(no subject)
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Dove
Preferred method of contact: PM my journal
Current characters in TLC: N/A
TICKY BOXES
Are you over the age of eighteen? Yes.
Are you aware that the mods will use dicerolls to determine the outcome of certain actions and comfortable with the fact that while your character cannot die without your express permission, they may get into some serious trouble? Yes.
Are you ready to rumble? Yes.
IN-CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Gideon Thraxios
Username:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thraxios
Fandom, Fandom AU, or OC: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Played By: Kunal Kapoor
Physical Description: The following quotation sums up Gideon's appearance pretty clearly:
In addition to the detail provided there, Gideon's tongue has been cut out, and he has aged significantly, so that he looks every inch of his 45 years. He's also missing teeth from torture sustained in Aiaia and likely has other scars.
History: Gideon Thraxios is, as his name indicates, from Thrax in Kekropia, a country to the west of Marathat (the country in which the books' main characters, Felix Harrowgate and Mildmay the Fox, grew up). He tells little of his child besides the fact that his father was a docker. When he was thirteen, he developed magic and was taken from his family to the Bastion, Kekropia's center of power. There, he was taught the Eusebian school of magic and was an officer within the Bastion by the time he was fifteen years old. Whether he saw combat is debatable. As he was the catamite and "favorite minion" of Kekropia's spymaster, it's likely that his role was much more of a background function.
Regardless, by fifteen, he was suicidal and only resisted the desire to kill himself out of a fear that he would be found and punished before dying. A mystery cult saved him from that fate; he was given over to the White-eyed Lady, a goddess of death and, more specifically, suicides. In undergoing the rituals associated with her worship, Gideon found reason to live and survived within the Bastion until he defected to Marathat around age 40.
Gideon comes to live within the Mirador just before the series begins. He first encounters Felix Harrowgate when the latter is, to all appearances, mad, and manages to deduce that his problem is actually a sensitivity to magic. Over the course of the book Mélusine, he grows so fond of Felix that he is willing to help him and his brother, Mildmay, escape the clutches of the higher-ups of the Mirador, though he quails at the thought of reentering Kekropia. And for good reason--while he's eventually threatened into doing so, he's captured in Kekropia and (in The Virtu) nearly burnt at the stake.
Though Mildmay manages to rescue Gideon before he's executed, he sustains a number of injuries to his person. Once he's recovered, things look a little brighter for him. He enters into a relationship with Felix and is fairly content to study thaumaturgy and visit his handful of friends.
By the events of The Mirador, however, things have gone downhill. Felix and Gideon fight frequently. While he's generally helpful to Mildmay, he occasionally snaps even at him. Various minor characters are insinuating that he is, in fact, a spy for the Bastion rather than a refugee from its cruelties. Perhaps most intolerable of all for him, Felix cheats on him constantly and blatantly. Near the end of the book, he breaks up with Felix. Soon after, he receives a note from his ex-lover, claiming that he wants to meet--and Gideon goes.
The only problem is that the note is actually from Isaac Garamond, a man looking to get rid of Felix Harrowgate. Gideon walks right into his trap and is strangled with a garrote. He dies struggling and in pain and is found not long after by Mildmay.
Powers: Gideon is a wizard, though he rarely does much active magic. There are different schools of magic in this series, and the one he was taught, the Eusebian school, was known for its cruelty when Gideon was young. For that reason, I tend to infer that he avoids using it when possible, not least because the details are scant regarding the magic used by them!
Talents/Abilities: Gideon is a scholarly man who possesses an impressive knowledge of various aspects of magic and philosophy, with the capability to quote passages from memory. He's also described as being able to lie "like an angel."
Personality: With friends, Gideon is a studious, placid man, gentle and intent on research and philosophy. He can be kind and thoughtful. For instance, he cares deeply for Mildmay and doesn't condescend to him despite their difference in education levels; to the contrary, he does his best to reassure Mildmay that he's a worthy person, and he genuinely enjoys spending time with him. They go places in the Lower City together and play Long Tiffany. And when Gideon needs to say something he can't get across in pantomime, he's always careful to write clearly and use small words that semi-literate Mildmay can easily understand.
