Bertie Wooster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
preuxchevalier) wrote2013-08-14 10:01 pm
preuxchevalier) wrote2013-08-14 10:01 pm
We the Lost Application
Character Name: Bertram Wilberforce Wooster
Canon: The Jeeves stories by P.G. Wodehouse/Jeeves & Wooster
Game Transplant: Jarjammed
Original App: Link
Game Summary: There was once a lonely rabbit girl named Poppy who had no friends. She was a bit abrasive, probably not the most open or trusting girl, but in her society you really couldn't be. Then, a rabbit boy contacted her. His name was Blink and he told her he dreamed on another world, one filled with chess people at war with one another, armies of black and white, and towers of gold. He'd seen her in his dreams. They needed her to help them win a game, SBURB, and save their world! They failed, utterly. Blink and another player, Cress, died; Poppy was left alone again.
This is where Jarjammed begins. 30-80 players picked up where Poppy and her companions left off in their broken, doomed session of the SBURB game. They muddled through figuring out the rules, the objectives, and all the other pieces that Poppy, Blink, and Cress should have handled. Players came in and went out of the game without rhyme or reason apart from the coding trying to right itself. Their presence warped the game, though, to the point that the Horrorterrors, the gods that watch over the multiverse, tried to step in and force an end or reset to the session. The players refused to let that happen and worked to remove the Horrorterrors from the game and win (with a lot of bickering, murder, silly parties, and strange glitches along the way). They succeeded and ultimately destroyed fate in the process. It was a lot to take in.
How long was your character in Game: One Year.
History of Character in their Game:
Bertie began SBURB by sticking his foot into his mouth. His first memo resulted in an argument about black flirting (a troll concept related to kissmesitude whereby two rivals/enemies engage in a sexual relationship). Due to the nature of pesterchum, Bertie didn’t know who was female and male, and he messaged a chumhandle called ‘arcanelegance’ thinking it was a girl who was having a romantic spat with a man she fancied. This was how he met Jay Zimin. Jay set Bertie straight on his being a man and also introduced Bertie to the concept of open homosexuality. At the welcome party Bertie threw for new players to the session, he met a number of people and got very drunk. Jay was one of these people and, wanting to make up for the mistake in his gender, Bertie assisted Jay in getting together with another man named Klaus Wulfenbach.
He met other trolls and people after that. Most notable were Nephel Dromai who taught him about troll quadrants and became one of his best questing chums, and Shelly de Killer, an assassin whom Bertie mistook for a comedian. Watching Shelly disembowel an underling drove home the danger of the game to Bertie, and he became decidedly more wary. Which was about the time that Jay started mouthing off to a troll named the Grand Highblood (GHB) in a memo. Jay went too far with his insults and GHB murdered him. Bertie rushed over and berated Klaus for not protecting Jay... whereupon Klaus punched him in the face. It was well-deserved and Bertie felt ashamed for his rash judgment. It was at this point that Bertie also met a girl named Usagi Tsukino who came to assist with healing Klaus’ consorts who had also been injured in GHB’s attack. Bertie commented that her skirt was rather short and thus began his tenuous relationship with modern fashion. Usagi told him off, then asked Klaus to transform to show off his magical boy outfit. It was then that Bertie realized Klaus was incredibly attractive, though he did his best to ignore that. He also found himself with a growing attraction toward Jay who apparently needed all the help he could get and who wasn’t afraid to just show himself as he was, warts and all.
The next major event to occur was a masquerade hosted by a troll named the Signless. Bertie lent out his jazz-playing bee consorts for some of the musical entertainment and met several people, including two women named Mary Katherine Blackwood (Merricat), and Cassandra Mortmain. He learned from Cassandra that she was from the same universe as him, though she was from a decade in his future. In the middle of the masquerade, the Signless’ Denizen (monsters designed to specifically to challenge an individual player as a ‘final boss’ on their planet) created a fog that disguised everyone’s appearances and caused a great deal of confusion. Bertie found Jay and Klaus who had also attended, but discovered that an imposter had tried to assault Jay. It took a lot of convincing, but he got them to believe that he hadn’t done that. After that, Bertie ran into several imposters and real players. The last player he met was an imposter spawned by the Denizen of Merricat. He got into a very awkward game of cards with her, which culminated in her asking him to marry her. Bertie agreed as his personal Code of the Woosters obligates him to marry any girl who asks. He was whisked away by the imposter to a makeshift chapel where an imposter GHB married Bertie and the imposter Merricat. He then promptly fainted and missed the entire rest of the masquerade.
When he woke, Bertie found himself alone and returned to his planet where he met the troll Eridan Ampora. Eridan had come round on a previous offer Bertie had made. With a heavy heart, Bertie announced his 'happy' marriage to Merricat on the game network as he tried to explain to Eridan what human married was and why he had to follow through with Merricat. The real Merricat eventually saw the memo and told Bertie in no uncertain terms that they were not married. Bertie was overjoyed and attributed the good fortune to Eridan’s presence. He considered the troll one of his bosom chums from thence forth.
Several more transuniveral morality memos and posts about the differences with trolls later, Bertie and other characters got a second primer on troll quadrants. Jay took this idea and ran with it, asking Bertie if he would like to enter into a formal moiraillegiance (Klaus was also in the private memo for moral support). Since Bertie had just learned that it was considered a romantic kind of love, he was very much against it. In fact, ever since discovering that he found the likes of Jay and Klaus attractive (following Jay straight up kissing him), he had been making every effort to avoid even the semblance of impropriety with the other men. Bertie refused labeling their relationship as such and left the conversation before he could be boxed in. From that point, he attempted to start courting Jay’s sprite. She was Jay’s twin sister and he thought if he could just fall in love with her instead, he’d be set. It didn’t work out so well, but Rook dashed his hopes for a relationship kindly.
The next major event involved a movie night hosted by Usagi. There, Bertie met a number of people before the show, but most notably, a young Japanese girl named Rhyme. She was flying awkwardly with rocket skates and Bertie, seeing the trouble, offered to let her try out, and then gave her his flying transport (a flying moonbike obtained from a code Usagi provided). She thanked him with a hug and Bertie discovered that not all little girls are awful fiends.
