App - Last Voyages

[to_dust]

[CW: Parental abuse, Body-horror, forced pregnancy]

User Name/Nick: Meredith
User DW: sidhebeingbrand
AIM/IM: Tejarik [aim] / shiplizard [gmail] / shakenandlimp
E-mail: shiplizard @ gmail . com
Other Characters: William Bush, Richard B Riddick

Character Name: C'rizz
Series: Doctor Who (Eighth Doctor audios, Big Finish Productions)
Age: Roughly 24
From When?: His death, at the end of Big Finish Audio 101 - Absolution.

Inmate/Warden: Revised: Inmate.

C'rizz lived his life always following, and died following. The Doctor told him, at the end of his life, to 'make his own destiny'-- whether the Doctor knew it or not, what C'rizz actually did was choose to do what the Doctor wanted.

He does not consider himself capable of making good choices on his own; he latches to authority figures, and limits his choices to which is the better authority figure: on his home planet, this choice was between his father and L'da; then it was between the Doctor and Rassilon, then it was between the Doctor and Aboresh. He died fulfilling a prophecy not his own.

C'rizz thinks himself too dangerous to be unlead, too weak to control his worse nature. He gave up on life because he thought it was better to die to save better people than live in the danger of betraying them. He has no faith in himself, sees no future. He's sullenly, defiantly hopeless.

Item: N/A

Abilities/Powers:
Chameleonism [not docked] - C'rizz has a species specific power to change the colour of his skin to blend in with his surroundings. More advanced disciples of the Church of the Foundation can change the texture of their skin to perfectly blend in with their surroundings: C'rizz has this potential but is a long way from perfecting it. He can only mimic vague patterns and blotches; canonically he can't yet manage polka dots.

Living reliquary [docked] - As an adept of the Church of the Foundation, he has the ability and duty to absorb the minds of anyone he kills, locking them away until some unspecified prophecied future. This ability was damaged by a Dalek attempt at mind control and he is left hearing the voices of his victims speaking to him in his head.
- On his arrival on the barge, all of the absorbed minds have been freed; he is empty.
- Proposed limit on ability - C'rizz will not retain the actual mind of anyone or anything he kills. He will have a fading impression of them, an increasingly faint 'voice' in his head that disappears within a week.

Low-level telepathy [docked] - C'rizz can detect when someone is lying because of the dissonance between what they say and what they feel, even other telepaths. shortly before his death he manifested extreme psychic powers, piggybacking the power of the souls he had absorbed-- this ability is null on the barge.

Personality:

revised
There is a stereotype among those who know that Eutermesans exist-- they say a Eutermesan is untrustworthy, that it will tell you whatever you want to hear and turn on you as easily as it allied itself with you.

This is true, by and large, though few Eutermesans set out to decieve-- they have an involuntary social chameleonism, a genetic tendency to match whoever they associate with. It's like the quirk of matching a person's accent after speaking with them, only taken to new heights and mingled with a latent empathic psychic ability. C'rizz alone is different from C'rizz happy in company and C'rizz stressed in company, his personality shifting like his skin tone.

C'rizz alone in danger, C'rizz isolated and encountered by a stranger for the first time, is a surly, terse individual. He is given to snapping, snarling, showing a mistanhropy beaten into him by the Church of the Foundation. This C'rizz is fatalistic and defiant; he will defy the Daleks or the Kromon even if it means losing his life. This aspect is almost depressive-- not much brings him joy, or hope. This is the facet that comes out, also, when he is talking to someone without personality he cannot instinctively imprint on-- most noticeably, the Dalek replicant version of Gemma Griffin, who shifted her personality to destabilize him but had no underlying humanity. It is the C'rizz that the Doctor and Charley Pollard first met, on the run from the Kromon.

When threatened or betrayed, this mistrustful self becomes increasingly violent-- he brings out the Adept of the Church, the killer, as a defense mechanism. He can do this mostly deliberately, although people in the know can also induce it in him (see: the Daleks). His argumentativeness settles into quiet menace, homicidal rage. It's a difficult state for him; an easy state to slide into and a hard one to get out of, as much as he may want to. He can murder without a thought, or maim an attacker before he calms down.

But most people won't ever meet this C'rizz; they'll meet the saucy, well-rounded gentleman traveller who molded himself to the personality of Charlotte Pollard, Edwardian Adventuress and The Doctor, whimsical hero; it is his favourite version of himself, one he clings to and fears will slip through his fingers. But to an observer he is unafraid-- confident, incongruously posh, with finishing-school grammar and a witty riposte for everything, albeit ignorant about strange basic things. (But what IS a horse?) It stands at odds with being a six-foot-four colour-changing reptilian, which effect he quite likes. (A note: he doesn't think that he can keep this facet of himself in the absence of Charley's stimulus, doesn't think he's strong enough. He's wrong.)

In an unfamiliar but unthreatening place, he softens a little from this lofty, snarky gentleman alien into a biddable, likable person-- agreeable and unfortunately, easily scammed. In Victorian London, he was lured away by an obvious conman and trapped as a freak show exhibition; in the Multihaven multi-religious sanctuary he was converted to a new religion in order to channel their energy-being deity. C'rizz doesn't like this facet of himself, but it's difficult to resist; it's his inbred coping mechanism for being in unfamiliar place, an impulse as strong as hunger.

