{PA} Theophrastus Veisz

For

I felt like it was neater to submit the new character sheet as a new deviation. I hope that's okay.

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Name: Theophrastus "Theo" Veisz


Age: 17 years old


Species: Faunus (White Tern)


Gender: Male


Year: Freshman


Aura Colour: Ivory (#FFFFF0)


Semblance: - Angel Mode -
A big pair of wings sprouts from Theo's back. They are white and have a shape fit for quick flight and precise maneuvering. When his semblance activates, Theo's hands, feet and lips gain a blueish-blackish colour, and his eyes darken and get much bigger irises until little white is visible in them at all. His overall movement patterns might become more bird-like as well.




Weapon: - Penna & Calamus -
In their melee form they are sickles containing chambers for liquid substances. Theo can enable those substances leaking into the blades, causing them to seep into wounds caused by cuts. For ranged combat the handles divide into two parts, putting the chambers at the center of the weights that the blades turn into. The results can be swung like pois, and dispense the substances in gaseous form like censers.


Fighting Style:

Theo usually tries to stun, paralyse, anesthetize or plain poison his enemy in a fight, aiming for small cuts with the poisoned blades or trying to make the enemy inhale some of his gases. Only when this has already weakened his enemy he starts going for attacks intended to do physical damage, either by slicing with the sickles or by using the pois as blunt weapons. But even then, he focuses on the most vulnerable spots.
The substances are usually his own mixtures, often created from herbal essences and Dust. Since the chambers can be activated separately from each other, this enables him to utilise the spontaneous reactions between the different elements. For example, he might set a flammable gas free first, then ignite it by causing a small puff of red Dust. He prefers the poi form of his weapons over the sickles.

Of course that means that in battle, he tends to wear his bird mask, in order to avoid the negative effects of his mixtures.

His motions are light, quick and often circular, with him twirling around and jumping a lot. He focuses on evasion more than on attack.
Theo isn't particularly strong, which he makes up for with dexterity, flexibility and an excellent control over his body. It might be in part due to his faunus nature, but he has no trouble managing limb movements that would demand a lot more focus from normal humans. This also enables him to manage his energy pretty well, making him look as if he could go for a long time in battle. In truth though, even one or two well-placed hits from a strong opponent could knock him out completely, and his own attacks are not particularly strong. Hence the necessity for poisons and gases.

In serious battle, his containers (which have to refilled after use, and are emptied more quickly when using gases) often contain: Red Dust, Light Blue Dust, White Dust, a paralysing poison, a poison destructive to most organic matter, ingredients for a flammable mixture (one in Penna and one in Calamus to mix them in the air) and an anesthetic.

In sparring, he usually only uses weak muscle relaxants, anesthetics or pigment dust to have an effect emulating battle. None of these substances have negative long-term effects - the pigments might stain, and the muscle relaxant or anesthetic might make the person affected by them incapable of moving for a few minutes/put them to sleep or make them drowsy for a short amount of time.

Reference for his fighting style:

    Basic movement patterns: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6oRnx…

    How he utilises the gases and powders (the sparks represent those particles): www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na0zM9… , www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XuR8S…

    Quick changes of direction: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMqniK…

Likes and Dislikes:

+ White and Gold
+ Beauty
+ Birds
+ Seeds, nuts, small fruit - but especially small fish
+ The ocean
+ Wing/bird iconography
+ Compliments and admiration
+ Romance
+ Learning
+ Botany
+++ Tiefen

- Dirt
- Rudeness
- Being ignored
- His heritage
- Failure
- People who are immune to manipulation
- Ugly things
- Chaos and messes
- Materials like plastic and synthetic chemicals
- Meat
- Eggs (eating those as a bird faunus? That's just wrong...)


Personality:

Theo's personality is difficult to describe - mostly because the person he is at the core doesn't fit in at all with the person he wants to be.On first glance, he could almost seem like a real life Prince Charming. Kind, considerate, helpful, gentle - maybe a bit oblivious at times, but never when it counts. And so humble. So amicable. So honest and lawful, but not stuck-up. So radiant with positive attitude. So polite. So talented - almost everything just seems to come to him naturally. And yet, he's so hardworking! Yes, Theo likes for everyone to think that his personality was just as beautiful and elegant as his appearance, and he doesn't like to let people look deeper than that. While he tends to always have a big circle of people who consider themselves his friends, there are only few who he feels the same about, and those are the only few people who may see who's behind that facade.