During the movie night, a glitch occurred in the game coding that caused everyone to take on the prototyping typically associated with the underlings that the players fought against as NPC villains. Every player contributes a prototype to an SBURB session by throwing an object into a kernelsprite. These are individualized tutorial NPCs for the players (think Navi from Zelda who helps Link learn to do things). Bertie was prototyped with a Sailor V game and a stuffed unicorn and ended up with a very unfortunate set of clothes, a horn, tail, and the urge to make dramatic speeches about love. During this, he bumped into a mage named Ienzo who was prototyped with a sexy scientist outfit (among other things) that really caught Bertie’s attention. As they were both incredibly awkward, though, the encounter was brief.
The next event of note was when a troll named Karkat decided he’d help everyone by using his game given powers to Peace everyone out who wanted it. Or beat up anyone who didn’t want it and then force Peace on them. This basically amounted to the affected player not caring about anything, even physical harm. Ienzo was one of the victims of this campaign and sent out a memo on the network asking for medical assistance in an eerily calm way. Bertie rushed to his aid along with Jay and a psychic troll girl named Ammond. In the process of assisting Ienzo, who had been beaten up so badly before being Peaced that he had broken bones, Bertie discovered his Lamb of Sacrifice powers. He drew almost all of Ienzo’s wounds into himself, leaving the other man healed and Bertie in agony. The others tried to help and Jay, in the process, discovered that his Hand of the Sun powers were also healing based. He could heal if he made skin-to-skin contact with the affected area. This necessitated undressing Bertie, which he protested with a woman (Ammond) present. In solidarity, she took off her top and the shock combined with the pain caused Bertie to faint. The others undressed and healed him and they all went on their merry ways. At least for a time.
Bertie met Ienzo, Rhyme, and a number of other characters again at a Halloween Party after that. It was thrown by the mischievous Pokemon sprite of one of the players. In short, the Halloween Party should have been called the Fire Party. Bertie was set on fire twice that night, nearly forced to eat poisoned food that he was attempting to get rid of with Rhyme’s help, and nearly caught in an explosion related to Ienzo’s magic, fire, and a tub filled with acid. On top of this, the two magical boys in their ranks, Klaus and a boy named Jake English, seemed to drop dead in the middle of the party when the Pokemon sprite stole their soul gems. It was eventually all resolved, though, and everyone went home that much more wary of parties.
Ienzo contacted Bertie sometime later to apologize (after the Peace Karkat had cast on him faded) and Bertie invited him over for tea. Tea turned to whiskey, and they became drunk, Ienzo decrying the experience as similar to losing his Heart back on his own world. To cheer Ienzo up, Bertie offered to teach him the Charleston, and then they tripped and Ienzo ended up kissing Bertie in the heat of the moment. Bertie reciprocated until they both realized what they were doing and broke away from each other. Ienzo spent the night at the flat as Bertie advised that flying drunk was a bad idea, but they didn’t acknowledge the incident again for some time. Bertie was very confused by it all because he found that he’d truly enjoyed the experience and wanted more of it... even though he knew that was something he shouldn’t want as a God-fearing English gentleman.
Disappearances happened in the game on a regular basis, being explained as the game trying to fix itself. Klaus was one of the next people to disappear. Jay despaired and Bertie asked him to move in so that he could look after the other man. He let Jay wallow for a bit, but eventually, Bertie began trying to set Jay up on dates with other people. They all went pretty horribly, but the worst was probably between Jay and Ienzo. Bertie tried to set them up so they’d both be unavailable, and he could dispense with any lingering crushes on either of them. Jay ended up getting handsy, Ienzo punched him in the face, and they both came back to yell at Bertie for his poor matchmaking. Bertie and Ienzo finally revealed to Jay that they had kissed, and Bertie admitted to enjoying it. He explained to the other men his reluctance to accept his own homosexuality, but that he wanted to try with Ienzo. Ienzo agreed and Jay stepped off as graciously as he could.
Less gracious was Jay’s later possession by the Horrorterrors. Several players were possessed, the game glitches were made worse by Sollux, a troll boy working for the Horrorterrrors (though actually a double-agent), and a lot of terrible stuff generally happened. In the middle of this, the players desperately tried to pull together to start getting things set for the end game. Some players (including Ienzo, Jay, and Ammond), went to face one of the major Denizens to free up an important planet from enemies and locked Bertie in the bathroom so that he couldn’t come. Bertie was Very Annoyed and ended up yelling at Jay when he returned, angry and feeling impotent. They made up quickly, but Bertie began to feel just a little niggling sensation that he really was a burden to his friends. After the defeat of that Denizen, the players began attempting to breed the universe frog on one of the original players’ planets (a key part of winning the game), and started gearing up to face their own individual Denizens. The possessed characters, however, performed a ritual for the Horrorterrors that made the glitches in the game go out of control. Extra shadow planets showed up, enemies got stronger, and things became more difficult.
On the bright side, the possessed characters started getting cured. On the brighter side, people still tried to make the best of it. A birthday party was held for a young man named Riku. He was one of the possessed and his friends planned the party to help get him unpossessed. Bertie just came along for the party and ended up meeting the Doctor there when the man set him on fire by accident. Bertie and the Doctor hit it off anyway and Bertie found himself later invited over for tea in the TARDIS. He and the Doctor talked adventure and Bertie managed to impress the Time Lord with his optimism. Bertie was just generally enchanted by the Doctor.
Shelly’s possession by the Horrorterrors was harder to deal with. He ended up kidnapping Merricat, whom Bertie felt somewhat responsible for having thought he married her at one point. He tried to help, but was stopped by Jay. He contacted her after the fact anyway and they had a heart-to-heart where he learned that she was from his universe and that she really needed friends. He decided to become that for her.
To combat the gloom, Bertie decided to take Ienzo on a romantic date of a crystal planet filled with paparazzi birds (he didn’t know the birds were paparazzi). In the course of this, Ienzo gifted Bertie with a Firaga ring, and they agreed to make their relationship official.
On the heels of this happy turn, came another game glitch, this one caused by Sollux, still possessed by the Horrorterrors. Everyone’s powers got switched and Bertie found that he was suddenly a genius inventor and had the urge to dress up in costume, monologue, and sing. He did all of these things as everyone began huddling together for protection from the growing strength of their enemies. Rhyme, Nephel, Eridan, Ammond, and several of his other friends came over to live with them at that point.
