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Entry tags:
Application: We the Lost
Player Name: Bramble
Player Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
bramblepatch
Character Name: Murai
Canon: Digger
Game Transplant:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
jarjammed
Original App: Jarjammed App
Game Summary: The premise of Jarjammed borrowed heavily from the webcomic Homestuck; the setting and general game mechanics were defined by the extra-universal "game" of Sburb, which, through a video-game interface superficially similar to games like The Sims, draws players into a pocket universe (the "Incipisphere" or the "Medium" - the terms refer to slightly different divisions of the setting but can be used more or less interchangably) where they are responsible for creating a new full-scale universe by way of fulfilling stereotypical video game "quests" and ultimately breeding an ideal frog as the representation of the new universe. In this case, the original players of the game failed rather badly, two of them dying. In desperation, the sole surviving player hacked into the game's software to find more players, recruiting them randomly and blindly from all over the multiverse.
This didn't work out so well as she might have hoped, as it took the resulting bloated and constantly changing player base more than a year and a half and considerable outside pressure to get their act together long enough to stop throwing parties and/or trying to murder each other, and finish the game.
How long was your character in Game: Approximately fifteen months
History of Character in their Game: Murai arrived in Sburb early in the game, entering the Medium on the tail-end of the initial rush of new players, when the influx slowed from a new batch every week to a new batch each month. At the time, little was known about their situation and the social dynamics of the group were still very much in flux. After a smooth entry - Murai got along well with her server player, although she never spoke to him after entry and he disappeared within a few weeks, and with her client, Ghost, a disembodied spirit with whom she would form a strong friendship of many months - Murai's initial act was to take to the network and make a memo introducing herself and asking after any other players who served the gods. This memo netted her a few friends, but also brought her to the attention of the Grand Highblood, a highblooded troll and a tyrannical warrior-priest of bloodthirsty gods who presented himself as an avatar of the same. Due to a timely warning from the Summoner, a rebel leader from the Grand Highblood's homeworld, Murai treated the Highblood with wary respect but declined to meet him in person. A few days later, when the Grand Highblood took one of the human players, Cassandra Mortmain, hostage in a display of power and psychological warfare, Murai approached the Summoner to offer her aid in the rescue effort. Although with her existing mental illness she was unwilling to risk joining the actual rescue party, she did contribute through providing recon and helping to organize their allies.
She helped with a second, unrelated rescue mission soon after, when the human Eridan Ampora, another new player, became lost on his chaotic and mind-altering planet. A friend of his from before Sburb, the human Karkat Vantas, asked for help in rescuing him; Murai answered the call. The search party eventually managed to locate and retrieve Eridan, although not before he totally flipped out and tried to kill them.
Sburb glitched a week or two later, causing a number of players to switch bodies; Murai was unchanged, and in the course of finding out who else was unaffected, found that she had given the Grand Highblood and the Handmaid, another high-powered troll player, a forum for bickering; concerned about Cassandra (who had been replying to the same memo), Murai asked them to leave, then banned both trolls, and then messaged Cassandra to check on her. In the following conversation, Murai recounted her own experiences as the victim of psychic attacks, and the two girls struck up a mutually supportive if slightly distant friendship that would last the rest of the game.
Her attempt to reach out to Gamzee Makara, the Grand Highblood's protege, was less successful; she found the young troll moody and uncooperative.
Through most of the following spring and summer, Murai settled into Sburb, spending a good deal of time questing on her own planet. In terms of the social game, she attempted to act as an advisor and mediator when possible, a role which she saw as an expression of her duties as a priest of the Veil. Human Karkat made a somewhat ill-advised memo musing on the morality of killing the game-generated monsters that threatened the players; Murai was one of the few who did not either take offense or mock him for it, and offered a sounding board if he wanted to talk about such concerns in the future. Azula made a memo for the express purpose of baiting several newcomers from her home reality; Murai told her off for bringing unnecessary conflict into an already chaotic situation. She lent her support to discussions of forming a code of law within Sburb (which never really panned out) and of staging weapons lessons for players who had joined the game with no previous combat experience (which was ultimately more successful, if never precisely organized), and offered assistance to a number of new arrivals into the game. When an unidentified vampiric player (in reality Alice Cullen, although she was never identified) preyed on another player's consorts, Murai offered advice on the possible varieties of vampires to the players attempting to find the killer.
Most of the time, her advice was accepted with either consideration or polite indifference; one major exception came when she attempted to warn Jay Zimin from picking fights with known associates of the Grand Highblood; Jay took offense to Murai's manner and exception to her warning, and took it upon himself to publicly seek out other player's opinions of the Grand Highblood. The situation cumulated several days later in Jay getting (temporarily, thanks to Sburb's resurrection mechanics) killed by the Grand Highblood.
Then, some four months after Murai's arrival in Sburb, players whose dream-selves dwelt on Derse began to have a series of deeply symbolic nightmares. Murai was among those afflicted. After several dreams that highlighted her own capacity for misplaced trust and the possible consequences of manipulation by authority figures, she was beginning to realize that these dreams contained accurate information about other players that she had not had the opportunity to learn and therefore had to have an outside source, but did not have time to act on this realization when her next nightmare startled her awake not on her own Land of Channels and Tempests, but in her dream tower on Derse.
Derse's proximity to the eldritch horrors known as Horrorterrors was enough to set off the more severe aspects of Murai's mental illness, including her PTSD and what is either schizophrenia or low-grade divine possession, triggering a panic attack during which she made an incredibly disjointed memo on the network. Her friends attempted to figure out what was wrong, the Grand Highblood took the opportunity to make another attempt at converting her, and Ghost, her client, basically sassed the Highblood until he went away. Karkat came to visit Murai on her planet, and with his newly-developed game-given powers as Monk of Calm was able to sooth her until she regained her senses.
Over the next few days, as Murai recovered from her ordeal, she had conversations with both Gamzee (who offered somewhat awkward support and advice) and the Grand Highblood (to whom she attempted to apologize for her incoherent accusations of charlatanry). Neither conversation went as well as might be hoped, as Murai was still badly shaken and a little confused, but overall it improved her understanding of and working relationship with both trolls.
