follow and risk their lives for. Altaïr at his best is trusted.
"But I have been ruined by curiosity, Maria. I want to meet the best minds, explore all the libraries of the world, and learn all the secrets of nature and the universe."
Beneath the killer and the leader lies Altaïr the scholar. A man who wants not just to know everything, but also to understand it. He observes people, animals, mechanisms and societies, hoping to gain insight. Although he arrives in the havens still a young man, he has already started along the path to becoming the ancient mentor of the Levantine Assassins, who wrote a library's worth of books and texts and brought innovations that would reform the order. The poet, the philosopher, as learned and taught as the murderer in his childhood. This manifests rather oddly at times; he doesn't look like the type, but Altaïr is fastidious and neat in his life and his writing both, and has been heard on occasion to berate someone for their sloppy recordkeeping or the careless treatment of a book.
The killer, the leader, the scholar; finally, the reformer. Altaïr has his own private ideas of what is right and just, and discrimination isn't one of them. For someone who can beat a man to within an inch of his life for information, he despises the oppression of human beings. One of the few things that can make him break his cover or inwittingly draw attention to himself is violence against an innocent. Sexism, racism, classism - all of these frustrate him. Not just the witnessing of them, but the knowledge that he cannot single-handedly change a system, categories, a prison of beliefs and prejudices that shelters under the concept of 'reality'. He does what he can, and that can backfire if he acts without context or too rashly, but it is perhaps poignant that a man whose near-fatal flaw is pride falls because he believes he can help more than is possible.
Skills and Abilities: Altaïr is highly trained to have every advantage in battle and on the streets that his order can provide. He's strong, unnervingly fast, and moves with little to no fear of harm, and being trained from childhood to wield any number of blades hasn't hurt his chances in a fight either. He can disguise himself and travel unnoticed through crowds, aided by excellent observation skills and a bizarre skill known as 'eagle vision' that identifies other humans in their relation to Altaïr. In a sense it acts as an extremely shallow clairvoyancy, identifying ill intent and sympathy both.
So, throwing knives, swords, daggers. Crossbows, if the occasion calls for it. The ability to scale buildings like a cat with its tail on fire, and to then jump back down with as little damage to his person.
He can't swim for toffee, though. Maybe if he stopped carrying his weight around in sharp metal objects... (No, he can. If he had to fill in a school health and safety swimming form he'd be the guy who wrote 'far enough' in the how far can you swim section.)
It's worth mentioning that he is still in possession of an artefact called the Apple of Eden, which contains alien knowledge and the unnerving ability to control the minds of those who look upon it. Suffice to say he'll be keeping it hidden, unmentioned and extremely safe. If you don't want this around, I'm happy for a dragon to confiscate it or something. :Ib
First Person Sample: books tho
Third Person Sample: in which altair is a decent assassin not!dad
