evil stepmother jack vessalius (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psychopath) wrote2013-05-07 11:28 pm
psychopath) wrote2013-05-07 11:28 pm
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exsilium
» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Numi
Current AGE: 18+
Player TIME ZONE: GMT+8
Personal JOURNAL:hypnos
IM & SERVICE: n/a
Player PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
surfacage
Current CHARACTERS: n/a
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Jack Vessalius
Canon & MEDIUM: Pandora Hearts
Canon PULL-POINT: Retrace 82, after Oz banishes him
Character AGE: 100+, physically 24
Character ABILITIES: Here's a wiki link, but to summarize: Jack is a master swordsman who can call upon a Chain, a powerful creature from the Abyss in the Pandora Hearts universe. Jack's Chain is called the Bloody Black Rabbit, or B.Rabbit for short. Chains are eldritch abominations that hold great power, called by a human from the nexus of the universe's creation, a shapeless place called the Abyss. It is implied that Jack's contract with the B. Rabbit is an illegal contract, as he isn't a Baskerville.
B. Rabbit gives Jack the ability to wield a scythe - blood-red, spiderwebbed glass, razor-sharp, taller than him - with preternatural ease, along with the ability to call upon chains that pierce through and disembowel enemies. The Chain itself is a killing machine that is feared even among its kind. His Chain also has the ability to break a world's 'chains', causing it to fall back into the place of its creation, the Abyss.
However, B. Rabbit is the real identity of Oz Vessalius; I have spoken with the current Oz-mun and we've agreed to work it out that Jack will still be able to use B. Rabbit, but Oz will be fully aware of whenever he does. We'll talk about it further when it comes up in-game, but no godmodding, I promise!
Character HISTORY: wiki link let's go
As an addition, since the wiki stops somewhere after the Tragedy of Sablier:
Jack was thrown out of the Abyss' hundred year cycle, left to wind and rewind in 24-year cycles (the age he had instigated the Tragedy), losing memories with every cycle. The only constant is Oz, the B. Rabbit, Jack's Chain, sharing his body, gaining more and more consciousness the more Jack's soul degrades. A century later, Zai Vessalius meets a child in a snowfall- Jack, on his last cycle before his memories vanish completely, and the latter convinces Zai to take Jack as a replacement for his stillborn son. Zai agrees, and his only heir is introduced to society: Oz Vessalius.
A hundred years later, Oz, the heir to the most important of the Houses, was thrown into the Abyss. Oz, Jack's Chain, reanimated in Jack's body, and Jack retained the contract. His soul was housed in Oz's, and the games began anew. Taking the role of the benevolent Hero, he carefully manipulated the boy - and Gilbert, Vincent, even, both who fell into the Abyss along with Sablier - into trying to prevent the Baskervilles from regrouping, from finding their master, from finding out the truth.
Alice, for some reason Jack couldn't fathom, was now the B. Rabbit, and held its powers. No matter. The girl would not stand between him and his goal. Through the diaries that he had Arthur fabricate - as Barmas were the historians of the dukedoms - nobody suspected that Jack was actively trying to recreate the Tragedy of Sablier itself, until it was too late.
Too late, too late, until Jack regained enough power to control Oz once again, to have his Chain cut the chains that held the world fast over oblivion. The dukedoms fell as Jack's lies and deception were uncovered wound by bloody, festering wound, and Oz was captured by the Baskervilles. Jack had to pull back because of exhaustion, but he had succeeded in cutting the world's chains again, similar to the Tragedy a century before. Gilbert, however, betrayed the Baskervilles and rescued Oz before he could be executed.
As they tried to escape, Jack goaded Oz more and more until he was able to bend the boy's will to take control of his body again. Things looked grim until Oscar, Oz's uncle, showed up to help them escape, talking sense into Oz and revealing that he just wanted Oz to be happy. This gave Oz enough strength to banish Jack and proceed to escape successfully from the Baskervilles.
TL;DR Basically Jack made Pandora Hearts happen.
He had intended to send the world after the woman that had been his raison d'être (into death), but Glen Baskerville, the guy who was supposed to see that that doesn't happen, stopped him. Glen also happened to be Jack's best friend, and Jack slew him in an attempt to get the party started once again. He failed, and even death sort of rejected him after what he tried to do.
