Application for Tu Shanshu

[lookedtothestars]

Player Information:
Name: July
Age: 22
Contact: julyflame on plurk, fairladypsyche on aim
Game Cast: None

Character Information:
Name: Jor-El
Canon: Man of Steel, 2013 film
Canon Point: Right after he dies on Krypton.
Age: Apparent late 40s, early 50s.
Reference: http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Man_of_Steel_(Movie) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_Steel_(film)

Note: Please do not read the app if you haven’t watched the film and really do not want to be spoiled.

Setting: Krypton is a dying planet, orbiting around a red sun.

Once the home planet of a race that at its height spanned the stars, exploring the wide universe around them, its people have stagnated, having retreated from the colonies they created, returning home, turning ever inward, hiding behind stoic surfaces and the roles their society has organized them into from before their very first breath.

Efficacy is the ideal in all modes of Kryptonian society, including that of interpersonal interaction. It is a society of active repression of acting on emotion, of minimal physical contact. Kryptonian families are called Houses, with each House’s crest symbolizing representing different values, and each Kryptonian is a member of one of Krypton’s Guilds, which is decided before birth and indicates what purpose an individual will serve, and what their future work will be.

The need for emotional and physical relationships has been completely removed. It has been replaced by the use of a codex filled with the genetic information of every Kryptonian that has lived, allowing for the careful and deliberate engineering of fetuses that have been created to be perfect for their later roles in life, their whole purpose and meaning defined for them. Krypton’s people have not seen a natural birth for centuries.

Its natural resources, near and far, are drained. Its core, breached in mind of providing the energy the people do not want to find among the stars, is threatening to completely destabilize, destroying the planet.

The surface of Krypton is stripped bare, where once, thousands and thousands of years ago, many parts of it were lush and natural. Modern Krypton is an expanse which the Kryptonians have conquered utterly, remaking and reshaping every portion of it to their will, for their needs, everything carefully used.

Jor-El,a prominent member of the Science Guild, has espoused views- completely contrary to modern Kryptonian society and its structure- that the ruling body in charge of Krypton’s governance and progress (or rather, lack thereof) are solidly against, and has spent the last several years- since the initial decision to harvest Krypton’s core- arguing against that decision and advocating several methods that would save Krypton’s people.

All of this comes to a head with the intrusion of General Zod, part of the Military Guild, in the last of a series of meetings between Jor-El and the council, with the announcement that he is undertaking a coup, intended to rid Krypton of the bloodlines that for so long have defiled it and brought it to ruin-bloodlines, that were doing what they were born to do, for generations- following ideas that were initially Jor-El’s. These ideas, that Krypton’s people have let themselves go staid and directionless, and working themselves towards decay, and that it needs to be challenged and changed, are undertaken in a violent manner, Zod’s forces both attacking and upholding the problems Jor-El warned against, still serving and following their intended purposes in life, and unwilling to take a step further.

The end result, once the military coup is stopped, and order returned, is Jor-El dead, Zod and his loyal directly commanded men and women sentenced to somatic reconditioning in a phantom zone cut off from their world, and all of this right before Krypton’s core finally suffers its last, cracking Krypton’s surface apart, sending geysers of molten rock up and obliterating all life on its surface.

And yet, the House of El still has hope for the future.

Unknown to nearly all, but discovered by Zod, Jor-El and his wife had a child in secret- naturally born without genetic engineering, with their son’s future left in his own hands- and launched him in a ship to another planet, home to a people who look much like Kryptonians, but orbiting a yellow sun.

There is more to tell, but this is not the story of Krypton’s last son.

(For further detailed observation on Man of Steel’s Krypton, Kryptonian society and its philosophical tenets and views, look here.)


Personality: Jor-El, at first glance, is a model Kryptonian, properly stoic. He is efficient in body language and as neutral in facial expression as one can be. Even when in the face of great and personal events that would cause emotional havoc to be extremely apparent, Jor-El is still able to school himself, though one is still able to get glimpses of what he is still feeling.

That said, Jor-El, by the modern standards of his people, is anything but ideal.

He is close to his wife, emotionally and physically affectionate, which is not only an oddity in and of itself, but also leads to them choosing, deliberately, to have a naturally born child, against the expectations of their society.

