Application for high_seas

[Name]: Incardine
[Age]: 27
[Contacts]:
♦ DW: [Bad username or unknown identity: “incardine”]
♦ AIM: NekoIncChan
♦ Plurk: nekoincardine
[Timezone]: Alaska
[Other Characters]: None!



[Name]: Rita Mordio
[Canon]: Tales of Vesperia
[Age]: 15
[Gender]: Female
[Canon Point]: Just before the final dungeon, the Tower of Tarqaron. More importantly, after the No Fourth Wall city of Nam Cobanda.

[History]:
For wide-view of canon: http://aselia.wikia.com/wiki/Tales_of_Vesperia and http://aselia.wikia.com/wiki/Rita_Mordio

Rita Mordio’s parents died before she was old enough to remember their faces, possibly during the course of the Great War (http://aselia.wikia.com/wiki/Great_War). Few details are brought up about them directly, but the notes available imply that they were nobles… But without them, Rita was left alone to fend for herself. This stunted Rita’s social growth significantly. However, from a young age, she gained a reputation as a genius with the magical devices known as Blastia, ending up getting hired as a researcher in the field at age ten. However, her eccentricities and lack of interest in socializing with people (viewing Blastia as more reliable and tending to personify them) led to her living in a near-ramshackle tower for both home and lab in the research-centric cave city of Aspio.

She was indirectly involved in the Shizontania incident (http://aselia.wikia.com/wiki/Tales_of_Vesperia:_The_First_Strike), providing two members of the Imperial Knights with a key device and answering several of the magical mysteries of the setting from the bed of the house she was staying in for research… And had halfway blown up when they surprised her on arrival. (Never mind how she answered a mystery she, in the main game, had no clue about the answer to until halfway through. Why she forgot something so critical is never really answered.)

Some years later, Rita Mordio found herself under suspicion of stealing a powerful Blastia from the Lower Quarter of Zaphias (hundreds of miles away from her), drawing her into a journey that would reshape her life. The reason for said suspicion? A thief known as Dedecchi had stolen the lower quarter's Aquae Blastia (the only source of pure water for the area)… Under the guise of repairing it, having been called in as a Mr. Mordio. After checking the empty Mordio manor, Yuri Lowell had followed a trail of stolen cores all the way to Aspio - ending up going alongside the Imperial Princess, Estellise Sidos Heurassein, who had snuck off with his help to warn an Imperial Guardsman - Yuri’s best friend, Flynn Scifo - that an assassin was going after him. (… Said assassin would spend the rest of the game trying to kill Yuri instead, because Yuri was a more fun opponent.) He’d also picked up an annoying kid with a greataxe, Karol Capel of the guild city of Dahngrest, known mostly for dropping out of half the guilds in that city.

Karol had actually slipped into Rita’s house, thinking it was empty - getting a fireball to the face from The Young Sorceress’ Foul Mood in response. Yuri accused Rita of being the thief - Rita, naturally, had no clue what the scruffy-looking hobo was talking about. She decided to clear her name by guiding them to nearby ruins that seemed to hold a thief. Before they left, though, Yuri wanted to check her dresser. Insisting that only a girl could check the dresser, Estelle did so instead, and… Well, whatever she saw, she would never admit, with Rita blushing madly. Rita swore vengeance on Yuri for that. (… It’s unknown which of several times Yuri would get punched or fireballed in the face qualified as that vengeance, but the grudge was probably settled eventually.)

The visit to the Ruins would establish Rita’s undervaluing of her own life against the value of potential research, and prove her not the thief - leading to a chase after Dedecchi, the true thief, which led to Rita getting injured fighting a golem of some strength - and Estelle healing her. Rita immediately noticed (but didn’t mention) that Estelle had only pretended to use a blastia to cast the healing magic - that she, in fact, had cast the spell entirely on her own, which Rita thought impossible. This led Rita to stick with the party, hoping to figure out what powered Estelle - and led to Estelle gleefully declaring that she’d never had friends her own age before, throwing Rita off-balance a little and beginning her general tsundere pattern.

Rather than bore you with the details of the plot, we’ll stick to a few particular incidents of choice. Like her setting Yuri and Estelle on fire during a school play because she was tired of being the damsel in distress. That’s a long story.