Jack framed Glen for the calamity he himself had caused and manipulated historians and the general public to believe that he was the hero, instead. For a century he planned and waited patiently, under-the-radar, so he could do it all over again (without the interference of Glen, this time), even if by the time he'd be able to do so, he would no longer have his memories. And his plans actually worked, to a frightening degree, and he didn't even have full control of his body. Oz and Jack share the same body, and Oz is the dominant soul most of the time, and Jack was still able to recreate the Tragedy of Sablier, only on a much wider scale.
Character PERSONALITY:
Jack himself doesn't know what his real self is like. It's shown in canon that he can be a ruthless, calculating chessmaster, whose determination spans time and death - he has no problem lying and using other people mercilessly to further his ends. However, underneath this, he still retains some modicum of care for people he would not actively acknowledge as his friends - he seems to hold some regret for raising his sword against his best friend.
Around other people, Jack usually will, at first, present a front of him being a third-rate nobleman, born into riches, highly charismatic and trusting with no knowledge of political machinations. Someone that is probably easy to use and manipulate, and easy to lure using emotional bait; someone who has a soft spot for children and animals, and loves to flirt with women and make them blush. He's quite the chatterbox, and would probably be one of the best catches for marriage, even if he isn't from one of the prominent noble houses; women want to be with him, and men want to be like him. He's the sort of person around whom crowds gather around, like moths to a flame.
In truth, he befriends those whom he can use and those who interest him; he gives favours and helps those whom he figures would feel indebted to him as a result. He has an affinity for making people listen to him and making them do things, with them believing that they are doing it because of their own choices, like what he had done to Arthur Barma.
After the Tragedy, Jack founded Pandora under the pretense of keeping Glen Baskerville sealed, and he knew the organization would do a splendid job of hunting Baskervilles down - thus preventing them from finding the seals, which hold the truth, and their master's body. The four Dukedoms were supposedly formed from those who helped rebuild the country after the Tragedy, but Jack had carefully chosen them according to the future he wanted to create.
Jack does not lie much; he prefers leaving out pieces of the truth, because that is easier to believe. He likes inane babble and shallow topics, talking about other people, not much about himself. Affection is distributed and received freely, because it no longer holds any meaning for him, after nearly a decade of using everything in his disposal to build connections in nobility.
Any sort of prying into his personality would be waved off, and any overt effort will be shut down. Pointing out his tendency to self-sacrifice, and his empty personality, makes him uncomfortable and discomfited. After Lacie's death, he seems to slip a little, leaning towards the edge of being obvious; Arthur actually realises what sort of person he is because of this.
He's known for climbing trees and staying up there for hours at a time- this is where he is truly alone, he feels, and this is where he can just not think about anything, drop his facade, and rest. This is also why he has taken up music box-making, along with watchmaking: they are mindless tasks, just putting things together after laying it out, and it comforts him to just let his hands work and not think about it.
It is also implied that Jack does not care much for his own well-being at best. When he finds Lacie, he is willing to be punished, or even put to death, as he had already seen the woman that had been his reason for living for nearly half his life. Even when Lacie practically deposits herself in his lap, he does nothing to touch her, content that she is close and that he can follow him.
It is said in canon material that what Jack feels for Lacie is too pure for obsession, but too blind for love. The only example he has of something approaching love is his mother's blind faith and her obsession to see his father again, which was never fulfilled (and he follows the same cycle, but with Lacie). Jack himself had never been loved or even given affection as himself, and from what he knows, he latches onto the first person to treat him like his own human being.
The sibling love between Lacie and Oswald confuses him, and this plays a part in his inability to understand that Oswald must put the good of many above the life of his sister. Oswald himself sends Jack's plans into a disarray, as he seemingly does not care what sort of empty man he is, and continues to be friends with him in spite of the fact that he only has eyes for his sister. He seems to regain part of his sanity when he later sees Oswald's severed head, and he realises that he had just killed his best friend (possibly only friend) by his own hand.