All of these are 'the real C'rizz'; the disillusioned misanthrope is closest to being his core personality, but the curious adventurer is a real outgrowth of himself, the first manifestation of real lasting change in him. In all of his personalities there are underlying constants-- he is suspicious of religion and gods, having met his god and learned how manufactured his religion is, somewhat bitter about Time Lords, and doesn't like himself very much. Under all of it, the truth is that he is afraid to trust himself. Ironically, his most constant trait is that he is certain that he's inconstant.

(The only escape from this self-loathing is a depressive fugue he can slide into when he's been psychically destabilized; he's very calm, when he's in this state, the way that people who have lost hope are calm. The voices in his head outnumber him and all he wants to do is sleep. He can beat this-- drag himself out-- but he needs help, and he needs to want to. )


Barge Reactions: Been here. Done this. C'rizz has arrived in as many impossible prisons as he's had hot breakfasts (possibly more, since the Eutermesans don't require cooked food.) At first he'll think that it's some new projection, psychic trap, or simulation that the Doctor has brought him too; he'll accept its true nature with almost embarrassing speed, since one of his species traits is acceptance to the point of gullibility.

Path to Redemption: The big obstacle between C'rizz and graduation is that he believes that he belongs on the barge. A prison outside of linear time that can dampen his powers is where he belongs; an inmate is what he is. He's been told he can't be trusted and he's given up trusting himself.

It is hard for him to believe in real change, when change is so easy to his species and so temporary.

His warden first has to help him find and face his core personality, to accept himself. He needs to develop enough mental strength to choose his own way instead of being towed along with other people's destiny.

Then, as himself, he has to work through what it means to live with his past as a killer for the Church of the Foundation; he has to understand that he is capable of really changing from that past, instead of hiding it under other people's better personality traits. And he has to accept that it is in his nature to change, and figure out how to deal with that positively and with control instead of setting himself up for failure.



History: Background: once upon a time there was a Gallifreyan named Rassilon who created an infinitely recycling pocket universe and then got himself stuck in it. More on that later.

C'rizz was born on Bortresoye, the so-called Crucible World constructed out of slabs and slivers of hundreds of living worlds, and sent whirling through space in a desperate bid to outrun the end of the universe. It was divided into zones, each representing a planet that made it up, divided by powerful dimensional force-fields. His zone was Eutermese, and he and his people are Eutermesans.

Eutermesans are human-sized hominids with flexible hide-like exoskeletons, superficially resembling reptiles. They have a chameleon-like ability to change their skin color to blend in with their surroundings. They also have a chameleon-like ability to change their personalities to blend in with the society around them. It's almost as if they were designed to be biddable and useful. You haven't forgotten about Rassilon, right?

Their faith is the Church of the Foundation, which teaches that all things will and must die, in order for the universe to be reborn. This is taken to an extreme-- the cult-like Church trains its disciples as efficient, emotionless killers tasked with absolving the sins of their fellows and then murdering them before they can commit any more sins. The leader of this church is known only by his title-- 'Guidance'-- and he had several sons, one named C'rizz.

C'rizz was brought up in the Church of the Foundation, functioning as murderer and monk; his childhood was unpleasant, somewhat abusive, but he accepted it. Eutermesans are accepting; it's in their makeup. As a living reliquary for the church, he kept an imprint of every person he killed inside his mind, mostly locked away in his subconscious. The church intended for disciples like him to make their race effectively immortal.

But then, L'da-- a much less accepting, passive young woman who fell for the young monk, and pried him out of the church with affection and care. C'rizz broke with his faith, much to his father's disappointment, and decided to marry L'da.

The day of their wedding was the day that termite-like corporate creatures called the Kromon invaded Eutermes, monopolizing their water and enslaving the Eutermesan population into workers with chemical elixirs that preyed on their already-obedient natures, killing those who resisted or couldn't work. C'rizz was slated to be transformed into a Kromon controller, but proved allergic to the biomodification elixirs.

He escaped into the wastelands, and was gunned down by a Kromon ship. He would have died if not for the arrival of two bizarre strangers-- the Doctor, and Charley Pollard.

With the help of Charley and the Doctor, C'rizz helped foment a revolution that wiped out the Kromon-- but not before seeing his beloved L'da transformed into a monstrous Kromon brood-queen, forced to give birth to thousands of hybrid Kromon workers. In their last moments together she begged him to kill her, and he did. L'da was the first life he'd taken since he left the church, and when he later saw that Charley had been forced through the same transformation, but had been cured, his guilt started to crush him.

Disillusioned with the church and grieving for L'da, he left Eutermes and traveled across Bortresoye and through the Divergent Universe with Charley and the Doctor, having dubious adventures and trying to forget absolutely everything about the Church of the Foundation. He succeeded, up until the destruction of Bortresoye-- then, as the TARDIS crashed on a strange, aquatic moon, he met Rassilon.