One of the long-term players, a troll known as the Signless, hosted a masquerade ball on his planet a few weeks later; Murai attended, after asking Cassandra for help in concocting something appropriate to wear for the occasion, and spoke with a number of other players, including Signless (a very considerate host), Karkat (who admitted he didn't intend to stay long), and Karkat's friend Theo (who Murai found polite if a bit odd). Several hours into the party, Signless's denizen (a monster designated as the end-boss of his Sburb quests) intruded, casting illusions over the entire party that disoriented the guests and changed their disguises to reflect some hidden secret of each person, as well as setting malicious specters of several people loose to mess with their friends and loved ones. Murai's new guise was that of the Black Mother, the goddess who had driven her mad in the first place; catching a glimpse of herself in a reflection triggered another breakdown, and she was helpless until the Iron Giant discovered her and broke the mirror. He didn't understand why his actions had helped, but was glad to have done something to help someone (having spent most of his own time in the game feeling increasingly helpless and useless) and the two of them spent some time together before being once again separated by the mists. After this, Murai encountered a spectre of Queen Serenity, a former incarnation of fellow player Usagi Tsukino, which asked Murai to look for her after the masquerade.
Although Murai agreed to do so, this mission was quickly overshadowed - immediately after the masquerade, Arya Stark accused Theo of murdering Karkat on the strength of something she'd seen during the masquerade. Murai cautioned her that it was quite likely that what she'd seen were specters, as Karkat had to the best of her knowledge left well before the illusions arrived and although it was a little worrying that no one had been able to contact Karkat, there were many places on Karkat's planet where he was unable to access the network. Arya refused to be reasoned with; while Arya led a vigilante party against Theo, Murai traveled to Karkat's planet and managed to locate him and bring him back in time to defuse the situation, although not before both Arya and Theo were badly injured fighting each other. As all of this was going down, Murai also messaged the Iron Giant to check in on him, and finding him depressed and confused, attempted to reassure him.
In general, tensions ran high in the wake of the masquerade, it took a few weeks for everyone to sort out exactly what had and hadn't happened, during which time several influential players disappeared from the game - disappearances were not unheard of, as the Incipisphere attempted to regain some equilibrium from the frequent new arrivals, but it was disruptive when people with many close ties to other players disappeared; Murai was particularly discouraged by the disappearance of the Summoner, especially when his disappearance and the Condesce's severely upset the Grand Highblood. The Signless was indisposed for a long time after confronting his Denizen at the masquerade; when he returned to the public eye, he was strangely fatalistic and it quickly became clear that he was, to some degree, being controlled by the Horrorterrors.
Then Sburb glitched again, this time imposing a variety of strange physical and/or psychological prototypings on the players, and Murai was a sentient swarm of bees for a week, which she found disorienting but not as distressing as some of the other players found theirs. During the prototyping glitch, Doctor Horrible laid waste to a number of other players' planets. Karkat and the Giant attempted to confront him about it at the end of the week; Doctor Horrible disintegrated the Iron Giant, killing him permanently, and then went into hiding. Karkat and Murai were both crushed by the Giant's death; Murai was further upset when Ghost, her client player and friend, disappeared from the game a few days later.
When the next batch of new players arrived, Murai took it upon herself to write an introductory guide to Sburb, stepping into a role of orienting new players which previously had been primarily occupied by the Summoner. Her guide was several hundred words long, and would be expanded and updated for each new influx of players for the rest of Sburb, often prompting complaints that it was too long and dense to be of any real use. Also at about this time, Hobbes the stuffed tiger discovered that he was not, precisely, real; Murai attempted to reassure him that his existence as an imaginary friend was valid.
In the continuing saga of "everything happens at the least convenient time," that was also the point that Karkat's troll double (generally just referred to as Troll Karkat) doped himself up on his Page of Peace powers and decided that the logical next step was to do the same for as many players as possible. Murai, already uncomfortably aware of her own mental and emotional fragility and struggling with grief over Giant's death, agreed to be Peaced with minimal objection, and as a result when Human Karkat held a funeral for Giant, Murai attended in a rather troubling haze of Peace.
The Peace lasted only a few days, and when she returned to the usual range of emotional responses, Murai did not seek out a second "treatment." She apologized to Human Karkat for her conduct and found him in an altered state of his own; when questioned, he readily admitted to working with the Horrorterrors and urged Murai to consider doing the same, although he quickly backed off when she reminded him of the effect that simple proximity to the Horrorterrors had on her. It quickly became clear, however, that Karkat and Signless were not the only players thus compromised; many other cases of varying degrees of possession came to light, and before the other players could determine how to free the Horrorterrors' pawns, the Horrorterrors used them to carry out a blood ritual which created sinister doubles of all the planets. The following weeks were spent slowly eliminating the monsters' influence over the players, with varying degrees of success.
This led to what was possibly the first major push for actually getting things done in Sburb; several players made attempts to gather information on the powers available within the player base, Murai continued to provide support and information to newcomers, and eventually a large number of players got together to take on the Denizen of one of the deceased original players, whose planet was, apparently, necessary to completing the game but all but inaccessable as long as the Denizen was present. Murai was among the players who traveled to the Land of Brass and Frogs to fight Nisaeg, teaming up with Human Karkat to fight side by side. The players ultimately killed the Denizen, and both Murai and Karkat came though relatively unscathed.
Many of the players did not. Of particular relevance to Murai was that Usagi awoke after the battle with the memories and personality of her previous incarnation, Serenity, and therefore severely disoriented as well as badly injured. This was, of course, also the version of Usagi that Murai had encountered a specter of during the masquerade; Murai interpreted this as a portent and went to aid Serenity; she would serve as Serenity's bodyguard for the next several months, until she regained her memories of her current incarnation - as a princess, Serenity was used to such an entourage, and Murai was worried about the possible political fallout of Serenity going unsupervised, especially since Usagi had made some not-particuarly-wise alliances in the game. Of particular concern was Usagi's close relationship with Gamzee, who had also been maimed during the denizen battle and was recuperating on Usagi's planet; Murai was able to defuse the situation when the Grand Highblood demanded his return. Also waiting on Serenity was Madame Eyes, a woman who Murai respected as competent and canny, but did not entirely trust.