Merricat took the reins in running the frog breeding program after that. She wanted to see it done so that they could win. However, in the middle of all that, the Horrorterrors, through Sollux, began deleting planets to punish the players. They wanted the players to reset the session and said players had refused. Ammond’s planet was deleted along with the planet they needed to breed frogs. Sollux fought back against the possession, though, and ended up fixing all the glitches (except the permanently-sleeping dreamselves) he caused and started to restored the deleted frog planet. The Horrorterrors killed him before that, but he ended up at least saving the program in his dreamtower on the moon of Prospit. He also managed to put up a barrier to keep the Horrorterrors out.
Thinking all hope was still lost because they did not have the frog planet or the means to restore it, many players fell into despair. One of these was Rhyme. Bertie went to visit her, though, and they talked it all out along with some of her other problems from before the game. She got back her memories of her brother Beat and her Maid of Hope powers began to manifest. She thanked Bertie for his help in this and all of his help throughout the game, and then asked if he would be her uncle. Bertie agreed, but Rhyme decided to stay on her own planet until she defeated her Denizen.
After such heavy happenings, Bertie resolved to cheer everyone up with a party... though they told him it would be cursed as all the other parties had been since the masquerade. He inquired after the date from the human version of the player Karkat and decided to host a Valentine’s Day party. Karkat inserted himself as the brains behind the operation, and Merricat also helped with decorations. In that process, he learned that she was dating Shelly de Killer, the man who had kidnapped and hurt her. He told her he trusted her judgment, but that he worried for her.
Sometime following this, Bertie and Jay had a major falling out with Jay accusing Bertie of being completely helpless and useless to the other players. Though Bertie stood up for himself and told Jay to get out of the flat if he didn’t like it, Bertie took the criticism to heart and cried for the first time since he was a child. His miniature breakdown was held in private, and from it he made a promise to improve himself so that he wouldn’t be so useless. When a man name Saionji began offering kendo lessons, Bertie took him up. He wasn’t the best kendo fighter by the end of the lessons, but he was competent enough to at least defend himself from mid-level enemies. Shortly before the Valentine’s Day party, Jay contacted Bertie to apologize. Bertie was keen to make amends, so it went smoothly.
Then came the Valentine’s Day party, which went perfectly up to the point where Bertie’s Denizen showed up. She kidnapped several players, and when Bertie and the others came to rescue them, she killed Bertie. He died virtually on top of Ienzo, and was resurrected on Prospit with a kiss. The others became even more protective of him after that with even the Doctor and Rhyme berating him for letting something like that happen. Bertie apologized profusely and kept working at his kendo to try to prevent it happening again.
His relationship with Ammond took on a new hue after that as she came to live in Bertie’s flat with him, Jay, and Ienzo. She explained to Bertie that she was in a moiraillegiance with Ienzo. Bertie didn’t quite understand, but they got to the point where he didn’t believe Ammond was trying to steal Ienzo away. It ended in him thanking her for being there to support Ienzo, too.
After that another party was thrown, this one of the fashion variety and no one died. The players rejoiced. Further rejoicing was had when several players announced the capture of Poppy, the original player who broke the game. Poppy was responsible for their presence in the game and they resolved to use her skills and computer to keep fixing glitches, this time under the watchful gaze of her fellow players. It was sometime around here that several players bartered to get Sollux back from the Horrorterrors. It set a time limit for winning at two months. They were also able to restore the frog planet before the barter occurred, leaving them open to continue pulling that together.
Sometime following that, Jay took up with one of the final players to enter the game, a vampire named Lestat. Bertie warned him to be careful, but didn’t do anything, happy his friend has found love again. As with the fashion party, the next party to occur (the Doctor’s Science Soiree) went off without any trouble. Bertie met Lestat there and warned him not to hurt Jay, then spent much of the rest of his time with Rhyme looking at the exhibits and displays. After the party, Jay and the Doctor proceeded to summon the White Queen, one of the major NPCs and a ruler of Prospit. She explained that the Prospitan Sisterhood (a extremist fringe group bent on defeating their rivals on the dream moon of Derse) had taken over and that the sleeping dreamselves had all been imprisoned.
After that, Merricat, who had once more taken up frog breeding duties, announced that they had created the penultimate frog, but that they needed more grist (basically building materials in game terms) in order to get the universe frog. Specifically, they would need to obtain the grist hoards held by some 20 denizens. Bertie took this to heart and went to face his Denizen with Ienzo’s help. The confrontation was non-violent. Bertie healed the wounds his Denizen had received during her fight with the other players after she'd killed him. Moved by his sacrifice (and the pain he went through in healing) she decided to listen to him. Bertie released his bee consorts and they made amends with the Denizen. During all this, Bertie discovered that his Lamb powers had activated further and that he now had rapid self-regenerative healing powers.
Over the next several weeks, Bertie helped other people face their Denizens, and Rhyme came to live in his flat after defeating hers. Theo and Sleipnir (two older players from the same universe and time) got married sometime during all this and Bertie and Ienzo took their own relationship to a new stage there: They danced publicly together. It was a major step for Bertie to be openly affectionate with his boyfriend. It made him nervous, but it all went well. At the wedding, Bertie also noted that Jay (still living with Lestat) looked sickly. He began to worry and let Rhyme, Ienzo, and Ammond know about his concerns. Shortly after that, Jay sent out a call for help from Lestat’s planet. Lestat’s Denizen battle had gone poorly and Jay ended up losing his legs. Bertie discovered at that point that his healing powers didn’t work on what would be tantamount to fatal wounds. They had to call in help from others and Bertie began to feel useless once more, though he did his best to hide his feelings of inadequacy from his friends. Lestat disappeared shortly there-after, so Bertie was never able to confront him.
Once all the Denizens were defeated, Merricat created the universe frog and the Signless (a fully realized Seer of Truth) was able to direct them in the final stretch of win conditions for the game. Several players went to breed ‘ectobunnies’ to send back to Poppy’s home world, and the others not involved in that had to deal with the troll Vladik kidnapping some players and throwing a wild bacchanal fete. His own psychic abilities allowed him to drive people to madness. Bertie went to rescue the kidnappees, but got caught up in the powers until Ienzo arrived and used his Scribe of Sense powers to literally knock some sense into Bertie. Ienzo discovered that his powers could ward off mental influences and healed Ammond, as well. They went to confront Vladik, and the troll proceeded to shank Ienzo with a machete. Bertie found he couldn’t heal the wound, and so, he and Ammond raced back to Ienzo's planet to place Ienzo on his questbed. The game had a mechanic whereby those who died on their questbed would ascend to godtier instead of dying permanently. It was successful, but Bertie and Ammond were then left with a body, which Bertie insisted on burying. He felt, once more, helpless.