He knows he's a manipulator, yes, but he doesn't realise how heartless he can be, since he's blinded by his singular obsession over Lacie - a woman who was, and is, his everything. He would gift the world to his deceased beloved, and that entails destroying it. He would destroy Lacie's only family, her brother, in order to bring her the world she loved so much. He would use a pair of brothers to further his own ends, seemingly without remorse, and he would destroy the lives of people a century later than his own time to finish what his best friend had given up his life for to prevent.
Jack loves completely, obsessively, unhealthily. It's a skewed love that's perfect in his mind, a love that justifies the means for an end that he thinks that is in his beloved's interests, but isn't. Oswald is the first person to see right through him and tell him that he finds nothing. He describes Jack like water - a stretch of water so silent and still, that all you can see is a reflection - and that's what he is, really.
After Oscar tells him that he saw the same thing as Zai, as Oswald, Jack seems to realise that all the things he had been telling Oz - that he destroys everything he touches, that he doesn't have anything at all - these are things that he had been projecting onto his Chain. The realisation - that Jack had been refusing to acknowledge these and was now being forced to - may have contributed to Oz being able to reclaim his body moments later.
» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Jack will choose a small pocket-watch that will be able to stop time - initially, for five seconds, and for about ten feet around him. However, using it taxes Jack greatly enough that at first, he'll pass out right after. The duration, area of effect, and the time needed for recovery would depend on the people affected by the time field he generates: longer time, greater area of effect, and less recovery time when they trust him more, and vice-versa.
Character INVENTORY: Jack will be bringing in the clothes he's wearing and a pocket-watch.
» PREVIOUS GAME INFORMATION ( IF APPLICABLE )
Previous GAME(s):somarium
Previous GAME SETTING(s): Somarium is a city based in a 'dream world'! As with dreams, the setting is a mashup of urban city and rural village, surrounded by desert; there are fantastical creatures left and right. The world itself runs on 'dream energy', replenished by the citizens by actual dreaming, and lately there have been wild fluctuations of this, forcing the citizens asleep for a week at a time, causing havoc one way or the other. Noctaere, creatures reminiscent of nightmares, plague the city at times as well.
Previous GAME CR: Only one, Oswald Baskerville.
Your character's DEVELOPMENT: Jack arrived in Somarium thinking it was a dream, rightly so, but he treated the world as something as fleeting as dreams usually were. He had just set his home world well on its way to breaking apart, so Somarium was nothing to him, at first. There was nothing to wait for, nothing to look forward to; Jack was prepared to be at a standstill.
And then he met his best friend, the man he had killed, the man he had fought to keep dead for the better part of a century: Oswald Baskerville. Oswald was the older brother of the woman Jack had originally tried destroying the world for, and, for better or for worse, Jack had considered him his best friend. Until, at least, Oswald himself threw his sister, Lacie, into the Abyss, essentially destroying her body and soul, because it was his duty as the head of his family.
Jack couldn't take it. He couldn't take the dichotomy of his best friend and the man who heartlessly killed his reason for living, and so he had mentally separated the two of them, Before and After Lacie, Oswald and Glen Baskerville. This gave him a reason not to feel guilt, because Glen was a heartless monster, and Jack was justified in killing him. Oswald was a fond memory relegated to whatever tatters his mind was left in.
He'd never expected to see Oswald again, but he did, in Somarium, and thusly, he was forced to face what he had done, forced to realise that he had to take responsibility for his actions. Jack was forced to admit to himself that he can't run away, and that he had killed Oswald as well as Glen. The fact that Oswald was still willing to be his friend even after Jack had forced Oswald to commit mass murder, had destroyed Oswald's family, and had killed Oswald himself - Jack had to reevaluate his opinion of humanity.
While he might still be a misanthropist, at least now, after being with Oswald for a few months, he has allowed himself to indulge in superficial friendships. These friendships, combined with the experience of them sharing his dreams and vice-versa, has softened his world view on healthy, non-romantic relationships. He still hasn't learnt complete emotional independence, Oswald rapidly taking the place of Lacie in Jack's obsessive personality, but at least he has started to acknowledge that perhaps people might be worth getting to know, regardless of how useful they are to him.
» SAMPLES
First PERSON:
[the video feed turns on- there's what looks to be an extremely confused young man, and he's...upside-down.]