While guarding and advising Serenity, Murai also continued to offer support to newcomers, both with her monthly guide posts (which did not get any less obnoxiously long and involved) and with keeping an eye out for other people's memos asking for advice and help.
After the disappearance of his moirail, Sollux Captor (who previously had been willingly colluding with the Horrorterrors anyway) kind of went around the bend and started hacking into the game code on a large scale; he destablized the game world, increased the spawn rate on the hostile Underlings, and then switched everyone's powers around. The other players responded by grumbling a lot and banding together; as an existing organized group of players, Serenity's entourage took in several other players as the situation deteriorated. Eventually, Sollux finished his long slide into a complete mental breakdown, deleted several planets including Brass and Frogs, attempted to doublecross the Horrorterrors, and put as much of the damage to rights as possible before dying and having his resurrected dreamself captured by the Horrorterrors.
Shortly after this, Serenity/Usagi achieved the God Tier powerup and in the process regained her memories; Usagi no longer required Murai's aid as an attendant and guard, but the girls parted as friends.
The next influx of new players included Sleipnir O'Hara, Theo's fiancee (this was actually the second time Sleipnir had been in the game, having disappeared several months before; Murai had not known her well the first time around, but Karkat had been fond of her). A few months later, Murai would officiate at their wedding, as the only religious official in the game who was not a murderous troll clown.
More than a month after taking Sollux hostage, the Horrorterrors used him to contact the other players and offer a deal: Sollux's return in return for several other players' dreamselves as collateral and a speedy resolution or forfeit of Sburb. Human Karkat attempted to volunteer himself as a hostage; Murai helped talk him down. However, and against the better judgement of a number of players including Murai, several of the other players did surrender their dreamselves. Sollux was returned, and they were given a deadline: win the game, or forfeit and allow the game to be reset (and everyone in it erased) within two months. As even with the Land of Brass and Frogs restored, the players still had only the vaguest idea of what was necessary to win the game and many thought that two months would not be enough, a number of players began making contingency plans.
Even with plans to doublecross the Horrorterrors in place (hopefully without anyone getting horribly tortured for their pains, this time), the Sburb players did kick into high gear, training, alchemizing better gear, and confronting their denizens at a much higher rate than previously. Many of the denizens allowed a nonviolent resolution with their individual players, sometimes a nonviolent resolution that other players could aid in some part of; Murai helped solve crossword puzzle barriers on Cassandra's land and accompanied the questing party that went to confront Signless's denizen, acting as decoys and distractions while Signless resolved the situation and therefore facing another round of the same sorts of illusions as during the masquerade (Murai was able to keep her head this time, although she was rather upset when a specter of Human Karkat approached her and attempted to make out with her - she later was reassured when she encountered the real Karkat).
And, eventually, Murai went to confront her own Denizen, Jumala, who had for more than a year prevented any rain from falling on her Land of Channels and Tempests. He claimed to have been acting in her interests, as the more interesting and valuable areas of the planet would otherwise be flooded; Murai answered that she was concerned only for the wellbeing of the dugong consorts that occupied the planet. In response, Jumala offered a deal: if Murai was really so unconcerned with the treasures of LoCaT, then she should travel to a recently drained complex on the other side of the planet and destroy the artifact she discovered there. If she did this, he would release the rains, and she would be counted as victorious for the purposes of Sburb. Murai agreed, and upon reaching the chamber, found that it contained her quest bed - an artifact which, when the designated player died upon it, would allow them to resurrect as a god tier hero. Murai briefly considered backing out of the deal and killing herself there to achieve god tier; ultimately, she decided that a quick and bloodless resolution with her denizen was worth more than a prestigious powerup in the game, and destroyed the quest bed. True to Jumala's word, the rains immediately began to fall.
And continued to fall for some time; while this was unquestionably good news for the dugongs, the torrential rains rendered the planet less than comfortable for Murai for few weeks, and she went to stay with Karkat, who was now living on the planet of a recently arrived friend and cousin of his from home, a younger human version of Gamzee Makara. Although similarly eccentric and entrenched in the occult, Human Gamzee was as approachable as Troll Gamzee was standoffish, and Murai quickly became fond of him. Murai went with them to help with paradox cloning the original three players - necessary for the proper causality of the game system - and comforted Gamzee when the Grand Highblood, who he associated with his grandfather, disappeared. Honestly, Murai was glad to have someone to talk to about the Highblood's disappearance in terms other than relief; her relationship with the troll had never been comfortable, but she had always been as intrigued as she was frightened, and he had been the closest thing to a colleague she'd had in the game.
Despite rapid and dramatic progress in the game, the Sburb players did not manage to finish the game within the two-month deadline; the hostages managed to escape via deft use of going god-tier, and the players put up their strongest defenses against the horrorterrors as they continued to work toward finishing the game and escaping to what they now understood to be an entirely new universe. However, while the players finally had their act together and managed to breed the ultimate frog, their long ineptitude had caused severe stress to the political atmosphere on Prospit, the planet of game constructs that were meant to act as the players' allies; Prospitian rebels assassinated their own Queen, prompting the White King to surrender and triggering final endgame conditions. The players mustered their forces and gathered on the final battleground of Skaia, where they fought the Black Queen - Murai and Karkat once again watching each other's backs for as long as possible in the chaos, although they eventually became separated, and Karkat was (temporarily) killed on the battlefield, necesitating ressurection where he dreamed on Derse. Having defeated the Queen, the players prepared to take on the Black King - when the leader of the rebel Prospitian Sisterhood appeared, killed the Black King, and put the players to rout.
The players fell back to their planets, pausing to rescue dreamselves and recently resurrected battle casualties from Prospit, and regrouped to consider their options. On the one hand, their Ultimate Reward, the gate into the new universe, was on Skaia. On the other hand, the Prospitian forces were guarding it, and also were hunting for the players throughout the Incipisphere. As more and more planets were attacked by Prospitian Warships, some of the more powerful players - notably Vladik Vathek, another adult highblooded troll - decided to launch a direct counterattack; many of the other players retreated to Cassandra's castle home to regroup. Murai talked Human Gamzee out of joining Vladik, and also reached out to Effy, a human girl who Vladik had taken under his wing; Effy chose to stay with her patron, but Murai promised to come and retrieve her if she wished to rejoin the group.
