Ashraf al-Mansur (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
negativecapability) wrote2012-12-02 05:26 pm
negativecapability) wrote2012-12-02 05:26 pm
Exit Void App
player.
NAME/HANDLE: Snow
PERSONAL JOURNAL:snow
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Yup
CONTACT: AIM: cshinsei, email: iceflavore at gmail, Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
snowishness
OTHER CHARACTERS: I-Nogstringwitch
character.
CHARACTER NAME: Ashraf al-Mansur (Raf)
SERIES: Arabesk Trilogy. And since that's sparse, have a written out history.
Raf is from an alternate universe, where World War One never expanded out of the Balkans, and therefore didn't become WWI. World War II never happened. Israel doesn't exist. The Ottoman Empire does. Russia is divided and the US is isolationist. Monarchy is the default form of government in Europe. Islam is more Sufist than it is in our universe. British imperialism was halted well before it was in the real world.
Raf's mother is a semi-famous wildlife television personality. She told Raf -- whose name then was something-starting-with-a-Z (it's not that I can't remember, it's just not specified) Welham -- growing up that his father was a Swedish hitchhiker she never caught the name of. Raf was genetically engineered prior to birth, with surgery continuing intermittently until he was five. She was a bit believer that humanity needed to keep evolving, and her vision is clear in Raf's modifications.
Raf was born sometime around 2030, and he grew up in boarding schools in Switzerland, Scotland, England, and briefly a non-boarding but still private school in New York, while he lived with his mother. She never showed any particular interest in Raf once he passed the age of five, and while he ran away from school several times to go home under the assumption that she would care if she was there, he eventually stopped trying.
When he was fifteen, he ran away from his boarding school in England to go to Seattle, where he wound up working under a crime boss for a couple of years. He was low in the organization, but rising despite his unwillingness to use violence to the same extent that others in the organization did. He was mostly a courier, delivering notices to people who owed Hu San (the crime boss) money. At this point the name he was going by was ZeeZee. This lasted for a couple of years.
At one point, Raf got suspicious that some people were completely gone when he went to deliver notices and switched around the order he visited them in, concerned that they were being warned. He walked into a murder scene, and he was set up to take the fall, since he'd been fighting with Hu San's boyfriend, and he'd decided to get rid of Raf.
Raf was arrested, but all he said when questioned under a lie detector was that he didn't do it. (He couldn't name Hu San or her boyfriend because then she would certainly have him killed.) He was declared clinically insane, as the evidence was that he had done the crime but he clearly didn't remember doing it. An incredible amount of money was spent to put Raf in a 'soft' prison, one that focused on light therapy and counseling. He was sentenced to life in prison, however.
One day (after a number of years there), he is broken out, handed a briefcase, and driven to the airport. Inside the briefcase is a credit card, a diplomatic passport of the Ottoman Empire with the name 'Ashraf al-Mansur' and a picture that looks startlingly like him, but in a haircut he's never had, and a plane ticket to El Iskandriya (Alexandria, Egypt). As well, there's some family history, of his father's side. Raf's father is said to be the Emir of Tunis, and there's a marriage certificate written mostly in Arabic stating he was legally married to Raf's mother at the time of Raf's conception. (Raf mostly can't read the marriage certificate.)
When he arrives in El Iskandriya Raf dodges the man sent to meet him at the airport, uses the credit card to buy himself a very expensive new suit and sunglasses, fights a man in an alley, and then shows up at his alleged aunt -- Lady Nafisa -- 's house. That evening he meets the woman it's been decided he'd marry: Zara bint-Hamzah. She's the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, and her marriage to Raf (the son of an emir, or pashazade) would raise her father's social status while helping Lady Nafisa out of her debt. Raf refuses, because Zara doesn't want to get married.