This feeling only intensified as the players, in a bid to sort things out with the Prospitan Sisterhood before going to face the endgame bosses (the Black Queen and the Black King of Derse), took the White Queen to talk with the leader of the Sisterhood. The leader ended up shanking the White Queen and stealing her powers. Bertie tried to heal the White Queen, but she died anyway. Jay began to despair, so Bertie put up a front of optimism. By this time, he was becoming much less honest about his true feelings on their chances of winning.
Things went quickly from there forward. The players plotted to face the Black Monarchs and did so. Ammond and several other players died in the battle with the Black Queen, but were resurrected through a game mechanic. After the fight with the Black Queen, the players had all reached the top of their echeladders (the leveling system in the game), and went to face the Black King. However, the Prospitan Sisterhood stepped in at the last moment and killed the Black King, achieving the win conditions for the players. The Prospitans turned their sights on the players next, though, and began attacking them. The players were forced to retreat.
During the retreat, Sollux managed to finally fix the dreamselves. The players stopped off at Derse and Prospit and rescued the dreamers before high-tailing it back to the planets. They holed up on Cassandra Mortmain’s planet as she had a defensible castle and wizards to help her hide it from the Prospitans. The players lasted two days on Cassandra’s planet before they were forced to travel to the Veil (a mass of asteroids around the planet Skaia, which was the battlefield where the armies of Derse and Prospit fought) for protection. There, the Signless used Poppy’s computer to rig up an appearifier so that players could view scenes from their timeline back in their home universes, past and future. While viewing Ienzo’s memories, Bertie learned that Ienzo did not have a last name and they discussed the implications of them, specifically related to a wife taking her husband’s last name in marriage on Earth. Bertie then proposed to Ienzo in a roundabout and unintended way by asking if the other man wouldn’t like to have a last name, specifically one Bertie could give him. Ienzo said he'd like that very much.
After that, on the third day of their escape from the Prospitans, the Horrorterrors made one last ditch effort to get the players to reset the session by telling them that they would destroy fate if they traveled through the portal into their newly created universe. This meant that they would all disappear permanently from their previous timelines. The majority of the players decided to go through with going into the new universe anyway. The alternative of returning to their own timelines, they discovered, would necessitate destroying every NPC in the game world. Mulling this over, the players eventually found a way to sneak back to the door to their new universe, disarm the Prospitans, and have Derse attack the Prospitans as a distraction while they went through. Bertie and several others had to fend off the last efforts of some players to use Poppy’s computer to destroy all the NPCs and return home, but it was a short battle. They destroyed Poppy’s computer and the players stepped through the door to their new universe.
How did they change from their canon personality wise (Please explain what caused it to happen?)
Bertie has always been an optimistic man who bounces back from most anything with good grace and a smile. He never worried that he was a useless lump because really, it made him less of a prospect for marriage, which he was just fine with. In Jarjammed, he faced situations he could never have imagined, many of them wonderful, and many of them traumatizing. His failure to protect Jay, Ienzo, Merricat, Ammond, and the White Queen from harm/death has shaken his faith in everything turning out all right. He doesn't want people to worry about him, though, so his optimism has become something of a front. He's determined to keep everyone else from breaking down, even at the expense of his own feelings getting pushed to one side. He's also much more concerned with being useful in some way to others. Jay telling him he was useless and helpless hurt Bertie more than he would ever admit. He has made the conscious effort to try to better himself physically when presented with the opportunity where he would not have done so before.
Another personality trait that has changed for Bertie is his antipathy toward children, particularly young girls. In his canon, every child he encounters is a terror and his impression was adjusted for that accordingly. In Jarjammed, he met Rhyme, Nephel, Effy, and a number of other young, brilliant kids. He has since amended his opinion to allow that children can be all right.
Finally, Bertie in canon shows little interest in marriage. He shows interest in girls on occasion, though. I have headcanoned this as him not knowing any better about alternatives and repressing his homosexual urges. He states in canon several times that he is 'one of natures bachelors,' a euphemism at that time for a homosexual man. He has also professed that he would like to spend the rest of his days in happy bachelorhood with his valet (manservant), Jeeves. In Jarjammed, Bertie came to understand homosexuality through discussions with Jay, Klaus, and (bizarrely) Merricat, and he accepted that he did, in fact, want a relationship with a man as opposed to a woman.
How did they change from their canon physically (Please explain what caused it to happen?):
Bertie did not change a great deal physically in the game. He is more physically fit than he was in canon. This came about as a result of quitting smoking and constant battles. He quit smoking because Ienzo told him it gave you cancer, and he was battling because it was part of the game mechanic. He also has some additional skill and physicality related to kendo as he took specific lessons with a player (Saionji) who was a kendo instructor of sorts back in his own universe.
Powers: Bertie’s powers as the Lamb of Sacrifice allow him to heal others by drawing injuries onto himself. He does this by touching them (typically holding their hand or shoulder). He has related super regenerative powers that allow him to recover from injuries quickly. A small cut would heal in seconds. Something more serious, like a broken leg, might take a day or so with the level he’s at. If an injury is fatal, he is unable to draw out the injury from the other person. Apart from that, he’s pretty nimble, but he’s an average male in his mid-20s.
Possessions:
- One (1) Firaga Ring
- One (1) Very Sentimental Poker Chip
- One (1) Cassio Keyboard
- Two (2) Rubber Duckies - One is your standard and named Benjamin, the other is painted like Iron Man and named Anthony
- The Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Collected Works of Mrs. Agatha Christie
- Elemental, My Dear Watson (a whangee that shoots elemental magic)
- A wardrobe's-worth of suits, ties, and the other attire a snappy young gentleman about the town might need
Please provide three samples from your previous game, at least one will have to be third person with context:
Sample One: Comes to grips with his sexuality (sort of) and starts dating Ienzo.
Sample Two: Growing closer to Merricat after Shelly hurts her.
Sample Three: Bertie and Jay have a falling out and Bertie takes the criticism about being useless to heart.