How...how does this- [he reaches for the screen to turn it around, plait slipping over his shoulder.] Oh, there we go, good heavens, I really am time out of place! This place looks so much more sterile than the last. [he startles like he's realised what he just said.] Erm, I didn't mean that badly, I just miss the trees. This world is beautiful in its own way, I suppose.
[and jack winks at the camera, smiling mischievously.] And I do believe its residents are just as splendid, would anyone care to give a poor, lost soul a tour?
Third PERSON:
Jack wasn't used to being alive. He wasn't used to keeping other people alive even more.
The first month he'd been here, he kept on anticipating waking up and finding himself in yet another world, or worse, he would be returning home, to a world he had destroyed with his own hands. Now it's been three months and the only thing he'd been waking up to is the stark white of the ceiling, the faint buzz of the light, and the sound of voices beyond his door. He hadn't bothered decorating his room; the only indicators that he lived there was a hastily-thrown together jewelry repair kit on a table, a hairbrush on a chair, and a sword propped up against the wall.
He'd been sick with some sort of plague, gone on at least two missions, and passed out at least thrice; Jack had never been so helpless before, buoyed by the tide of a war that he had no hand in starting. It made his stomach clench and it made him wish he didn't have to get up in the morning (two more hours until six and he can go down and train and pretend to be Jack Vessalius again), but he had to keep up appearances and he had to try and become a normal functioning member of society.
Just because that was what Oswald and Lacie would have wanted. He was used to doing incredibly hard and tedious things for the siblings, but that was when he didn't quite care about what people thought of him. Now, regret and empathy were twins whispering over his shoulder, struggling to make their voices heard over the part of Jack that wanted to just not care. This city was essentially a melting pot of culture and worlds and sentient beings and some days it took Jack everything he had not to find a fracture in it and tear it apart.
He had already started to build up a network of eyes and ears and while he had promised himself that he would never again have a hand in destroying a society, a life, Jack would remember that he never kept promises in the first place. He lay cocooned under the covers for two more minutes - what if he did this, what if he did that, what if sleep just came to him at a normal time for once and not in the middle of the day - before giving up and getting to work on a bracelet, instead.
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
So Jack has a pet budgie named Iris, acquired in Somarium. May he bring her along to Exsilium?
Player NAME: Numi
Current AGE: 18+
Player TIME ZONE: GMT+8
Personal JOURNAL:
hypnosIM & SERVICE: n/a
Player PLURK:
Current CHARACTERS: n/a
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Jack Vessalius
Canon & MEDIUM: Pandora Hearts
Canon PULL-POINT: Retrace 82, after Oz banishes him
Character AGE: 100+, physically 24
Character ABILITIES: Here's a wiki link, but to summarize: Jack is a master swordsman who can call upon a Chain, a powerful creature from the Abyss in the Pandora Hearts universe. Jack's Chain is called the Bloody Black Rabbit, or B.Rabbit for short. Chains are eldritch abominations that hold great power, called by a human from the nexus of the universe's creation, a shapeless place called the Abyss. It is implied that Jack's contract with the B. Rabbit is an illegal contract, as he isn't a Baskerville.
B. Rabbit gives Jack the ability to wield a scythe - blood-red, spiderwebbed glass, razor-sharp, taller than him - with preternatural ease, along with the ability to call upon chains that pierce through and disembowel enemies. The Chain itself is a killing machine that is feared even among its kind. His Chain also has the ability to break a world's 'chains', causing it to fall back into the place of its creation, the Abyss.
However, B. Rabbit is the real identity of Oz Vessalius; I have spoken with the current Oz-mun and we've agreed to work it out that Jack will still be able to use B. Rabbit, but Oz will be fully aware of whenever he does. We'll talk about it further when it comes up in-game, but no godmodding, I promise!
Character HISTORY: wiki link let's go
As an addition, since the wiki stops somewhere after the Tragedy of Sablier:
Jack was thrown out of the Abyss' hundred year cycle, left to wind and rewind in 24-year cycles (the age he had instigated the Tragedy), losing memories with every cycle. The only constant is Oz, the B. Rabbit, Jack's Chain, sharing his body, gaining more and more consciousness the more Jack's soul degrades. A century later, Zai Vessalius meets a child in a snowfall- Jack, on his last cycle before his memories vanish completely, and the latter convinces Zai to take Jack as a replacement for his stillborn son. Zai agrees, and his only heir is introduced to society: Oz Vessalius.