Sometime after that, Lady Nafisa is murdered in her home. Raf is accused, but then cleared of the murder, and in the course of it makes friends with the Chief of Detectives, Felix Abrinsky. Felix, however, is killed by a bomb meant for Raf by Lady Jalila, the same person who had murdered Lady Nafisa. Raf finds out about both of them, confronts Lady Jalila and kills her when she threatens both Zara and Hani's lives.
CANON POINT: The end of Pashazade, pre-Epilogue
AGE: 25ish
APPEARANCE: I'm using Bahram Radan as a PB, which mostly fits Raf's appearance as described in canon, and the necessary facial features. The exception is that Raf is described as having blond hair, which is really a very minor point and the smallest aspect about his genetic engineering, so I really don't anticipate it being a problem.
PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY: N/A
PERSONALITY: Raf is in parts both incredibly flexible and really really rigid.
He's flexible when it comes to himself: he shifts his name, his appearance, and his habits twice. The first time is when he joins Hu San and becomes ZeeZee and the second is when he lands in El Iskandriya and becomes Raf. He has an incredible ability to blend in, and he adapts the kind of responses he gives depending on who he's talking to and what their personality is. (It isn't a simple matter of shifting to get along with someone better. When faced with someone with a more aggressive personality, he behaves aggressively.) Raf changing is really about him fitting in, not about him making friends.
His rigidity comes from his moral code. He does what he thinks is right, no matter the consequences. He refuses to marry Zara because she doesn't want to marry him, no matter that doing so 'ruins her' in the eyes of other possible suitors and he has no idea what the consequences to him will be. He shoots Felix to end his pain. While Raf regrets that he had to do it - and feels guilt from the fact that the bomb that killed Felix was meant for him - he has no doubts that it was the right thing for him to do. While Felix might have been able to live, it would have been in incredible pain and at great personal cost to him, so Raf made the decision almost instantly to do what he decided to do.
In general, when Raf determines that he's going to do something he then does it without backing out. He didn't get along with Wild Boy, Hu San's boyfriend, in part because Wild Boy viewed Raf as a threat to his relationship and in part because Raf didn't show Wild Boy the respect he thought he deserved. Wild Boy and a group of his friends went after Raf to attack him, careful to avoid anything that would leave a mark on Raf's face -- but otherwise working him over quite thoroughly. As soon as Wild Boy leaves Raf to stumble home he does so, swallows painkillers and four beers, then slams his own fist into his face and takes a knife to open up a two-inch cut on his own face. It certainly made Hu San displeased with Wild Boy.
One thing that Raf is firm about is the fact that he's an atheist. His doubts initially started when at around age ten he wondered if the fact that he was genetically engineered meant he didn't have a soul. He asked Tiri, who didn't answer him, so Raf thought about it himself. The conclusion he reached -- that souls weren't real -- put him at odds with the protestant boarding school he was attending. Raf spent a Scottish winter of Sundays running instead of going to chapel, and that was the end of that.
Growing up, Raf had no real experience with family. He only had his mother, and she wasn't the loving sort. As a child at boarding school, Raf's eidetic memory meant that he picked up on schoolwork more quickly than it would be taught and didn't connect with the other children at all. With that as his background, he takes to caring for Hani remarkably well. Part of it is that she's similar to how he was -- and does better being treated more like an adult -- part of it is that she looks out for herself a lot and he's willing to yield to her judgment, and part of it is that she's a lot like he was, and he knows what he'd needed and never gotten. He has no idea what he's doing, but he'll take responsibility anyway, because he genuinely wants Hani to be cared for and doesn't think anyone else can do an adequate job.
Raf is, he accepts, more than a little bit crazy. He's well past the point of caring if anyone knows: he talks to the fox in his head no matter what people can overhear by way of his response. While there's a technical explanation for Tiri -- he's a chip implanted in Raf's skull -- it's unclear to what degree Raf knows this, and he certainly doesn't need an explanation. Tiri is simply a part of Raf's life, a hallucination that he's partly codependent with. Tiri is important to Raf's mental state and helps him with the fact that he can internalize so much, as well as physically helping Raf fight. Tiri needs Raf because without him he has no one to talk to, the worst thing Raf could do to Tiri would be to stop acknowledging his existence.
