Character History Poll

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The Implacable Experiment

This character is an individual who has had close contact with the Empire after being used for human (or esper) experimentation in the Magitek Facility and has taken on a grotesque appearance. This character is aware of their disturbing appearance and their primary drive is to seek vengeance against those who have wronged him/her and to see that they are brought to justice.

This character would work well in FF6 as they would serve to show the more cruel and inhumane side of the Gestahlian Empire, especially when you consider how much Terra's past is lacking in filling in the darker parts of the Empire's history. This character would also ideally have a somewhat strange fighting style which would vary from the other characters, they also by merit of being a Magitek experiment could have a natural magic learning list.

This is the final poll for our character history, we have some good backstories here and its getting me excited for our next phase: concept art. So, artists, while you read, get your creative juices flowing. Without further adieu, here are our submissions!

"Miranda Captured" by Lockirby2 (Click to View)

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Gender: Female -> There's 10 male characters in FF6, and 3 female ones. My OCD is telling me to even out these numbers . Furthermore, this character would serve as sharp contrast to pretty much every other female character in video games (especially FF) who are ridiculously fan-servicey.

Hometown: Miranda

Backstory: This character, [name], started out as the leader of a small group of elite forces that were the defense of Miranda before the Imperial Army took over the cities on the southern continent. This small force was able to fend off the more numerous opposition for quite a while before General Celes was sent to torch the city. With the power of Magic, something this small force was not trained to deal with, Miranda was quickly taken. However, [name] survived, and Celes was so impressed with her tactical and fighting ability that she took [name] to the empire to be magically augmented (The original plan was to use a Slave Crown to control her if she decided not to co-operate). However, unbeknownst to everybody involved (even after all of these events unfold), Kefka decided to have a little "fun" with the conversion process, causing many physical deformations to occur. The failure of this augmenting horrifies Celes, partly because she feels responsible for it, and it disillusions her to the empire. She helps [name] to escape, but is branded a traitor for it. [name]'s story picks up when the party meets her, which will be determined later.

Pros:
-Explains why Celes became a traitor, and gives [name] a connection to at least one party member. It is a fairly deep connection, too, as there are a decent amount of both positive and negative emotions flowing between them.
-Sets up a scene where Kefka reveals that he was the one who tampered with the augmenting process. This will also give [name] a personal hatred for Kefka, and not just the empire.
-Definitely shows the cruelty of the Empire, which is what we were going for.

Cons:
-The elite group defending Miranda had no presence in the original story.
(it's harder to see cons in your own stuff )

"The Desertion" by Tin Man (Click to View)

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Gender: Doesn't really matter. I personally feel that this character might be better as a male, but like LockKirby I find the lack of females in this game, and the general fan-servicey treatment of female characters in FF games to be a bit strange.

Hometown: I was also thinking Maranda.

Backstory: This character will have been conscripted into the Gestahlian Empire's Army after the occupation of Maranda. After being forced to serve as a soldier this character begins to become guilt ridden and tries to escape. S/he is caught attempting dessertion and is taken back to Vector to serve their time in other ways. While there the character undergoes a drastic and experimental form of Magitek augmentation by an ambivalent Cid under the hostile supervision of Kefka. The party may encounter this character a couple times before s/he is recruited, but at least one encounter in the Magitek facility seems like it would be required, most likely with them discovering and releasing him/her from the facility.

Pros to this story:
-Displays military occupation by the Gestahlian Empire as being much more disruptive and evil to people's lives.
-Shows how the Empire creates consequences and punishments for those who oppose them, and how heavy handed they can be. This also serves as a foil to show how noble the Returners cause really is.
-Makes Cid's turning on the Empire seem less capricious and sudden, also allows for exploring his character more as he may be wracked with guilt over his part in ruining individual's lives and using his discoveries to propagate the banality of evil. (This also leads into a potential WoR sidestory.)

Cons:
-May require making a few extra sprites and events to display the past events.

"The Betrayed young citizen" by Madsiur (Click to View)

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Gender: Female.

Back history: This daughter of a South Figaro sailor was raised by a lonely old woman from Vector after the boat transporting her and her father sunk near the Southern Continent. She was then taken prisoner by the Empire in her teenage years after the old woman died an that Emperor Gestahl adopted a secret law to capture homeless [and unwanted] citizens for Magitek experimentations. During her captivity, she developed her hate towards the Empire that she was considering once her second home.

Possible encounters: She might have been in contact with Cid and/or Kefka and/or Celes during her captivity. She might also have been in contact with some Espers and talked with them. This all depends on how we want to develop her back story and the game events.