Notes: I’ll be taking Bertie from the point that they’re just stepping into the portal to a new world. He will assume the world of We the Lost is this new universe they’ve created.
Canon: The Jeeves stories by P.G. Wodehouse/Jeeves & Wooster
Game Transplant: Jarjammed
Original App: Link
Game Summary: There was once a lonely rabbit girl named Poppy who had no friends. She was a bit abrasive, probably not the most open or trusting girl, but in her society you really couldn't be. Then, a rabbit boy contacted her. His name was Blink and he told her he dreamed on another world, one filled with chess people at war with one another, armies of black and white, and towers of gold. He'd seen her in his dreams. They needed her to help them win a game, SBURB, and save their world! They failed, utterly. Blink and another player, Cress, died; Poppy was left alone again.
This is where Jarjammed begins. 30-80 players picked up where Poppy and her companions left off in their broken, doomed session of the SBURB game. They muddled through figuring out the rules, the objectives, and all the other pieces that Poppy, Blink, and Cress should have handled. Players came in and went out of the game without rhyme or reason apart from the coding trying to right itself. Their presence warped the game, though, to the point that the Horrorterrors, the gods that watch over the multiverse, tried to step in and force an end or reset to the session. The players refused to let that happen and worked to remove the Horrorterrors from the game and win (with a lot of bickering, murder, silly parties, and strange glitches along the way). They succeeded and ultimately destroyed fate in the process. It was a lot to take in.
How long was your character in Game: One Year.
History of Character in their Game:
Bertie began SBURB by sticking his foot into his mouth. His first memo resulted in an argument about black flirting (a troll concept related to kissmesitude whereby two rivals/enemies engage in a sexual relationship). Due to the nature of pesterchum, Bertie didn’t know who was female and male, and he messaged a chumhandle called ‘arcanelegance’ thinking it was a girl who was having a romantic spat with a man she fancied. This was how he met Jay Zimin. Jay set Bertie straight on his being a man and also introduced Bertie to the concept of open homosexuality. At the welcome party Bertie threw for new players to the session, he met a number of people and got very drunk. Jay was one of these people and, wanting to make up for the mistake in his gender, Bertie assisted Jay in getting together with another man named Klaus Wulfenbach.
He met other trolls and people after that. Most notable were Nephel Dromai who taught him about troll quadrants and became one of his best questing chums, and Shelly de Killer, an assassin whom Bertie mistook for a comedian. Watching Shelly disembowel an underling drove home the danger of the game to Bertie, and he became decidedly more wary. Which was about the time that Jay started mouthing off to a troll named the Grand Highblood (GHB) in a memo. Jay went too far with his insults and GHB murdered him. Bertie rushed over and berated Klaus for not protecting Jay... whereupon Klaus punched him in the face. It was well-deserved and Bertie felt ashamed for his rash judgment. It was at this point that Bertie also met a girl named Usagi Tsukino who came to assist with healing Klaus’ consorts who had also been injured in GHB’s attack. Bertie commented that her skirt was rather short and thus began his tenuous relationship with modern fashion. Usagi told him off, then asked Klaus to transform to show off his magical boy outfit. It was then that Bertie realized Klaus was incredibly attractive, though he did his best to ignore that. He also found himself with a growing attraction toward Jay who apparently needed all the help he could get and who wasn’t afraid to just show himself as he was, warts and all.
The next major event to occur was a masquerade hosted by a troll named the Signless. Bertie lent out his jazz-playing bee consorts for some of the musical entertainment and met several people, including two women named Mary Katherine Blackwood (Merricat), and Cassandra Mortmain. He learned from Cassandra that she was from the same universe as him, though she was from a decade in his future. In the middle of the masquerade, the Signless’ Denizen (monsters designed to specifically to challenge an individual player as a ‘final boss’ on their planet) created a fog that disguised everyone’s appearances and caused a great deal of confusion. Bertie found Jay and Klaus who had also attended, but discovered that an imposter had tried to assault Jay. It took a lot of convincing, but he got them to believe that he hadn’t done that. After that, Bertie ran into several imposters and real players. The last player he met was an imposter spawned by the Denizen of Merricat. He got into a very awkward game of cards with her, which culminated in her asking him to marry her. Bertie agreed as his personal Code of the Woosters obligates him to marry any girl who asks. He was whisked away by the imposter to a makeshift chapel where an imposter GHB married Bertie and the imposter Merricat. He then promptly fainted and missed the entire rest of the masquerade.
When he woke, Bertie found himself alone and returned to his planet where he met the troll Eridan Ampora. Eridan had come round on a previous offer Bertie had made. With a heavy heart, Bertie announced his 'happy' marriage to Merricat on the game network as he tried to explain to Eridan what human married was and why he had to follow through with Merricat. The real Merricat eventually saw the memo and told Bertie in no uncertain terms that they were not married. Bertie was overjoyed and attributed the good fortune to Eridan’s presence. He considered the troll one of his bosom chums from thence forth.
Several more transuniveral morality memos and posts about the differences with trolls later, Bertie and other characters got a second primer on troll quadrants. Jay took this idea and ran with it, asking Bertie if he would like to enter into a formal moiraillegiance (Klaus was also in the private memo for moral support). Since Bertie had just learned that it was considered a romantic kind of love, he was very much against it. In fact, ever since discovering that he found the likes of Jay and Klaus attractive (following Jay straight up kissing him), he had been making every effort to avoid even the semblance of impropriety with the other men. Bertie refused labeling their relationship as such and left the conversation before he could be boxed in. From that point, he attempted to start courting Jay’s sprite. She was Jay’s twin sister and he thought if he could just fall in love with her instead, he’d be set. It didn’t work out so well, but Rook dashed his hopes for a relationship kindly.
The next major event involved a movie night hosted by Usagi. There, Bertie met a number of people before the show, but most notably, a young Japanese girl named Rhyme. She was flying awkwardly with rocket skates and Bertie, seeing the trouble, offered to let her try out, and then gave her his flying transport (a flying moonbike obtained from a code Usagi provided). She thanked him with a hug and Bertie discovered that not all little girls are awful fiends.