A hundred years later, Oz, the heir to the most important of the Houses, was thrown into the Abyss. Oz, Jack's Chain, reanimated in Jack's body, and Jack retained the contract. His soul was housed in Oz's, and the games began anew. Taking the role of the benevolent Hero, he carefully manipulated the boy - and Gilbert, Vincent, even, both who fell into the Abyss along with Sablier - into trying to prevent the Baskervilles from regrouping, from finding their master, from finding out the truth.
Alice, for some reason Jack couldn't fathom, was now the B. Rabbit, and held its powers. No matter. The girl would not stand between him and his goal. Through the diaries that he had Arthur fabricate - as Barmas were the historians of the dukedoms - nobody suspected that Jack was actively trying to recreate the Tragedy of Sablier itself, until it was too late.
Too late, too late, until Jack regained enough power to control Oz once again, to have his Chain cut the chains that held the world fast over oblivion. The dukedoms fell as Jack's lies and deception were uncovered wound by bloody, festering wound, and Oz was captured by the Baskervilles. Jack had to pull back because of exhaustion, but he had succeeded in cutting the world's chains again, similar to the Tragedy a century before. Gilbert, however, betrayed the Baskervilles and rescued Oz before he could be executed.
As they tried to escape, Jack goaded Oz more and more until he was able to bend the boy's will to take control of his body again. Things looked grim until Oscar, Oz's uncle, showed up to help them escape, talking sense into Oz and revealing that he just wanted Oz to be happy. This gave Oz enough strength to banish Jack and proceed to escape successfully from the Baskervilles.
TL;DR Basically Jack made Pandora Hearts happen.
He had intended to send the world after the woman that had been his raison d'être (into death), but Glen Baskerville, the guy who was supposed to see that that doesn't happen, stopped him. Glen also happened to be Jack's best friend, and Jack slew him in an attempt to get the party started once again. He failed, and even death sort of rejected him after what he tried to do.
Jack framed Glen for the calamity he himself had caused and manipulated historians and the general public to believe that he was the hero, instead. For a century he planned and waited patiently, under-the-radar, so he could do it all over again (without the interference of Glen, this time), even if by the time he'd be able to do so, he would no longer have his memories. And his plans actually worked, to a frightening degree, and he didn't even have full control of his body. Oz and Jack share the same body, and Oz is the dominant soul most of the time, and Jack was still able to recreate the Tragedy of Sablier, only on a much wider scale.
Character PERSONALITY:
Jack himself doesn't know what his real self is like. It's shown in canon that he can be a ruthless, calculating chessmaster, whose determination spans time and death - he has no problem lying and using other people mercilessly to further his ends. However, underneath this, he still retains some modicum of care for people he would not actively acknowledge as his friends - he seems to hold some regret for raising his sword against his best friend.
Around other people, Jack usually will, at first, present a front of him being a third-rate nobleman, born into riches, highly charismatic and trusting with no knowledge of political machinations. Someone that is probably easy to use and manipulate, and easy to lure using emotional bait; someone who has a soft spot for children and animals, and loves to flirt with women and make them blush. He's quite the chatterbox, and would probably be one of the best catches for marriage, even if he isn't from one of the prominent noble houses; women want to be with him, and men want to be like him. He's the sort of person around whom crowds gather around, like moths to a flame.
In truth, he befriends those whom he can use and those who interest him; he gives favours and helps those whom he figures would feel indebted to him as a result. He has an affinity for making people listen to him and making them do things, with them believing that they are doing it because of their own choices, like what he had done to Arthur Barma.
After the Tragedy, Jack founded Pandora under the pretense of keeping Glen Baskerville sealed, and he knew the organization would do a splendid job of hunting Baskervilles down - thus preventing them from finding the seals, which hold the truth, and their master's body. The four Dukedoms were supposedly formed from those who helped rebuild the country after the Tragedy, but Jack had carefully chosen them according to the future he wanted to create.
