"Like a mirror, my fate is to reflect; Colors, images, stories - they're burned within me,
continuously, endlessly, until the day I'm no longer of any use to you or anybody else."
"...Then I'll be as good as DEAD, am I wrong?"
Clothing: A desaturated red long-sleeved tunic with the excess sleeves pulled up, twisted around the wrist and tied in a knot, acting as makeshift wristlets. It goes over a pale white petticoat, dark grey trews and medium-height leather boots, half-way to knee length. A half-leather, half rope baldrick, sliding in between leather straps that can either be added or removed to taste, serves as a holder for either weapons and important to have at hand items. The necklace was gathered at some point during the duo's many explorations, apparently, its history resonated with Fouquant enough to want to keep it over long-distance sentimental value.
Armor: None, both for lack of wealth and social position. Differently from their craftier sibling, they weren't approving of the idea of stealing someone else's property... And then having
that part of its history clinging to them as a constant reminder. The layering is a poor attempt at providing more fabric to be cut through and therefore a little more protection.
Name: Fouquant
Age: 18
Gender: Male (feels non-binary)
Origin: OC (
Roleplay of the Chosen)
Personality: Fouquant's personality is a white canvas upon which absolutely anything can be drawn and redrawn on top of, resulting in a thick, muddy, ugly, confusing mess. By themselves, and without the influence of anyone else, not even their sibling, Fouquant comes across as a stoic, distant, seemingly inert kind of person. They've been used to feeling everyone else's emotions and channelling their thoughts for so long that being by themselves is the most terrifying and disorienting thing since they simply don't have any idea of what even is there. It feels a lot more empty and devoid of meaning than letting themselves be dragged by the current of others. Their base state is nearly unknown to them, and Fouquant can't help but feel some kind of aversion to the hollow world, devoid of any color, of their never properly built inner self.
Out of isolation and around others, which is how about 95% of their time is like, interacting with Fouquant is a rather surreal, hard to believe experience. Because of their passive empathy, they change mood way too quickly and with surprisingly intensity every single time a different person is interacting with them. They'll connect to another's emotional state almost instantly, bouncing through them almost tirelessly. The impression is that Fouquant is doing it on purpose, trying to mimic the way the person interacting with them is, becoming almost a mirror of them. In reality, Fou has absolutely no control over it and is internally resigned to going with the flow they're unable to stop in any way. The more people they have to be doing this for at the same time the more distressed they're internally, wanting to clarify it, or say something more genuinely and taking a huge effort to bypass the effects of their power to do so. Eventually, they may just have to step away for a moment, being so overwhelmed that no thought or emotion is echoing properly anymore, rendered into a noisy mess of everything and nothing, all at once.
--Skills/Abilities--
- Psychometry/Empathy: Fouquant has had an elevated sensitivity to the auras, invisible energies around both people and objects, ever since they were born and it has manifested in two different ways, Psychometry for things and Empathy when it comes to people. Psychometry allows them to when physically touching an object, both see and feel its history pass through their mind quick and in its entirety for a minute or so. Depending on the weight of what was learned, it may leave them a tad disoriented at best and cause physical pain at worst.
As Empathy, the ability is sadly passive, and will prompt them to feel the exact same thing that the person interacting with them is currently feeling. The interaction may be as mild as body-language executed nearby to physical contact and conversations. While it is great to uncover hidden second-intentions and emotions, possibly helping avoid misunderstandings, it elicits a sudden switch on their mood, to the extent that they feel like they really are the person; Suddenly others' problems, worries are also their worries and they feel rather strongly about them. Do it enough times in such a small span of time, and they end up incredibly confused as to how much of it is actually theirs and how much was gained from other places.
- Object-Cloning: Discovered a bit later in life, eventually Fouquant figured out that after learning an object's history and obtaining a good understanding of the energy they carry, they could essentially 'split it off' creating an aura that was exactly the same as the one on the original object, therefore creating a perfect a clone of the item. The duplicate carries the exact same history as the original and has in a way 'lived' the exact same time span as the original physically. That means that any kind of time damage done to the object remains in its copy, even microdamage that hasn't actually broken the item in a visible way yet.
The process is not instantaneous the first time they're encountering the target-object, needing to use Psychometry on it first to then copy its signature energy, however with objects that they are already quite familiar with it is quicker and less strenuous the longer they've been acquainted with the item. There is no limitation as to the number of copies created and neither their life-span, though it requires a lot of willpower to keep doing it consecutively becoming harder and harder every new use, with them getting more and more tired in return.
--Knowledge--
Lip-reading: Upper-average
Human behavior: Advanced
Due to the intricacies of their magic, Fouquant has become highly attuned to patterns of human behavior, such as associations of body-language with certain emotions or intentions that are universal, since they have experienced it enough times to correctly tie one thing to the other. A such, even written language, which therefore would give them the history of the surface it was written at but not much more, would be easily decipherable over its intent if they had watched it being written in front of them, because of the reading of body-language more than the message itself.
History: Average
Similarly, after watching the life-history of so many items, Fouquant has a repertoire of locations that other people would have not. They would have seen cities at their prime, forests before being destroyed, kingdoms and hidden rooms that only few select people would have the knowledge of. They may not be able to name them, given that objects can't hear and as such hold no sound memories, but once in a location they've seen before, they're able to quickly remember which object has been in it and possibly remember how it looked like in different eras, for as long as the item had existed inside of it. There's also some lesser ones such as knowing
exactly where the items they're consuming may have come from and what they've been through, which weirdly hasn't turned them vegan or something close yet.
Crafting/Carving: Below-average
Because of owning their dagger, Fouquant has taken upon themself to use the information they had gained after watching the history and creation of so many objects with psychometry and attempt to employ it in practice. Turns out it is a lot harder than it seemed, but with some experimentation and practice, they've come to gather what type of stones are better to use for sharpening, polishing and even carving some small objects out of laying around wood as a bit of a past-time. They're in no way honed skills and are still done a little blindly, but it isn't the craft of a fresh beginner either.
Blade-fighting: Beginner
Surely these two had to defend themselves before during their travels, and though one would expect them to get better at doing so, Fouquant is actually rather avoidant of actually fighting close-quarters until there's no other option, due to the way their magic works. If they were to attack somebody, the pain would recoil as a consequence of empathy, leaving them feeling
exactly the same as if they had suffered the wound themselves, albeit for a limited time. The attacks also have no kind of expertise or technique behind them, more akin to flaying the blade around threateningly to force distance or a firm but rather slow single-point stab; Making it so that all of their moves are very easy to parry, dodge and even predict.
Weapon of choice: An old bone dagger carved out from the rib of a large boar; Not their handiwork and another acquisition from adventures land out. Despite the nearly traumatic experience of feeling and seeing the animal getting killed, followed by its many
many years of use in combat, Fouquant took upon themselves to continue its legacy instead of letting it rot abandoned after being dropped by its last owner.
It felt wrong to let the story end there given that it wasn't broken or damaged in any way that impeded its effectiveness. They take extremely good care of it, cleaning, polishing and re-sharpening the blade, to the point that it
almost looks recently made.