[ooc] deeringtonhall application

[exorion]

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Cayde-6
Canon: Destiny
Canon Point: Post-death

In-Game Tattoo Placement: ANTLER TRAMP STAMP BABY
Current Health/Status: pretty heckin beat up honestlu
Age: Unknown, (Destiny's timeline is very ambiguous,) but he does confirm he's "way older than [126]".
Species: Exo (a human consciousness in a fancy robot body, essentially)

Content Warnings: None I THINK

History: on Detinypedia, on Destiny Wikia

CRAU History and Impact: N/A
Personality:

I almost typed N/A again on autopilot, wouldn't that be a hell of an insult.

Cayde is one of those people who really makes you question why he has such a position of responsibility. He rarely seems to take things seriously, is known to play pranks on and make bets with his fellow Vanguard members, and fairly openly hates his job. A cavalier attitude that sometimes seems more well placed on someone with no ties to any organisation, rather than one third of the team leading the charge to try and save their system from endlessly encroaching darkness.

The thing is, Cayde's entire life as an Exo has revolved around protection. Despite being on his sixth iteration, he has vague memories of his first assignment being a security detail — protecting a scientist silently with the knowledge he could take down anyone who tried to get past him to her. Before that, even, he thinks he might have been a soldier. (One with a gambling problem, something that seems to have stayed with him based on the amount he mentions bets and his fondness for playing cards. If the Guardian is a hunter, he even has a gun commissioned for them called The Ace of Spades.)

He has a naturally investigative mind, likely part of the reason Brask pegged him for the Vanguard, being someone who takes notes and ferrets away information, secrets, and items that may be of use later. His fellow Vanguard may tire of his attitude, but there's ample respect for his capabilities. Despite the jokes, Cayde has a very straightforward manner when it comes to dealing with problems. See an enemy? Shoot it. See an obstacle? Get around it. He doesn't have patience for arguing the things that need to be done, so much as he wants to just get them done. When figuring out how to deal with the Taken, he secretly sends the Player Character on a mission to retrieve a stealth drive he stole and hid some time ago, and then to take that ship straight behind enemy lines. Not once does he mention it to his colleagues until the Guardian has successfully (-ish) landed aboard the Dreadnaught.

Being Hunter Vaguard is a role Cayde took reluctantly, having lost the Vanguard Dare he took over after his friend — Andal Brask, the previous Vanguard whose cloak he wears in remembrance — died. He'd say his heart belongs to the stars, and it's not untrue. Cayde is an explorer and a treasure hunter in his heart, one who feels deeply stifled by staying in the Tower, managing assignments for other Guardians. He longs for travel, and frequently implores passing Guardians to tell him stories or bring him with on their next mission. He loves seeing new things and finding interesting artifacts, having stashed weapons, books, and treasure in hidy-holes across the system with a labelling system based on a deck of playing cards.

Like many Hunters, he seems something of a natural loner. Something likely amplified by being functionally immortal twice over. Not that he doesn't like people, because he does, and seems to have a fairly decent amount of friends, but if someone isn't in his immediate area he feels no pressing need to check up on them. He cares though, quite deeply. When he finds out Tevis is dead, he's obviously broken up about it despite attempting to hide it with jokes about how he'll never get back the money Tevis owes him. And he expresses concern for the Guardian's safety on numerous occasions. Usually when they're unexpectedly ambushed even though it happens so often they really should expect this sort of thing by now.

There's a lot of depth hidden behind the veneer of someone who seemingly can't take anything seriously. It's hard to say how much of that is intentional and how much is just Cayde.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping:

As a Guardian, Cayde has a lot of Space Magic at his fingertips. As long as he has access to the Light, he's immortal and heals rapidly. Guardians are also stronger and faster with the Light - an experienced Guardian is effectively a one-person army. Cayde is also a Hunter with the Gunslinger specialisation, which means he's fast acting and an excellent shot. Able to use the light to create throwing knives, grenades, and if pushed, craft a powerful gun that will kill most things in one shot. All with a touch of fire to them.

Time to break it down.

Functional Immortality: Like it says on the tin, as long as they're not in a Darkness Zone, (which is to say, a place filled with so much Darkness the Light cannot reach, or mechanically a place where the Guardian's Ghost would be unable to help,) all guardians are functionally immortal. A Guardian can die, even be wholly obliterated, but they'll be brought back by their Ghost as if it never happened. Another Guardian can also use their own Light to revive them. Obviously this is null and void in Deerington.

Self-healing: It manifests that way, at least, but so long as they can get a few seconds out of the line of fire, Guardians can generally be fully healed by their ghost from the brink of death in a few seconds.

Enhanced Strength, Agility, Endurance: What it says on the tin. They're stronger, faster, and hardier than your average non-guardian. The finer details vary between classes, but effectively they have a quicker reaction time, can take a lot of hits, fall great distances, and jump pretty high.

Cayde is a Gunslinger, as such, he has certain additional skills under his belt.

• Double Jump: Get some extra air. Like, a lot of extra air.
• Triple Jump: Or one can jump three times in a row without touching the ground. Each jump is smaller than those of the double jump, but it gives a lot more control.
• Grenades: Again, made of Light. A Gunslinger has their choice of Tripmines, Incendiary grenades which catch enemies on fire, and Swarm grenades that release a cluster of smaller charges after an initial explosion.
• Solar Burn: Gunslinger is a solar subclass, which effectively means all offensive Gunslinger abilities come laced with a little fire.

It also comes with 3 distinct subheaders because Bungie hate me specifically, essentially a handful of skills in 3 little bundles.

Way of the Sharpshooter is geared toward a slow, methodical approach focused on precision.