Pros:
- Rich backstory and relations with the actual characters of the game if we want any.
- Explain well why the character feels doubly betrayed by the Empire and explain her hatred.

Cons:
- Might require a lot of event creation, but isn't this the goal of this hack? ;)

For the record, guest votes are going to be deleted, please vote with your user account.

Again, it's a really hard choice here for me, so I will talk it out as I try to decide...

After reading all three more than a few times, I do see some similarities to Celes's story elements in both Maranda Captured & The Desertion, basically how she got captured for what I assume to be feeling guilty and/or trying to escape, and thus branded a traitor and getting locked up and all that stuff.. but overall they are both different enough to not feel too much like Celes.

I feel that The Desertion would work much better as a male character indeed for this reason, but like we are all thinking another female character is needed. Although, now that I think about it ...do we really want a disfigured female character??? Not sure how she would get portrayed as female characters are usually so pretty! Or 'cute' in Relm's case lol. The 'Beastly' disfigured characters are always male, right?

Out of the two, I would have to give the slight edge to Maranda Captured, just because I do like what it all adds to Celes's story and how it would help to flesh out and fill in some plot holes and unsolved mysteries to the original story. Then again though, I'm not sure how much attention/interaction she would have to receive from Celes to make it seem legit, since Celes is basically tied up in 'messing around' with Locke for the whole story lol.

In my opinion I feel the easiest to draft into the game would be The Desertion, followed by Miranda Captured, and then The Betrayed young citizen would be the most difficult to achieve and pull off nicely...although actually maybe not. That character (TBYC) might require the least amount of work to the preexisting story & events since it is so original. Hm, does that make since? Like Gogo or Umaro, but with much more dialog and substance lol.

I think that The Betrayed young citizen is easily the most original out of the three, and I love the idea of Gestahl having a secret initiative of abducting homeless and 'unwanted' people for the experiments! That is so Gestahl. I am really tempted to just choose this one - but at the same time I'm not sure if it would be as practical and convincing as the other two.

Final Thought: I do like the idea of another former Imperial joining the team, as well as someone that is totally original like TBYC...

In the end I'm going to have to go with:

Ugh, I'm still not sure yet... >_<

I love the idea of Gestahl having a secret initiative of abducting homeless and 'unwanted' people for the experiments! That is so Gestahl.

This was the primary reason I went with TBYC (TCBY? mmm....)

Concerning that aspect of the story, Zozo would be a great place to take people from! That would be the first place I would start taking people from if I was Gestahl. A fun story element to counter that with would be to have an NPC say that Gestahl is afraid of the ghetto, or hates the rain or something. I'm sure there's a much better reason to be had though, I'm just thinking ahead a bit. =)

I'm really leaning towards TBYC here... I'll give it a bit more thought though, in the case that I may wind up actually working on the character one way or another in the future, if needed

Well, after much thought I'm going with Maranda Captured. I can already feel for the character and can in-vision her story working out nicely inside FF6, as well as helping to fill in some story gaps and strengthening Celes's background as I stated earlier.

But the main reason I chose it over TBYC, is because I can't really in-vision that character (TBYC) taking on a grotesque appearance anywhere in that story synopsis. If it wasn't for the outward appearance change/disfigurement aspect, I would have gone with TBYC. And if the Character was a male, I would have gone with The Desertion. =)

P.S. It would have also helped my decision to know when and where exactly these characters would get recruited.

Ironically Nattak, that's the only one that you didn't vote for in the preliminary voting XD.
This is a hard decision for me to make, lol.

I can't really in-vision that character (TBYC) taking on a grotesque appearance anywhere in that story synopsis.

You know, I thought the same thing when I wrote my submission. But then I said to myself that she could have got that ugly/grotesque appearance because of the experiment (or is it already the case in the character concept... I don't remember...)

You know, I thought the same thing when I wrote my submission. But then I said to myself that she could have got that ugly/grotesque appearance because of the experiment (or is it already the case in the character concept... I don't remember...)

That's kind of what I figured. It would have been nice to have had more detail in any of the submissions about the experimentation that was done on them and the effects it had.

personally it was a very tough choice for me as well with choices 1 and 3

but in the end I went with the betrayed citizen because of a few reasons

just to name a few

I love the idea of the whole capturing orphans and the unwanted, its honestly something I would come up with (and am kinda pissed that I didn't lol)

also the fact that you are giving Zozo a bit more spotlight, seeing as how the creators could have done so much more with Zozo (and I don't mean the mountains in the WOR)

but yeah that's just 2 name a few lol