Zael (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
justanoutsider) wrote2015-08-01 08:53 pm
justanoutsider) wrote2015-08-01 08:53 pm
Ryslig App
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Saff
Contact: undersaffiresky @ AIM | Plurk: Saffire
Or just make Pixle bug me.
Other Characters: Shinjiro Aragaki | Werebear
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Zael.
Age: Unknown. But in his early twenties, around 22-24. If it comes up, I’d say 22.
Canon: The Last Story
Canon Point: Chapter 22: Shortly after talking to Therius and General Asthar and invoking the power of the Outsider to move Lazulis.
Character Information: Full Game Chapter Summaries | Character Page | Wikipedia
Personality:
At first glance, Zael is the tried-and-true stereotypical protagonist you’d expect out of a JRPG. He’s a brave, trusting, selfless idealist who wears his heart on his sleeve and has an extraordinary amount of empathy and concern for others, no matter their gender, age, or race. With that said, Zael is remarkably trusting for a mercenary, preferring to believe in the best in people, despite being constantly exposed to the darker side of humanity throughout his travels as a key part of a mercenary band.
As a mercenary, he’s seen how ruthless human beings can be. He's seen friends and comrades die. Has had to be in situations where he's had to defend himself and those he cares about. He's has to fight and take the lives of others in his or his friends' defense. He's had to work dangerous jobs with little to no thanks from their clients in return. He's had to deal with always constantly being treated as some kind of dirty, second-class citizens by the bulk of the public, as if his mercenary band is one not to be trusted. He's seen a lot, but it has never changed his views.
This trust and empathy is also especially amazing considering Zael’s prior history. He still fiercely believes that the vast number of people within the world he lives in are good despite having witnessed his village getting raided and burned to the ground by bandits during wartime when he was very young. These bandits also took the life of his mother (and his father, as well, if he had not already died before the specific event). They left him an orphan with no home or family to turn to until he was found and taken in by Dagran.
Even though he is definitely haunted by the event (and experiences plenty of flashbacks to the occasion), he refuses to let anger or resentment consume him. He has no desire to seek revenge, unlike Dagran, for whom revenge was his sole reason for living. And what anger Zael does have within him he fiercely and stubbornly represses and blocks out (a thing which Syrenne calls him out on), though it bubbles to the surface occasionally when he’s reminded of how cruel and blackhearted people can be. But he wants to see those people as an exception, not the rule. It’s not because he’s naive (he's seen enough to have evidence to the contrary, and he knows the entire world is not a good place). It's more like he prefers to see the world as a softer one. He wants to believe in the existence of a kinder, more benevolent sort of world with everything he is, because then he can hold on to the idea that the terrible things that a scarce few people do are greatly outweighed by the good. So not naive (as he says to Calista, there are many things he's seen that "he'd rather forget,"), just that he's just willing to put his trust in people still.
As such, it can take him a very long time for him to rid himself of the blind trust that he places in the people he comes in contact with. He never sees Dagran's growing machinations for what they are until it's already past the point of no return (even if he has a feeling something is going on), nor does he fully question the legitimacy of the Count's intentions with Lazulis until he is already starting to slide down a very slippery moral slope, helped by events Zael can’t just turn a blind eye to.
But even after his trust is betrayed, Zael is a person who finds it very easy to forgive. He forgives Dagran after his death, even after he betrays the party, and he holds no lingering ill will against the Count, though he might not approve of some of his actions. He even doesn’t hate Jirall, a man who tried (very passionately and very, very hard, gold star all around) to have him killed on multiple occasions. He even tries to help him and save Jirall's life at one point. And Jirall was trying to kill him even then.
This helps highlight Zael's intense desire to serve and help other people, regardless of their race, background, or status in life. You don't need to be human. You can be rich or poor. It doesn't matter what you may have done to Zael in the past or how you've treated him. If Zael can help, he will.