His hallucinations aren't limited to Tiri -- Raf has since Felix's death occasionally seen his mangled body and exchanged brief words. His interactions there are different than his with Tiri, what Raf says to the hallucination of Felix is a few sentences at most -- Felix is a construct of Raf's brain to remind Raf of his duty and obligations, more so than anything else.
Raf's someone who bluffs his way through things until he has an actual hold on them. He doesn't need to figure things out in order to react to them, and he knows in many cases pretending does him just as much good as actually knowing would. His momentum keeps carrying him forward, and stopping to get his bearings would just be a waste of time.
ABILITIES: Raf is genetically engineered. As a result he has enhanced speed and strength, can see in ultra-violet and infrared, much higher-than-average hearing, and an eidetic memory. He has extra ribs to protect soft organs and small muscles that let him close his ear, nictitating membranes he can use to cover his eyes and protect them. He's also immortal -- in the sense that he won't die from old age -- although that's not a thing he's aware of. His body can self-repair at a faster rate than an ordinary human, but not a ridiculous level.
There is also a computer chip implanted in his brain carrying the artificial personality of a fox. In addition to providing him with some level of companionship the arctic fox, Tiri, advises Raf in battle situations, increasing the speed of his reflexes enormously. He's also an explosives expert, crack shot, and very skilled in unarmed combat.
Weaknesses: Tiri at this point is dying. The only kind of energy his systems can use is neon, and even with that he still vanishes from time to time in the middle of a fight. And Raf's eyes are very light sensitive, in normal sunlight conditions he needs sunglasses or polarized contacts. Raf's also scared of falling and fire.
POSSESSIONS: Polarized contacts, Versace sunglasses, Omega watch (capable of tapping into internet/radio signals on his world), black shirt, 'smart silk' jacket (for mild temperature control), black trousers, Taurus revolver.
samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: Link 1
Link 2
THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: Have I-No in game now.
NAME/HANDLE: Snow
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
snowARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Yup
CONTACT: AIM: cshinsei, email: iceflavore at gmail, Plurk:
OTHER CHARACTERS: I-No
gstringwitchcharacter.
CHARACTER NAME: Ashraf al-Mansur (Raf)
SERIES: Arabesk Trilogy. And since that's sparse, have a written out history.
Raf is from an alternate universe, where World War One never expanded out of the Balkans, and therefore didn't become WWI. World War II never happened. Israel doesn't exist. The Ottoman Empire does. Russia is divided and the US is isolationist. Monarchy is the default form of government in Europe. Islam is more Sufist than it is in our universe. British imperialism was halted well before it was in the real world.
Raf's mother is a semi-famous wildlife television personality. She told Raf -- whose name then was something-starting-with-a-Z (it's not that I can't remember, it's just not specified) Welham -- growing up that his father was a Swedish hitchhiker she never caught the name of. Raf was genetically engineered prior to birth, with surgery continuing intermittently until he was five. She was a bit believer that humanity needed to keep evolving, and her vision is clear in Raf's modifications.
Raf was born sometime around 2030, and he grew up in boarding schools in Switzerland, Scotland, England, and briefly a non-boarding but still private school in New York, while he lived with his mother. She never showed any particular interest in Raf once he passed the age of five, and while he ran away from school several times to go home under the assumption that she would care if she was there, he eventually stopped trying.
When he was fifteen, he ran away from his boarding school in England to go to Seattle, where he wound up working under a crime boss for a couple of years. He was low in the organization, but rising despite his unwillingness to use violence to the same extent that others in the organization did. He was mostly a courier, delivering notices to people who owed Hu San (the crime boss) money. At this point the name he was going by was ZeeZee. This lasted for a couple of years.