During the movie night, a glitch occurred in the game coding that caused everyone to take on the prototyping typically associated with the underlings that the players fought against as NPC villains. Every player contributes a prototype to an SBURB session by throwing an object into a kernelsprite. These are individualized tutorial NPCs for the players (think Navi from Zelda who helps Link learn to do things). Bertie was prototyped with a Sailor V game and a stuffed unicorn and ended up with a very unfortunate set of clothes, a horn, tail, and the urge to make dramatic speeches about love. During this, he bumped into a mage named Ienzo who was prototyped with a sexy scientist outfit (among other things) that really caught Bertie’s attention. As they were both incredibly awkward, though, the encounter was brief.
The next event of note was when a troll named Karkat decided he’d help everyone by using his game given powers to Peace everyone out who wanted it. Or beat up anyone who didn’t want it and then force Peace on them. This basically amounted to the affected player not caring about anything, even physical harm. Ienzo was one of the victims of this campaign and sent out a memo on the network asking for medical assistance in an eerily calm way. Bertie rushed to his aid along with Jay and a psychic troll girl named Ammond. In the process of assisting Ienzo, who had been beaten up so badly before being Peaced that he had broken bones, Bertie discovered his Lamb of Sacrifice powers. He drew almost all of Ienzo’s wounds into himself, leaving the other man healed and Bertie in agony. The others tried to help and Jay, in the process, discovered that his Hand of the Sun powers were also healing based. He could heal if he made skin-to-skin contact with the affected area. This necessitated undressing Bertie, which he protested with a woman (Ammond) present. In solidarity, she took off her top and the shock combined with the pain caused Bertie to faint. The others undressed and healed him and they all went on their merry ways. At least for a time.
Bertie met Ienzo, Rhyme, and a number of other characters again at a Halloween Party after that. It was thrown by the mischievous Pokemon sprite of one of the players. In short, the Halloween Party should have been called the Fire Party. Bertie was set on fire twice that night, nearly forced to eat poisoned food that he was attempting to get rid of with Rhyme’s help, and nearly caught in an explosion related to Ienzo’s magic, fire, and a tub filled with acid. On top of this, the two magical boys in their ranks, Klaus and a boy named Jake English, seemed to drop dead in the middle of the party when the Pokemon sprite stole their soul gems. It was eventually all resolved, though, and everyone went home that much more wary of parties.
Ienzo contacted Bertie sometime later to apologize (after the Peace Karkat had cast on him faded) and Bertie invited him over for tea. Tea turned to whiskey, and they became drunk, Ienzo decrying the experience as similar to losing his Heart back on his own world. To cheer Ienzo up, Bertie offered to teach him the Charleston, and then they tripped and Ienzo ended up kissing Bertie in the heat of the moment. Bertie reciprocated until they both realized what they were doing and broke away from each other. Ienzo spent the night at the flat as Bertie advised that flying drunk was a bad idea, but they didn’t acknowledge the incident again for some time. Bertie was very confused by it all because he found that he’d truly enjoyed the experience and wanted more of it... even though he knew that was something he shouldn’t want as a God-fearing English gentleman.
Disappearances happened in the game on a regular basis, being explained as the game trying to fix itself. Klaus was one of the next people to disappear. Jay despaired and Bertie asked him to move in so that he could look after the other man. He let Jay wallow for a bit, but eventually, Bertie began trying to set Jay up on dates with other people. They all went pretty horribly, but the worst was probably between Jay and Ienzo. Bertie tried to set them up so they’d both be unavailable, and he could dispense with any lingering crushes on either of them. Jay ended up getting handsy, Ienzo punched him in the face, and they both came back to yell at Bertie for his poor matchmaking. Bertie and Ienzo finally revealed to Jay that they had kissed, and Bertie admitted to enjoying it. He explained to the other men his reluctance to accept his own homosexuality, but that he wanted to try with Ienzo. Ienzo agreed and Jay stepped off as graciously as he could.
Less gracious was Jay’s later possession by the Horrorterrors. Several players were possessed, the game glitches were made worse by Sollux, a troll boy working for the Horrorterrrors (though actually a double-agent), and a lot of terrible stuff generally happened. In the middle of this, the players desperately tried to pull together to start getting things set for the end game. Some players (including Ienzo, Jay, and Ammond), went to face one of the major Denizens to free up an important planet from enemies and locked Bertie in the bathroom so that he couldn’t come. Bertie was Very Annoyed and ended up yelling at Jay when he returned, angry and feeling impotent. They made up quickly, but Bertie began to feel just a little niggling sensation that he really was a burden to his friends. After the defeat of that Denizen, the players began attempting to breed the universe frog on one of the original players’ planets (a key part of winning the game), and started gearing up to face their own individual Denizens. The possessed characters, however, performed a ritual for the Horrorterrors that made the glitches in the game go out of control. Extra shadow planets showed up, enemies got stronger, and things became more difficult.
On the bright side, the possessed characters started getting cured. On the brighter side, people still tried to make the best of it. A birthday party was held for a young man named Riku. He was one of the possessed and his friends planned the party to help get him unpossessed. Bertie just came along for the party and ended up meeting the Doctor there when the man set him on fire by accident. Bertie and the Doctor hit it off anyway and Bertie found himself later invited over for tea in the TARDIS. He and the Doctor talked adventure and Bertie managed to impress the Time Lord with his optimism. Bertie was just generally enchanted by the Doctor.
Shelly’s possession by the Horrorterrors was harder to deal with. He ended up kidnapping Merricat, whom Bertie felt somewhat responsible for having thought he married her at one point. He tried to help, but was stopped by Jay. He contacted her after the fact anyway and they had a heart-to-heart where he learned that she was from his universe and that she really needed friends. He decided to become that for her.
To combat the gloom, Bertie decided to take Ienzo on a romantic date of a crystal planet filled with paparazzi birds (he didn’t know the birds were paparazzi). In the course of this, Ienzo gifted Bertie with a Firaga ring, and they agreed to make their relationship official.
On the heels of this happy turn, came another game glitch, this one caused by Sollux, still possessed by the Horrorterrors. Everyone’s powers got switched and Bertie found that he was suddenly a genius inventor and had the urge to dress up in costume, monologue, and sing. He did all of these things as everyone began huddling together for protection from the growing strength of their enemies. Rhyme, Nephel, Eridan, Ammond, and several of his other friends came over to live with them at that point.