In fact, the bulk of his sidequests are of Zael performing mostly mundane things for people within the city of Lazulis (who first ignore him and think almost nothing of him), like finding a lost cat or minding a shop for a seller in the market. He also always has an open ear for his friends and allies. He listens, but never pries. He's not trying to change anyone. He just mostly wants to be there and do what he can to help, like with Yurick, when he helps him find out the fate of his father. He doesn’t even need an explanation. Doesn't really care if it means a lengthy detour. He’ll help his friends almost entirely without question.
This is even true of strangers. At the start of the game, he never questions Calista's desire to hide from the city's guards upon first meeting her. Later on, when he discovers that she is unhappy with her lot in life (being the niece of Lazulis Island's ruler, Count Arganan, and normally kept caged within the castle's walls and threatened to be married off against her will) it troubles him. He admits to Dagran that all he wants to do is help her, even if it would mean taking essentially "kidnapping" her and running away with her. ...And the Count himself is their current employer.
This bothers him because he hates to see injustice done, or any kind of unfairness, because it goes against his very ideals. It goes against the fundamental good he believes people have within them, against standards he believes that humanity (especially those in power) should be upholding... because it's just common decency. Why would you want to do anything else???
This is why he gets so angry when he sees people acting with brutality, deceit, and savagery, because it not only goes against these ideals, but reminds him about what happened to his parents and his village. He doesn’t want to believe that a lot of other people can be that way. He knows that they are, he doesn't like to see it. Doesn't like to face the idea that people are and can be entirely inhuman. In fact, events that make him directly confront humanity's unhindered brutality are pretty much the only times we ever see Zael grow truly angry at anyone.
The main instance of this (and it’s one of the main catalysts that helps steer his later choices) is when he alongside Count Arganan’s gathered army arrives at the main Gurak stronghold only to find that it is populated not by soldiers who can fight back, but filled with unarmed civilians and children. And Arganan's army doesn't turn back at the revelation: they only proceed to kill the defenseless Gurak and take those who remain as prisoners of war. It’s an event Zael is disgusted and angered by (he’ll fight armed soldiers, but he'd never kill innocent, unarmed people if he had a choice.) He refuses to participate in the slaughter, instead trying to hide some of the Gurak so they aren’t killed, growing angrier at each new act of cruelty (and trying to suppress and block it out) until Syrenne manages to snap him out of it before he could perhaps act upon it.
But sometimes what bothers him more than seeing cruelty and injustice going on around him is seeing it happen and feeling that he's powerless to do anything about it. In situations like this, he can act rashly, despite being a rather calm and levelheaded individual in general, someone who is typically obedient and far from rebellious.
The key here is that he wants to help people, and he often refuses to accept that there’s not anything he can do (or should do). It’s during these times he often disregards the more cautious advice of others in favor of what his heart tells him to do. Zael's actions are always thickly woven with good intentions, even if these “good intentions” are not always the best, safest, or smartest choice for everyone, including himself. Quite often they are a mistake, and a fault of his, and this mostly happens during the moments where people's lives are in immediate jeopardy and he doesn't pause to think. At one point, he blows the cover of both he and his comrades in an effort to rescue some of his people captured by the Gurak and forced to work for them. And in so doing, he put his friends in danger without thinking. And at times he can be too trusting and too wiling to help.
However, when he actually is actually given the chance and opportunity to think on things though, and weigh the possible effects his decisions have on others, choices like this can also ironically hold him back from actually doing the right thing, and he can turn suddenly indecisive. When he does realize that a choice he makes could greatly (and negatively) impact the happiness and welfare of the people around him, he always broods and hesitates, doubting his own actions and convictions and wondering which way is right. He feels one way, but understands another.
And this is the type of person he is from his current canon point: hesitant. A person torn between two choices. He had to decide whether to take a stand, despite consequences to himself and his friends, or to keep the peace and follow the orders of another man that he’s starting to doubt. Obedience in exchange for the things he's dreamed of, including the continued status, happiness, and better life for his friends.
