exsilium app

[nowthatsfunny]

» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Froda
Current AGE: Really old
Player TIME ZONE: PST
Personal JOURNAL: froda_baggins
IM & SERVICE: AIM: frodabaggins03
Player PLURK: frodabaggins
Current CHARACTERS: N/A

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Tess
Canon & MEDIUM: The Last of Us; video game
Canon PULL-POINT: After her death, at the capitol building in Boston.
Character AGE: Approximately 38.
Character ABILITIES: Tess is a baseline human, albeit one with some good asskicking skills - she's survived a post-apocalyptic America infested with fungal zombies for twenty years (since she was a teenager, no less), is a feared smuggler and knows her way around a fire fight. Also, on a more mundane level, she's essentially been running her own business for a number of years, so she's got a good head for numbers and knowing the value of things, as well as making contacts and hammering out business deals with people.

Character HISTORY: Tess @ The Last of Us wiki.

Tess is, at the beginning of the game, a smuggler in the Boston Quarantine Zone, the business partner (and perhaps more) of Joel. She's maybe ten years or so younger than Joel, and thus was probably a teenager when the infection broke out originally, but now she's in her late 30s and has attained a fearsome reputation in the Boston underworld (as evidenced by her interactions with other characters in the early part of the game, who treat her with almost universal respect and possibly a little bit of fear).

Tess takes the initiative, going to make a drop without Joel, and getting assaulted on her way back in the process - assaulted by two thugs hired by rival smuggler Robert. She returns to Joel and explains to him what happened, and that she knows where Robert is - the two leave to find Robert and exact revenge, eventually tracking him down and, after learning that he sold a shipment of weapons that rightfully belonged to them to the militia group the Fireflies, Tess kills him.

It's then that Marlene appears, the leader of the local Firefly group. Tess wants their guns back, and negotiates with Marlene for their return - Marlene says they can have it all back, if they smuggle something out of Boston for her. That something turns out to be a fourteen-year-old girl, Ellie - and she's not just any girl, either. She's immune to the infection, and possibly the key to a cure for it. Tess and Joel (the latter somewhat reluctantly) agree to this, and so their trek across the crumbling city of Boston begins. While trying to get Ellie to the rendez-vous point, Tess is cornered and bitten by one of the infected, thus contracting the infection herself. She doesn't tell either Joel or Ellie about this, however, until they finally reach the capitol building and find the expected escort of Fireflies dead. Desperate and distraught, Tess finally reveals the terrible truth - the bite that signed her death warrant. Needing to know that it wasn't all in vain, she makes Joel promise to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies, no matter what the cost. Then, she forces them to leave, giving them a chance to escape as she makes one last stand against the soldiers seeking them - she dies as herself, taking several of them with her.

Character PERSONALITY:

Tess is at first glance tough as nails, no-nonsense, and frankly, not someone you would want to cross. She's ruthless even for a survivor in her world, being involved in smuggling and other varied illegal activities. She has no problem committing acts of violence, even cold-blooded murder, to protect her business interests and live to see another day.

She's a natural leader, and very charismatic. This is made very clear in the early parts of the game, where nearly everyone she encounters addresses her with respect - and possibly a little fear. It's clear that in her partnership with Joel, she is more or less "the brains" - she's the one making contacts, hammering out business deals and the like, while Joel tends to follow her lead. He even refers to her occasionally as "ma'am" and "boss". She's also headstrong, and occasionally impulsive - she goes to make a drop on her own, knowing it's dangerous and knowing she'll probably incur Joel's wrath, and Joel makes some comments to the effect that she sometimes goes haring off without being very cautious. In short, Tess is a bit of a firebrand.

Joel is her business partner, but also her closest friend, and the person she trusts most in the world. Her feelings for him run deep, and it's clear that they have some romantic undertones to them - they enjoy flirting with each other quite a bit, anyway. No matter the exact nature of the relationship, it's clear that Joel is the most important person in her life, and someone she trusts a great deal. Most of her other relationships seem to be purely about business. But she actually likes Joel.

She gets along well with Ellie, too, though she doesn't have as much time to develop a real bond with the girl. Still, she's not nearly as hostile to Ellie as Joel is at first, and actually commiserates with her after a particularly scary encounter with infected - despite the fact that she's clearly much more experienced with them than Ellie is. She comes to see Ellie as the key to a cure, however, pretty fast, especially once she herself is bitten. She bears no animosity to the girl for anything that happened - she is, after all, just a kid, and there's not much in this world that even an adult can control.

She's also perhaps a little less cynical than she seems at first glance. She takes a certain amount of enjoyment in what she does, and in life in general. When they get outside, she comments that she loves the fresh air, as opposed to the stink inside the QZ, and relishes taking a deep breath. She enjoys playfully bantering and flirting with Joel as well, and even has a bottle of alcohol that she's acquired from somewhere. Essentially, Tess likes to find pleasure in whatever she can - the world is shitty enough without her being doom and gloom all the time. Her sense of humor tends toward the sharp and acerbic, even morbid at times - for instance, she makes a joke out of killing a couple of guys who try to jump her in the street. This is as much a product of the world she lives in as anything else - when death is a normal part of life (gruesome, terrible death no less), Tess feels that one either learns to deal with it by making light of it sometimes, or you go crazy.

Furthermore, she has a kind of hope that Joel seems to lack, at least in the early stages of the game. She buys Ellie's story about being immune while Joel is still disbelieving, and she honestly begins to think that Marlene could be right: Ellie could be the key to a cure. When Tess is bitten, this only exacerbates her feelings, and drives her need to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies. It also motivates her to press Joel for a promise that he will finish the job when they find all the men at the capitol building dead. The bite signed Tess's death warrant, but rather than completely give in to despair, she remains strangely, fiercely determined that a better world can happen, if Ellie can just get to the people trying to find a cure.

» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Her 9 mm pistol, which is from her canon. Over time, it will allow her to be a better shot, and more stealthy in combat situations. Furthermore, it will eventually upgrade in several ways, including higher clip capacity, faster fire rate, etc.
Character INVENTORY: - Backpack
- 9 mm pistol
- 3 extra clips
- 3 med kits
- flashlight
- gas mask
- 2 protein bars (long expired but still edible)
- small stack of ration cards from the Boston Quarantine Zone
- set of forged identification papers with a false name

» SAMPLES
First PERSON: [The woman on the video is petite, a little undernourished, and generally looks a bit the worse for wear. But she's got a sharp look in her eyes, a smart look. A look that's assessing things carefully before she makes any major moves.]

My name is Tess. I hear I've been here before. [She has a very brief hesitation before that I've, mostly because she's unsettled by the information.] I don't remember it, so I guess I'd just like to know who knew me - her - whatever. Maybe it'll jog my memory.

[Another pause, and she frowns a bit, down at something off-screen.] I can't be the only one this has happened to, right?

Third PERSON: Test drive thread

» ADDITIONAL NOTES