Application for Fate/C

[phobophage]

Player} Kaja (kajarainbow)
Age} 31
Other Characters} None

Character Name} Deimonea
Series} N/A
Age} Ancient
Suitability} N/A

History}
The Dream World is full of dream-like geometry, odd isolated patches, and more. It has no real layout, instead being connected by whatever works for the dream. As such, travel tends to be stumbling through scenes until one finally arrives (or fails to arrive) at ones destination.

Deimonea was born during the creation of the Dream World, as the Crystal Queen drew her out of the primordial dream-foam. She floated with the other Dreams, residents of the Dream World, waiting for the creation to be completed, until the Queen's labors attracted her attentions. She escaped from the pen she was confined in for her safety and narrowly avoided getting woven into the underside of the Dream World by a preoccupied Queen.

Watching the weaving, she learned much. About the workings of the Dream World, what it was made out of, how it was put together. This gave her a better understanding of dreams than most Dreams and awareness of how to manipulate them in ways that only the Queen and the most powerful Dreams and Dreamers could.

She ran freely, causing havoc amongst the Queen's creations, until the Queen finally noticed and plucked her out to force her to work on designing nightmarish landscapes. From this prison Deimonea escaped too, by tricking another Nightmare into performing her tasks. Deimonea's life after that, until recently, was a life of responsibility evasion, casual hedonism, and careful selective terrorization.

In recent times, the threat of Despair began spreading and threatening to drag all Dreamers into their own spiral of self-destruction. The Queen found herself unable to act directly against them, and so she selected candidates from the ranks of Dreams and Dreamers to endow with a portion of her power. Those individuals became Dream Saviors, magical girls and boys and others that warred against the forces of Despair.

A Dream Savior named Berry found Deimonea performing mind-damaging experiments upon Dreamers and put an end to them, forcing Deimonea to see the larger picture of her interdependence on others as well as the potential of all Dreamers.

Deimonea was pulled into a team with Berry, teasing her and being teased in return. The two of them played a part in the first Dream War against the Adversaries, completing covert missions and dropping in to help out other Dream Saviors. In the final massive assault on the Adversaries' three castles, Berry was scattered across the dreamscape from using a massive combination attack to destroy a castle.

For a fair while, Deimonea gathered up Berry's scattered essence to reassemble her. She'd come to think of Berry as her first good friend, and it was an interesting challenge. Finally, after returning Berry to coherence and having only the occasional patrol to mop up Adversary remnants, Deimonea started working on a better understanding of the Dream World in an attempt to learn how to create her own version.

Personality}
From the very beginning, the Queen created Deimonea to be inquisitive and independent, and Deimonea carried those qualities beyond her expectations. Present her with a mystery and she will seek to unravel it. Attempt to control her, and she will seek to escape it.

Deimonea tends to directness in going for her desires. She has no real sense of embarrassment or shame, though what she considers the stupidity of her earlier carelessness and wastefulness still rankles on her. She can be rather gluttonous in fulfilling her desires and will often ignore others' complaints.

One particular mystery she's taken an interest in is the workings of the minds of Dreamers. She understands fear easily and naturally, but the other parts of Dreamers' thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are intriguing to her. And she's never before had a chance to observe Dreamers in their natural habitats, instead of in the surreal disruptions of their routines experienced in dreams.

Deimonea preys on fear as a Nightmare, and has no regrets about it. Her encounters with Berry taught her some self-restraint, but she still enjoys savoring the fear she causes in others. As much, she rarely makes any effort to ramp back her inherent creepiness, since the nervousness that causes in others are like tasty little popcorn snacks to her. At night, she prowls dreams creating and feeding off nightmares.

And yet her interest in Dreamers causes her to be fairly friendly and even cheery, since she's found interacting with them to be one of the best ways to learn about them. Rudeness doesn't particularly bother her, since her main criteria of 'fun company' are interesting people, and she appreciates honesty and fearlessness. Braveness is one of the better ways to make her think of a person as more than just someone to frighten.