As the Prospitian bombardment continued, the players had to abandon Cassandra's planet and move to hiding in the Veil, the meteor belt that formed a kind of no-man's-land where both Prospit and Derse had once had scientific installations; while hiding in the Veil, the players discovered an opportunity to view their pasts (which Murai declined to use) and then, the next day, held what was termed a "cry party," an event to memorialize the various players killed or disappeared in the course of the game (during which Murai endeavored to make a list of the many players who had disappeared, with an eye toward making a more permanent memorial once they'd made it into the new universe). They looked for weapons left behind by the Prospitians and Dersites.
And then the Horrorterrors contacted them once more, finally showing their cards - the manipulation of the nature of the session had disabled destiny as a force operating on the players; if they left the Incipisphere, the effect would spread to the entire multiverse. This news troubled the players less than the Horrorterrors thought it should, although Murai was relatively more unsettled by the news than most of her fellow players; fate and destiny were well-documented forces in her home reality, and ones she had learned to be comfortable with. However, she was willing to cooperate with the general consensus of the other players and continue to work toward entering the new universe.
The players had found the firepower needed to beat back the Prospitian rebel forces and leave the Incipisphere. There was, however, one more consideration - reasearch determined that there was a possibility of returning to their home realities, but to do so, they would leave portals open which any entity in the Incipisphere could use, and if given the chance, the Prospitian rebels were likely to move on to other worlds and universes in their quest to sabotage the system of Sburb. Therefore, if anyone was going to go home rather than moving on, they would have to first access the game code once more and erase all native life from the Incipisphere. The majority of players found this unacceptable, as not only the Prospitians and Dersites but also the Denizens and Consorts of each planet were sapient beings in their own right; a few players, desperate to return to their homes, made an attempt to reach the computer that would allow such a change to be made, but a small force of guards, including Murai, fended them off.
And finally, after more than a year and a half of intrigue, infighting, quasifamilial bonding, feuding, and really disastrous parties, the players of Sburb were ready to step forward into their new universe, bringing self-determination to all of Paradox Space.
Those that didn't get snapped up by We the Lost's Being, anyway. Murai's going to be taking an unscheduled detour. I guess that's what happens when you throw predestination out the window.
How did they change from their canon personality wise (Please explain what caused it to happen?):
Murai has, over the course of Jarjammed, become significantly more independent; while the events of her canon had rebuilt her self-confidence, Murai at the end of the comic was still very much a follower, and this carried over to her early days in Sburb. When she first entered the game, her initial instinct was to seek out an authority figure. Fortunately, this lead her to the Summoner and, on his recommendation, the Signless; there were much worse people who Murai could have adopted as a surrogate commander. However, the chaotic nature of the game - and, perhaps, the anti-establishment bent of some of the people with whom she chose to associate - made Murai's habit of finding a reasonable authority figure to follow hard to maintain. At the same time, her growing reputation as a fair, intelligent, and helpful person lent her a certain degree of influence with the other players. By the time the Summoner disappeared from the game, Murai was more comfortable acting on her own initiative rather than looking to another for orders or - as in the case with Serenity - serving as an adviser rather than simply a subordinate; by the time Sburb had been won, Murai, while still perhaps happiest when able to support another person's authority, was comfortable expressing her opinion in fora that included the most influential members of the player base, seeking out new alliances and making new plans on her own, and asserting herself in situations where she felt she had relevant training or intelligence.
At the same time, Murai has learned, to a certain degree, to relax. Her childhood was extremely atypical and her early adolescence marked by a severely traumatic event that led to the development of a mental illness she still struggles with; prior to Sburb, Murai had not really had the opportunity to just be a teenager. While Sburb was a difficult, dangerous situation with delicate politics and frequent life-or-death scenarios, it also provided time and opportunity for casual interaction with other kids her own age in a way she'd never really experienced. Playful banter with Cassandra, word games with Ghost (who, although ageless, was frequently childlike), discussing books and movies and the more whimsical kind of philosophy with Human Karkat and Gamzee, being introduced to video games and junk food by Usagi - all encouraged Murai to set aside her professional concerns from time to time and enjoy herself. She is still incredibly serious and stoic by nature, but she's less apt to consider herself on duty every waking moment, and her wry sense of humor makes an appearance more often.
How did they change from their canon physically (Please explain what caused it to happen?):
Murai has not physically changed to any significant degree during Sburb, save that the freshly-healed broken arm with which she entered the game has since fully recovered, the bone fully knitted and the muscle-tone regained. Overall, she may be slightly physically stronger. Otherwise, Murai is the same slight, athletic teenage girl with a shaved head and a habit of dressing in dark robes and opaque veil.
Powers:
Murai's primary power is her sensitivity to the Divine; she is able to perceive and recognize gods and similar powers that be in ways that most mortals are not capable of, and furthermore is able to detect when a divine power has been corrupted in some way - this particular aura, which Murai refers to as the Shining Dark, is also a major trigger for her PTSD.
Sburb additionally granted her powers as the Warden of Zeal, which primarily give her a supernatural ability to motivate or, conversely, to sooth a manic state. She is inexperienced in using these powers, and less than comfortable with them.
Possessions:
Murai brings:
-three changes of clothes, her veil, and her sandals
-a belt knife
-weaponry:
--standard issue sword of the Veiled (plain, utilitarian, anti-demon enchantments)
--Space Sword (aquired on Usagi's planet)
--Gunblade of the Veiled (alchemized with a gun)
-her copies of:
--Action Comics No. 1
--the Disciple's writings
--Chicken Soup for the Sailor Soldier's Soul
Please provide three samples from your previous game, at least one will have to be third person with context:
Sample One: Murai: Check in on acquaintance: Murai is worried about Cassandra.
Sample Two: Murai: Ill-advised memo: Because exactly what Murai didn't need after waking up on Derse was a confrontation with the Grand Highblood.
Sample Three: And the stars fell out of the sky: Shortly after the Highblood's disappearance, Murai and Human Gamzee have a conversation about grief and destiny, among other things.
Bonus TL;DR Sample: Murai: Continue your habit of putting useful information all in the same place: Infodump memo, including such topics as "how not to die horribly your first week" and "why Jay Zimin needs to shut up."