• Weighted Knife: A throwing knife made of the Light that does a hefty amount of damage. In the game it rewards precision kills with an instant recharge but I have no idea how I'd manage that in Deer so let's not.
• The other three buffs — Practice Makes Perfect, Knock 'Em Down, and Line 'Em Up — focus on damage for precision hits and how that links with his Golden Gun. Instead of getting into the minutiae of that, let's just toss it all out. Cayde is canonically a deadly accurate shot, let's not start giving him buffs.
• Golden Gun: His super under this tree, a limited use ability. This is a gun of 'blazing Light' that fires three shots of massive damage in a short window. A Guardian can be taken down in one shot in almost all circumstances, for instance.

Way of the Outlaw is, like it sounds, the cowboy tree. Geared less toward precision and more toward taking out as many people as quickly as possible.

• Proximity Explosive Knife - his throwing knife is now a proximity mine. Though it doesn't last long once it's been thrown and will detonate after a short amount of time regardless of whether or not anyone comes near it.
• Chains of Woe and Deadshot are passive buffs that once again focus on the interplay between nailing hits and whatnot. He doesn't need them, get them out of here.
• Six-Shooter: Instead of the slow, (relatively,) focused Golden Gun under the Sharpshooter tree, this one is a quick fire burst that's effectively him fanning the hammer.

Way of a Thousand Cuts is a fancy new take on the subclass focused on the age old addage: "what do you have there?" "a KNIFE"

• Knife Trick: Instead of a single knife, he throws out a fan of knives. They don't do as much damage as say, the weighted knife, but they'll burn you.
• The Burning Edge and Playing With Fire essentially say that burning people makes his own abilities charge up faster.
• Blade Barrage: Instead of the Golden Gun, he has this which, as the wiki says: "Vault into the air and unleash a volley of Solar-charged explosive knives." I really can't think of a better way to describe it

Cayde is also an Arcstrider, purely by virtue of the fact that every hunter has access to the Gunslinger and Arcstrider subclasses. But he never uses it so let's just say he can't access it in Deerington so I don't have to write out a convoluted bunch of stuff he'll never use anyway.

All of this, is provided to him via his Ghost, which is kinda like the ammo box to his gun. A Ghost is a small (say, fist-sized,) sentient companion of magic tech that acts as a conduit for the Light. Without it, Cayde can't access the Light at all. They also have a couple of their own skills:

• Hacking: If it's tech, a Ghost can generally figure it out and hotwire it. It might take a while (and of course, would be up to player/mod discretion if it works on things in El Nysa,) but few things are entirely beyond them. They're even the only ones still around that understand the tech used to build Exos.
• Hiding: They're pros at hide-and-seek and tend to go hide somewhere out of the way when there's combat afoot. This is because Ghosts are very fragile little friends, and a dead Ghost cannot be revived. At least not in their world, maybe the people here know a little trick the Traveller never had up it's... Orb.
• Transmat: Transmat is effectively the teleporters in Star Trek, they work over short distances on both people and items,
  and the Ghost handles all that.
• Comms: His Ghost is also his comm system; if it can figure out the Fluid it could potentially do the same here.

In addition to being a Guardian, Cayde is also an Exo. Exos were supposedly originally built as sentient war machines to fight some threat that's long since been forgotten. They're consistently described in Golden Age literature as being tireless and unyielding; built to fight and protect their creators, Exos are far stronger and hardier than the humans they served. Characters like the Exo Stranger show that even without the Light, Exos are highly capable and adaptable so long as their personality is too, which Cayde’s certainly is.

Light aside, the skills bestowed upon him by the traveller still transfer, and he was a soldier even before becoming an Exo. Cayde is adept with a broad range of guns, a quick and accurate shot, and able to nail someone in the face with a knife from a significant distance. He's been this for several centuries, and he is a deft hand at navigating the wilderness. Any Hunter worth their salt is a skilled scout; one who can assess danger from a distance, find the information others can't, and stay hidden because frankly they're much squishier than Titans and their skills depend more on close range than Warlocks, and Cayde was one of the top scouts for the previous Hunter Vanguard for a reason. He's been doing this for centuries, and there's a reason he's responsible for all the other Hunters in the Tower.

As I mentioned in his personality, he has a sharp mind that's naturally investigative. Though he resents the responsibility, Cayde is very good at assessing threats and deciding how best to tackle — how to allocate troops, effectively. Harvesting information is something he's also very good at, something you see in the scouts under him too. Shiro-4, for instance, is much more no-nonsense than Cayde, but he has that same straightforward problem solving attitude and need to know everything about a given situation. It's likely why Cayde’s day-to-day role is handling bounties and assassination targets.

Inventory:

1 Set of Hunter Armour. Since his armour isn't available in-game, I couldn't tell you what the perks are so we'll just act as if they don't have any.

His Cloak. Like the rest of his armour, we'll just ignore perks. It's just important because it belonged to an old friend.

Sundance: Sundance is his Ghost, his sentient lil' robot buddy. She's never given any dialogue in the game or lore, but is described as being just like him, so uh. Good luck guys.

Ace of Spades. A handgun that features powerful and explosive rounds, low recoil, and the ability to move rounds into the magazine without manually reloading. Sadly for Cayde, it's really just gonna act like a normal gun because I'm TIRED.

Writing Samples: party hard

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Frank
Player Age: 31
Player Contact: FiremanSam or Frankentine#0816

Other Characters In Game: AU Eames (falsify)
In-Game Tag If Accepted: cayde-6: frank
Permissions for Character: ayo
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: yeah
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: body horror & psychological horror
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: self-harm & queer suicide
Additional Information: (bee movie script.txt)