But that's not all he is. Mildmay says in The Mirador, "He grinned at me. It was a sharp, nasty grin. Mute or not, Gideon wasn’t somebody to fuck with. I had to remind myself of that every so often, because it was easy to be sorry for him and forget just how hard he could bite if somebody pissed him off. Him and Felix were well matched." Beneath the surface, there's a lot more going on than "nice, bookish, retiring man." You don't become a favored member of the Bastion by being nice. It's a position that requires ruthlessness and cruelty. Even in his life in the Mirador, he was still somebody who could hold his own against others. Only his major blindspot--Felix--manages to get him killed.
In his everyday life, he's incredibly stubborn; at one point, Felix describes him as intransigent. Gideon's tenacity of will can be a good thing, as when he refuses to give up on Felix in Melusine; when everyone else has dismissed Felix as insane, Gideon is certain that there's more to the issue. But it also means that he'll take the bait when an argument is dangled before him, and he'll keep at it even when he should know better. He and Felix are infamous for their tiffs among the other denizens of the Mirador, especially their servants, in The Mirador.
Going along with his stubbornness and willingness to argue, he can be catty and sarcastic when he wants to. He has a dry sense of humor and tends to be deeply ironic. His cattiness doesn't extend to teasing friends or otherwise insulting them outside an argument, but he won't hesitate to knock someone he doesn't respect.
Gideon is also an incredibly jealous man when it comes to his relationship with Felix. Let the record show that he's got reason to be pissed at his boyfriend--Felix cheats on him repeatedly with a variety of people--but he doesn't handle it all that well. It's the basis of most of their arguments.
Many of their issues are Felix's fault--he's the one who cheats, who knows Gideon wants him to be faithful, who dismisses Gideon's anger as dramatics--but as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Ultimately, the two of them have very different priorities in their relationship, and each has difficulty communicating his desires and expectations in ways the other can understand and appreciate.
Going hand in hand with his jealousy is the fact that he just can't hold a grudge against Felix. He's seen Felix at just about his absolute worst--and Felix has a variety of "worst"s. He's seen him furious, vulnerable, nearly helpless with misery and magically induced madness. The only person who's been unlucky enough to shepherd Felix through worse is Mildmay. And on some level, Gideon can't keep himself from forgiving the man over and over, in great part because he's seen him at those lowest points and loves him regardless. Gideon loves him to a painful extent, despite or even because of Felix's faults, and that love makes it possible for him to keep coming back even when he knows the same thing is probably going to happen.
That willingness to take Felix back despite everything is ultimately the cause of his death; even after Gideon has dumped Felix, the slim possibility that Felix might come to some kind of "I'll stop fucking other people" compromise is enough to convince Gideon to go and hear him out. If Felix had actually written that fateful note, they might have gone back to their stormy relationship. But it was Isaac Garamond, and so Gideon died for his love of Felix.
There's one other aspect to Gideon that bears mentioning, and that's his faith in the White-Eyed Lady. As noted above, worship of the White-Eyed Lady is the stuff of mystery cults--the cult isn't looked well on, especially at the Bastion (though they generally turn a blind eye to its adherents). Gideon is devotedly religious in a way that Felix isn't and can't understand; when Felix asks why he practices a faith that's so dangerous, Gideon gives him an "impatient [look]. Gideon said, :Because we must. Because that is what faith is.:" His faith is something extremely private for him; he only explains it to Felix and Mildmay when he has to, years after he first met the two of them.
SETTING SPECIFIC INFORMATION
Estate and descriptors: Fog (Transient, obfuscating, descending)
Reason for this Estate: Gideon's background is in many places a mystery, one that he perpetuates with a sense of purpose and, on occasion, poisonous satisfaction:
Mixed into it is the movement that has defined his life--from Thrax to the Bastion, from the Bastion to the Mirador, and the tenuousness of his place in the Mirador--and the ultimate loss of status. Gideon goes from one of the more respected people of the Bastion to a near-hermit who's looked on with suspicion for his foreign heritage and past political ties to another nation.