Player Contact:
Character Name: Murai
Canon: Digger
Game Transplant:
jarjammed Original App: Jarjammed App
Game Summary: The premise of Jarjammed borrowed heavily from the webcomic Homestuck; the setting and general game mechanics were defined by the extra-universal "game" of Sburb, which, through a video-game interface superficially similar to games like The Sims, draws players into a pocket universe (the "Incipisphere" or the "Medium" - the terms refer to slightly different divisions of the setting but can be used more or less interchangably) where they are responsible for creating a new full-scale universe by way of fulfilling stereotypical video game "quests" and ultimately breeding an ideal frog as the representation of the new universe. In this case, the original players of the game failed rather badly, two of them dying. In desperation, the sole surviving player hacked into the game's software to find more players, recruiting them randomly and blindly from all over the multiverse.
This didn't work out so well as she might have hoped, as it took the resulting bloated and constantly changing player base more than a year and a half and considerable outside pressure to get their act together long enough to stop throwing parties and/or trying to murder each other, and finish the game.
How long was your character in Game: Approximately fifteen months
History of Character in their Game: Murai arrived in Sburb early in the game, entering the Medium on the tail-end of the initial rush of new players, when the influx slowed from a new batch every week to a new batch each month. At the time, little was known about their situation and the social dynamics of the group were still very much in flux. After a smooth entry - Murai got along well with her server player, although she never spoke to him after entry and he disappeared within a few weeks, and with her client, Ghost, a disembodied spirit with whom she would form a strong friendship of many months - Murai's initial act was to take to the network and make a memo introducing herself and asking after any other players who served the gods. This memo netted her a few friends, but also brought her to the attention of the Grand Highblood, a highblooded troll and a tyrannical warrior-priest of bloodthirsty gods who presented himself as an avatar of the same. Due to a timely warning from the Summoner, a rebel leader from the Grand Highblood's homeworld, Murai treated the Highblood with wary respect but declined to meet him in person. A few days later, when the Grand Highblood took one of the human players, Cassandra Mortmain, hostage in a display of power and psychological warfare, Murai approached the Summoner to offer her aid in the rescue effort. Although with her existing mental illness she was unwilling to risk joining the actual rescue party, she did contribute through providing recon and helping to organize their allies.
She helped with a second, unrelated rescue mission soon after, when the human Eridan Ampora, another new player, became lost on his chaotic and mind-altering planet. A friend of his from before Sburb, the human Karkat Vantas, asked for help in rescuing him; Murai answered the call. The search party eventually managed to locate and retrieve Eridan, although not before he totally flipped out and tried to kill them.
Sburb glitched a week or two later, causing a number of players to switch bodies; Murai was unchanged, and in the course of finding out who else was unaffected, found that she had given the Grand Highblood and the Handmaid, another high-powered troll player, a forum for bickering; concerned about Cassandra (who had been replying to the same memo), Murai asked them to leave, then banned both trolls, and then messaged Cassandra to check on her. In the following conversation, Murai recounted her own experiences as the victim of psychic attacks, and the two girls struck up a mutually supportive if slightly distant friendship that would last the rest of the game.
Her attempt to reach out to Gamzee Makara, the Grand Highblood's protege, was less successful; she found the young troll moody and uncooperative.
Through most of the following spring and summer, Murai settled into Sburb, spending a good deal of time questing on her own planet. In terms of the social game, she attempted to act as an advisor and mediator when possible, a role which she saw as an expression of her duties as a priest of the Veil. Human Karkat made a somewhat ill-advised memo musing on the morality of killing the game-generated monsters that threatened the players; Murai was one of the few who did not either take offense or mock him for it, and offered a sounding board if he wanted to talk about such concerns in the future. Azula made a memo for the express purpose of baiting several newcomers from her home reality; Murai told her off for bringing unnecessary conflict into an already chaotic situation. She lent her support to discussions of forming a code of law within Sburb (which never really panned out) and of staging weapons lessons for players who had joined the game with no previous combat experience (which was ultimately more successful, if never precisely organized), and offered assistance to a number of new arrivals into the game. When an unidentified vampiric player (in reality Alice Cullen, although she was never identified) preyed on another player's consorts, Murai offered advice on the possible varieties of vampires to the players attempting to find the killer.
Most of the time, her advice was accepted with either consideration or polite indifference; one major exception came when she attempted to warn Jay Zimin from picking fights with known associates of the Grand Highblood; Jay took offense to Murai's manner and exception to her warning, and took it upon himself to publicly seek out other player's opinions of the Grand Highblood. The situation cumulated several days later in Jay getting (temporarily, thanks to Sburb's resurrection mechanics) killed by the Grand Highblood.
Then, some four months after Murai's arrival in Sburb, players whose dream-selves dwelt on Derse began to have a series of deeply symbolic nightmares. Murai was among those afflicted. After several dreams that highlighted her own capacity for misplaced trust and the possible consequences of manipulation by authority figures, she was beginning to realize that these dreams contained accurate information about other players that she had not had the opportunity to learn and therefore had to have an outside source, but did not have time to act on this realization when her next nightmare startled her awake not on her own Land of Channels and Tempests, but in her dream tower on Derse.
Derse's proximity to the eldritch horrors known as Horrorterrors was enough to set off the more severe aspects of Murai's mental illness, including her PTSD and what is either schizophrenia or low-grade divine possession, triggering a panic attack during which she made an incredibly disjointed memo on the network. Her friends attempted to figure out what was wrong, the Grand Highblood took the opportunity to make another attempt at converting her, and Ghost, her client, basically sassed the Highblood until he went away. Karkat came to visit Murai on her planet, and with his newly-developed game-given powers as Monk of Calm was able to sooth her until she regained her senses.
Over the next few days, as Murai recovered from her ordeal, she had conversations with both Gamzee (who offered somewhat awkward support and advice) and the Grand Highblood (to whom she attempted to apologize for her incoherent accusations of charlatanry). Neither conversation went as well as might be hoped, as Murai was still badly shaken and a little confused, but overall it improved her understanding of and working relationship with both trolls.