As stated before, Zael, in the beginning of the game, has a very romantic, idealized view of humanity. When he finds rejection instead of trust and kindness, he doesn't blame other people's prejudices or faults for it; instead, he tends to blame himself when things go wrong, regardless of whether this is the case or not. He doesn't ask why other people are the way they are, instead he asks himself what he's doing that is wrong, or what he can do to change things.
This ties in with his goal to become a knight.
Despite his optimistic and usually calm, open, and friendly demeanor, if with a slight tendency towards introversion, Zael is, in actuality, a very lonely person. It's part of the reason why one half of the Outsider (an otherworldly being that had been summoned to his world years prior), chooses him to connect with and bestow its immense power upon. It chooses him because his heart is like its own. As the Outsider itself puts it, his heart is “filled with loneliness and sorrow.”
He has lived a very lonely life. His parents are dead, and the only continuous, stable relationship he's ever had in life is with Dagran, a fellow orphan and the organizer and de facto leader of his current mercenary group. He has grown up having nothing, constantly seeing the members of he and Dagran’s mercenary group leave the fold or die. He tries to find acceptance, but finds mostly rejection. His life has never been very stable or constant. He’s never really had a place to call home.
But he doesn't blame other people for this; he puts the onus on himself, and believes throughout the initial portion of The Last Story that if he becomes a knight, he'll finally be able to find the warmth and acceptance that he wants so badly, and in so doing improve his circumstances for himself and his friends. This is because he has a very romantic view of knighthood in general. Knights are an idealized version of just wants he wants to be and embody. To him, they are chivalrous and benevolent and exist to serve the people and better the world. People think highly of them for a reason, after all.
Except he learns that this isn't the case.
His naive and romantic ideals of what knighthood is and means to those who are knights is quickly shattered upon his employ to Count Arganan. He discovers that knighthood is hardly what it's cracked up to be. The soldiers aren't noble; they don't so much as serve the people as serve themselves, lazy, and mostly around for decoration and show. He also learns that those in power use and manipulate those below them for their own ends, something he hadn't really considered until that point. And once the Count starts to use Zael for his power, propelling the entire island for war for the Gurak, he starts to honestly question his goals in life.
So when the Count finally offers Zael knighthood, his dream, and Calista's hand in marriage, he rejects it—highlighting the catalyst for his own personal change. And during the days that follow (which is after Zael's canonpoint, but put here for reference), he becomes a more confident, and self-sure individual who finally understands what kind of person he wants to be. By the end of the game, he no longer harboring the intense doubts he held during the weeks before. He still ends up believing in the best of people, but he is finally able to accept that the world isn't entirely black and white. He takes upon the role of a leader, instead of a follower acting on blind trust.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- Selfless
- Brave
- Loyal
- Empathetic (a listener who cares and worries about others.)
- Lonely (trying to find his place in the world)
- Levelheaded/calm/easygoing
but
- Quick (and sometimes rashly so) to defend and protect his "family," friends, and those who can't defend themselves.
- Trusting/Idealistic/Easy to Befriend
- Slow to anger, but with trigger points against cruelty and injustice
- Potential to both be a leader (willing to stand for what he believes in and take control of his future), but also a follower that works well and desperately wants to get along with other people.
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER? Fits.
Opt-Outs: Arachne, Nymph, Faerie, Troll, Naga
Also Shinjiro is a Werebear
Roleplay Sample
It takes some time for Zael to find his way out of the forest the world had decided to deposit him in without warning, or even a memory, just scratches and bruises decorating his skin. He doesn’t know where he is, confused at the sudden change of scenery that certainly was not the island he had been living in. All he has to go on are unfamiliar trees and winding forests paths and cries that make him wonder just what kind of creatures call this wood home—because they certainly can’t be children. He wonders where the others are. Wonders if, somehow (perhaps by some magic) the others are also here. He doesn’t have the power to sense the presence of others, like Calista and Yurick can, and the Outsider’s mark is suddenly, uncharacteristically dormant. He can’t feel its power pulsing within him any longer, though the brand remains. He doesn’t know if he made a mistake. Perhaps he used too much of the Outsider’s power in moving the island. Perhaps something had gone wrong. But he doesn’t know, and that’s what bothers him.