Within the series, fog is associated with him by one of the main characters, Felix Harrowgate, in the depths of his magic-induced madness. While he sees other characters as animal-headed monsters, Gideon is merely "a green shape" that "moves in a trailing cloud of fog, just the greenness and a sense of ferocity carefully held in check." Gideon does not know this.
Imperator and Code: Light. Gideon is from a scholarly background, not to mention one in which labyrinths can be used not only for entertainment or religious meditation but magic, and the idea of preservation is something he would recognize and understand. While he might not agree with the descriptions of the Code of the Light, and he would not recognize the Biblical allusions, he would agree with the principles themselves. Humanity must be protected at all cost (especially from itself), especially, would appeal to him.
Reason for playing: I've played Gideon in other settings, and I've always enjoyed writing his character. However, I've never left a game and felt like I'd gotten to do everything I was interested in for him. I like seeing him meet new characters, and I'm excited to play him in a high-concept game, since I think the Estates business will be interesting to him.
WRITING SAMPLES
- Write an in character monologue in which your character either praises or damns their particular Estate and/or Code.
- Write a short scene in which your character is looking in the mirror or write a short scene in which another character first sees your character.
Gideon has avoided mirrors since Aiaia. The first time he'd seen himself after his imprisonment had been like staring into the face of a stranger, one who happened to share a pair of dark eyes sitting large above his hollow cheeks. However much he's recovered from that ordeal, the vanity of gazing at oneself seems best left to his lover, who manages to be charming about it at times.
When Felix and Mildmay have left the awkward, mostly silent breakfast table for court, however, he can't resist returning to his bedroom and picking up the hand mirror resting on a chest of drawers. I’m forty-five, Felix, and apparently inadequate for your sexual sophistication. Why in the world would I be jealous?
His cheeks have carried a touch of gauntness
Perhaps
Name: Dove
Preferred method of contact: PM my journal
Current characters in TLC: N/A
TICKY BOXES
Are you over the age of eighteen? Yes.
Are you aware that the mods will use dicerolls to determine the outcome of certain actions and comfortable with the fact that while your character cannot die without your express permission, they may get into some serious trouble? Yes.
Are you ready to rumble? Yes.
IN-CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Gideon Thraxios
Username:
thraxiosFandom, Fandom AU, or OC: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Played By: Kunal Kapoor
Physical Description: The following quotation sums up Gideon's appearance pretty clearly:
Now that he wasn't just a green shape in a cloud of fog, he proved to be a man of medium height, slenderly built, with the bronze tone to his skin that indicated he came from the eastern end of the Kekropian Empire. His hair was dark and curly, escaping from his queue in wild tendrils; his eyes were dark and startlingly intelligent, shining like beacons out of an otherwise undistinguished, snub-nosed face. He was older than I, but I wasn't sure by how much.
In addition to the detail provided there, Gideon's tongue has been cut out, and he has aged significantly, so that he looks every inch of his 45 years. He's also missing teeth from torture sustained in Aiaia and likely has other scars.
History: Gideon Thraxios is, as his name indicates, from Thrax in Kekropia, a country to the west of Marathat (the country in which the books' main characters, Felix Harrowgate and Mildmay the Fox, grew up). He tells little of his child besides the fact that his father was a docker. When he was thirteen, he developed magic and was taken from his family to the Bastion, Kekropia's center of power. There, he was taught the Eusebian school of magic and was an officer within the Bastion by the time he was fifteen years old. Whether he saw combat is debatable. As he was the catamite and "favorite minion" of Kekropia's spymaster, it's likely that his role was much more of a background function.
Regardless, by fifteen, he was suicidal and only resisted the desire to kill himself out of a fear that he would be found and punished before dying. A mystery cult saved him from that fate; he was given over to the White-eyed Lady, a goddess of death and, more specifically, suicides. In undergoing the rituals associated with her worship, Gideon found reason to live and survived within the Bastion until he defected to Marathat around age 40.