One of the long-term players, a troll known as the Signless, hosted a masquerade ball on his planet a few weeks later; Murai attended, after asking Cassandra for help in concocting something appropriate to wear for the occasion, and spoke with a number of other players, including Signless (a very considerate host), Karkat (who admitted he didn't intend to stay long), and Karkat's friend Theo (who Murai found polite if a bit odd). Several hours into the party, Signless's denizen (a monster designated as the end-boss of his Sburb quests) intruded, casting illusions over the entire party that disoriented the guests and changed their disguises to reflect some hidden secret of each person, as well as setting malicious specters of several people loose to mess with their friends and loved ones. Murai's new guise was that of the Black Mother, the goddess who had driven her mad in the first place; catching a glimpse of herself in a reflection triggered another breakdown, and she was helpless until the Iron Giant discovered her and broke the mirror. He didn't understand why his actions had helped, but was glad to have done something to help someone (having spent most of his own time in the game feeling increasingly helpless and useless) and the two of them spent some time together before being once again separated by the mists. After this, Murai encountered a spectre of Queen Serenity, a former incarnation of fellow player Usagi Tsukino, which asked Murai to look for her after the masquerade.
Although Murai agreed to do so, this mission was quickly overshadowed - immediately after the masquerade, Arya Stark accused Theo of murdering Karkat on the strength of something she'd seen during the masquerade. Murai cautioned her that it was quite likely that what she'd seen were specters, as Karkat had to the best of her knowledge left well before the illusions arrived and although it was a little worrying that no one had been able to contact Karkat, there were many places on Karkat's planet where he was unable to access the network. Arya refused to be reasoned with; while Arya led a vigilante party against Theo, Murai traveled to Karkat's planet and managed to locate him and bring him back in time to defuse the situation, although not before both Arya and Theo were badly injured fighting each other. As all of this was going down, Murai also messaged the Iron Giant to check in on him, and finding him depressed and confused, attempted to reassure him.
In general, tensions ran high in the wake of the masquerade, it took a few weeks for everyone to sort out exactly what had and hadn't happened, during which time several influential players disappeared from the game - disappearances were not unheard of, as the Incipisphere attempted to regain some equilibrium from the frequent new arrivals, but it was disruptive when people with many close ties to other players disappeared; Murai was particularly discouraged by the disappearance of the Summoner, especially when his disappearance and the Condesce's severely upset the Grand Highblood. The Signless was indisposed for a long time after confronting his Denizen at the masquerade; when he returned to the public eye, he was strangely fatalistic and it quickly became clear that he was, to some degree, being controlled by the Horrorterrors.
Then Sburb glitched again, this time imposing a variety of strange physical and/or psychological prototypings on the players, and Murai was a sentient swarm of bees for a week, which she found disorienting but not as distressing as some of the other players found theirs. During the prototyping glitch, Doctor Horrible laid waste to a number of other players' planets. Karkat and the Giant attempted to confront him about it at the end of the week; Doctor Horrible disintegrated the Iron Giant, killing him permanently, and then went into hiding. Karkat and Murai were both crushed by the Giant's death; Murai was further upset when Ghost, her client player and friend, disappeared from the game a few days later.
When the next batch of new players arrived, Murai took it upon herself to write an introductory guide to Sburb, stepping into a role of orienting new players which previously had been primarily occupied by the Summoner. Her guide was several hundred words long, and would be expanded and updated for each new influx of players for the rest of Sburb, often prompting complaints that it was too long and dense to be of any real use. Also at about this time, Hobbes the stuffed tiger discovered that he was not, precisely, real; Murai attempted to reassure him that his existence as an imaginary friend was valid.
In the continuing saga of "everything happens at the least convenient time," that was also the point that Karkat's troll double (generally just referred to as Troll Karkat) doped himself up on his Page of Peace powers and decided that the logical next step was to do the same for as many players as possible. Murai, already uncomfortably aware of her own mental and emotional fragility and struggling with grief over Giant's death, agreed to be Peaced with minimal objection, and as a result when Human Karkat held a funeral for Giant, Murai attended in a rather troubling haze of Peace.
The Peace lasted only a few days, and when she returned to the usual range of emotional responses, Murai did not seek out a second "treatment." She apologized to Human Karkat for her conduct and found him in an altered state of his own; when questioned, he readily admitted to working with the Horrorterrors and urged Murai to consider doing the same, although he quickly backed off when she reminded him of the effect that simple proximity to the Horrorterrors had on her. It quickly became clear, however, that Karkat and Signless were not the only players thus compromised; many other cases of varying degrees of possession came to light, and before the other players could determine how to free the Horrorterrors' pawns, the Horrorterrors used them to carry out a blood ritual which created sinister doubles of all the planets. The following weeks were spent slowly eliminating the monsters' influence over the players, with varying degrees of success.
This led to what was possibly the first major push for actually getting things done in Sburb; several players made attempts to gather information on the powers available within the player base, Murai continued to provide support and information to newcomers, and eventually a large number of players got together to take on the Denizen of one of the deceased original players, whose planet was, apparently, necessary to completing the game but all but inaccessable as long as the Denizen was present. Murai was among the players who traveled to the Land of Brass and Frogs to fight Nisaeg, teaming up with Human Karkat to fight side by side. The players ultimately killed the Denizen, and both Murai and Karkat came though relatively unscathed.
Many of the players did not. Of particular relevance to Murai was that Usagi awoke after the battle with the memories and personality of her previous incarnation, Serenity, and therefore severely disoriented as well as badly injured. This was, of course, also the version of Usagi that Murai had encountered a specter of during the masquerade; Murai interpreted this as a portent and went to aid Serenity; she would serve as Serenity's bodyguard for the next several months, until she regained her memories of her current incarnation - as a princess, Serenity was used to such an entourage, and Murai was worried about the possible political fallout of Serenity going unsupervised, especially since Usagi had made some not-particuarly-wise alliances in the game. Of particular concern was Usagi's close relationship with Gamzee, who had also been maimed during the denizen battle and was recuperating on Usagi's planet; Murai was able to defuse the situation when the Grand Highblood demanded his return. Also waiting on Serenity was Madame Eyes, a woman who Murai respected as competent and canny, but did not entirely trust.