Merricat took the reins in running the frog breeding program after that. She wanted to see it done so that they could win. However, in the middle of all that, the Horrorterrors, through Sollux, began deleting planets to punish the players. They wanted the players to reset the session and said players had refused. Ammond’s planet was deleted along with the planet they needed to breed frogs. Sollux fought back against the possession, though, and ended up fixing all the glitches (except the permanently-sleeping dreamselves) he caused and started to restored the deleted frog planet. The Horrorterrors killed him before that, but he ended up at least saving the program in his dreamtower on the moon of Prospit. He also managed to put up a barrier to keep the Horrorterrors out.
Thinking all hope was still lost because they did not have the frog planet or the means to restore it, many players fell into despair. One of these was Rhyme. Bertie went to visit her, though, and they talked it all out along with some of her other problems from before the game. She got back her memories of her brother Beat and her Maid of Hope powers began to manifest. She thanked Bertie for his help in this and all of his help throughout the game, and then asked if he would be her uncle. Bertie agreed, but Rhyme decided to stay on her own planet until she defeated her Denizen.
After such heavy happenings, Bertie resolved to cheer everyone up with a party... though they told him it would be cursed as all the other parties had been since the masquerade. He inquired after the date from the human version of the player Karkat and decided to host a Valentine’s Day party. Karkat inserted himself as the brains behind the operation, and Merricat also helped with decorations. In that process, he learned that she was dating Shelly de Killer, the man who had kidnapped and hurt her. He told her he trusted her judgment, but that he worried for her.
Sometime following this, Bertie and Jay had a major falling out with Jay accusing Bertie of being completely helpless and useless to the other players. Though Bertie stood up for himself and told Jay to get out of the flat if he didn’t like it, Bertie took the criticism to heart and cried for the first time since he was a child. His miniature breakdown was held in private, and from it he made a promise to improve himself so that he wouldn’t be so useless. When a man name Saionji began offering kendo lessons, Bertie took him up. He wasn’t the best kendo fighter by the end of the lessons, but he was competent enough to at least defend himself from mid-level enemies. Shortly before the Valentine’s Day party, Jay contacted Bertie to apologize. Bertie was keen to make amends, so it went smoothly.
Then came the Valentine’s Day party, which went perfectly up to the point where Bertie’s Denizen showed up. She kidnapped several players, and when Bertie and the others came to rescue them, she killed Bertie. He died virtually on top of Ienzo, and was resurrected on Prospit with a kiss. The others became even more protective of him after that with even the Doctor and Rhyme berating him for letting something like that happen. Bertie apologized profusely and kept working at his kendo to try to prevent it happening again.
His relationship with Ammond took on a new hue after that as she came to live in Bertie’s flat with him, Jay, and Ienzo. She explained to Bertie that she was in a moiraillegiance with Ienzo. Bertie didn’t quite understand, but they got to the point where he didn’t believe Ammond was trying to steal Ienzo away. It ended in him thanking her for being there to support Ienzo, too.
After that another party was thrown, this one of the fashion variety and no one died. The players rejoiced. Further rejoicing was had when several players announced the capture of Poppy, the original player who broke the game. Poppy was responsible for their presence in the game and they resolved to use her skills and computer to keep fixing glitches, this time under the watchful gaze of her fellow players. It was sometime around here that several players bartered to get Sollux back from the Horrorterrors. It set a time limit for winning at two months. They were also able to restore the frog planet before the barter occurred, leaving them open to continue pulling that together.
Sometime following that, Jay took up with one of the final players to enter the game, a vampire named Lestat. Bertie warned him to be careful, but didn’t do anything, happy his friend has found love again. As with the fashion party, the next party to occur (the Doctor’s Science Soiree) went off without any trouble. Bertie met Lestat there and warned him not to hurt Jay, then spent much of the rest of his time with Rhyme looking at the exhibits and displays. After the party, Jay and the Doctor proceeded to summon the White Queen, one of the major NPCs and a ruler of Prospit. She explained that the Prospitan Sisterhood (a extremist fringe group bent on defeating their rivals on the dream moon of Derse) had taken over and that the sleeping dreamselves had all been imprisoned.
After that, Merricat, who had once more taken up frog breeding duties, announced that they had created the penultimate frog, but that they needed more grist (basically building materials in game terms) in order to get the universe frog. Specifically, they would need to obtain the grist hoards held by some 20 denizens. Bertie took this to heart and went to face his Denizen with Ienzo’s help. The confrontation was non-violent. Bertie healed the wounds his Denizen had received during her fight with the other players after she'd killed him. Moved by his sacrifice (and the pain he went through in healing) she decided to listen to him. Bertie released his bee consorts and they made amends with the Denizen. During all this, Bertie discovered that his Lamb powers had activated further and that he now had rapid self-regenerative healing powers.
Over the next several weeks, Bertie helped other people face their Denizens, and Rhyme came to live in his flat after defeating hers. Theo and Sleipnir (two older players from the same universe and time) got married sometime during all this and Bertie and Ienzo took their own relationship to a new stage there: They danced publicly together. It was a major step for Bertie to be openly affectionate with his boyfriend. It made him nervous, but it all went well. At the wedding, Bertie also noted that Jay (still living with Lestat) looked sickly. He began to worry and let Rhyme, Ienzo, and Ammond know about his concerns. Shortly after that, Jay sent out a call for help from Lestat’s planet. Lestat’s Denizen battle had gone poorly and Jay ended up losing his legs. Bertie discovered at that point that his healing powers didn’t work on what would be tantamount to fatal wounds. They had to call in help from others and Bertie began to feel useless once more, though he did his best to hide his feelings of inadequacy from his friends. Lestat disappeared shortly there-after, so Bertie was never able to confront him.
Once all the Denizens were defeated, Merricat created the universe frog and the Signless (a fully realized Seer of Truth) was able to direct them in the final stretch of win conditions for the game. Several players went to breed ‘ectobunnies’ to send back to Poppy’s home world, and the others not involved in that had to deal with the troll Vladik kidnapping some players and throwing a wild bacchanal fete. His own psychic abilities allowed him to drive people to madness. Bertie went to rescue the kidnappees, but got caught up in the powers until Ienzo arrived and used his Scribe of Sense powers to literally knock some sense into Bertie. Ienzo discovered that his powers could ward off mental influences and healed Ammond, as well. They went to confront Vladik, and the troll proceeded to shank Ienzo with a machete. Bertie found he couldn’t heal the wound, and so, he and Ammond raced back to Ienzo's planet to place Ienzo on his questbed. The game had a mechanic whereby those who died on their questbed would ascend to godtier instead of dying permanently. It was successful, but Bertie and Ammond were then left with a body, which Bertie insisted on burying. He felt, once more, helpless.
