Application for Empatheias!

( WE LOVE SPOILERS. )

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉

 

Player: Nick
Contact: Discord - CHRONICK#8186
Age: 20
Current Characters: N/A

⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉

 

Character: Soren (of Katolis)
Age: 18
Canon: Netflix's The Dragon Prince
Canon Point: End of Season 2

WORLDBUILDING + BACKGROUND

( A/N: I was just about done writing this section before I realized I could just link the wiki. I was looking at the OC template instead of the canon, whoops. Since we're already here, why not have both? )

The Dragon Prince is set in a high-fantasy world full of magic, monsters, elves, princes, and every other Tolkien-esque element imaginable. The primary conflict of the series lies within the feud between two neighboring domains: The Kingdom of Katolis, last ruled by King Harrow, and the mysterious land known as 'Xadia'.

Xadia is home to magic — those born to Xadia are born connected to one of the six Primal Sources of the land, a connection the humans of Katolis are unable to experience. To make up for this, human mages have turned to the only source of magic available to them: dark magic. As the name implies, dark magic is more sinister compared to Primal magic, and those who cast dark magic spells do so by taking the life of living creatures and drawing upon their essence to charge their spells. The only exceptions to these rules (that we know of) are Primal Stones, crystal balls used to contain the elements of the Primal Sources. These allow humans to conduct magic so long as they have such a Stone in their possession.

The conflicts between Xandia and the human worlds span centuries. Before the wars, before the lies, before the tragedies, there was a time where humans and creatures of magic lived in peace. This changed when humans discovered dark magic. Humans killed magical creatures by the hundreds in order to fuel their magic, something that horrified the elves and dragons of time. As a result, the humans were driven from the lands and forced to live away from the creatures of magic. To ensure the boundary would not be crossed, the creatures created a river of lava to divide the continent: humans on one side, everyone else on the other.

PERSONALITY

Soren is a brawny, brave young man without the brains to match. He's the son of the high mage, lord protector, and (former) king advisor, Viren. While his father's strengths lie in magic and tact, Soren's assets lie in his brute strength alone.

He's about what you'd expect from a young, privileged knight: he's impulsive, he's proud, he makes a lot of bad jokes, and he's sort of a goofball. He eats a lot of food, and he's a bit on the dramatic side but, at the end of the day, Soren truly means well and wants to do what's best for the people of Katolis.

By the age of eighteen, Soren rose to a respectable rank within the royal Crownguard, the knights assigned to protect the royal family at all costs. As prestigious as the title may sound, Soren spends a decent portion of his time palling around with his fellow knights and training the eldest prince, Callum, in the art of sword-fighting. Since Callum shows no skill with a sword and no chance of improving any time soon, Soren finds this to be a rather tedious task and has given up on any actual training. Instead, he uses this time wisely by teasing Callum as much as he can. One particular point Soren often brings up is the fact that Callum is a step-prince, not King Harrow’s true son but his step-son. Callum does not appear to think much of this at first and often brushes it off. His teasing seems to be mostly in good fun, however, as his relationship with Callum isn't always antagonistic. He even allows himself to be "defeated" in battle by Callum in to help him impress a girl.

Despite being the eldest between he and his sister, Soren presents himself as the more petulant of the two.  He follows an 'act first, think later' philosophy that lands him into trouble more often than not. He can be described as impulsive or quick-to-strike, believing it better to attack first than to miss an opportunity. He's rather impatient, something we see during their hunt for the princes. Soren grows incredibly bored with Claudia’s plan to find the princes through magic as it requires a great deal of waiting around and gathering ingredients, something he tires of quickly.

Soren and his father have a particularly difficult relationship as they’re shown to be complete opposites in every sense of the word. Viren is calculating, intelligent, and thoughtful while Soren is brackish, obstinate, and naive. For this reason, Viren has a closer relationship with Claudia, to whom he’s passed his magic talents on to.

Soren is notably bad with words, something pointed out to him by friends and foes alike. His attempts at jokes often fall short and, despite knowing how to use sarcasm, it appears he often overthinks what is sarcasm and what isn’t, which often results in more failed wordplay. When attempting to taunt Rayla upon capturing her, Rayla points out how bad his sarcasm is, which Soren misidentifies as sarcasm. However, his jokes, as awful as they are, often help to keep the mood light between he and his sister on their journey.

His skills in battle are seen numerous times throughout the series. From practicing in the courtyard, to training Prince Callum, to his battle against a moonshawdow elf—which are notorious within the world of Katolis for being especially skilled in battle—he's proven time and time again that he knows what he's doing at least part of the time.

When in the company of those he deems respectable (or frightening) — higher-ups, the king, his father, etc. — Soren is capable of placing his attitude on the back-burner long enough to show some humility.

Magic as a whole makes Soren visibly uncomfortable, another reason why he and his father are not particularly close; magic is Viren's entire being. Dark magic requires the loss of life to power spells, and Soren is often disgusted by the sight of his sister squashing a bug or crushing a toad in order to make her spells work. His discomfort is portrayed as child-like, but this also highlights Soren's questionable moral alignment. He views life as having some value and shows discomfort with anything that challenges this idea, but he isn't above manipulation and mild cruelty to achieve his goals. (When Viren tasks him with the secret mission of not simply capturing the princes but killing them, for example, Soren his horrified. Reluctantly, Soren agrees and attempts to stage several "accidents" in order to kill the princes. We later learn he only agreed to this to appease his father.)

