tosavethisworld | metaheroes app.

Player —

Player Name: Effy
Pronouns: she/her
Are you over 18? yes! 24 y/o.
Contact:

mollymauktealeaf | Discord: foggytealeafs#7641
Current Characters: N/A
Who Invited You?:

Character —

Character Name: Aloy
Character Canon: Horizon Zero Dawn
Character Age: 18
Canon Point: Post-HZD, after slipping away during the festivities in Meridian
Link to History: Here!

Inventory: I'm sorry. she's from an open world action-adventure game. there's a lot to cover, inventory-wise.

SHIELD WEAVER ARMOR - an outfit made out of ancient (21st-century) technology that projects a highly durable, damage-absorbing force field. However, once the force field is broken, it takes time to recharge, during which time Aloy is vulnerable. It also needs a power source to keep the shield going, something she'll want to look into at some point.

SPEAR - a spear that Aloy made herself that she uses in melee combat. The spear itself is nothing special, it's a stick with a sharp pointy bit, but she attached an override module to it that allows her to override the machines in her world, turning them from hostile to friendly and, in some cases, able to be ridden.

BOW AND SPECIAL ARROWS - Aloy has a Carja Sharpshot Bow that fires slowly but has a high accuracy, used in making precise shots from afar. She's a skilled arrow crafter, and her arrows come with a variety of special abilities, ranging from fire arrows to arrows that can freeze things in place to arrows that spew acid to sonic arrows. This special arrow crafting I'll be adapting into a superpower, so more on that below.

TRIPCASTER - the Shadow variant, to be exact. The Tripcaster is a stealth weapon that deploys a tripwire that, depending on Aloy's needs, can shock something, burn them, or detonate in their faces.

ROPECASTER - the Lodge variant in terms of appearance. The Ropecaster is a ranged weapon that's used to pin down targets, immobilizing them so Aloy can better target their weaknesses.

RATTLER - the starter variant in appearance. The Rattler is a short-ranged bolt gun that fires multiple projectiles toward a target within close range—essentially, it functions kind of like a shotgun. Aloy uses this only when she needs to get out of a jam fast and get some distance.

SLING - the Lodge blast sling and the Shadow sling are used to fire either elemental bombs that inflict some kind of effect on something in the same fashion as Aloy's arrows, or explosive bombs of different types—blast bombs explode on impact, sticky bombs stick to a target and explode after five seconds, and proximity bombs function like landmines, exploding when someone comes near.

FORGEFIRE - a flamethrower taken from an Oseram bandit's corpse.

ICERAIL - a weapon given to Aloy that fires ice in much the same way the Forgefire works as a flamethrower.

STORMSLINGER - a ranged weapon that fires electric bolts. Aloy can overcharge it so the bolts can deliver a bigger punch, but it hurts her if she isn't wearing sufficient protection.

POTIONS - split into two types: healing potions and resistance potions. Healing potions basically just boost Aloy's natural healing, so she can pop back up if she takes a hard hit, but in-game I'll play it like it only keeps her up and mostly stable. If she breaks a bone, it won't magically heal her, it'll just make it hurt slightly less when she moves. Resistance potions briefly grant Aloy a measure of resistance against certain types of damage—if she drinks a potion that allows her to resist fire, for example, she won't get burned as much, but only for a brief length of time. In-game, let's say it lasts her maybe ten minutes.

RAPPEL - literally just a rope with a hook at the end that allows her to fast-rappel down cliffs.

FOCUS - by far Aloy's most prized possession, the Focus is a tiny, triangular device attached to her right ear that when activated projects a 3D holographic interface that Aloy can interact with, and stores and records a great deal of information that Aloy picks up along her travels. Think something like Tony Stark in his workshop in Iron Man 3—Aloy uses the Focus in much the same way, as it allows her to track machines, men, and animals when she needs to, as well as reconstruct scenes of interest to her. It also highlights objects of interest to her, such as supply caches, and seems to color-code it so that she knows how valuable the items within a cache are. Finally, she also can use it to talk to other people who have Focuses, such as Sylens.

Powers —

Skills:

Machine Hunter - Aloy hunts machines and is very, very good at it. Even without her focus, she was taught to track and fight by one of the best trackers around, and she is a damn good archer on top of that, being able to pinpoint weak spots in armor and fire an arrow that hits exactly where she needs it to. She is also strong enough to lug around heavy components and weaponry, and agile enough to dodge heavy hits from terrifying machines that would otherwise incapacitate her.

