Tristan Raphael Hayes [Complete]
Apr 23, 2014 8:07:50 GMT -5
Post by Tristan Hayes on Apr 23, 2014 8:07:50 GMT -5
The Basics
Name: Tristan Raphael Hayes
Nicknames: None, but he sometimes prefers to go by Raphael than Tristan
Age:
16
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: Student
Powers: Pain Manipulation: Tristan is able to take the physical pain from someone's body and make it all go away. This has the side effect of a duller phantom version of the pain afflicting his own body later, as well as stomach upsets if the pain is particularly intense. It's noted that this ability works in reverse, allowing him to enhance the pains of others. Tristan doesn't like using it that way. This is involuntary and requires contact, although he can direct whether he is taking away or enhancing the pain, therefore he has taken to wearing gloves to mitigate this until a time when he is able to dull this effect.
Play By: Ben Barnes
The Details
Hair Color:
Dusty Brown
Eye Color:
Green
Any Piercings?
None
Any Tattoos?
None
Any Scars?
Several he doesn't know about, mostly minor from his childhood on his right forearm, left knee and right palm.
General Appearance: A lad of 5'10" whose body seems to lack both muscle and fat. His frame is fragile but posture strong and presented well, strong high cheekbones with a defined chin leading down to visible clavicles that support thin and lean arms. A flat chest with an even flatter stomach, no pectorals or abs to speak of let alone anything other than his sharp scapula sticking from his body like two spikes driven through his shoulders. Lean thighs and thin legs support his seemingly frail body, lacking in hair. Overall, Tristan looks flat where he shouldn't be and sharp where it has no place, as if his body was drained of mass by some strange occurrence.
His eyes are green, oddly vibrant for someone with a frail body, sitting under thick brows fixed in a constant grimace, his eyes usually half closed and shallow. His nose is straight and thin, flaring out more than normal above his tightly drawn lips, each pocking dimples at the corners of his mouth. His chin, rounded but still strong against the skin, defined along the sides with high cheekbones pressing up against his eyes and brow. Generally his hair is parted from his face, either combed back or to the side, keeping the stray hairs away from his eyes. Dusty grey as if it has been scoured by a strong wind, it descends to his shoulders before curling slightly away, ending in fine and feathery tips. Often he wears a silver cross necklace.
Tristan is completely blind and has been since he was three. The condition is caused by a lack of development in his optic nerves, causing them to degrade fast as he grew from a fully capable baby into a blind child at three years of age. This can be seen when he addresses people, his eyes unfocused and staring past them. He has learned to use his tongue to find his way using echolocation, occasionally opting to use a stick to aid in finding his way but preferring to simply used his earned skill. He would softly click his tongue as he walks, discerning the world around him through the sound he hears, letting him walk where he needs to and avoid obstacles. His is one of the reasons he doesn't like loud places, as it interferes with his ability to click and find his way.
In terms of clothing Tristan likes to wear simple button up shirts, kept pressed and looking presentable. He will often be wearing black or white gloves depending on how much he'll be using his hands, only taking them off when he showers, cleans them or sleeps. This is one of the things he has done on order to make sure his powers aren't activated by accident. Black trousers and black or brown lather shoes are what he prefers to wear long with his shirts. If it' cold he'll wear a dark blue coat, double buttons up the front, along with a white scarf and woollen flat cap. If he want to dress more casually for anything, such as if he was going to the beach or out on a camping trip, he'll swap out the presentable white and black shirt and trousers for t-shirts and cargo pants, preferring to wear plain and loose clothing.
Personality: Tristan is a withdrawn individual, pleasant to everyone he meets and rather quiet in his daily life. He doesn't speak loudly and sometimes is struggled to be heard, preferring the quiet over the loud and the solitary over the crowded. His motions are slow and thought out, giving him an easy stride as he walks, body straight and arms free. Usually he prefers to talk to only one or two people at a time and must be pushed to attend any large social events. Even at these he remains quiet, pleasant and reserved, trying his best to simply enjoy the people he does speak to and not cause a scene.
Generally, he seems a bit of an melancholy person, with his soft voice and slow movements, exaggerated by his preference towards introspection. He is quietly in control of his life and enjoys things staying the way they are, not being one to quickly embrace change. He won't object to many things, if only as not to raise his voice, and tries to carry himself calmly through everything. Sometimes he's been described as "bleak", due to his perpetually tired appearance, as if he is constantly weary in waking life. Despite this he seems to have a quiet faith in the christian God, not making much noise about it and occasionally directing a prayer for himself or another.