While nowhere near a firebrand, his is a dissenting voice. He is an active voice for change and progress, enough so that others- such as General Dru-Zod- have claimed part of his ideas as inspiration for their own actions. Jor-El’s ideas, however, go farther than even the most militant ideas Zod is willing to uphold, because in action, Jor-El’s would change Kryptonian culture as they know it entirely.

Though Kryptonians live and die in an socio-cultural environment which they are created to live in with harmony and accordance, their will and purpose shaped to it, Jor-El’s actions and words throughout the film- both the actual Jor-El and the AI shadow of him- stress the importance of choice and free will, and the ability for a person to make their own choices and have effects on that environment

This bravery is not only limited to his words and personal philosophy, however, but is also visible in his actions. Rather than passively submerge into the coup that took and warped his ideas, Jor-El chose to fight, escape, and continue on with his plans.

Jor-El is more than willing to take the straightforward approach in any given scenario in hopes that being upfront will succeed- when confronted with the knowledge that Krypton is going to kill everything alive on its surface, he suggests they use their knowledge to evacuate the codex and start a new generation of Kryptonians elsewhere, continuing their species. When General Zod confronts him with the beginning of Zod’s coup, Jor-El attempts to dissuade him with logic and reason.

However, when logic, reason, and charisma fail him, Jor-El flouts rules, authority, society’s standard, and occasionally reason with a wholly unique efficacy.

Where access to the codex is not allowed, he steals it, rather than lose time continuing to argue. Where normal Kryptonians design their children to have the best genetics of both parents and plan their very roles and lives from the moment of creation, he impregnates his wife and leaves genetics to chance and the child’s future up to his choice, because it is the best option through which he can work through his ideas and help Krypton. Where needing a means of escape with the aforementioned coded, in a high up location, against a heavily armed fighter, he jumps off the side, since that is the fastest way to both guarantee escape and ensure he isn’t immediately followed.

Despite this apparent habit of flinging himself off into the middle of the air from a long way up, Jor-El also exhibits a highly attuned sense of mortality- both his own and that of those around him.

This sense of mortality does not prevent him from killing, however. If anything, it creates a necessity to the act, with mortality measured not in individual lives, but in a whole people that he is trying to preserve and keep alive.

Jor-El, with regards to finding himself on Tu Vishan, will only be moderately surprised. Moderately surprised because while he was fully accepting and expecting he was likely going to die in his very near future, ending up on the back of the turtle in a world of, again, limited resources, was not near the top of the list at all in terms of what he expected. Given that he succeeded at his goals in life, and the end was near anyways, Jor-El will not be bringing a great portion of existential angst along with him. Due to the circumstances surrounding his death, he will however have some inner turmoil regarding the fact that he has effectively left his wife to face the end of their world alone. He will be willing to assist other Foreigners and kedan as they would like or need help with, but he will be extremely aware that he, at least, has nowhere to return.

Appearance:


Abilities: Jor-El is first and foremost a scientist, with all the reasoning and logic skills that implies, as well as an understanding of the sciences. He is, however, a man of many talents.

Jor-El was able to design and build a small ship intended to travel to a distant planet, in another solar system with only the help of his wife, Lara. The clandestine nature of the act would have prevented him from seeking any outside assistance, limiting him only to what he could do on his own.

He also designed and developed a program, an artificial intelligence, that is able to emulate him- his consciousness, his intelligence- while at the same time be aware of its own state of being and converse on Jor-El’s behalf.

As controversial as his views may be, he is still able to interest and attract others into taking up those ideas, and still merits the attention of Krypton’s ruling council; enough so that while on one side he very accidentally inspired a military coup, on the other the ruling council still listen to him and grant him private meetings- even after years of him telling them again and again that they are wrong while he offers alternate actions.

He also shows skill at fighting- he is able to overpower and kill several soldiers on his own, to enable his escape. He’s also shown as being able to mostly hold his own against Zod in one-on-one unarmed combat. It is likely that he learned how to fight from Zod, since the two were relatively well matched in terms of their fight, with Jor-El able to partially anticipate Zod’s movements.

