app for neosapien

[rubricatus]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Nix
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A
CONTACT: salroka; PM
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Magnus the Red (AU name: Magnus Sohrab)
CANON: Warhammer 40,000 (Specifically, the Horus Heresy novel line.)
CANON REFERENCE: Here
AGE: 47 (as opposed to hundreds of years old in canon)
GENDER: Male
CHARACTER TYPE: Meta-human
APPEARANCE: He's over ten feet of pure muscle and glam rock hair, so he's hard to miss. Also, he has bright red skin and only one eye.

PERSONALITY:
Magnus is a primarch: a being that is, by its very nature, larger than life. Created to lead military legions and reunite lost galactic colonies under a singular, unified banner of the human race, only twenty eighteen of these men exist throughout the whole of the universe, and each of them was designed to the cellular level to be fit for their task in every conceivable way. Physically giant, mentally enhanced, they are a beacon for humanity to rally around, casting their light over the masses while remaining something above them.

So, it often surprises people that Magnus is so humble and tolerant of others. It's a rare thing for Magnus to lord his status over "lesser" mortals, and for him to do so generally speaks of an extreme situation. He listens well, and allows others to speak without fear of censure; he never speaks out of turn, or uses his status to violate the decorum that would bind a lower man; he speaks mildly of his own accomplishments in the Great Crusade, emphasizing the collective nature of the undertaking. He seeks for common ground with everyone he meets, whether at a simple formal function or in negotiation with the ruler of a "barbarian" world he's meant bring to "Compliance."

In other words, the "Magnus" a mere acquaintance knows is a delicate blend of fact and facade, calculated to achieve very particular ends. You see, among the eighteen primarch brothers, Magnus bears the distinction of being its most powerful psyker — someone capable of bending the chaotic energies of the universe to his whims. He embraces and wields this power freely, and that's enough to make him the subject of suspicion, even some of his own brothers regarding him as a malevolent sorcerer. Magnus is well-aware that he operates in a gray space feared by many, and accordingly, the face he presents to the world is one designed to seem as non-threatening as possible.

What lies under that mask would surely confirm his detractors' worst suspicions in their eyes. A far cry from the humility he expresses to others, Magnus's thoughts are filled with condescension and arrogance. Though (nearly) all the primarchs see themselves as being natural superiors to "mortal" men, Magnus takes it to a level beyond that, thinking in the privacy of his own thoughts that he can barely recognize them as the same species as himself. To Magnus, a baseline human with no psyker abilities is as far from him as they are from their early hominid ancestors, and he regards them with a mixture of pity for their blindness and disdain for their ignorance.

In fact, there's little Magnus abhors more than ignorance. This is half the reason for his embrace of the Warp's energies. To shy away from their study, he feels, is no better than to be a caveman flinching away from fire. The pursuit of knowledge is his greatest passion, and forward progress his greatest goal; something he often says in the private company of those he trusts is that while he doesn't know everything, someday, he will. Where his critics accuse him consorting with powers not meant to be understood, he answers that truth, science, and enlightenment are the very foundations of the Imperium of Man, and that his studies will one day bring humanity to stand upon an even greater apex.

Ironically, it's because of this that the tolerant nature Magnus displays isn't a lie. To discard points of view outside his own would make him every bit as ignorant as his detractors, after all. He studies philosophies and literature thousands of millennia old; when encountering a disparate branch of human culture among the stars, he fights to preserve it even as the Imperium of Man annexes it, sometimes even bending the rules of the Imperium to do so. Though he disdains superstition and religion as "primitive", he nonetheless believes that wisdom can be expressed through any culture, and loathes the loss of knowledge and art that comes with the destruction of one.

A good example of his relative open-mindedness can be found in the novel A Thousand Sons: Within the Imperium of Man, religion is expressly forbidden. However, upon arriving to a planet in the midst of their most important religious observation, he refuses to disturb it, and expressly orders his men not to trespass into the natives' holy valley after being told of its significance. Within his own point of view segments, it's made clear he regards their beliefs with no small amount of condescension — yet, at the same time, he recognizes them as nothing more objectionable than an expression of appropriate awe for the natural forces of the world.