That incident would be well after Rita’s incident at The Heliord - where one of the Barrier Blastia (plot-devices that keep monsters away from cities) started failing. Only after it flat-out failed and started spewing out enough Aer to poison the entire city did Rita rush in, declaring loudly that the blastia could explode with enough force to destroy the entire town. (Not one for avoiding panic, she.) Rita’s work had minimized the explosion… But only Estelle pulling Rita back at the last second prevented the blast that did ensue from killing the mage. Even then, Estelle was left healing Rita for quite some time… Leading Rita, when the others had left, to let Estelle know she could stop pretending to use her Blastia. After that, she wound up actually starting to acknowledge Estelle as a friend.

Two major betrayals would mark Rita’s adventures with Yuri and crew. The first was caused by Judith, a dragon-riding (well, Ba’ul wasn’t a dragon, but close enough) hunter of powerful Hermes blastia, who destroyed the one powering their boat at an inopportune time. (Ultimately, that one proved a misunderstanding - one Rita and Judith patched up over once Rita knew why Judith was hunting for the devices. Though the fact that Judith wasn’t willing to just explain it was a problem…) The second was caused by Raven, an elite soldier of Altosk - known to the Empire as Knight Commander Schwann Oltorain, and ordered by the Commandant of the Knights to kidnap Estelle for a grand scheme of his. This scheme would not only lead to a brainwashed Estelle attempting to kill the entire party (only saved by desperate action by Yuri), but would ultimately unleash the world-threatening beast known as the Adephagos on the planet (due to Alexei mistaking the seal that kept the beast away for a superweapon). This one, Rita was less willing to forgive - until it turned out “Schwann” had actually died a decade ago, and been revived by Alexei… With a kill-switch attached.

The reveal of the Adephagos was followed by Yuri getting stabbed by one of Flynn’s soldiers, causing him to fall hundreds of feet to his presumed (but fortunately not actual) death. Estelle and Rita, meanwhile, returned to the capital, where Rita had been working to modify Estelle’s powers to be self-powered rather than consuming Aer - which had been revealed to be what created and empowered the Adephagos. The party’s reunification put them on a path against Duke Pantarei - a hero of the Great War, now bent on eliminating humanity’s ability to destroy the environment - by sacrificing the entire human race to destroy the Adephagos.

However, while Rita’s successful development of the techniques of creating ‘spirits’ from willing Entelexeia proved a key symbol of her genius and its ability to save the world, this part of her story became more noteworthy for the sheer number of sidequests that opened up. To say this was a strange time in Rita Mordio’s life would be a generous understatement. Whether it was working at a hot springs, participating in a school play at a late-20th-century Japanese high school festival (… And lighting both Yuri and Estelle on fire during it because she was tired of being the damsel in distress…), or fighting in the great arena of Nordopolica, a lot of Rita’s time during this phase of things was not devoted to dealing with the threat to the world - or the imminent sacrifice of all Blastia in the name of ending the Adephagos and that which had created him. It was a strange period.

[Personality]:
Ask anyone in Aspio about Rita Mordio, and the first word of description you would likely hear is “Eccentric”. Forced to fend for herself form a very young age, Rita’s social development was basically nonexistent, and she began to determine that people aren’t reliable - trusting more in the power of Blastia, to the point where she tended to name them and become borderline endeared to them. Left to work on her own, Rita became even more known for her eccentricities - and for her violent attitude, which bordered on the sadistic. (Her signature weapons, after all, were sashes and whips.) However, this was also matched with a bullheaded persistence and courage that borderlined on the ignorance of risk - a borderline reckless efficiency that even progresses to her combat magic, which mixes small, quick strikes and massive area-of-effect elemental magic.

Speaking of… When it comes to magic, Rita’s a pure genius. “Beyond her abilities” is a foreign concept to Rita by now, and she performs new masterworks one after the other throughout the course of the story. Her focus on her work has been obsessive for years, and has led her to work near-miracle after near-miracle - including replicating the functional capabilities of a legendary weapon capable of manipulating the magical energies of the entire world, building a lightbox in a cave with a box of scraps, and even managing to work with the inherent magic of Estelle - a kind of magic Rita had never seen before meeting her - to allow Estelle’s magic to be self-powered, rather than granting power to the Adephagos.