While guarding and advising Serenity, Murai also continued to offer support to newcomers, both with her monthly guide posts (which did not get any less obnoxiously long and involved) and with keeping an eye out for other people's memos asking for advice and help.
After the disappearance of his moirail, Sollux Captor (who previously had been willingly colluding with the Horrorterrors anyway) kind of went around the bend and started hacking into the game code on a large scale; he destablized the game world, increased the spawn rate on the hostile Underlings, and then switched everyone's powers around. The other players responded by grumbling a lot and banding together; as an existing organized group of players, Serenity's entourage took in several other players as the situation deteriorated. Eventually, Sollux finished his long slide into a complete mental breakdown, deleted several planets including Brass and Frogs, attempted to doublecross the Horrorterrors, and put as much of the damage to rights as possible before dying and having his resurrected dreamself captured by the Horrorterrors.
Shortly after this, Serenity/Usagi achieved the God Tier powerup and in the process regained her memories; Usagi no longer required Murai's aid as an attendant and guard, but the girls parted as friends.
The next influx of new players included Sleipnir O'Hara, Theo's fiancee (this was actually the second time Sleipnir had been in the game, having disappeared several months before; Murai had not known her well the first time around, but Karkat had been fond of her). A few months later, Murai would officiate at their wedding, as the only religious official in the game who was not a murderous troll clown.
More than a month after taking Sollux hostage, the Horrorterrors used him to contact the other players and offer a deal: Sollux's return in return for several other players' dreamselves as collateral and a speedy resolution or forfeit of Sburb. Human Karkat attempted to volunteer himself as a hostage; Murai helped talk him down. However, and against the better judgement of a number of players including Murai, several of the other players did surrender their dreamselves. Sollux was returned, and they were given a deadline: win the game, or forfeit and allow the game to be reset (and everyone in it erased) within two months. As even with the Land of Brass and Frogs restored, the players still had only the vaguest idea of what was necessary to win the game and many thought that two months would not be enough, a number of players began making contingency plans.
Even with plans to doublecross the Horrorterrors in place (hopefully without anyone getting horribly tortured for their pains, this time), the Sburb players did kick into high gear, training, alchemizing better gear, and confronting their denizens at a much higher rate than previously. Many of the denizens allowed a nonviolent resolution with their individual players, sometimes a nonviolent resolution that other players could aid in some part of; Murai helped solve crossword puzzle barriers on Cassandra's land and accompanied the questing party that went to confront Signless's denizen, acting as decoys and distractions while Signless resolved the situation and therefore facing another round of the same sorts of illusions as during the masquerade (Murai was able to keep her head this time, although she was rather upset when a specter of Human Karkat approached her and attempted to make out with her - she later was reassured when she encountered the real Karkat).
And, eventually, Murai went to confront her own Denizen, Jumala, who had for more than a year prevented any rain from falling on her Land of Channels and Tempests. He claimed to have been acting in her interests, as the more interesting and valuable areas of the planet would otherwise be flooded; Murai answered that she was concerned only for the wellbeing of the dugong consorts that occupied the planet. In response, Jumala offered a deal: if Murai was really so unconcerned with the treasures of LoCaT, then she should travel to a recently drained complex on the other side of the planet and destroy the artifact she discovered there. If she did this, he would release the rains, and she would be counted as victorious for the purposes of Sburb. Murai agreed, and upon reaching the chamber, found that it contained her quest bed - an artifact which, when the designated player died upon it, would allow them to resurrect as a god tier hero. Murai briefly considered backing out of the deal and killing herself there to achieve god tier; ultimately, she decided that a quick and bloodless resolution with her denizen was worth more than a prestigious powerup in the game, and destroyed the quest bed. True to Jumala's word, the rains immediately began to fall.
And continued to fall for some time; while this was unquestionably good news for the dugongs, the torrential rains rendered the planet less than comfortable for Murai for few weeks, and she went to stay with Karkat, who was now living on the planet of a recently arrived friend and cousin of his from home, a younger human version of Gamzee Makara. Although similarly eccentric and entrenched in the occult, Human Gamzee was as approachable as Troll Gamzee was standoffish, and Murai quickly became fond of him. Murai went with them to help with paradox cloning the original three players - necessary for the proper causality of the game system - and comforted Gamzee when the Grand Highblood, who he associated with his grandfather, disappeared. Honestly, Murai was glad to have someone to talk to about the Highblood's disappearance in terms other than relief; her relationship with the troll had never been comfortable, but she had always been as intrigued as she was frightened, and he had been the closest thing to a colleague she'd had in the game.
Despite rapid and dramatic progress in the game, the Sburb players did not manage to finish the game within the two-month deadline; the hostages managed to escape via deft use of going god-tier, and the players put up their strongest defenses against the horrorterrors as they continued to work toward finishing the game and escaping to what they now understood to be an entirely new universe. However, while the players finally had their act together and managed to breed the ultimate frog, their long ineptitude had caused severe stress to the political atmosphere on Prospit, the planet of game constructs that were meant to act as the players' allies; Prospitian rebels assassinated their own Queen, prompting the White King to surrender and triggering final endgame conditions. The players mustered their forces and gathered on the final battleground of Skaia, where they fought the Black Queen - Murai and Karkat once again watching each other's backs for as long as possible in the chaos, although they eventually became separated, and Karkat was (temporarily) killed on the battlefield, necesitating ressurection where he dreamed on Derse. Having defeated the Queen, the players prepared to take on the Black King - when the leader of the rebel Prospitian Sisterhood appeared, killed the Black King, and put the players to rout.
The players fell back to their planets, pausing to rescue dreamselves and recently resurrected battle casualties from Prospit, and regrouped to consider their options. On the one hand, their Ultimate Reward, the gate into the new universe, was on Skaia. On the other hand, the Prospitian forces were guarding it, and also were hunting for the players throughout the Incipisphere. As more and more planets were attacked by Prospitian Warships, some of the more powerful players - notably Vladik Vathek, another adult highblooded troll - decided to launch a direct counterattack; many of the other players retreated to Cassandra's castle home to regroup. Murai talked Human Gamzee out of joining Vladik, and also reached out to Effy, a human girl who Vladik had taken under his wing; Effy chose to stay with her patron, but Murai promised to come and retrieve her if she wished to rejoin the group.