Because there, Theo may be more outgoing, and more actually caring (towards those he regards as friends), but he's also vain and downright obsessed with looking as if he was the best. While he works hard - the only way to keep up the illusion of being good indefinitely - he gladly cheats, lies and tricks his way to first place if he can avoid repercussions for it. And since he genuinely is intelligent and not even half as oblivious as he pretends to be, he can often figure out ways to avoid said repercussions. In fact, his report cards from his former schools appear to be those of the perfect student not necessarily because he really did ace all subjects. He might have helped it with a little cheat-sheet here and a bit of blackmail there. And while he is no bully, he does have a good eye for the vulnerable spots of other people, just like he does for what kind of person they find pleasant to be around, and he uses both to his advantage.

Not all of that is pure egocentrism though, because as mentioned before, Theo can care deeply about people other than himself. And some of these people happen to be his own and Tiefen's family - all of whom he wants to make proud. Even his closer friends not always catch on to this part of him, but much of his behaviour comes from the feeling of inadequacy that he's been living with since his childhood. Some of it is due to growing up together with Tiefen, who was always richer, stronger, and in Theo's opinion also smarter. Theo can't stop wanting to measure up to him.
Then there are Theo's parents, who aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed, nor particularly well-off. Theo loves them deeply, but at the same time feels as if he'd have to make up for their lack of success with his own existence.
And then there are the von Tiefens, who have been Theo's extended family for all of his life. They put their trust into him when they paid for his education, they put their good reputation on the line by supporting a faunus like a child of their own, and he feels like there is no other way to repay that than by being - or at least appearing to be - the very best. Someone worthy of their investments.

But the biggest role in his secret insecurities plays his species. Faunus are considered worse than humans by default. So if Theo wants to feel even a little bit adequate, he needs to best all humans around him. Be it by way of actual skill or by 'outwitting' them.
He might not even be fully conscious of that mindset himself, and can't pinpoint why it tears him up inside whenever someone is better than him at something. Or even worse: More popular. This is a big part of why he's so obsessed with his reputation and appearance, and why he soaks up attention like a sponge.

It's no excuse for how he tries to obtain it, though.

But maybe this is already as good as Theo can be if he tries, because within the darkest corners of his soul, a frightening love for gore and violence lurks. And an even more scary apathy towards the suffering of others if they are not close enough to him. Theo is aware of both of these tendencies, and constantly scared of becoming the violent, evil person he thinks he is at the core, and therefore constantly tries to find ways of  channeling that part of himself into more socially acceptable or at least justifiable acts. Becoming a Huntsman is part of that. Where else would he get acceptable targets for his violent urges?

There are some parts of his personality, even in front of strangers, that are genuine. Like his love for knowledge, the sky, the ocean and plants. Especially herbs fascinate him, and he experiments constantly with combining them with Dust to create new and exciting substances. While Tiefen is the better surgeon of the two, Theo excels at being a pharmacist, showing even more interest for that than for other parts of being a doctor. He keeps creating new substances like balms, elixirs and potions, which he tries to test in all kinds of ways. There have been incidents where that ended badly for his health - since Dust might reveal or intensifiy effects of herbs that were undetectable before - but that doesn't keep him from trying and bringing prototypes to the battlefield with him.

He also can come across a bit juvenile at times, and not always in a bad way. For example, he gets touchy-feely when he really likes someone, he still has a sense of childlike joy and wonder about the small things in life and his face is hilarious when he's genuinely confused.

He also genuinely wants to do good for humans and faunus at large. He's just way too willing to throw individuals under the bus for that.

Concerning faunus, he prefers to stay away from them, even though he tries to not act as if he thinks of them as less than human. He'd even defend a faunus from bullying - as much as he can without compromising his standing on the social ladder too much.

History:

Theo's parents - his father being a nurse, his mother a secretary/receptionist - started working at the office of Tiefen's mother without knowing of each other first. They met at work, recognised each other as faunus of the same type albeit with different traits (Theo's father sports the sleek wins of a white tern sprouting from his back, while his mother has unnaturally big and dark bead eyes, almost no white being visible in them) and bonded over it. The friendship grew into a romance, and the romance into a healthy, supportive and happy relationship between them.

Still, they were distressed when Theo's mother did not deliver a baby, but an egg.

Fortunately for them, Dr. von Tiefen was willing to rush to their side even in the middle of the night with her little Seraphim by her side, and helped them treat the egg right, as she had some professional experience with faunus. This is also how Tiefen first met Theo - as a big, ivory-colored egg.

Theo hatched as an infant, and his parents were incredibly relieved that he was basically indistinguishable from human babies. Both of them had experienced a lot of discrimination due to their obvious traits and their admittedly a bit lacking intellect, and they had feared something even worse for their child. But Theo looked human, and he turned out to be a bright little boy. Also, Tiefen's new favorite plushie. With the children playing so frequently together, of course the von Tiefens couldn't help but get a little attached to Theo, and since his own parents struggled to provide him with the education and life he needed and deserved, the von Tiefen family began to help out. A few text books here, a more prestigious and educational elementary school there, and while Theo at first got a lot of Tiefen's old clothing, eventually he was even given completely new toys and clothes by his now extended family. It sparked his determination to make all the effort the von Tiefens put in him pay off, and the bright little toddler grew into a teenager who kept his report cards as flawless as his complexion.