Rock Climber - Aloy regularly, casually free-climbs sheer rock faces and scaffolding and giant giraffe-like robots. She has the endurance to cling to something for a long time even when that thing is moving under her fingers, and is light enough on her feet that she can pull some fairly acrobatic stunts.

20 INT Stat - Aloy is a clone of Dr. Elisabet Sobeck, a genius scientist who got started in experimental physics and computer science at thirteen years old, earning a doctorate in robotics just seven years later. That genius carries over in Aloy, who uses it to solve mysteries throughout the game that range from "who murdered the captain of the guard in Meridian" to "what was Project Zero Dawn, and what happened to the people in it" to "who was my mother", as well as hack into and dismantle machinery (and often machinery actively trying to kill her), and strategize her fights with machines or even swarms of pissed-off human beings on the fly. Also she once figured out, using just her eyes and her knowledge of how an eclipse worked, that the earth was round.

Crafty - Aloy is capable of crafting ammunition, weaponry, tools, and pouches on the fly, combining materials scavenged from downed machines with natural resources to come up with bombs, trick arrows, traps, and even tools that she regularly uses throughout her journeys.

Executive Access - As a clone of Elisabet Sobeck, the lead scientist on Project Zero Dawn, Aloy has access to all the facilities and top-secret information related to Zero Dawn, especially the ones coded to respond to Sobeck's geneprint. This won't come in useful in-game, as obviously Sobeck doesn't exist, but it does mean Aloy's no stranger to identification technology.

Machine Rider - Aloy can override and reprogram certain machines into being friendly enough that she can ride them like horses. At her canon point, she's one of like, two people who can do this.
Superpowers: no canon superpowers, so the listed powers below are for this game.

TECHNOPATHY: Aloy can now communicate directly with technology and AIs when she holds them in her hands, and ask them to do things for her. This is different from her spear's override ability in that she can't force technology to work for her this way—she can only obtain some level of basic information, and anything more requires that the technology or the AI cooperate with her. For example, she can talk to the Vision without using her mouth, but can't make the Vision do shit for her, although if she touches him she'll at least be able to glean his name, age, design model, basic specs, that kind of thing. She can talk to televisions and ask them to switch channels for her, as another example, but if it refuses to do it then she'll have to manually change the channel herself.

EASY ARROW CRAFTING: Aloy's arrow-crafting will be made significantly easier, as she'll now be able to simply concentrate on the type of arrow she desires while nocking an arrow to her bow, and when she fires it off it'll be that type. Here is a list of the arrow types she uses:
Hunter Arrows - default arrow, nothing special about them. (The game series has Hardpoint, Precision and Harvest arrows, but I'm grouping them under here because they really only do higher damage than a hunter arrow and tear components off machines.)

Fire Arrows - arrows that are on fire.

Frost Arrows - arrows that can freeze people and machines in place, slowing them down so Aloy can shoot them.

Shock Arrows - arrows that deliver an electric charge on impact, stunning the target and locking them into place.

Corruption Arrows - arrows that on impact can cause a target to become hostile to the nearest person. I'm assuming they work a little like poison darts, where what causes the corruption is delivered via a needle that breaks the skin or the machine armor.

Tearblast Arrows - arrows that on impact emit a sonic blast that strips off armor and can knock people off their feet.

Limitations: Aloy, while one of the best fighters in her world, is at this point in time an 18-year-old—a very capable 18-year-old genius, but nonetheless, she lacks a lot in the way of experience, especially in the social department, due to her upbringing as an outcast. She can come off somewhat awkward and brusque, even downright aggressive, and has a habit of taking on obstacles alone and not asking for help. She also comes from a post-apocalyptic Iron Age, and therefore her experience with advanced technology tends to be somewhat limited, although less so than the average citizen in her world. She has names for things that don't exist anymore, thanks to her Focus, but no real experience with them. (For example: she knows punk music is a thing that exists, but she won't know it if she hears it.)

Also, the easy arrow crafting power only works on arrows that she made beforehand. She can't generate arrows out of thin air, and she can't apply the property to anything but arrows. She'll just have to make her own bombs.

Personality —

The Nora, the tribe that Aloy is most associated with, revere motherhood and the family to such a degree that they've built a whole religion around it. That makes Aloy, a mysterious orphan they found without a mother within their sacred mountain, a very, very suspicious person, and because of her motherless state, she was cast out from the tribe at a young age, sent to an outcast named Rost to be raised. This, and her subsequent upbringing as an outcast (but not quite an orphan, with Rost as her father figure), has significantly impacted Aloy's life and personality, and in fact is really what kicks off her development in the games: the big world-saving quest she embarks on? All of it begins because she wanted to know one thing and one thing only: who was her mother? And absolutely nothing is going to stand in the way of her learning that.