Something else that surely contributes is his own identity as a psyker. While within the storyline of the Horus Heresy novels, the conflict is largely treated as a question of scientific progress vs dogmatic conservatism, the fact remains that psyker ability is an inborn part of a person. Not only does Magnus himself understand the experience of unfair rejection, the planet he was raised on began as a colony world for people who feared persecution for their psychic abilities. The legion he heads — a group of men he calls his sons — bears the brunt of distrust for their study and use of the Warp in combat. All of this has given Magnus a keen awareness of the injustice of prejudice, and as such made him sympathetic toward the suffering of others.

Though one of the most compassionate primarchs, Magnus nonetheless has difficulty connecting with others as peers rather than subordinates. Some of this, of course, is due to his own pride and arrogance in considering himself above mortal men. However, even among his brothers, there are only a few he would consider to be a friend, in part due to a refusal to engage him with the same open-minded understanding he has always tried to offer in turn. His sense of social isolation is very real, and the result is a man who is sociable and interested in others yet emotionally closed off from them, often engaging with people on matters important to them while being much more guarded about his own history and struggles.

In contrast, Magnus excels in relationships of mentorship. Something of a natural dad, he treats the men of the Thousand Sons as if they are his children in a very literal sense. At turns warm and firm, understanding and instructing, Magnus educates his sons in his principles so that they might use them to flourish for themselves. The relationship also allows him to express a deep care for others in a far more personal way than usual for him. It's not an exaggeration to say that he would sacrifice anything for his pupils, and indeed, he nearly did; when his legion was beset by a mutational disease that twisted their minds and flesh into those of monsters, Magnus gave up his right eye to a powerful entity in the Warp in exchange for the power to save them.

Among those he is closest with, more of Magnus's true face comes to the fore. Though he is consistently described as a strong and charismatic orator, within the boundaries of his personal life, he becomes outright theatrical in his delivery, gesturing and emoting and dramatically pacing his words with great relish. He talks proudly of his own accomplishments — not in the Great Crusade, but in areas of personal importance to him, on the world of Prospero and among the Thousand Sons and in his studies of the Warp. And he reveals a streak of incredible vanity; he declares himself to be perfection in physical form, and dresses flamboyantly with any chance he gets, loading his outfits with eye-catching jewelry and using his psyker abilities for things so petty as changing his eye color to match his accessories.

But even that level of pride is a pale shadow in comparison to what goes on in the confines of his own head. Magnus is, at his core, a man so consumed by hubris that he can no longer recognize it. He will lend an ear to any viewpoint, but in truth, he will only accept those that confirm things he has already decided. He is always right; he always knows better than those who disagree with him; he is always justified in defying conventional law or morality in the service of what he has decided is correct. He is infallible, incapable of being mistaken. And, as the story always goes, this pride leads to his eventual destruction; seeing no need to question his own presumptions, he accepts a devil's bargain.

Very little about Magnus's personality changes in this AU; just swipe out "psyker" for "Meta-human", and you're pretty much good to go. What differences do exist largely come from the change in social status. While Magnus is often regarded with distrust or even rejection due to his dabbling in areas many consider occult, he is still a primarch. Average people are almost universally awed by him, and both his legion and the people of Prospero look up to him as a revered leader. Not so within the world of Neo Sapien! Because Magnus remains extremely prideful, and believes himself to be better than normal humans, this fact adds a spiteful element to his character. He dresses flamboyantly because people believe he should be ashamed of the marks of his difference; he lives luxuriously because people would take that opportunity away from him. Essentially, the more social rejection he feels, the more he doubles down on everything about himself.

POWERS & ABILITIES:
Magnus's abilities as a Meta-human involve both a physical and psychic component.

The most obvious physical difference is that Magnus is extremely large, being about twice the size of a normal human in all dimensions. In order to support this level of physical mass in a bipedal form, there are a number of aspects of his physiology that could be considered "advanced" as relative to an average person:

• Bone and muscle is proportionally denser than what is found in a normal human. That is to say, even without much in the way of exercise, Magnus is really buff! This, combined with his overall size, does give him some level of enhanced strength and durability, proportional to the amount of muscle mass involved and the size of his body. It isn't beyond human capability, but it's significantly higher than the baseline and considering he doesn't have to work for it... Eh.
  