There are few things that can move him to true passion, but music is one of those things. It is one of only several pastimes that Tristan will openly share and revel in. When he plays his piano or his flute he seems to come alive and for a small moment the frail child is gone, leaving behind a passionate and lively man who's body seems, for the moment, stronger and surer than ever before, lasting for only until his hands rest again and the quiet, somber boy returns.
Your Vices
Likes: Music and quiet places. Reading in front of a warm fire or heater, or just in a comfortable chair. He adores hot chocolate and cold winter days. He loves the snow and all of the winter season, even the rain he loves to feel and hear tapping over the roof of the classrooms and dorms.
Dislikes: Extremely loud noises, yelling, hot days.
Strengths: Sitting and listening to others, playing the piano, violin and flute, finding his way despite his blindness, keeping secrets and giving slow, thought out advice. From a life of living without sight Tristan has earned how to read his surroundings using echolocation, a technique that involves clicking his tongue and reading the echo that comes back to him to determine the location of people and objects.
Weaknesses: Tristan, for how much he enjoys helping others, sometimes cannot empathise well with them or understand their own emotions. sports or fast paced activity, dealing with children, letting go of people, things and places.
Fears: Being lost, being unable to take away pain, seeing and causing pain.
Secret: His ability to inflict pain as an opposite to taking it away. He's used it twice and never told anyone. He would be extremely distressed if anyone ever did find out.
Family Ties
Father:
Gabriel Haye. Artist and critic, currently living in the state of Vermont, not far from the town of Pilot Ridge. Doesn't make much money, divorced from Tristan's mother.
Mother:
Melissa Haye Reibstien, Music teacher in Berlin. Divorced and remarried to a carpenter named Sebastian Reibstien.
Siblings:
None
Any Other Important People:An ex-girlfriend in Germany who he often writes as a penpal. Knows of his powers but doesn't tell anyone. He hasn't made many close friends yet, but tends not to have a problem with many people.
History
Born Tristan Raphael Hayes, in Berlin of 1998 to a musician and a critic. From a young age his mother's musical tastes influenced his life, everything from orchestral pieces to church hymns he absorbed throughout his childhood. Meanwhile his father's hopes for his son taking up the talents he had forged himself in the art world were dashed when Tristan's progressive blindness began accelerating at age three. The optic nerves that relayed signals from his eyes to his brain stopped developing and slowly died away as he grew up, leaving his father with a blind son unable to appreciate his own works and the beauty of the brush and canvas. This caused tension between him and his wife, who carried on tutoring Tristan in the piano and the woodwind instruments of her passion. Ultimately the distance between his parents increased as their interests that they once both held began to diverge and conflict, as well as their successes. Tristan's father began to lose customers and commissions for his art and his critique panels, while his mother would find success in her concerts and her growing circle of professional friends. Soon she was the breadwinner of the family, and by the time Tristan was eleven, his father had left the picture. Outdone by his wife and suffering from the great shame and depression tat afflicts every artist when they fail, he left for the United States to try and realign his life. Tristan lived with his mother from then on, continuing his tutorage in the musical arts, but forever wondering if his father's downfall had been his own fault, and wishing that he could have taken away the pain inside. He had overcome his blindness, learning to use his tongue to click and find his way by the sound that came back to him, he had overcome the fact that he could never see the keys he pressed to create the beautiful music his mother had taught him, he had overcome it all just so he could instead let others rely on him. Not the other way around.
Beginning with the simple act of kissing better the wound of a girl at age six on the playground's of his elementary school, Tristan always enjoyed comforting others, taking away her pain though words and gentle touches, believing it was this simple as all children would. This continued as he grew, With Tristan often being the one to make his friend's smile again when they were hurt, pick them up and dust them off. The side effects were what alerted him to his true abilities at age fifteen, when the meta-human powers that had lain dormant for years finally manifested. He had held the hand of his dying grandfather, and taken from his old and withered body the pain that spiked with every cough and sputter over the beeping of the heart monitor. The second his hand grasped the clammy skin of his grandfather the old man let out a sigh of relief, all his pains vanishing. "You've always been able to do that, son. Every time you shook my hand or sat on my knee." His grandfather told him. "My gout never just came and went, it was always you doing this for me." Tristan didn't truly believe him at first, but the idea of being able to comfort someone like that was something that gave him a sad joy. His grandfather passed away quietly a week later with Tristan holding his hand as he left, feeling the stinging prickles in his chest as the pain flowed into his own body, lessened but still there. He bore through it for his grandfather's sake, and then it was gone, and so was he. It was then, in witnessing death for the first time, and feeling the pain of it within him cold and grating, that he thought this gift was something more than just words.