As such, her demeanor can sometimes switch quickly between creepy and friendly. To her there's no particular disparity between those behaviors. Sometimes scaring someone is just her way of making a cheery hello. After all, the only social norms she knows are those of dreams, which can be wildly inconsistent and arbitrary.

Deimonea tends to prefer nonlethal solutions simply because every dead dreamer is one less food source, though this doesn't stop her from using illegal or immoral nonlethal methods. But Berry's taught her that any Dreamer might turn out to be unexpectedly interesting. As such, she's been learning to treasure their potential.

She lacks certain normal human reactions. For example, she's largely indunated to fear and so tends to react to terrifying situations with more caution than fear.

Like most Dreams, she might seem bizarre sometimes to people from less surreal worlds, sometimes following seemingly irrational dream logic in her behavior (and giving justifications that make sense only if you're high or in a dream). Bizarre events are more matter of course for her, while mundanity seems rather surreal to her. But she's gotten this far by being resourceful and eventually she will adapt.

From the very start of watching the Queen's creation of the Dream World, Deimonea's had a high interest in creative expression and even her dream of one day achieving the power to create worlds is just the ultimate expression of that. Because of the exceptional visualization required to create the level of details in the dreams she creates, she's got a fair deal of artistic ability.

A lot of her curiosity is directed toward opening up new artistic methods, including learning to understand the workings of reality so that she can play more directly with that reality (for example, taking an interest in the physical sciences). By understanding how the world works, she hopes to unlock the secrets of creating a new world, however immeasurably long that will take her. No matter how much of a pipe dream it might be.

Abilities}
She can travel into and through dreams, manipulating them as well as pulling others' minds into the ones created by her. As mere dreams, those create no direct harm other than possible psychological trauma, but they can still trick someone into a dangerous situation such as stepping off a skyscraper if they don't realize it in time.

She can create relatively simple dream entities, in short creating familiars. Unlike her general dream abilities, those can actually kill, though only a Grail War participant will be harmed by them or even perceive them outside a dream.

Because of her nature as a Nightmare, she will generally sense when others're feeling fear and closely related emotions and can understand the details of that fear (things like what they're feeling afraid about at that moment). With deeper digging, she can discover a person's hidden fears.

Baggage} None. She lacks possessions as such.

Notes}
As an immaterial psychological entity, Deimonea's existence is maintained by the pendant--destroying it will send her back to the Grail, resulting in her defeat. She is invisible to most people, except for those involved in the Grail War, unless she uses her dream abilities upon them. Like other Dreams, she does not have biological needs; instead, she sustains her existence by making people experience terror.

Sample}
Hello to everyone else caught up in this moronic war. We've been fighting for a while, and I've noticed you're all really interesting people. Atypically so. It's like that 'Dream Savior War' all over again. Not sure who came up with that name. So, it's too bad we aren't doing more fun things than killing each other.

Of course, that won't stop me from killing you. Since it doesn't seem to last and everyone just comes back out of the Grail. Even the ones who don't come back just haven't done it yet. So, I've already got a wish I want to make, and I'm willing to do things like that for it. It doesn't bother me that you'd have your own reasons for wanting to kill me. It's kinda annoying, but getting a wish's a good reason.

Still, we've got a long time in which to get that wish. It doesn't surprise me that some of you're in a particular hurry to win. Dreamers always seem to be like that, because they're used to only living so long. But this doesn't seem to be like that. It seems like we'll get many chances again and again. I suppose eventually you'll learn patience if you relive this long enough. As for me, I'll just figure all this out, however long it might take. And I'll figure out how this works, and then I'll figure out how to create my own wishes without needing all that ridiculous stuff we're doing, or at least a good strategy for winning this.

Even with all that, I'm interested in all of you. There're so many differences from my own world. Even with all this tedious and moronic fighting, I'm not going to regret getting to see such interesting things.