As the Prospitian bombardment continued, the players had to abandon Cassandra's planet and move to hiding in the Veil, the meteor belt that formed a kind of no-man's-land where both Prospit and Derse had once had scientific installations; while hiding in the Veil, the players discovered an opportunity to view their pasts (which Murai declined to use) and then, the next day, held what was termed a "cry party," an event to memorialize the various players killed or disappeared in the course of the game (during which Murai endeavored to make a list of the many players who had disappeared, with an eye toward making a more permanent memorial once they'd made it into the new universe). They looked for weapons left behind by the Prospitians and Dersites.
And then the Horrorterrors contacted them once more, finally showing their cards - the manipulation of the nature of the session had disabled destiny as a force operating on the players; if they left the Incipisphere, the effect would spread to the entire multiverse. This news troubled the players less than the Horrorterrors thought it should, although Murai was relatively more unsettled by the news than most of her fellow players; fate and destiny were well-documented forces in her home reality, and ones she had learned to be comfortable with. However, she was willing to cooperate with the general consensus of the other players and continue to work toward entering the new universe.
The players had found the firepower needed to beat back the Prospitian rebel forces and leave the Incipisphere. There was, however, one more consideration - reasearch determined that there was a possibility of returning to their home realities, but to do so, they would leave portals open which any entity in the Incipisphere could use, and if given the chance, the Prospitian rebels were likely to move on to other worlds and universes in their quest to sabotage the system of Sburb. Therefore, if anyone was going to go home rather than moving on, they would have to first access the game code once more and erase all native life from the Incipisphere. The majority of players found this unacceptable, as not only the Prospitians and Dersites but also the Denizens and Consorts of each planet were sapient beings in their own right; a few players, desperate to return to their homes, made an attempt to reach the computer that would allow such a change to be made, but a small force of guards, including Murai, fended them off.
And finally, after more than a year and a half of intrigue, infighting, quasifamilial bonding, feuding, and really disastrous parties, the players of Sburb were ready to step forward into their new universe, bringing self-determination to all of Paradox Space.
Those that didn't get snapped up by We the Lost's Being, anyway. Murai's going to be taking an unscheduled detour. I guess that's what happens when you throw predestination out the window.
How did they change from their canon personality wise (Please explain what caused it to happen?):
Murai has, over the course of Jarjammed, become significantly more independent; while the events of her canon had rebuilt her self-confidence, Murai at the end of the comic was still very much a follower, and this carried over to her early days in Sburb. When she first entered the game, her initial instinct was to seek out an authority figure. Fortunately, this lead her to the Summoner and, on his recommendation, the Signless; there were much worse people who Murai could have adopted as a surrogate commander. However, the chaotic nature of the game - and, perhaps, the anti-establishment bent of some of the people with whom she chose to associate - made Murai's habit of finding a reasonable authority figure to follow hard to maintain. At the same time, her growing reputation as a fair, intelligent, and helpful person lent her a certain degree of influence with the other players. By the time the Summoner disappeared from the game, Murai was more comfortable acting on her own initiative rather than looking to another for orders or - as in the case with Serenity - serving as an adviser rather than simply a subordinate; by the time Sburb had been won, Murai, while still perhaps happiest when able to support another person's authority, was comfortable expressing her opinion in fora that included the most influential members of the player base, seeking out new alliances and making new plans on her own, and asserting herself in situations where she felt she had relevant training or intelligence.
At the same time, Murai has learned, to a certain degree, to relax. Her childhood was extremely atypical and her early adolescence marked by a severely traumatic event that led to the development of a mental illness she still struggles with; prior to Sburb, Murai had not really had the opportunity to just be a teenager. While Sburb was a difficult, dangerous situation with delicate politics and frequent life-or-death scenarios, it also provided time and opportunity for casual interaction with other kids her own age in a way she'd never really experienced. Playful banter with Cassandra, word games with Ghost (who, although ageless, was frequently childlike), discussing books and movies and the more whimsical kind of philosophy with Human Karkat and Gamzee, being introduced to video games and junk food by Usagi - all encouraged Murai to set aside her professional concerns from time to time and enjoy herself. She is still incredibly serious and stoic by nature, but she's less apt to consider herself on duty every waking moment, and her wry sense of humor makes an appearance more often.
How did they change from their canon physically (Please explain what caused it to happen?):
Murai has not physically changed to any significant degree during Sburb, save that the freshly-healed broken arm with which she entered the game has since fully recovered, the bone fully knitted and the muscle-tone regained. Overall, she may be slightly physically stronger. Otherwise, Murai is the same slight, athletic teenage girl with a shaved head and a habit of dressing in dark robes and opaque veil.
Powers:
Murai's primary power is her sensitivity to the Divine; she is able to perceive and recognize gods and similar powers that be in ways that most mortals are not capable of, and furthermore is able to detect when a divine power has been corrupted in some way - this particular aura, which Murai refers to as the Shining Dark, is also a major trigger for her PTSD.
Sburb additionally granted her powers as the Warden of Zeal, which primarily give her a supernatural ability to motivate or, conversely, to sooth a manic state. She is inexperienced in using these powers, and less than comfortable with them.
Possessions:
Murai brings:
-three changes of clothes, her veil, and her sandals
-a belt knife
-weaponry:
--standard issue sword of the Veiled (plain, utilitarian, anti-demon enchantments)
--Space Sword (aquired on Usagi's planet)
--Gunblade of the Veiled (alchemized with a gun)
-her copies of:
--Action Comics No. 1
--the Disciple's writings
--Chicken Soup for the Sailor Soldier's Soul
Please provide three samples from your previous game, at least one will have to be third person with context:
Sample One: Murai: Check in on acquaintance: Murai is worried about Cassandra.
Sample Two: Murai: Ill-advised memo: Because exactly what Murai didn't need after waking up on Derse was a confrontation with the Grand Highblood.
Sample Three: And the stars fell out of the sky: Shortly after the Highblood's disappearance, Murai and Human Gamzee have a conversation about grief and destiny, among other things.
Bonus TL;DR Sample: Murai: Continue your habit of putting useful information all in the same place: Infodump memo, including such topics as "how not to die horribly your first week" and "why Jay Zimin needs to shut up."