onlyeverdoubted | In the Night App

PLAYER INFO

Player Name: Siobhan
Player Contact: fiercebadrabbit on plurk
Character(s) In-Game: N/A

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Bodhi Rook
Age: 25
Canon: Star Wars

World Description: A Galaxy Far, Far Away

History: Wookiepedia

CRAU: N/A

Death: During the Battle of Scarif, a grenade lands in the cabin right after Bodhi contacts the rebellion but before the outcome of the fight is decided.

What are your plans for this character in-game? Bodhi is deeply damaged and has had no time to process a lot of that, coming as he does from the middle of the frantic action on the blast radius of an unremarked death. He has a lot of healing and coping to do. But he is also deeply curious, highly motivated, and fundamentally good, even if he hasn't quite worked out how to do it yet. As he begins to work through his baggage, and probably as a part of that, becoming invested in a new world that he hasn't been part of irrevocably fucking up will come naturally to him.

What aspects of this game and/or its setting are you most interested in having this character engage with? The light limitations, while kind of a small tweak, make for an interesting actual challenge to the jamjar setting that has a lot of potential.

How does your character generally get along with other people? Bodhi is complex in this respect. He's perfectly capable of small talk and getting along based on circumstances, but that kind of shallow relationship is all he's had in a while and he's a bit burned out. He reads as nice and he's quiet and quick to accomodate people, which usually gets him read as nice, but he's also picky and judgmental. He's drawn to strong personalities and intelligence, both of which he sees himself as lacking, and if he doesn't find someone interesting he's more likely to take against them than if they upset him. He's very guarded about space as well as emotional energy. He tends toward a small, scattered selection of close friends rather than a cohesive group, and can keep to himself more than is healthy.

What is your character's mental state upon entering the game? Bodhi is coming fresh from a violent death that came quick on the heels of loss, torture, and genocide. He's a mess. But he's a mess who blew up his own life voluntarily not much more than a week ago, so as distressed and delicate as he is, he also has nothing much to lose or go back to. He's a blank slate, but with anxiety.

Skills/Abilities: Bodhi is a human with no special powers. He has in-depth knowledge of the technology behind space ships and communications in his universe, self-taught and spotty knowledge of gambling and black markets, and is making it up as he goes with everything else. He's very handy, though. Willing and able to fix just about anything. And he takes good notes.

Flaws/Weaknesses: Bodhi is riddled with insecurity and self-loathing that he has, in many ways, just earned. No one forced him to sign on with the Imperials. His other choices weren't good, but he made the one he did and has to live with that. He's useless as a soldier, despite technically having a rank. He's stubborn and temperamental when cornered and entirely too eager to please everyone and disappear into the woodwork when he thinks that's still an option. He's bad with people and impulsive in tense social situations. Seeing him as soft, as a coward, as easily manipulated or threatened is all entirely accurate. He has an addictive personality and serious problems with trauma and depression. At one point a terrestrial octopus space monster scrambled everything inside his head and broke a lot of what it left behind. He's legitimately a disaster. But he's also his own worst enemy. Always assuming the worst of himself keeps him trapped in his own insecurity, blind to every completely legitimate accomplishment, presupposing failure and firmly believing the worst anyone might say about him.

Personality: Bodhi is a tightly wound bundle of anxieties, guilt, and crippling self doubt who goes through life wholeheartedly dedicated to not showing any of it. His road from child of an occupied planet to semi-willing servant of the regime taught him to respect power, acknowledge rules spoken and unspoken, keep his head down and channel feelings into acceptable outlets that don't threaten anyone in charge. Try to take up as little space as possible, barely exist, do the job, find the real if banal solace in hanging around other pilots chatting about crushes and races and drinking too much and the occasional death-defying dare to do stupid things with ships. He trained himself carefully for a small, unexamined life of quiet desperation, hiding from the internal voices that told him to do something better. Even after breaking from that, throwing away the safe, soul-crushing lot of unremarkable cargo pilot, it's hard to shake that training, and he gives himself no credit for the core of courage and conviction that led him away from the Empire and into the unknown for the sake of making things right. Bodhi sees the coward and the sneak in the mirror, not the freedom fighter who never had a chance to come into his own. He remembers failing to qualify for fighter pilot training on the weight of crippling anxiety attacks and pure squeamishness, not the technical and mathematical prowess that kept him on, and certainly not that he flew the mission that saved the galaxy (a little). Everything about himself that's good and gentle and brave seems like a fluke, or like he borrowed it from someone better—first Galen, then the Rogues.

He lives under constant conviction that everyone can tell what a failure he is, that he's constitutionally incapable of getting anything right, and his overcompensating for that makes for the chirpy, aggressively cheerful babbling that he often deteriorates into in conversation. He gave up his life, his friends, his every possible comfort zone, and living in perpetual low-level terror is almost relaxing. When you're always petrified, nothing can get worse.

There are a few areas he can trust himself in. He's a pilot, after all, and even if he lacks that flyboy confidence that the fighters revel in, he's part of a proud order that transcends politics and conflicts, master of calculations and tight maneuvers. He's perfectly happy working on mathematical and mechanical puzzles. He's an excellent gambler (he really isn't) because he knows the system (no he doesn’t). He can banter with crews and techs and always hold his own. He can be tough and play dirty if he's put in a corner as long as he has a reason to be there, a script that makes sense in his head. And then he attributes that cleverness and steely resolve to someone else, too. He needs to feel like he belongs to something, like he's doing something right, to bring out the best in him. It's one reason he fastened on so completely to Galen when he finally broke from the Imperials, why he tied his fate directly to Jyn's in turn. He can't believe in Bodhi alone, but he can be a tool of something greater, even though he never feels like he's done enough.

So when he's at loose ends or even when he loses the script for a moment, he tends to get panicky. It's pathetically easy to throw him for a loop, and he wears his heart on his sleeve, so it's also easy to tell and take advantage. He practically forgets how to talk if he's too uncomfortable. And that was before he ran away from his life, was captured by the people he thought he was fleeing to, was psychically tortured, survived the wholescale slaughter of his hometown and the death of his trusted mentor, was bombed, shot at, and ultimately blown up. It's been a traumatic little while for Bodhi that he hasn't even begun to deal with, and there's only so much chipper conversation and tinkering with whatever's lying around can do to keep that floodgate closed. Tellingly, Bodhi recoils from physical contact no matter how casual, frequently overreacts to normal stimuli, sleeps poorly or not at all, and generally struggles to maintain his facade of normalcy. And a lot of his memories don’t work right anymore. That’s always fun.

Day to day and beyond the deep scars, Bodhi is kind and enthusiastic about people when he likes them, and he likes pretty easily, having never shaken the desperation for security and approval that came of a childhood on an occupied world where mortal danger was an everyday reality. He’s naturally quiet, cooperative, and gentle, with a slight tendency to defer to anyone who isn’t obviously evil. He has a spine in there, but he needs to really believe in a cause to drag it out. Being an agreeable jellyfish is so much easier. He always intends to get close to people but tends to be bad at it. His social skills are all a bit surface level and he’s very reluctant to share anything about himself, so making progress beyond nodding acquaintance or drinking buddy can be tough.

Items: Machinist's goggles, Imperial flight suit (significantly blood-, smoke-, and generally battle-stained), tactical vest with a few small tools, similarly battered boots.

SAMPLES

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