See, Aloy is a very determined person. This is evident from when she's a precocious young girl, and she has her first real brush with how her lack of a mother and outcast status affects her standing within the Nora. She's shunned and even bullied for being an outcast, and this is what really crystallizes her desire to find out more about her mother. To do that, she ends up demanding that Rost train her so she can one day run in the Proving trial and win, earning a boon from the Matriarchs she'll use to ask who her mother was. She's also a curious person, whose first reaction to finding a piece of ancient technology in a ruin she fell into as a child is to stick it on her ear, and while the question that drives her through much of the first game is who was my mother?, she also tends to delve into hazardous ruins full of hostile machines, simply because she wants to find out more about the old world, especially Project Zero Dawn. These two traits combined make for someone who, once she gets wind of a mystery or something of interest to her, is quick to chase down the answers and steamroll over whatever gets in her way.

They also mean, however, that she can sometimes have a bad case of tunnel vision that can come off as her being self-centered, at first. Her quest to find out more about her mother quickly mutates into something much bigger than herself, especially after the Proving trial turns into a massacre that takes the life of many of her fellow runners and her father figure Rost, and this event drives her to find out more about the culprits. A noble goal, but she also ends up nearly dismissing a friend's own grief and desire to find out what happened to his sister because she's trying to find the man who helped get Rost and so many of her people killed. It takes that friend all but begging her to come help him for her to help. That having been said, she starts to grow out of this tunnel vision of hers, growing more compassionate and kind as she interacts with more people and explores the world outside the Nora's Sacred Lands.

And at heart, she's a deeply compassionate and even dutiful person. Because of the open-world nature of the games, Aloy can do a lot of errands and side quests for various people, and while some offer rewards from the outset, others are simply Aloy stopping by and asking what's going on. There is never truly an option for Aloy to turn these errands down, even if she gets annoyed with someone—she feels a sense of duty to help other people around her, some moral obligation compelling her to watch out for them and do as they ask of her. She can be brusque due to her upbringing as an outcast, even downright rude and sardonic, and sometimes awkward as talking to people isn't always her strong suit, but she comes around to caring for other people incredibly easily. After finding out more about her origins in the depths of the Nora's Sacred Mountain and how it relates to Zero Dawn's leader Dr. Elizabeth Sobeck, she comes out to find that the Nora have gone from being suspicious of her to being worshipful of the woman who is apparently their goddess's Anointed, and immediately demands they get back up on their feet—the world is in danger, and she doesn't need their worship, but their help in saving a world full of people "just as good as you".

I mentioned Dr. Sobeck. She's Aloy's mom, sort of, but also not—Elisabet Sobeck died a thousand years before Aloy was ever born, but Aloy is her clone, grown from a sample of her genes to fulfill a destiny bigger than she ever thought possible. From her, Aloy not only gets her compassion, determination, and sense of duty, she also gets her intelligence. She's smart and clever, with the kind of deductive skills that would make Sherlock Holmes envious, although she's also an eighteen-year-old girl and gets tripped up by her lack of experience, both in general and in social terms. She's intelligent enough, however, to be able to work out that what looked very convincingly like a murder was actually a kidnapping and a frame-up job all in one, and susses out various things about the world around her that wouldn't be obvious to other people. Some of this, to be sure, is assisted by her Focus, but she's capable even without it, not only winning in a fight rigged against her after her Focus was crushed, but even retrieving her gear from where it'd been taken from her.

In short, Aloy is a kind, compassionate, and intelligent woman, who was quite literally born to do extraordinary things.

Gameplay —

Areas of Interest / Brainstorming: I took Aloy directly after HZD, after she's finished with her driving quest of finding out about Project: Zero Dawn and Sobeck, because I want to see how she fares, after having learned so much about the world that Zero Dawn saved, in a world that's very similar to it. For much of her life she's been an outcast with no real friends, and although she's started making some as of her canon point, I want to see how she interacts with people far outside of even the general post-apocalyptic future context of her world. I also want to see what she does with her new technopathy power, as it's analogous to her spear's override abilities but at the same time, she really isn't used to actually outright communicating with machines—at her canon point, she has talked with one malevolent AI and heard a posthumous message from one benevolent AI. I think it would be very fun.

...and okay I also want her to find out what pop music is.