He almost wants to stay in the forest and look for the others—to see if he can find a familiar face, or listen for a familiar voice—and he does wander for awhile, even when he sees a break in the trees, just in case he’s not the only one who ended up here. He might not be able to locate anyone, but his presence could be a beacon, even without Gathering (and he… can’t really be the only one here, can he?)
And he eventually finds someone along the darkening road in the last remaining rays of sunlight. It's a man with a beard, carrying an odd sort of weapon in his hands that’s unfamiliar to him, with clothing that’s equally strange. He's also toting along a bag that's slung over his shoulder, full of objects that look charred and blackened. He’s seen much during his travels, but no one quite like this.
“Er—“ He’s not sure where to start. “Excuse me.”
The man turns, almost flinches when he sees him. It’s enough to make Zael stop in his tracks. Better to give the man space. He does try to smile though.
“Sorry.” He probably looks like just as much of a stranger. “...I was just hoping you could tell me where I am.”
The man grunts, voice rough and carrying an accent Zael can’t remember hearing before. The man’s eyes are hard, and his tone is just as cold. “If you don’t know where the hell you are, then you’re one of them. And I want nothin’ to do with the lot of you.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Zael's heard words like this, but the bitter, sharp coldness in the other man's tone makes him pause. He’s not sure he knows what he means. “I’m sorry? I’m not sure I understand.”
“You will,” the man says, grinning crookedly. His shoulders, which were once tight, seem to relax. “You don’t. But you will. Just keep heading northeast, follow the road. Maybe then you’ll start to see what I mean. See what good your kind do. Might as well get a taste before the fangs come in.”
The man turns his back on him, and Zael makes no effort to follow.
Name: Saff
Contact: undersaffiresky @ AIM | Plurk: Saffire
Or just make Pixle bug me.
Other Characters: Shinjiro Aragaki | Werebear
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Zael.
Age: Unknown. But in his early twenties, around 22-24. If it comes up, I’d say 22.
Canon: The Last Story
Canon Point: Chapter 22: Shortly after talking to Therius and General Asthar and invoking the power of the Outsider to move Lazulis.
Character Information: Full Game Chapter Summaries | Character Page | Wikipedia
Personality:
At first glance, Zael is the tried-and-true stereotypical protagonist you’d expect out of a JRPG. He’s a brave, trusting, selfless idealist who wears his heart on his sleeve and has an extraordinary amount of empathy and concern for others, no matter their gender, age, or race. With that said, Zael is remarkably trusting for a mercenary, preferring to believe in the best in people, despite being constantly exposed to the darker side of humanity throughout his travels as a key part of a mercenary band.
As a mercenary, he’s seen how ruthless human beings can be. He's seen friends and comrades die. Has had to be in situations where he's had to defend himself and those he cares about. He's has to fight and take the lives of others in his or his friends' defense. He's had to work dangerous jobs with little to no thanks from their clients in return. He's had to deal with always constantly being treated as some kind of dirty, second-class citizens by the bulk of the public, as if his mercenary band is one not to be trusted. He's seen a lot, but it has never changed his views.
This trust and empathy is also especially amazing considering Zael’s prior history. He still fiercely believes that the vast number of people within the world he lives in are good despite having witnessed his village getting raided and burned to the ground by bandits during wartime when he was very young. These bandits also took the life of his mother (and his father, as well, if he had not already died before the specific event). They left him an orphan with no home or family to turn to until he was found and taken in by Dagran.