At one point, Raf got suspicious that some people were completely gone when he went to deliver notices and switched around the order he visited them in, concerned that they were being warned. He walked into a murder scene, and he was set up to take the fall, since he'd been fighting with Hu San's boyfriend, and he'd decided to get rid of Raf.
Raf was arrested, but all he said when questioned under a lie detector was that he didn't do it. (He couldn't name Hu San or her boyfriend because then she would certainly have him killed.) He was declared clinically insane, as the evidence was that he had done the crime but he clearly didn't remember doing it. An incredible amount of money was spent to put Raf in a 'soft' prison, one that focused on light therapy and counseling. He was sentenced to life in prison, however.
One day (after a number of years there), he is broken out, handed a briefcase, and driven to the airport. Inside the briefcase is a credit card, a diplomatic passport of the Ottoman Empire with the name 'Ashraf al-Mansur' and a picture that looks startlingly like him, but in a haircut he's never had, and a plane ticket to El Iskandriya (Alexandria, Egypt). As well, there's some family history, of his father's side. Raf's father is said to be the Emir of Tunis, and there's a marriage certificate written mostly in Arabic stating he was legally married to Raf's mother at the time of Raf's conception. (Raf mostly can't read the marriage certificate.)
When he arrives in El Iskandriya Raf dodges the man sent to meet him at the airport, uses the credit card to buy himself a very expensive new suit and sunglasses, fights a man in an alley, and then shows up at his alleged aunt -- Lady Nafisa -- 's house. That evening he meets the woman it's been decided he'd marry: Zara bint-Hamzah. She's the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, and her marriage to Raf (the son of an emir, or pashazade) would raise her father's social status while helping Lady Nafisa out of her debt. Raf refuses, because Zara doesn't want to get married.
Sometime after that, Lady Nafisa is murdered in her home. Raf is accused, but then cleared of the murder, and in the course of it makes friends with the Chief of Detectives, Felix Abrinsky. Felix, however, is killed by a bomb meant for Raf by Lady Jalila, the same person who had murdered Lady Nafisa. Raf finds out about both of them, confronts Lady Jalila and kills her when she threatens both Zara and Hani's lives.
CANON POINT: The end of Pashazade, pre-Epilogue
AGE: 25ish
APPEARANCE: I'm using Bahram Radan as a PB, which mostly fits Raf's appearance as described in canon, and the necessary facial features. The exception is that Raf is described as having blond hair, which is really a very minor point and the smallest aspect about his genetic engineering, so I really don't anticipate it being a problem.
PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY: N/A
PERSONALITY: Raf is in parts both incredibly flexible and really really rigid.
He's flexible when it comes to himself: he shifts his name, his appearance, and his habits twice. The first time is when he joins Hu San and becomes ZeeZee and the second is when he lands in El Iskandriya and becomes Raf. He has an incredible ability to blend in, and he adapts the kind of responses he gives depending on who he's talking to and what their personality is. (It isn't a simple matter of shifting to get along with someone better. When faced with someone with a more aggressive personality, he behaves aggressively.) Raf changing is really about him fitting in, not about him making friends.
His rigidity comes from his moral code. He does what he thinks is right, no matter the consequences. He refuses to marry Zara because she doesn't want to marry him, no matter that doing so 'ruins her' in the eyes of other possible suitors and he has no idea what the consequences to him will be. He shoots Felix to end his pain. While Raf regrets that he had to do it - and feels guilt from the fact that the bomb that killed Felix was meant for him - he has no doubts that it was the right thing for him to do. While Felix might have been able to live, it would have been in incredible pain and at great personal cost to him, so Raf made the decision almost instantly to do what he decided to do.
In general, when Raf determines that he's going to do something he then does it without backing out. He didn't get along with Wild Boy, Hu San's boyfriend, in part because Wild Boy viewed Raf as a threat to his relationship and in part because Raf didn't show Wild Boy the respect he thought he deserved. Wild Boy and a group of his friends went after Raf to attack him, careful to avoid anything that would leave a mark on Raf's face -- but otherwise working him over quite thoroughly. As soon as Wild Boy leaves Raf to stumble home he does so, swallows painkillers and four beers, then slams his own fist into his face and takes a knife to open up a two-inch cut on his own face. It certainly made Hu San displeased with Wild Boy.