His terrible epiphanies in convenient bullet-point form:
-The Church of the Foundation was a corruption of the Church of the Foundry
-Referring to Rassilon's Foundry, in which was contained his entire universe
-Rassilon had manipulated his species at every step of their evolution to make them useful minions
-The relics of his church were keys that Rassilon needed to escape the cycle of the divergent universe
Rassilon promised that he could see L'da again if he would betray his friends and help Rassilon escape.

Shortly thereafter he also met his father again: how Guidance escaped the Kromon we don't know, but we do know that in order to purge his son of all the blasphemies he'd absorbed in his travels, he tortured him by repeated near-drownings. C'rizz feigned a renewal of faith long enough to get the keys to the primary universe to Rassilon-- who immediately revealed that the promises he'd made were lies. Betrayed by everyone, C'rizz abandoned his entire universe, fleeing with the Doctor into the prime universe of linear time.

C'rizz's mental state began to degrade in the linear universe. He was used to finite time, of everything repeating itself, of lives constantly repeating-- the ability to leave death in the past shook him, and repeated psychic assaults weakened the barriers between his conscious mind and the souls he had absorbed as a reliquary. After being captured by the Daleks and nearly brainwashed into beinga dalek emperor, he began to hear his victims' voices in his head, including L'das; he began to kill again, closing himself off from the Doctor and Charley.

His vast psychic potential led the mutated denizens of a hell-planet to drag him to them, unleashing the souls of his victims as a massive energy-being and grooming him to be their new leader. Half-brainwashed, he led their armies on the last denizens of humanity on the planet; the few survivors set off a weapon that would destroy all life on the planet, even the now-massive, demonic C'rizz.

Realizing that Charley and the Doctor would die, C'rizz absorbed the bio-weapon into himself instead, taking the entire brunt of it and sparing the rest of the planets' inhabitants. He used the last of the psychic power he had gained to return the planet to its once peaceful, living state, and dissolved into dust, considering himself absolved for every murder he had ever been committed except one.

Addition: On L'da
Little is known about L'da (pronounced Lidah); her time 'onscreen' in the canon is minimal, restricted to her death scene and some hallucinations of her (most of which were manipulated by Rassilon). We can gather something about her, though, by her actions and how C'rizz remembers her.

She did not disagree in principle with the Church of the Foundation; like most of the sentient life of Eutermese, she considered it a true religion. (This is evident by the reverence that the mole-like Orook species had for C'rizz's status as adept, and by L'da's strained but not hostile relationship with C'rizz's father.) She coaxed C'rizz out of the church because she saw that he was unhappy and that his father was abusive, not because she saw the religion as inherently destructive.

For a Eutermesan, though, this made her extremely assertive and rather radical; espousing the happiness of an individual over the priorities of the church, especially when the individual a monk-adept, is revolutionary. C'rizz chose to be with her because he valued her kindness and her authority, saw her as a valid alternative to the church. In his memories of her she is assertive to the point of being overbearing, but he reacts to this as if it's comforting.

In his life she was a benevolent influence, a warm colour to match himself too-- in death, she represents the memory of someone he adored but failed to save, a symbol of his own weakness, and also an example of the kind of person he should try to emulate. He holds new friends up to her standard-- but doesn't believe he can live up to it himself.

L'da is the proof that his innate malleability doesn't make him hopeless, since she kept constant despite having the same issues but his guilt keeps him from understanding this.


Sample Journal Entry:
I realize that he was here, Lord Rassilon, but are we absolutely sure that he isn't the admiral. It's exactly the kind of thing he'd do, get trapped in his own prison-- he has done, in fact. Or he'd spend time here to show that it wasn't him. It's not that I'm complaining. I like it here, as much as you can like this place; it's a relief to be out of linear time again. But it really does seem like the kind of thing he'd do.

[C'rizz's face darkens. Not literally; his skin remains its default purplish-grey, but he scowls, yellow eyes narrowing menacingly.]

And if it is I owe him... some words. He nearly killed my friends last time we ran into him.

Sample RP:
C'rizz is in the CES very much against his will. He's never found a planet he liked enough to stay on-- and today it's Eutermes. Which is why he was encouraged to go in, he thinks, to see something familiar.

"I left for a reason," he says bitterly. The little egg-layer he's talking to pauses, and then goes back to making its nest, lined with its old skin-sheds and soft grasses.

Home is beautiful-- desert fading into prairie around the rivers, flowing like he remembers, like they used to before the Kromon came. He could almost forget that anything happened-- no, he can forget that anything happened. He can feel his body adjusting, his mind peacefully accepting that he's home and everything is fine. A glance down at his hand and he can see that he's gone the red of the soil-- happy pastoral colour. Happy pastoral C'rizz.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG. His hands come into fists and he slaps at the adaptive part of his brain that's happily merging with this illusion, riles up some good, vibrant anger to keep himself aware. He has to get out-- he starts striding to the door, but soon it's a run. He bursts into the corridors of the barge and the door closes on Eutermes, shutting him off from the past. He slams a fist into the door; metallic grey bleeds up his arm, and he forces his skin to go as smooth as it can, gleaming like metal. Just like the barge. He belongs here more than he could ever belong there again.

Special Notes: N/A