  
• While Magnus does not heal faster than the baseline, he does heal cleaner, and it seems his body is incapable of scarring. This has actually proven itself a hindrance more than anything, however; cybernetic implants are basically a no-go for him, even when they're something he could use or need. His missing eye can't be replaced with a cybernetic one, for example, because the socket has completely grown over with new flesh, replacing everything from the eyelid to the optic nerve.
  
  This enhanced rejuvenation also seems to affect his aging somewhat, but at this point, it's hard to say if that means a longer lifespan or just aging more gracefully than the average.
  
  
• The most significant difference in his physiology, however, is wholly internal. His internal organs are arranged in a way that deviates drastically from the norm, in part to accommodate the fact that his torso contains two hearts and two sets of lungs. This makes pumping enough blood and circulating enough oxygen feasible, but it also means that, say, he could in theory survive the loss of one heart as long as the flow of blood was stopped before he bled out. He definitely wouldn't be able to be physically active to the same degree with only one heart, but, you know, it's better than being dead.
  
  The double organs also increase his endurance a bit relative to a normal person, but the difference isn't anywhere near as significant as what is caused by his muscle mass.
  
  That said, this is both a blessing and a curse. Not unlike his would-be superior healing, this makes standard medical procedures a bit of a nightmare. Obviously, with his internal organs not following the usual blueprint of the human body, everything from being diagnosed with a simple illness to receiving a life-saving operation is far more difficult — and far riskier than it would be for a normal person, in the case of the latter.
  
  
• He has something of a resistance to toxins, simply due to the sheer size of his body. Essentially, you're going to need a lot more cyanide to poison him, and a lot more booze to get him drunk.

There's also the wholly superficial difference of being red and having special (apparently prismatic) eyes.

Despite this section already being almost 500 words, however, his real powers that actually matter are telepathy and adjacent mind-hacking powers.

• To start this section with a blanket note: These abilities are tied almost in their entirety to his eyes. With exactly one exception, the target of his psychic abilities must be in his field of vision — and, as mentioned elsewhere, he only has one eye, meaning he has a large blind spot to contend with.
  
  
• Magnus can read minds! In the case of a surface read, it's very unobtrusive and undetectable (to anyone who doesn't have a Meta-human ability that would allow them to detect it, at least), and it picks up only surface thoughts and emotions that the target is feeling in the moment. He is capable of scanning large groups of people at once this way; so long as they're within his line of sight, he can sort through even dozens of people very quickly.
  
  However, Magnus is also capable of carrying out a much deeper reading on single targets, and this case, they will feel it. If your mind is a dresser, this is Magnus ripping its drawers free and dumping them onto the floor, and the more someone resists the attempt to pick through their psyche, the more unpleasant that feeling will become. In this case, Magnus is perfectly capable of pulling up old thoughts and memories for his perusal. It's even possible for him to uncover ones that had gone forgotten by the target prior. (This is a big maybe and, for obvious reasons, can't really be accomplished reliably. Brains are tricky that way.)
  
  
• Magnus can also project his own thoughts into the minds of others. However, ability goes far beyond simple mental communication! In addition to words, Magnus can insert visions, suggestions, and emotions into others' minds.
  
  The simplest of these is probably emotions. Magnus can prompt someone to feel peaceful, angry, sympathetic, fearful — basically whatever he likes, to whatever degree he likes. The limitations largely come in the form of what it can't do: that is, communicate a real complexity to these feelings, or direct them wherever he wants. The odds of the emotion taking root are also much lower if someone is already feeling an emotion strongly, and Magnus attempts to make them feel in an opposed way. In other words, using this ability, he could make someone attacking him so angry that they become reckless and therefore easier to disarm; he could not make them suddenly angry at someone else, and trying to make them feel calm and peaceful instead might only have a one-in-ten chance of success.
  