One thing that Raf is firm about is the fact that he's an atheist. His doubts initially started when at around age ten he wondered if the fact that he was genetically engineered meant he didn't have a soul. He asked Tiri, who didn't answer him, so Raf thought about it himself. The conclusion he reached -- that souls weren't real -- put him at odds with the protestant boarding school he was attending. Raf spent a Scottish winter of Sundays running instead of going to chapel, and that was the end of that.
Growing up, Raf had no real experience with family. He only had his mother, and she wasn't the loving sort. As a child at boarding school, Raf's eidetic memory meant that he picked up on schoolwork more quickly than it would be taught and didn't connect with the other children at all. With that as his background, he takes to caring for Hani remarkably well. Part of it is that she's similar to how he was -- and does better being treated more like an adult -- part of it is that she looks out for herself a lot and he's willing to yield to her judgment, and part of it is that she's a lot like he was, and he knows what he'd needed and never gotten. He has no idea what he's doing, but he'll take responsibility anyway, because he genuinely wants Hani to be cared for and doesn't think anyone else can do an adequate job.
Raf is, he accepts, more than a little bit crazy. He's well past the point of caring if anyone knows: he talks to the fox in his head no matter what people can overhear by way of his response. While there's a technical explanation for Tiri -- he's a chip implanted in Raf's skull -- it's unclear to what degree Raf knows this, and he certainly doesn't need an explanation. Tiri is simply a part of Raf's life, a hallucination that he's partly codependent with. Tiri is important to Raf's mental state and helps him with the fact that he can internalize so much, as well as physically helping Raf fight. Tiri needs Raf because without him he has no one to talk to, the worst thing Raf could do to Tiri would be to stop acknowledging his existence.
His hallucinations aren't limited to Tiri -- Raf has since Felix's death occasionally seen his mangled body and exchanged brief words. His interactions there are different than his with Tiri, what Raf says to the hallucination of Felix is a few sentences at most -- Felix is a construct of Raf's brain to remind Raf of his duty and obligations, more so than anything else.
Raf's someone who bluffs his way through things until he has an actual hold on them. He doesn't need to figure things out in order to react to them, and he knows in many cases pretending does him just as much good as actually knowing would. His momentum keeps carrying him forward, and stopping to get his bearings would just be a waste of time.
ABILITIES: Raf is genetically engineered. As a result he has enhanced speed and strength, can see in ultra-violet and infrared, much higher-than-average hearing, and an eidetic memory. He has extra ribs to protect soft organs and small muscles that let him close his ear, nictitating membranes he can use to cover his eyes and protect them. He's also immortal -- in the sense that he won't die from old age -- although that's not a thing he's aware of. His body can self-repair at a faster rate than an ordinary human, but not a ridiculous level.
There is also a computer chip implanted in his brain carrying the artificial personality of a fox. In addition to providing him with some level of companionship the arctic fox, Tiri, advises Raf in battle situations, increasing the speed of his reflexes enormously. He's also an explosives expert, crack shot, and very skilled in unarmed combat.
Weaknesses: Tiri at this point is dying. The only kind of energy his systems can use is neon, and even with that he still vanishes from time to time in the middle of a fight. And Raf's eyes are very light sensitive, in normal sunlight conditions he needs sunglasses or polarized contacts. Raf's also scared of falling and fire.
POSSESSIONS: Polarized contacts, Versace sunglasses, Omega watch (capable of tapping into internet/radio signals on his world), black shirt, 'smart silk' jacket (for mild temperature control), black trousers, Taurus revolver.
samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: Link 1
Link 2
THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: Have I-No in game now.