Even though he is definitely haunted by the event (and experiences plenty of flashbacks to the occasion), he refuses to let anger or resentment consume him. He has no desire to seek revenge, unlike Dagran, for whom revenge was his sole reason for living. And what anger Zael does have within him he fiercely and stubbornly represses and blocks out (a thing which Syrenne calls him out on), though it bubbles to the surface occasionally when he’s reminded of how cruel and blackhearted people can be. But he wants to see those people as an exception, not the rule. It’s not because he’s naive (he's seen enough to have evidence to the contrary, and he knows the entire world is not a good place). It's more like he prefers to see the world as a softer one. He wants to believe in the existence of a kinder, more benevolent sort of world with everything he is, because then he can hold on to the idea that the terrible things that a scarce few people do are greatly outweighed by the good. So not naive (as he says to Calista, there are many things he's seen that "he'd rather forget,"), just that he's just willing to put his trust in people still.
As such, it can take him a very long time for him to rid himself of the blind trust that he places in the people he comes in contact with. He never sees Dagran's growing machinations for what they are until it's already past the point of no return (even if he has a feeling something is going on), nor does he fully question the legitimacy of the Count's intentions with Lazulis until he is already starting to slide down a very slippery moral slope, helped by events Zael can’t just turn a blind eye to.
But even after his trust is betrayed, Zael is a person who finds it very easy to forgive. He forgives Dagran after his death, even after he betrays the party, and he holds no lingering ill will against the Count, though he might not approve of some of his actions. He even doesn’t hate Jirall, a man who tried (very passionately and very, very hard, gold star all around) to have him killed on multiple occasions. He even tries to help him and save Jirall's life at one point. And Jirall was trying to kill him even then.
This helps highlight Zael's intense desire to serve and help other people, regardless of their race, background, or status in life. You don't need to be human. You can be rich or poor. It doesn't matter what you may have done to Zael in the past or how you've treated him. If Zael can help, he will.
In fact, the bulk of his sidequests are of Zael performing mostly mundane things for people within the city of Lazulis (who first ignore him and think almost nothing of him), like finding a lost cat or minding a shop for a seller in the market. He also always has an open ear for his friends and allies. He listens, but never pries. He's not trying to change anyone. He just mostly wants to be there and do what he can to help, like with Yurick, when he helps him find out the fate of his father. He doesn’t even need an explanation. Doesn't really care if it means a lengthy detour. He’ll help his friends almost entirely without question.
This is even true of strangers. At the start of the game, he never questions Calista's desire to hide from the city's guards upon first meeting her. Later on, when he discovers that she is unhappy with her lot in life (being the niece of Lazulis Island's ruler, Count Arganan, and normally kept caged within the castle's walls and threatened to be married off against her will) it troubles him. He admits to Dagran that all he wants to do is help her, even if it would mean taking essentially "kidnapping" her and running away with her. ...And the Count himself is their current employer.
This bothers him because he hates to see injustice done, or any kind of unfairness, because it goes against his very ideals. It goes against the fundamental good he believes people have within them, against standards he believes that humanity (especially those in power) should be upholding... because it's just common decency. Why would you want to do anything else???
This is why he gets so angry when he sees people acting with brutality, deceit, and savagery, because it not only goes against these ideals, but reminds him about what happened to his parents and his village. He doesn’t want to believe that a lot of other people can be that way. He knows that they are, he doesn't like to see it. Doesn't like to face the idea that people are and can be entirely inhuman. In fact, events that make him directly confront humanity's unhindered brutality are pretty much the only times we ever see Zael grow truly angry at anyone.
The main instance of this (and it’s one of the main catalysts that helps steer his later choices) is when he alongside Count Arganan’s gathered army arrives at the main Gurak stronghold only to find that it is populated not by soldiers who can fight back, but filled with unarmed civilians and children. And Arganan's army doesn't turn back at the revelation: they only proceed to kill the defenseless Gurak and take those who remain as prisoners of war. It’s an event Zael is disgusted and angered by (he’ll fight armed soldiers, but he'd never kill innocent, unarmed people if he had a choice.) He refuses to participate in the slaughter, instead trying to hide some of the Gurak so they aren’t killed, growing angrier at each new act of cruelty (and trying to suppress and block it out) until Syrenne manages to snap him out of it before he could perhaps act upon it.