  He can prompt feelings in large batches of people at once (not as many as he can see, but about as many as he can see within any 15 yard span); once he stops focusing on maintaining the emotion, it begins to fade and whether it will persist or not depends entirely on how caught up the target has become in feeling it.
  
  He can also project particular sights, sounds, and sensations — or, basically, hallucinations. As with the emotional prompting, he can affect as many people as he can see within a 15 yard space; unlike the emotional prompting, its effectiveness decreases as more people are placed under the effect. Attempting something complex for a large group of people is technically possible, but the results are weak and watery. Either complexity or vividness must be sacrificed; it's the choice between making a large group of people hear something as if it were really there or affecting all five of a single person's senses. Obviously, the effect stops as soon as his focus is broken.
  
  Finally, the most complex use of this ability is suggestion. Magnus can implant the seed of an idea into someone's mind so that they think it's their own. This works best with simple concepts (or more complex concepts that flow naturally from what they already believe), and if the person in question has no mental or emotional aversion to a particular idea, it can compel them to perform a simple action for him (literally or metaphorically looking the other way, handing something over to him, etc). However, if the target has some reason to not want to do or think the way Magnus wants, all this can do is make them more inclined to be persuaded, and he still has to handle the persuasion himself. At most, he can implant the same suggestion in five people at once.
  
  He can also project thoughts (and the others mentioned above) in a fifteen-foot radius around himself rather than the more typical sight-based line, but the effect is weak and passive in comparison. Think a minor aura of calm or similar; it's enough to take the edge off of a mood, but not to affect it dramatically.
  
  
• Magnus can also seize control of the nervous system in its entirety. As with the abilities above, he can affect as many people as he can see within a particular space (reduced from a 15 yard line to a 10 yard line here), and the complexity of the effects decreases as the number of people affected increases.
  
  Unfortunately, suppressing the activity the medulla oblongata is not a particularly complex command! With this ability, he can do a wide variety of things, such as: shutting off one or more senses, stopping the heart, setting every nerve ending to Maximum Pain, or scrambling nerve impulses (left goes right, arm movement becomes leg movement, etc). He can even take control of a body as if it were a puppet — or multiple bodies at once, though he can only put them through one simultaneous set of motions and complexity, responsiveness, etc decreases as the number of people under his control increases. Once that number passes five or so, it becomes very hard for him to make them do anything more complex than stand still.
  
  If his concentration is broken, so is his hold over anyone targeted with this ability; it might take a few seconds for everything to return to working order, but it doesn't persist in any meaningful way once someone is free of the effect.
  
  This ability could also, in theory, be used to alter someone's memories. However, removing (or even worse, falsifying) memories like that is extremely delicate work. With the tools at his disposal, he's just as likely as not to permanently damage part of their brain doing this, and so, this isn't something he's likely to ever attempt unless one outcome is just as good as the other. Magnus is ethically dubious enough that there's some chance such a situation will arise — but, by the same token, he has enough compassion that said situation would have to be really extreme.
  
  
• As mentioned above, doing anything noteworthy requires some amount of focus. Despite his Galaxy Brain Billion IQ mind, whatever Magnus has to say on the matter, he's still bound by one very human limitation: at any given time, there's only so much mental energy he has to give. Magnus in a fresh and revitalized mental state can use these abilities to genuinely scary effect; a stressed and tired Magnus is capable of much less before fizzling out. Unleashing a bedazzling display of ~PSYCHIC MIGHT~ on any given day means needing at least a few days of mental relaxation afterward before he can attempt anything so impressive again.
  
  As the number of targets increases, so does the focus necessary, and therefore how mentally taxing it is to use any of these abilities. In the case of something as basic as projecting a simple emotion, the increase in focus is actually fairly negligible; for something as complex as puppeteering several people at once, the increase is disproportionately large. At the top of his game, he still couldn't make more than five people stand still for more than a few minutes. A complex hallucination affecting only one sense in a large group of people is maintainable for only a little longer than that. Most everything else falls somewhere between the two extremes of "lucky to last four minutes" and "could probably keep this up until he got bored."
  