The eccentric genius calmed somewhat during her adventures - warming up to her adventuring mates at least, particularly Estelle and Judith. This isn’t, however, to say Rita’s calmed all that much - she’s almost as violent to her friends as her enemies at times (though she won’t do anything serious to them… Well, unless you count setting them on fire as serious.) She’s also more than a little haughty, handing spells off to Estelle simply because she viewed them as beneath her (though she was more subtle about how she said it). Also, she’s terrible with money in general - chewing through highly-expensive flavored medicinal gels like potato chips in spite of her professed not really caring much about food. (Suffice it to say, her eating habits are probably less than healthy.)

Pointedly, though, as she’s started to trust people for the first time in her life, she’s become more and more willing to sacrifice what she’d known before in the name of saving the world from all that was coming towards it. She’s become willing to acknowledge concepts like “cooking” being more than just a step before you take food and drop it into your stomach where it becomes the same mush as everything else. And she’s willing to put up with a lot of strange things in the name of being friends with someone - somethign that would have been unimaginable not that long previous in her life.


[Abilities / Strengths & Weaknesses]:
Rita is, first and foremost, a very, very skilled mage, specializing in elemental artes. She requires the blastia in her collar to cast reliably - while it’s possible to create formulas without them (indeed, post-canon, it’s the only way to cast spells of any sort), it’s too difficult for even her to pull in mid-combat. The spells range from small-but nasty hits - like her trademark fireballs - to field-covering effects as wide as the mighty Ancient Catastrophe. When sufficiently infuriated, Rita can enter a state known as ‘Overlimit’, in which she can cast spells extremely rapidly essentially as long as she keeps casting. The fandom-memetic result of this is known as “Blahblahblah! TIDAL WAVE!”, just to give a clue how this works.
She also does know various utility formulas for operating old machines, printing formulas onto single-use scrolls an untrained warrior can use, and the like, as well as how to study formulas and develop new ones. Post-canon, she’s shown easily delving into non-magical sciences.
In a melee fight, Rita uses sashes and whips, including instant-cast strike arts that channel through them. Larger formulas are actually cast by spinning the sash or whip in spherical patterns, creating mana patterns in the air immediately around her, a visually impressive effect that paints a clear target on her back.
She’s also known to be good with dice games and gambling, oddly.

In weaknesses, besides being fairly typical Squishy Mage (though she has the endurance for long-term travel and a humorously strong right hook when not in a real fight), Rita isn’t superbly known for her temper - a fact that has gotten her in a lot of trouble frequently in her quest, and can grate on even her best friends sometimes. She’s also generally not the best with reading people, which can make her a little easier to deceive even if she doesn’t trust someone… Though it didn’t stop her from near-immediately figuring out Estelle was in fact the princess of the Empire.

[Limited Powers]:
Rita won’t be reliably able to enter Overlimit, nor will she be able to access her high-power Mystic Artes at all. In general, the reduced Aer levels in the environment will slow her spellcasting down significantly, emphasizing her squishiness when a fight breaks out.

[Other Important Facts]:
Rita, for all her wrinkles, is a relatively simple character - most everything of importance is covered here.

[Samples]:
♦ Thread: Test Drive Thread!
♦ Post:
[Text]
So. This is this world’s thing. A magical communication book thing. You write in it, and it shows up in other people’s books.

Kinda spooky, especially since there’s no identifying the formulas that power it. Really… Very spooky. I feel like I shouldn’t be using this thing, and instead should be taking it apart to learn how it works.

But, of course, I don’t have my lab gear. Just some pocket tools for fixing the all of one Blastia I’ve got. This place really does get annoying with the pick-ups, huh?

I mean, if I’m going to do more than be a badass witch, I need my lab stuff.

Speaking of, I’m Rita Mordio, Genius Mage of Aspio. I know a good amount of combat magic and I have the stuff for casting THAT at least. So if you need firey death on your enemies or stuff like that, I guess I’m looking for work until I say I’m not? Also, I should be able to figure out some of the local formulas and apply them to a ship at some point.

So, yeah. Lemme know if you’re not a total creep and want some help.