Despite having an average social life and a girlfriend to keep him company, he began to make a habit of visiting the hospice where he grandfather died after classes when he graduated into high school. He would volunteer to sit with the old and the sick and the frail and hear their tales. He held their hand as they talked, taking their pain into him and not showing even a bit of discomfort as it tore at him inside. The comfort and stories from the dying made it all a little bit easier to take, and for years he spoke with the dead who sat in beds, just waiting for their number to be called by God or the Devil. He heard stories that made him cry, stories that made him mad, stories that made him wish for a better world and to take away the pain in the minds of the storytellers when their eyes grew wet and rheumy. But try as he might he couldn't soothe their minds with anything more than his own words. It changed him, that hospice. The beacon of comfort and life in a realm of the already dead, already sentenced to their fate. He wished he could have been born with the power to heal, not delay; to fix, not soothe; he wished he had never been born at times. But he kept on, up until the day that the woman in the yellow sun dress had come to take him away to the institute. At age sixteen, only a few days after his birthday, it had taken her a while to find him, his power's so subtle and intermittently used, so invisible that they went unnoticed by all except those who felt their touch. He didn't object, only asking to stay with the old woman in his arms until her story was complete, as it was almost over. Five days later he left the country. Rather than being sent to Kocher as a meta-human in Europe would have been Tristan decided, after discussing his own abilities with his mother and working out what would be best for him, to instead transfer to the Hammel Institute in Pilot Ridge, Vermont in The US. Tristan's mother pushed that it would better for him to see the world, as well as live in the same country as his own father, wanting him to have a possible chance to reconnect with him. Although the paperwork took longer to file and his trip was delayed it gave Tristan time to say goodbye to his friends properly, as well as to decide how to pack his quiet life into a single suitcase. His mother saw him off at the gates and wished him well, reassuring him that she would always be there in case he needed anything.
When he arrived he didn't have much trouble navigating the halls and grounds of the institute, and soon found himself a quiet spot in the library to occupy, as well as the music rooms where he could be found often playing some Hymn or old orchestral piece on the grand piano, taking advantage of such an opportunity to the fullest. Tristan is still quiet, reserved and a sombre fellow, but amiable nonetheless. He doesn't talk much to others, preferring only one or two others to associate with at a time. Right now he's just wondering where all this could be going, and what more he'll learn of his powers other than the joy and suffering they bring in equal measure to his mind.
Roleplay Example
"Our flight's in three hours, we really should be leaving now if we want to make it on time." The lady in yellow had told him. The colour of that fress she wore was gaudy against the stark white walls surrounding them with the light floral embossing that gave them a rough texture to the touch, a supposed comfort to break up the overall monotony of the sterile building. Her voice was out of time with the beeps of the monitor beside Tristan, while the other side held the body of an pale haired woman in a vintage pink dress. It was Chanel she told him, and her husband had always told her she was the most stunning woman in the world when she wore it, and how it had been her favourite even as the colours faded and styles changed. Now her mouth was still, the stories were done. He held her hand with his finger tracing the simple golden ring around her thin fingers, skin papery and warm against his younger supple flesh. It had been there for sixty years, and she hoped it would be there even long now. He didn't turn when he spoke to the lady in yellow and his eyes stayed fixed somewhere beyond the slowly breathing woman that now lay on the bed, ready to leave. But he wasn't. "Not yet." He said. It wasn't a command or a request. Just a fact. "A few more minutes."
The lady in yellow didn't speak but he heard her shoes tapping away at the linoleum floor slowly, the same colour as her namesake Tristan had given her. His own foot tapped but instead with the beat of the chroma green monitor to his left. Then number's on the display dropped slowly like the way the motes of dust in the early morning light fell and meandered down onto the body of he woman who he had come to know so well in only a day, a legacy soon that would join the countless others filed away in his mind, always to remember but never to forget. Tap, tap tap. That was all there was to it. A countdown, a slow spiralling pattern towards the rest that everyone earned eventually, going into in the dress that her life had stored so many memories of into the realms beyond any man's understanding. He sighed just as his grandfather did all those years ago when he had left the world, his hand grasped in the grip on a fifteen year old boy in a blue and red raincoat. His cane lay over his knees, ready for his hands to grip, unneeded but always there.
"Yes...We can go now..."
And his foot stooped tapping.
What About You?
Name: You can call me Kay. Sometimes people know me by the name Kiwi.
Age: 20
Experience: I've role played often on other sites but this is my first character here at Hammel Institute. It's a new genre of RP for me and I'm looking forward to it.
How Did You Find Us? An ad on a RPG directory board under the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section.
Ready To Play? Ready and willing.