Gideon comes to live within the Mirador just before the series begins. He first encounters Felix Harrowgate when the latter is, to all appearances, mad, and manages to deduce that his problem is actually a sensitivity to magic. Over the course of the book Mélusine, he grows so fond of Felix that he is willing to help him and his brother, Mildmay, escape the clutches of the higher-ups of the Mirador, though he quails at the thought of reentering Kekropia. And for good reason--while he's eventually threatened into doing so, he's captured in Kekropia and (in The Virtu) nearly burnt at the stake.
Though Mildmay manages to rescue Gideon before he's executed, he sustains a number of injuries to his person. Once he's recovered, things look a little brighter for him. He enters into a relationship with Felix and is fairly content to study thaumaturgy and visit his handful of friends.
By the events of The Mirador, however, things have gone downhill. Felix and Gideon fight frequently. While he's generally helpful to Mildmay, he occasionally snaps even at him. Various minor characters are insinuating that he is, in fact, a spy for the Bastion rather than a refugee from its cruelties. Perhaps most intolerable of all for him, Felix cheats on him constantly and blatantly. Near the end of the book, he breaks up with Felix. Soon after, he receives a note from his ex-lover, claiming that he wants to meet--and Gideon goes.
The only problem is that the note is actually from Isaac Garamond, a man looking to get rid of Felix Harrowgate. Gideon walks right into his trap and is strangled with a garrote. He dies struggling and in pain and is found not long after by Mildmay.
Powers: Gideon is a wizard, though he rarely does much active magic. There are different schools of magic in this series, and the one he was taught, the Eusebian school, was known for its cruelty when Gideon was young. For that reason, I tend to infer that he avoids using it when possible, not least because the details are scant regarding the magic used by them!
Talents/Abilities: Gideon is a scholarly man who possesses an impressive knowledge of various aspects of magic and philosophy, with the capability to quote passages from memory. He's also described as being able to lie "like an angel."
Personality: With friends, Gideon is a studious, placid man, gentle and intent on research and philosophy. He can be kind and thoughtful. For instance, he cares deeply for Mildmay and doesn't condescend to him despite their difference in education levels; to the contrary, he does his best to reassure Mildmay that he's a worthy person, and he genuinely enjoys spending time with him. They go places in the Lower City together and play Long Tiffany. And when Gideon needs to say something he can't get across in pantomime, he's always careful to write clearly and use small words that semi-literate Mildmay can easily understand.
But that's not all he is. Mildmay says in The Mirador, "He grinned at me. It was a sharp, nasty grin. Mute or not, Gideon wasn’t somebody to fuck with. I had to remind myself of that every so often, because it was easy to be sorry for him and forget just how hard he could bite if somebody pissed him off. Him and Felix were well matched." Beneath the surface, there's a lot more going on than "nice, bookish, retiring man." You don't become a favored member of the Bastion by being nice. It's a position that requires ruthlessness and cruelty. Even in his life in the Mirador, he was still somebody who could hold his own against others. Only his major blindspot--Felix--manages to get him killed.
In his everyday life, he's incredibly stubborn; at one point, Felix describes him as intransigent. Gideon's tenacity of will can be a good thing, as when he refuses to give up on Felix in Melusine; when everyone else has dismissed Felix as insane, Gideon is certain that there's more to the issue. But it also means that he'll take the bait when an argument is dangled before him, and he'll keep at it even when he should know better. He and Felix are infamous for their tiffs among the other denizens of the Mirador, especially their servants, in The Mirador.
Going along with his stubbornness and willingness to argue, he can be catty and sarcastic when he wants to. He has a dry sense of humor and tends to be deeply ironic. His cattiness doesn't extend to teasing friends or otherwise insulting them outside an argument, but he won't hesitate to knock someone he doesn't respect.
Gideon is also an incredibly jealous man when it comes to his relationship with Felix. Let the record show that he's got reason to be pissed at his boyfriend--Felix cheats on him repeatedly with a variety of people--but he doesn't handle it all that well. It's the basis of most of their arguments.
Many of their issues are Felix's fault--he's the one who cheats, who knows Gideon wants him to be faithful, who dismisses Gideon's anger as dramatics--but as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Ultimately, the two of them have very different priorities in their relationship, and each has difficulty communicating his desires and expectations in ways the other can understand and appreciate.