  He also can't use the most impressive of his abilities if he can't, you know, concentrate. To compensate for these weaknesses, Magnus practices meditative techniques (a personal routine he refers to as "the Enumerations"), but this can only off-set the issue so much. It can be the difference between one less push and nothing, but it's never going to be a full restore of his metaphorical mana.
  
  
• As most of his powers work by, essentially, hacking the nervous system, cybernetic implants in the brain can interfere with their effectiveness. The best case scenario for him here is that cybernetics form a dead zone in the target's brain, and only the surrounding areas and functions can be affected normally. However, depending on how deeply entwined the cybernetics are, the effects of his powers might be diminished on a whole, or they might work only unreliably — or, in the case of seizing control of a nervous system, they might not even work at all.

Also he's highly educated in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. Also, more educated in history, biology, chemistry, psychology, and the arts than the average layman. Especially likes classics and antiquity. He's a nerd, is what I'm saying.

AU HISTORY:
Rumor has it that, almost five decades ago, there was a man. A genius scientist, among other things, with visionary ideas that might be euphemistically described as ahead of his time, he found backers in the same places one might go for a particularly suspicious loan. But the inauspicious source of his funding didn't concern him; all that mattered was that he was given underlings to carry out his orders, a laboratory to work in, and the freedom to act as he pleased. His goal was to reach the farthest edge of human potential; using his own DNA as a base—he was quite an advanced specimen of humanity himself, people say—he experimented with cloning and genetic enhancement, intent on creating a better breed of humans for reasons only he was fully aware of.

And then, one day, he disappeared. Different rumors will give you different explanations as to why. Some say his experiments went too far even for the unscrupulous men who had funded him. Some say they wanted to be repaid for their investment, as he had promised, and he refused. Some say a wannabe competitor caught wind of his work and wanted to put a stop to it—or maybe steal the data he had collected for themselves. All that can be said for sure is that the records he had kept were purged, and if his experiments had seen any success, their results never saw the light of day.

Around this same time, Amon Sohrab adopted a child. Unmarried and middle-aged, Amon was a man well-liked in the social circles of the wealthy, known for both generously investing in businesses he thought held promise and his straightforward, always-truthful manner. Though his choice to adopt prompted the occasional whisper — perhaps his new son was an illegitimate child of some secret mistress? — for the most part, those who knew him accepted that he simply wanted an heir to see to his affairs as he grew older, and to inherit the fortune he had accumulated over his life.

The truth was something far more extraordinary. A closeted Meta-human himself, Amon had grown into both telepathic and precognitive abilities early in life, and had long used them to give himself an edge in the world of business. A vanishingly small number of people knew the truth of his success, but it was enough for him to be approached by a friend with shady connections. The request was at once simple and monumental: care for a child that had begun exhibiting psychic abilities at an abnormally early age. Amon agreed, unable to argue against the combined weight of his compassion and pragmatism; after all, who would be better equipped in the face of a child declaring its needs through psychic screams?

Amon quickly grew attached to his new son, aided by the mental connection between them. However, it soon became evident that the child, given the name Magnus, was more than just an early-blooming psychic. What had begun as a large baby soon became a toddler the height of a child twice his age. His skin and hair both darkened to an unnatural red, and his eyes took on a strange and unsettling prismatic quality. Though Amon had spent his entire life concealing the truth of what he was, it became impossible to hide that Magnus was a Meta-human almost immediately, and that's when the whispers really began in earnest.

At first, there was pity. How unfair was it that such an upstanding and well-respected man had been saddled with such a burden? But as Magnus grew older, and continued to grow, even that much compassion was in short supply. What had once been barely tolerated thanks to Amon's wealth and reputation was soon met with objection after objection, other parents in Central Ward distressed by the thought of seeing their children in the company of such a dangerous-looking Meta-human. Before long, people began to openly "suggest" that Amon place Magnus in foster care — where he could find a family somewhere far, far away.

Amon refused, and he moved to Middle Ward together with his son.