But sometimes what bothers him more than seeing cruelty and injustice going on around him is seeing it happen and feeling that he's powerless to do anything about it. In situations like this, he can act rashly, despite being a rather calm and levelheaded individual in general, someone who is typically obedient and far from rebellious.
The key here is that he wants to help people, and he often refuses to accept that there’s not anything he can do (or should do). It’s during these times he often disregards the more cautious advice of others in favor of what his heart tells him to do. Zael's actions are always thickly woven with good intentions, even if these “good intentions” are not always the best, safest, or smartest choice for everyone, including himself. Quite often they are a mistake, and a fault of his, and this mostly happens during the moments where people's lives are in immediate jeopardy and he doesn't pause to think. At one point, he blows the cover of both he and his comrades in an effort to rescue some of his people captured by the Gurak and forced to work for them. And in so doing, he put his friends in danger without thinking. And at times he can be too trusting and too wiling to help.
However, when he actually is actually given the chance and opportunity to think on things though, and weigh the possible effects his decisions have on others, choices like this can also ironically hold him back from actually doing the right thing, and he can turn suddenly indecisive. When he does realize that a choice he makes could greatly (and negatively) impact the happiness and welfare of the people around him, he always broods and hesitates, doubting his own actions and convictions and wondering which way is right. He feels one way, but understands another.
And this is the type of person he is from his current canon point: hesitant. A person torn between two choices. He had to decide whether to take a stand, despite consequences to himself and his friends, or to keep the peace and follow the orders of another man that he’s starting to doubt. Obedience in exchange for the things he's dreamed of, including the continued status, happiness, and better life for his friends.
As stated before, Zael, in the beginning of the game, has a very romantic, idealized view of humanity. When he finds rejection instead of trust and kindness, he doesn't blame other people's prejudices or faults for it; instead, he tends to blame himself when things go wrong, regardless of whether this is the case or not. He doesn't ask why other people are the way they are, instead he asks himself what he's doing that is wrong, or what he can do to change things.
This ties in with his goal to become a knight.
Despite his optimistic and usually calm, open, and friendly demeanor, if with a slight tendency towards introversion, Zael is, in actuality, a very lonely person. It's part of the reason why one half of the Outsider (an otherworldly being that had been summoned to his world years prior), chooses him to connect with and bestow its immense power upon. It chooses him because his heart is like its own. As the Outsider itself puts it, his heart is “filled with loneliness and sorrow.”
He has lived a very lonely life. His parents are dead, and the only continuous, stable relationship he's ever had in life is with Dagran, a fellow orphan and the organizer and de facto leader of his current mercenary group. He has grown up having nothing, constantly seeing the members of he and Dagran’s mercenary group leave the fold or die. He tries to find acceptance, but finds mostly rejection. His life has never been very stable or constant. He’s never really had a place to call home.
But he doesn't blame other people for this; he puts the onus on himself, and believes throughout the initial portion of The Last Story that if he becomes a knight, he'll finally be able to find the warmth and acceptance that he wants so badly, and in so doing improve his circumstances for himself and his friends. This is because he has a very romantic view of knighthood in general. Knights are an idealized version of just wants he wants to be and embody. To him, they are chivalrous and benevolent and exist to serve the people and better the world. People think highly of them for a reason, after all.
Except he learns that this isn't the case.
His naive and romantic ideals of what knighthood is and means to those who are knights is quickly shattered upon his employ to Count Arganan. He discovers that knighthood is hardly what it's cracked up to be. The soldiers aren't noble; they don't so much as serve the people as serve themselves, lazy, and mostly around for decoration and show. He also learns that those in power use and manipulate those below them for their own ends, something he hadn't really considered until that point. And once the Count starts to use Zael for his power, propelling the entire island for war for the Gurak, he starts to honestly question his goals in life.