Jack does not lie much; he prefers leaving out pieces of the truth, because that is easier to believe. He likes inane babble and shallow topics, talking about other people, not much about himself. Affection is distributed and received freely, because it no longer holds any meaning for him, after nearly a decade of using everything in his disposal to build connections in nobility.
Any sort of prying into his personality would be waved off, and any overt effort will be shut down. Pointing out his tendency to self-sacrifice, and his empty personality, makes him uncomfortable and discomfited. After Lacie's death, he seems to slip a little, leaning towards the edge of being obvious; Arthur actually realises what sort of person he is because of this.
He's known for climbing trees and staying up there for hours at a time- this is where he is truly alone, he feels, and this is where he can just not think about anything, drop his facade, and rest. This is also why he has taken up music box-making, along with watchmaking: they are mindless tasks, just putting things together after laying it out, and it comforts him to just let his hands work and not think about it.
It is also implied that Jack does not care much for his own well-being at best. When he finds Lacie, he is willing to be punished, or even put to death, as he had already seen the woman that had been his reason for living for nearly half his life. Even when Lacie practically deposits herself in his lap, he does nothing to touch her, content that she is close and that he can follow him.
It is said in canon material that what Jack feels for Lacie is too pure for obsession, but too blind for love. The only example he has of something approaching love is his mother's blind faith and her obsession to see his father again, which was never fulfilled (and he follows the same cycle, but with Lacie). Jack himself had never been loved or even given affection as himself, and from what he knows, he latches onto the first person to treat him like his own human being.
The sibling love between Lacie and Oswald confuses him, and this plays a part in his inability to understand that Oswald must put the good of many above the life of his sister. Oswald himself sends Jack's plans into a disarray, as he seemingly does not care what sort of empty man he is, and continues to be friends with him in spite of the fact that he only has eyes for his sister. He seems to regain part of his sanity when he later sees Oswald's severed head, and he realises that he had just killed his best friend (possibly only friend) by his own hand.
He knows he's a manipulator, yes, but he doesn't realise how heartless he can be, since he's blinded by his singular obsession over Lacie - a woman who was, and is, his everything. He would gift the world to his deceased beloved, and that entails destroying it. He would destroy Lacie's only family, her brother, in order to bring her the world she loved so much. He would use a pair of brothers to further his own ends, seemingly without remorse, and he would destroy the lives of people a century later than his own time to finish what his best friend had given up his life for to prevent.
Jack loves completely, obsessively, unhealthily. It's a skewed love that's perfect in his mind, a love that justifies the means for an end that he thinks that is in his beloved's interests, but isn't. Oswald is the first person to see right through him and tell him that he finds nothing. He describes Jack like water - a stretch of water so silent and still, that all you can see is a reflection - and that's what he is, really.
After Oscar tells him that he saw the same thing as Zai, as Oswald, Jack seems to realise that all the things he had been telling Oz - that he destroys everything he touches, that he doesn't have anything at all - these are things that he had been projecting onto his Chain. The realisation - that Jack had been refusing to acknowledge these and was now being forced to - may have contributed to Oz being able to reclaim his body moments later.
» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Jack will choose a small pocket-watch that will be able to stop time - initially, for five seconds, and for about ten feet around him. However, using it taxes Jack greatly enough that at first, he'll pass out right after. The duration, area of effect, and the time needed for recovery would depend on the people affected by the time field he generates: longer time, greater area of effect, and less recovery time when they trust him more, and vice-versa.
Character INVENTORY: Jack will be bringing in the clothes he's wearing and a pocket-watch.
» PREVIOUS GAME INFORMATION ( IF APPLICABLE )
Previous GAME(s):
somariumPrevious GAME SETTING(s): Somarium is a city based in a 'dream world'! As with dreams, the setting is a mashup of urban city and rural village, surrounded by desert; there are fantastical creatures left and right. The world itself runs on 'dream energy', replenished by the citizens by actual dreaming, and lately there have been wild fluctuations of this, forcing the citizens asleep for a week at a time, causing havoc one way or the other. Noctaere, creatures reminiscent of nightmares, plague the city at times as well.
Previous GAME CR: Only one, Oswald Baskerville.