Under a yellow sun, such as that which is above Tu Vishan, Jor-El will develop the normal suite of superpowers all Kryptonians would get: superstrength, superspeed, the power of unaided flight, super endurance and stamina, invulnerability, super hearing, heat vision, and x-ray vision. Unlike the other Kryptonians currently present on the turtle, this will be the first time Jor-El is exposed to the radiation of a yellow sun, which means he will have no prior experience or practice with them whatsoever.

(Presuming that the world’s atmospheric composition is similar to Earth’s, Jor-El would also have initial respiratory difficulties until his body grew accustomed to the different air.)

Inventory: A bodysuit and Kryptonian armor, both of which have the House of El’s crest above the sternum. He also has a cape.

Suite: Jor-El would likely do best in a three-floor suite in Earth, since they would feel most similar to what he is used to, between the uncluttered space and organic feel to their architecture.

In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
His lungs were not meant for this sort of atmospheric composition. Since his arrival in the chamber in the Emperor’s palace, and the curt and nearly unhelpful explanation as to his presence, Jor-El’s mind has been working heavily, if strained, from the difficulty he was having breathing. He can’t not think, no sooner than he could stop breathing. Even though right now, both were having near-treasonous effects on his body and mind.

In a place between life, dreaming, and death. The first two do not, cannot, apply. Not for him. Not with what he last remembers. He knows that under no circumstances would Zod have let his thrust be anything but fatal. Zod is- was- thorough, even though his military coup proved he did not understand the basis behind what Jor-El had been saying.

Krypton is effectively gone, and out of his reach. An irony. Jor-El, dead to save his son, leaving Kal-El to be the last Kryptonian, alone in the universe if the codex is never used, has effectively become alone in this world himself, with his wife alone on Krypton to face armageddon. Each separated from the others, divided because of his actions. He was not expecting to leave Lara alone. For all the acts he had undertaken, even including stealing the codex, he had not planned for this. His own death at Zod’s hand, has, rather unexpectedly, saved him from the end he was expecting the planet to deliver.

Deliberating on this just makes it harder to breathe, and the two compound. It is difficult to school himself, thinking on such things. The Kedan accompanying him have already begun giving him looks of mild concern as they escort- cart, partially because the cart was what they used for traveling to their city, and partially because he had needed assistance in the first place to even reach the cart- him to his new quarters in Keeliai. Likely because it would be unfortunate for them if he were to expire on the way.

The view, even from his particularly unfortunate position in the cart, and the occasional dimming of his sight from his afflicted lungs, along with other factors, is adding up into an altogether ominous situation. The landscape looks sickly, ravaged, and overcultivated, and entering the city itself does not suggest anything more positive. Nothing he sees is as advanced as the technology Krypton possesses, and the infrastructure and buildings he can see seem jumbled- the most primitive and simple structures mixed with towering structures that at least suggest the builders had access to more advanced materials; Jor-El is not exceedingly well versed in these matters, but his understanding of technology suggests that there should not be such an intermixture without serious cultural backsliding or serious issues.

Eventually, they reach the building he will be living in. The structure, and the architecture of the other buildings in the area is somewhat comforting. They are, very obviously, built differently from the citadels of Krypton, but some of the same aesthetics apply. While stone, it does not look carved away, or hewn and joined together, but almost organic, as though it formed naturally without outside interference.

He is helped inside and the kedan leave, without any formality. At the first opportunity he has, he allows himself to pass out, and his still-shallow breathing gradually evens.

Network:

[As the video feed begins, a figure sits down in front of it, which means the video feeds the middle of a blue suited torso, moving up to a very familiar crest with what to most appears to be the curving shape of an ‘S’ resting above the sternum, up past the shoulders which are framed by a cape, and then, finally, a salt and pepper bearded, somewhat older face framed by brown hair, with bright blue eyes on the camera. If you were expecting someone else, you are sadly mistaken.

He also appears to be having a bit of a hard time breathing. But it's not readily apparent. His whole face doesn't really appear to be all that expressive.]

I am Jor-El of Krypton.

[He sounds somewhat breathy in an unhealthy way.]

I would appreciate medical assistance, or a way to contact anyone who could provide medical assistance.

[There, the video ends. Straight to the point.]