Going hand in hand with his jealousy is the fact that he just can't hold a grudge against Felix. He's seen Felix at just about his absolute worst--and Felix has a variety of "worst"s. He's seen him furious, vulnerable, nearly helpless with misery and magically induced madness. The only person who's been unlucky enough to shepherd Felix through worse is Mildmay. And on some level, Gideon can't keep himself from forgiving the man over and over, in great part because he's seen him at those lowest points and loves him regardless. Gideon loves him to a painful extent, despite or even because of Felix's faults, and that love makes it possible for him to keep coming back even when he knows the same thing is probably going to happen.
That willingness to take Felix back despite everything is ultimately the cause of his death; even after Gideon has dumped Felix, the slim possibility that Felix might come to some kind of "I'll stop fucking other people" compromise is enough to convince Gideon to go and hear him out. If Felix had actually written that fateful note, they might have gone back to their stormy relationship. But it was Isaac Garamond, and so Gideon died for his love of Felix.
There's one other aspect to Gideon that bears mentioning, and that's his faith in the White-Eyed Lady. As noted above, worship of the White-Eyed Lady is the stuff of mystery cults--the cult isn't looked well on, especially at the Bastion (though they generally turn a blind eye to its adherents). Gideon is devotedly religious in a way that Felix isn't and can't understand; when Felix asks why he practices a faith that's so dangerous, Gideon gives him an "impatient [look]. Gideon said, :Because we must. Because that is what faith is.:" His faith is something extremely private for him; he only explains it to Felix and Mildmay when he has to, years after he first met the two of them.
SETTING SPECIFIC INFORMATION
Estate and descriptors: Fog (Transient, obfuscating, descending)
Reason for this Estate: Gideon's background is in many places a mystery, one that he perpetuates with a sense of purpose and, on occasion, poisonous satisfaction:
:You’re never going to tell me why he hates you, are you?:
:No,: Gideon said and smiled at me sweetly. :The same way you’re never going to tell me anything except exactly what you want me to hear.:
Mixed into it is the movement that has defined his life--from Thrax to the Bastion, from the Bastion to the Mirador, and the tenuousness of his place in the Mirador--and the ultimate loss of status. Gideon goes from one of the more respected people of the Bastion to a near-hermit who's looked on with suspicion for his foreign heritage and past political ties to another nation.
Within the series, fog is associated with him by one of the main characters, Felix Harrowgate, in the depths of his magic-induced madness. While he sees other characters as animal-headed monsters, Gideon is merely "a green shape" that "moves in a trailing cloud of fog, just the greenness and a sense of ferocity carefully held in check." Gideon does not know this.
Imperator and Code: Light. Gideon is from a scholarly background, not to mention one in which labyrinths can be used not only for entertainment or religious meditation but magic, and the idea of preservation is something he would recognize and understand. While he might not agree with the descriptions of the Code of the Light, and he would not recognize the Biblical allusions, he would agree with the principles themselves. Humanity must be protected at all cost (especially from itself), especially, would appeal to him.
Reason for playing: I've played Gideon in other settings, and I've always enjoyed writing his character. However, I've never left a game and felt like I'd gotten to do everything I was interested in for him. I like seeing him meet new characters, and I'm excited to play him in a high-concept game, since I think the Estates business will be interesting to him.
WRITING SAMPLES
- Write an in character monologue in which your character either praises or damns their particular Estate and/or Code.
- Write a short scene in which your character is looking in the mirror or write a short scene in which another character first sees your character.
Gideon has avoided mirrors since Aiaia. The first time he'd seen himself after his imprisonment had been like staring into the face of a stranger, one who happened to share a pair of dark eyes sitting large above his hollow cheeks. However much he's recovered from that ordeal, the vanity of gazing at oneself seems best left to his lover, who manages to be charming about it at times.
When Felix and Mildmay have left the awkward, mostly silent breakfast table for court, however, he can't resist returning to his bedroom and picking up the hand mirror resting on a chest of drawers. I’m forty-five, Felix, and apparently inadequate for your sexual sophistication. Why in the world would I be jealous?
His cheeks have carried a touch of gauntness
Perhaps