Magnus was less than ten years old at the time — but still more than old enough to remember the experience clearly. An intelligent and perceptive child from the moment he could talk, he understood very well what was happening, and why. He felt none of the childish guilt that might be expected of a boy his age, however, and none of the gratitude for his father's care that he would profess later; stung by rejection and seething at his unfair treatment, for the first time, he wondered how so many people could be so small-minded and fearful.

As they settled into Middle Ward, Amon decided that Magnus should be homeschooled, at least for a time. Magnus understood the reason for that without being told, too, and knew that his father was trying to protect him from further cruelty and discrimination. It was in that moment that he decided he would never allow anyone to say there was something wrong with him; he would be their better in every respect, so that whoever looked at him with disdain was forced to see that they were wrong. His natural enjoyment of learning became something else, and though Amon was a highly educated man himself, Magnus quickly surpassed his ability to teach. He was forced to hire tutors from outside the home to keep up with his son's voracious progress.

The same could be said of Amon's lessons in harnessing his powers. While Magnus had none of the precognitive abilities Amon possessed, his telepathic abilities developed far faster and far deeper. Before long, their role as mentor and student seemed to have been reversed, with Magnus educating his father in the many applications of psychic ability he found himself capable of. Nonetheless, Amon warned him against being too proud of the gifts he had been born with; Magnus promptly outgrew that part of his education, too.

By the time Magnus was sixteen, he was off to post-secondary school. He made it into the best university in Central Ward through a combination of pride, prodigy-level talent, and pure bull-headed determination, and despite the less-than-welcoming reception he received from staff and students alike, this was in some ways the best thing that ever happened to him. Too proud to be cowed by the social environment, Magnus had nonetheless spent his adolescence in social isolation, refusing to even attempt to interact with mundane humans outside his home; the new world he found himself in taught him quite a bit about the value of adopting a social mask, particularly when among those who were the sort to be intimidated or fearful of his abilities.

It also helped him find a focus for all the questions and all the frustration that had been pent up inside him since he first left Central Ward. What place did Meta-humans have in the world? Why were humans fearful of them? Though his interests had always veered toward the humanities, he found them solidifying into the want to study these questions and their implications stretching into both the future and the past. Pursuing double degrees (and, later, doctorates), in time, his research coupled with more personal reading gave rise to views more radical than he could publicly discuss. A shame, too — they made him feel as though he truly understood his purpose on this earth, and there were plenty like him who could have benefited from that same clarity.

But, of course, not everything was rosy in a world hostile to his very existence. Though he learned how to be such an exemplar of intelligence and good manners that no one could truly find fault with him, that didn't stop him from being the target of unfair prejudice on campus — and in the larger Central Ward area. Such a visible Meta-human would by nature be regarded with suspicion, and suspicion would by nature be met with scrutiny by authority. This all culminated in a particularly violent incident involving Magnus, a drunk and belligerent attacker, and a police call. Magnus had, up to this point, hid the presence of his psychic abilities from everyone but his father; when accosted, Magnus used them to (harmlessly, but abruptly) force his would-be assailant into a state of unconsciousness.

Magnus didn't escape the subsequent police confrontation unscathed. At a guess, the officer connected his odd eyes to his powers; the result, even after Magnus cooperated so far as getting down on the ground, was that his right eye was damaged beyond repair. The remains of it were removed, but his body healed in its peculiar way and no replacement was fitted despite the money for it being available.

Naturally, none of this stopped him from completing his education.

It didn't take long for Magnus to become a noteworthy academic figure. Some people praised him as a brilliant and visionary mind; many others saw him as a Meta-human supremacist nut waiting to crack. (The truth, of course, is that neither of these things preclude the other.) As Amon grew older and left more and more of his financial affairs in his hands, Magnus began to invest heavily in the Neo Sapien Organization — still a relatively new organization at the time, but one that Magnus believed in deeply and immediately.

Over time, Magnus has cultivated a close relationship with the NSO, even using NSO channels to publish work deemed too provocative elsewhere on a few occasions. He's never been on their payroll officially, at least in part due to his consideration for what effect his reputation might have on the group; however, he has tied himself closely to their educational outreach programs through both funding and direct work, and he's happy to let the group call on him for favors.

SAMPLES

TDM Top-Level with 3+ sub-threads