Theo's own parents decided to fade more and more into the background, aside from giving him emotional support when he needed it. They noticed that their son found and kept many more friends when everyone mistook him for a human than when people found out he was a faunus, and even asked Tiefen's parents to attend school appointments in their place unless Theo wanted them there.

And Theo wasn't stupid. He caught on to the same thing, and from a rather early age on, he picked up how the dynamics worked between humans and faunus, and even between wealthy and not-so-well-off people of the same species. As a result, he internalised a lot of the oppressive attitude present in the system, to the point where he began hating his lower-class faunus heritage and denied and hid it at any opportunity. He didn't want to actively deny his parents, but when they stepped back from his life in the public, he didn't ask them to become more present again, either.

But they are incredibly proud of their smart, beloved and apparently all-around wonderful son, and let him feel this whenever they can.

By now, people tend to mistake Theo and Tiefen for foster brothers, often assuming that Theo was adopted by the von Tiefen family. He never corrects those assumptions, and actually gladly confirms them as much as he can. They're not all wrong, either - after all, Theo and Tiefen did grow up close like brothers, and Theo spent enough time at Tiefen's place throughout his stays that he would likely have his own room by now if he didn't insist on spending the nights keeping Tiefen awake with discussion about herbal and synthetic medicine.

Being regarded as a well-off human fits into the public idea of a Prince Charming and hero so much better.

Like Tiefen, Theo went to medical school. But unlike Tiefen, he managed to skip two years of school beforehand (once in elementary through honest knowledge, once in middle school by other means), enabling him to enroll at the same time as Tiefen despite his younger age.



Other:

- Theo is about 5'8'' tall, but pretty much always wears shoes (often ankle boots) with high heels, adding another half to full inch.
- He may or may not be doing that because he wants to emphasise that he is taller than Tiefen.
- Small birds like swallows, wrens and thrushes feel attracted to Theo or at least don't show much fear of him.
- While he exhibits no obvious traits of birds, there are some a bit more subtle clues. For example, when he is alarmed, he might completely freeze and only turn his head in almost robotic motions to look around.
- Twirling poi and acrobatics are fun to him because both gets the attention of others, so he doesn't only do it for battle and sparring. He does it in private, too, usually in well-visible spots on campus.
- He's got a very pretty singing voice.
- He's got several versions of his battle outfit with different patterns for the golden applications (for the sake of everyone who wants to draw him in his battle clothes, because I don't want to subject y'all to copying these ones exactly).
- He also has detachable (purely decorative) wings he often wears on his outfit.


Relationships:

Tiefen Callow - Theo's closest friend and big "brother". Theo looks up to him and loves him dearly. At times he's torn between his wish to be more like Tiefen and his desire to be independent and himself.

Berry Jessamyn - Theo thinks she's a little cutie. Cute enough to qualify as a fitting accessory for him, maybe... and she seems like easy enough prey. Also her name is Berry, how could he resist that?

Thistle Rosamund - Cute on the outside, but Theo gets the feeling that she's either rude or doesn't warm up to people quickly. He'll have to bide his time and take the slow route on this one...

Kim Taehyun - Has mostly only spotted her from afar up until now, but she's GOLDEN and SHINY and Theo wants to have the golden shiny girl! He's unaware of the fact that she's a faunus so far.

 Cloris Itzal - Theo likes her very much, both as a person and as a potential accessory for himself. He genuinely enjoys working with her, and was almost a bit sad when they ended up on different teams.

 October Jackson - The fact that October immediately played along with Theo's orders makes Theo really fond of him. Also: Cute freckles! Part of why he's sad that he couldn't get on a team with Cloris and October is that he sensed an insecurity in both of them that would have made them easy to manipulate in his opinion.

Dusty Braun - She doesn't like Theo and has Tiefen's permission to treat Theo however. So he's scared as heck of her.

Shiena En'yo - His rival when it comes to Taehyun's affections, and he doesn't seem to realise that he's hopelessly outclassed. It's fun arguing and flirting with her interchangeably though!

Scylla Montauk - Theo's partner in his new team and one of the few things that make him feel less negatively about not being in a team with Cloris and October. After all, she's cute and he appreciates the complementing nature of their themes and colors.

Aurric Worthbane - Theo hates his new teamleader with the burning passion of a thousand suns. Because Aurric is teamleader, which means Theo's not the teamleader, which means Theo is not the best - and not being the best, to Theo, means not being good enough.

If I have already rped with you, but not mentioned you on here yet, Theo probably hasn't formed his opinion about your character yet. It'll come in time. <3