Your character's DEVELOPMENT: Jack arrived in Somarium thinking it was a dream, rightly so, but he treated the world as something as fleeting as dreams usually were. He had just set his home world well on its way to breaking apart, so Somarium was nothing to him, at first. There was nothing to wait for, nothing to look forward to; Jack was prepared to be at a standstill.
And then he met his best friend, the man he had killed, the man he had fought to keep dead for the better part of a century: Oswald Baskerville. Oswald was the older brother of the woman Jack had originally tried destroying the world for, and, for better or for worse, Jack had considered him his best friend. Until, at least, Oswald himself threw his sister, Lacie, into the Abyss, essentially destroying her body and soul, because it was his duty as the head of his family.
Jack couldn't take it. He couldn't take the dichotomy of his best friend and the man who heartlessly killed his reason for living, and so he had mentally separated the two of them, Before and After Lacie, Oswald and Glen Baskerville. This gave him a reason not to feel guilt, because Glen was a heartless monster, and Jack was justified in killing him. Oswald was a fond memory relegated to whatever tatters his mind was left in.
He'd never expected to see Oswald again, but he did, in Somarium, and thusly, he was forced to face what he had done, forced to realise that he had to take responsibility for his actions. Jack was forced to admit to himself that he can't run away, and that he had killed Oswald as well as Glen. The fact that Oswald was still willing to be his friend even after Jack had forced Oswald to commit mass murder, had destroyed Oswald's family, and had killed Oswald himself - Jack had to reevaluate his opinion of humanity.
While he might still be a misanthropist, at least now, after being with Oswald for a few months, he has allowed himself to indulge in superficial friendships. These friendships, combined with the experience of them sharing his dreams and vice-versa, has softened his world view on healthy, non-romantic relationships. He still hasn't learnt complete emotional independence, Oswald rapidly taking the place of Lacie in Jack's obsessive personality, but at least he has started to acknowledge that perhaps people might be worth getting to know, regardless of how useful they are to him.
» SAMPLES
First PERSON:
[the video feed turns on- there's what looks to be an extremely confused young man, and he's...upside-down.]
How...how does this- [he reaches for the screen to turn it around, plait slipping over his shoulder.] Oh, there we go, good heavens, I really am time out of place! This place looks so much more sterile than the last. [he startles like he's realised what he just said.] Erm, I didn't mean that badly, I just miss the trees. This world is beautiful in its own way, I suppose.
[and jack winks at the camera, smiling mischievously.] And I do believe its residents are just as splendid, would anyone care to give a poor, lost soul a tour?
Third PERSON:
Jack wasn't used to being alive. He wasn't used to keeping other people alive even more.
The first month he'd been here, he kept on anticipating waking up and finding himself in yet another world, or worse, he would be returning home, to a world he had destroyed with his own hands. Now it's been three months and the only thing he'd been waking up to is the stark white of the ceiling, the faint buzz of the light, and the sound of voices beyond his door. He hadn't bothered decorating his room; the only indicators that he lived there was a hastily-thrown together jewelry repair kit on a table, a hairbrush on a chair, and a sword propped up against the wall.
He'd been sick with some sort of plague, gone on at least two missions, and passed out at least thrice; Jack had never been so helpless before, buoyed by the tide of a war that he had no hand in starting. It made his stomach clench and it made him wish he didn't have to get up in the morning (two more hours until six and he can go down and train and pretend to be Jack Vessalius again), but he had to keep up appearances and he had to try and become a normal functioning member of society.
Just because that was what Oswald and Lacie would have wanted. He was used to doing incredibly hard and tedious things for the siblings, but that was when he didn't quite care about what people thought of him. Now, regret and empathy were twins whispering over his shoulder, struggling to make their voices heard over the part of Jack that wanted to just not care. This city was essentially a melting pot of culture and worlds and sentient beings and some days it took Jack everything he had not to find a fracture in it and tear it apart.
He had already started to build up a network of eyes and ears and while he had promised himself that he would never again have a hand in destroying a society, a life, Jack would remember that he never kept promises in the first place. He lay cocooned under the covers for two more minutes - what if he did this, what if he did that, what if sleep just came to him at a normal time for once and not in the middle of the day - before giving up and getting to work on a bracelet, instead.
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
So Jack has a pet budgie named Iris, acquired in Somarium. May he bring her along to Exsilium?
