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{ ROYCE BRACKET We had a saying, which goes: when everything changes, nothing changes. You see? When everything changes, nothing changes. But all this? This isn't what we had in mind. TRANSISTOR } PLAYER NAME: Xel JOURNAL: piasora PLURK: piasora DISCORD: tevinter#3439 TIMEZONE/PACE: GMT-6 / CST. I try to get through tags daily or every-other-daily! Please allow some delay when grad school gets malevolent.

OVERVIEW Once there was a great engineer. Arithmetic was his medium and a city was his canvas. He planned the roads, buildings, and byways. His work could not be more precise. Like everyone in Cloudbank, he served at the pleasure of the city's people. The city changed quickly and often, reconfiguring to best suit the contemporary sensibility. Thus the engineer's work was ephemeral. He loved his craft, but could not let himself become attached to the product of his effort. Because the engineer's work was never done, it stayed fresh. With new whims came new challenges. Bridges. Gardens. Towers. Ports. None of it lasted very long. The nature of his work led him to notice certain patterns over time. The will of the people changed in cycles. Bridges would come down in favor of railways. Railways would give way to parks. New bridges would then be build upon the parks, and so on. Recognizing this, the engineer started fashioning avant garde structures and designs he believed would persist beyond the immediate urges of the population. Yet, these ideas proved much less popular, and before much longer he became obscure, and left his job to pursue personal interests on his own. It was then that he discovered a formula visualizing exactly how the structures of Cloudbank formed. He studied this formula closely for it filled him with a deep sense of wonder and even deeper sense of dread. He developed predictive algorithms to determine where and when the visualization would take form, and began drawing it out with his own architectural plans, until one day he found it in its natural state. He saw beyond the confines of the city into something more, and there before him was something extraordinary. He took it, and realized the things he saw now stood at his call. PERSONALITY "Eccentric" might be a kind way of describing Royce. His surface presentation and mannerisms are peculiar and sometimes jarring in their dissonance: a stranger on the street will see a tall, handsome man with sharp fashion sense and a piercing stare, but unless sufficiently excited, his voice tends to come out gentle, almost frail, and gives the impression that he's a lot older than he is. The second he's engaged in conversation he'll reveal himself to be soft-spoken and awkward, prone to meandering and repetitive speech, either clipped and disorganized or veeeery slooooow, as if carefully considering the words he chooses to say. He has a tendency to ramble, potentially not noticing when people aren't listening anymore (or maybe even that they've left the room). All in all, it's not hard to come away with the impression that Royce isn't quite a people person. He is quite gifted and benefited from an elite education in his youth. He's shown to love his work for its own sake, pouring a great deal of energy into his creations—and ego, apparently, because when he begins to fall out of Cloudbank's favor, he first devotes his time to creating all manner of avant-garde structures in an attempt to have his work endure. When that fails, he quits working for the city altogether and withdraws to a remote suburb to pursue his interests freely. It's not an unreasonable leap to say Royce's ego factors into his decision-making quite a lot, particularly as it culminates in his willingness to straight up murder a bunch of people in order to turn Cloudbank into its best self. "Best," of course, is relative. Fact is, it was Royce and his colleagues who decided what the greater good would look like for the hundreds of thousands of other people living in Cloudbank, whose government was based on majority rule. While Royce claims he didn't originate the Camerata's plan himself, he freely admits to Red that he was "all for it, all for it at first"—and commentary in the game seems to suggest that he's either lying to Red or truly believes in his own way that the plan was Grant's idea to begin with, though it's worth mentioning that Royce rarely seems to say anything he doesn't mean. When their grand plan falls off the rails with cataclysmic consequences, he shows himself to have very little genuine regret about his own catastrophic mistakes. Royce is a believer in the old adage that it's impossible to make an omelette without broken eggs; it should be established that death doesn't seem to hold quite the same gravity in Cloudbank that it does in our world, but he nonetheless is quick to acknowledge the moral truth of their actions. But it's important to note the way