Soren's lack of intelligence manifests itself as poor logic and bad decision making. At one point, Soren attempts to persuade the young princes into doing as he asked by saying the deceased King Harrow misses them dearly and would like them to come home. At the time, the princes do not know their father is dead, and Soren, in a short-lived display of dark cunning, uses this to his advantage. When Claudia confronts him about the immorality of this, Soren accuses her of hypocrisy, saying killing innocent creatures for her magic being worse than lying, once again showing his moral compass and its limits.

For undisclosed reasons beyond his father's intensity, Soren's father and his mother split up when Soren was young. When given the choice of who to stay with, he chose Viren.

THE 'NEW' SOREN

Soren's impulsivity led to the accidental destruction of a town. True to form, he chose to act first without thinking through the consequences and ended up injuring dozens of townspeople along with himself. After a semi-successful attempt at capturing a dragon, the dragon retaliated by attacking Soren, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.

While in the infirmary Soren is told he will never be able to walk again. He appears to be at peace with this news and soon comes to the conclusion that, now that's he's unable to be a knight, he’d like to become a poet. With his distinctive lack of eloquence, this revelation goes about as expected. His first attempt at a haiku about twelve beats too long, something Soren doesn’t even notice until his sister points it out to him. It's Soren's bad poetry that spurs Claudia to do something to save him. Becoming paralyzed comes as a blessing in disguise to Soren since, now that he's unable to move, he no longer has to continue on with the mission and all of the guilt that comes with it.

This fall from grace, from obstinate knight to bedridden poet, comes with a humbling of Soren's personality. He recognizes the destruction and loss his rash decisions have caused, how he caused the problem of the dragon and harmed people more than he helped them, and he's prepared to make his peace with a new life.

In order to heal Soren's injury, Claudia seeks out a fawn and slaughters it in order to charge her spell, one of the most powerful spells she's cast thus far. The process of bringing life back to Soren's body is excruciatingly painful, but the results are a success.

Though he's regained his strength and is no longer paralyzed, it is uncertain whether or not he will continue on the mission to destroy the princes. As Soren heals from the wounds of battle, he continues to practice his poetry, appearing to take his new poet life to heart.

ABILITIES

SWORDSMANSHIP
While lacking the tactical thought required to be successful on the battlefield, Soren is adept when it comes to close combat. He's able to do more than hold his own in a battle and has been capable of disarming his opponent and ending a battle when the time comes. It is unknown just how long Soren has been studying battle.

LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE
Soren has been shown to be skilled at little else aside from combat. In a way, this foils Prince Callum's character. Callum often describes himself as not being good at anything despite being adept at a number of skills throughout the series and Soren, without explicitly saying it, is shown being terrible at everything. The man can't even write a haiku. When the one ability he had is taken away from him, it raises questions.

ALIGNMENT

THRAS

The idea of bravery and courage feel pretty central to Soren's character. The series starts off highlighting Soren being courage in battle and being brave when encountering enemies, but more depth is added to this as time goes on. We see fear when we look more at Soren's relationship with his father and how fearful he is of disappointing him. So much so that he's prepared to literally KILL the kids he's grown up with and has known all of his life just to make his old man proud.


 

OTHER.

Season 2 ends on a bit of a cliffhanger and we aren't sure if Soren's death/rebirth arc is going to majorly impact his character in the future. For the sake of simplicity of playing him without inserting a bunch of headcanons and speculation, I'm going to assume the answer is no and that Soren sort of goes back to being his old S1/S2 self with maybe a little more compassion and a little more terrible poetry recited at any given moment. His wounds are healed. He's not bedridden. He's back in action.
 

 

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉

 

GENERAL SAMPLE

Test Drive Meme!

EMOTIONAL

(In response to the taskboard ad — GT0103!)

Beckoning of the end.
Why do carrots have such little flavor?
Good food is an old friend.

Soren had never felt such low pits of despair. So low, in fact, that Soren couldn’t think of any reasonable ways to see himself out of them—or  unreasonable ways, for that matter. A despair so low, it was palpable. He could feel the brewing of misery in the air around him, taste the desperation on his parched tongue. With each passing moment, he felt his body grow weaker, his beautiful, beautiful muscles growing depleted.

Must... stay... strong...
Feel... so... soft...

As if directly responding to his weakened state, the chair—once study—beneath him, and the table—once sturdy—before him, groaned, as if they too had given up on the thought of a better tomorrow. All at once, both the chair and the table collapsed and Soren fell along with them, reduced to a moaning heap on the ground surrounded by sobbing splinters, devoid of the energy required to lift himself off the ground.

Three days into this no red meat diet, three entire days. No leg of lamb. No mince meat pies. No bacon. He didn’t think he could make through the remainder of the day let alone the next two weeks after that.  Soren could taste the steaks his was missing out on. They tasted far better than misery, despair, and… what’s this...? Soren picked at the healthy alternative that landed on the ground beside him, the healthy…. celery…? All at once, Soren lost the will to go on and accepted his inevitable, veggie-induced death.