So when the Count finally offers Zael knighthood, his dream, and Calista's hand in marriage, he rejects it—highlighting the catalyst for his own personal change. And during the days that follow (which is after Zael's canonpoint, but put here for reference), he becomes a more confident, and self-sure individual who finally understands what kind of person he wants to be. By the end of the game, he no longer harboring the intense doubts he held during the weeks before. He still ends up believing in the best of people, but he is finally able to accept that the world isn't entirely black and white. He takes upon the role of a leader, instead of a follower acting on blind trust.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
- Selfless
- Brave
- Loyal
- Empathetic (a listener who cares and worries about others.)
- Lonely (trying to find his place in the world)
- Levelheaded/calm/easygoing
but
- Quick (and sometimes rashly so) to defend and protect his "family," friends, and those who can't defend themselves.
- Trusting/Idealistic/Easy to Befriend
- Slow to anger, but with trigger points against cruelty and injustice
- Potential to both be a leader (willing to stand for what he believes in and take control of his future), but also a follower that works well and desperately wants to get along with other people.
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER? Fits.
Opt-Outs: Arachne, Nymph, Faerie, Troll, Naga
Also Shinjiro is a Werebear
Roleplay Sample
It takes some time for Zael to find his way out of the forest the world had decided to deposit him in without warning, or even a memory, just scratches and bruises decorating his skin. He doesn’t know where he is, confused at the sudden change of scenery that certainly was not the island he had been living in. All he has to go on are unfamiliar trees and winding forests paths and cries that make him wonder just what kind of creatures call this wood home—because they certainly can’t be children. He wonders where the others are. Wonders if, somehow (perhaps by some magic) the others are also here. He doesn’t have the power to sense the presence of others, like Calista and Yurick can, and the Outsider’s mark is suddenly, uncharacteristically dormant. He can’t feel its power pulsing within him any longer, though the brand remains. He doesn’t know if he made a mistake. Perhaps he used too much of the Outsider’s power in moving the island. Perhaps something had gone wrong. But he doesn’t know, and that’s what bothers him.
He almost wants to stay in the forest and look for the others—to see if he can find a familiar face, or listen for a familiar voice—and he does wander for awhile, even when he sees a break in the trees, just in case he’s not the only one who ended up here. He might not be able to locate anyone, but his presence could be a beacon, even without Gathering (and he… can’t really be the only one here, can he?)
And he eventually finds someone along the darkening road in the last remaining rays of sunlight. It's a man with a beard, carrying an odd sort of weapon in his hands that’s unfamiliar to him, with clothing that’s equally strange. He's also toting along a bag that's slung over his shoulder, full of objects that look charred and blackened. He’s seen much during his travels, but no one quite like this.
“Er—“ He’s not sure where to start. “Excuse me.”
The man turns, almost flinches when he sees him. It’s enough to make Zael stop in his tracks. Better to give the man space. He does try to smile though.
“Sorry.” He probably looks like just as much of a stranger. “...I was just hoping you could tell me where I am.”
The man grunts, voice rough and carrying an accent Zael can’t remember hearing before. The man’s eyes are hard, and his tone is just as cold. “If you don’t know where the hell you are, then you’re one of them. And I want nothin’ to do with the lot of you.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Zael's heard words like this, but the bitter, sharp coldness in the other man's tone makes him pause. He’s not sure he knows what he means. “I’m sorry? I’m not sure I understand.”
“You will,” the man says, grinning crookedly. His shoulders, which were once tight, seem to relax. “You don’t. But you will. Just keep heading northeast, follow the road. Maybe then you’ll start to see what I mean. See what good your kind do. Might as well get a taste before the fangs come in.”
The man turns his back on him, and Zael makes no effort to follow.