in which his recognition of their plan's "wrongness" differs sharply from Asher's; overburdened by guilt for their sins, Asher spills everything to Red before it's too late to tell her. Royce realizes this by the time Red reaches Fairview and seems to regard Asher with a little bit of pity: "Poor Asher. Before the end he just, he went and told you our whole plan, did he? Expecting what, your sympathy? Your mercy?" Royce possesses no such illusions. He knows full well that his actions are as unforgivable in Red's eyes as they are irrevocable, and thus he doesn't see the use in clinging to regret for his mistakes. And his mistakes were catastrophic, he absolutely sees that, but they can't be changed, so what else is there to do but try to move forward under these new circumstances? This mindset could certainly leave a person with the impression that Royce is remorseless, even cold, and next to a more... typical person, this might be a fair assessment. But his thoughts and actions come not from a place of malice, but sheer pragmatism. Maybe even optimism, as even right down to his showdown with Red he's still extolling the virtues of her voluntarily allowing him to absorb her into the Transistor. Of the prospect of being killed by her instead, he remarks: "I've always wondered what it's like in [the Transistor], so either way, I... win." Finally, it's worth taking a little time to discuss Royce's relationship with the Process. Indeed, it's arguably his primary relationship in the game. Evidence would suggest that Royce was the one who discovered the Process in the first place while searching for the underpinnings of his ever-changing city. Not long after, he discovered a means by which the Process could be directed to take specific actions: the Transistor. Royce speaks about the Process in his notes with the kind of excitement you'd expect from a zoologist who's discovered a totally new species. He is, by turns, fascinated with and affectionate toward and frightened by them. However, it's still important to understand that for all his recognition that the Process is a unique and powerful entity, his priority has always been to find ways of using it for his own benefit and for Cloudbank's benefit. Everything Royce has done, in fact—his harnessing of the Process, his part in a plan that would have guaranteed the deaths of at least a dozen people and ultimately resulted in the deaths of thousands more, all of it—was, in his eyes, entirely for the sake of helping his beloved city realize its true potential. He never even thought to question whether he and his friends were worthy of that role in the first place. IC PERMISSIONS PHYSICAL VIOLENCE: While Royce will try his best to avoid this whenever possible, if he considers himself in a position where, say, he's going to have to fight for his life, he will attack immediately and without mercy. Still, it'll take quite a bit to draw him into a petty physical conflict, which is good, because he could probably use a punch in the face at some point. MENTAL INFORMATION: If the landscape of Royce's mind is anything like the way he behaves and speaks, it's pretty strange in there. Royce himself is an architect/engineer and his home of Fairview is filled with very strange and beautiful structures—crystalline trees and half-finished cathedrals and Escherian oddities. He's also a much more emotional and pride-driven person than his outward demeanor would suggest, albeit with bouts of intense detachment and/or obsession. PHYSICAL AFFECTION: Why would you want this. That said yes please, if nothing else it'll probably throw him for a loop. He's not a touchy-feely guy so expect that he'll probably be super awkward about it. IC TRIGGERS: He has none. RELATIONSHIPS: The vast majority of Royce's relationships will be platonic for sure; he's honestly pretty affable in general, if a little hard to get to know. Sex is not necessarily off the table. Romance? Uhhh... good luck. SMUT OPT-INS?: Yes and I'm sorry in advance IF YES, PREFERENCES: Royce is a self-centered weirdo who kind of lives in his own world but he's not made of stone. Probably. It is a fact that he's pretty uninterested in the vast majority of people, but there are bound to be a few odd exceptions. Speaking OOCly, if he already finds a character interesting enough that smut becomes feasible (or if circumstances simply uh, encourage it), I'm open to considering it. Gender is not really an issue with Royce; either you're worthy of being noticed or you're not. What a shitlord.

INFORMATION CANONPOINT: Post-game. AGE: 37 HEIGHT: 6'3" BUILD: Narrow dorito with stick legs HAIR: #100809 EYES: #63997b APPEARANCE: Link STATUS: Alive, perplexed FACTION: Undetermined CURRENT LOCATION: Nevrione PERMISSIONS BACKTAGGING: Always. 4TH-WALLING: Ask! THREADJACKING: Ask! MIND READING: Y FIGHTING: Y SHIPPING: Y INJURY: Y KILLING: N

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