This feeling only intensified as the players, in a bid to sort things out with the Prospitan Sisterhood before going to face the endgame bosses (the Black Queen and the Black King of Derse), took the White Queen to talk with the leader of the Sisterhood. The leader ended up shanking the White Queen and stealing her powers. Bertie tried to heal the White Queen, but she died anyway. Jay began to despair, so Bertie put up a front of optimism. By this time, he was becoming much less honest about his true feelings on their chances of winning.
Things went quickly from there forward. The players plotted to face the Black Monarchs and did so. Ammond and several other players died in the battle with the Black Queen, but were resurrected through a game mechanic. After the fight with the Black Queen, the players had all reached the top of their echeladders (the leveling system in the game), and went to face the Black King. However, the Prospitan Sisterhood stepped in at the last moment and killed the Black King, achieving the win conditions for the players. The Prospitans turned their sights on the players next, though, and began attacking them. The players were forced to retreat.
During the retreat, Sollux managed to finally fix the dreamselves. The players stopped off at Derse and Prospit and rescued the dreamers before high-tailing it back to the planets. They holed up on Cassandra Mortmain’s planet as she had a defensible castle and wizards to help her hide it from the Prospitans. The players lasted two days on Cassandra’s planet before they were forced to travel to the Veil (a mass of asteroids around the planet Skaia, which was the battlefield where the armies of Derse and Prospit fought) for protection. There, the Signless used Poppy’s computer to rig up an appearifier so that players could view scenes from their timeline back in their home universes, past and future. While viewing Ienzo’s memories, Bertie learned that Ienzo did not have a last name and they discussed the implications of them, specifically related to a wife taking her husband’s last name in marriage on Earth. Bertie then proposed to Ienzo in a roundabout and unintended way by asking if the other man wouldn’t like to have a last name, specifically one Bertie could give him. Ienzo said he'd like that very much.
After that, on the third day of their escape from the Prospitans, the Horrorterrors made one last ditch effort to get the players to reset the session by telling them that they would destroy fate if they traveled through the portal into their newly created universe. This meant that they would all disappear permanently from their previous timelines. The majority of the players decided to go through with going into the new universe anyway. The alternative of returning to their own timelines, they discovered, would necessitate destroying every NPC in the game world. Mulling this over, the players eventually found a way to sneak back to the door to their new universe, disarm the Prospitans, and have Derse attack the Prospitans as a distraction while they went through. Bertie and several others had to fend off the last efforts of some players to use Poppy’s computer to destroy all the NPCs and return home, but it was a short battle. They destroyed Poppy’s computer and the players stepped through the door to their new universe.
How did they change from their canon personality wise (Please explain what caused it to happen?)
Bertie has always been an optimistic man who bounces back from most anything with good grace and a smile. He never worried that he was a useless lump because really, it made him less of a prospect for marriage, which he was just fine with. In Jarjammed, he faced situations he could never have imagined, many of them wonderful, and many of them traumatizing. His failure to protect Jay, Ienzo, Merricat, Ammond, and the White Queen from harm/death has shaken his faith in everything turning out all right. He doesn't want people to worry about him, though, so his optimism has become something of a front. He's determined to keep everyone else from breaking down, even at the expense of his own feelings getting pushed to one side. He's also much more concerned with being useful in some way to others. Jay telling him he was useless and helpless hurt Bertie more than he would ever admit. He has made the conscious effort to try to better himself physically when presented with the opportunity where he would not have done so before.
Another personality trait that has changed for Bertie is his antipathy toward children, particularly young girls. In his canon, every child he encounters is a terror and his impression was adjusted for that accordingly. In Jarjammed, he met Rhyme, Nephel, Effy, and a number of other young, brilliant kids. He has since amended his opinion to allow that children can be all right.
Finally, Bertie in canon shows little interest in marriage. He shows interest in girls on occasion, though. I have headcanoned this as him not knowing any better about alternatives and repressing his homosexual urges. He states in canon several times that he is 'one of natures bachelors,' a euphemism at that time for a homosexual man. He has also professed that he would like to spend the rest of his days in happy bachelorhood with his valet (manservant), Jeeves. In Jarjammed, Bertie came to understand homosexuality through discussions with Jay, Klaus, and (bizarrely) Merricat, and he accepted that he did, in fact, want a relationship with a man as opposed to a woman.
How did they change from their canon physically (Please explain what caused it to happen?):
Bertie did not change a great deal physically in the game. He is more physically fit than he was in canon. This came about as a result of quitting smoking and constant battles. He quit smoking because Ienzo told him it gave you cancer, and he was battling because it was part of the game mechanic. He also has some additional skill and physicality related to kendo as he took specific lessons with a player (Saionji) who was a kendo instructor of sorts back in his own universe.
Powers: Bertie’s powers as the Lamb of Sacrifice allow him to heal others by drawing injuries onto himself. He does this by touching them (typically holding their hand or shoulder). He has related super regenerative powers that allow him to recover from injuries quickly. A small cut would heal in seconds. Something more serious, like a broken leg, might take a day or so with the level he’s at. If an injury is fatal, he is unable to draw out the injury from the other person. Apart from that, he’s pretty nimble, but he’s an average male in his mid-20s.
Possessions:
- One (1) Firaga Ring
- One (1) Very Sentimental Poker Chip
- One (1) Cassio Keyboard
- Two (2) Rubber Duckies - One is your standard and named Benjamin, the other is painted like Iron Man and named Anthony
- The Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Collected Works of Mrs. Agatha Christie
- Elemental, My Dear Watson (a whangee that shoots elemental magic)
- A wardrobe's-worth of suits, ties, and the other attire a snappy young gentleman about the town might need
Please provide three samples from your previous game, at least one will have to be third person with context:
Sample One: Comes to grips with his sexuality (sort of) and starts dating Ienzo.
Sample Two: Growing closer to Merricat after Shelly hurts her.
Sample Three: Bertie and Jay have a falling out and Bertie takes the criticism about being useless to heart.
Notes: I’ll be taking Bertie from the point that they’re just stepping into the portal to a new world. He will assume the world of We the Lost is this new universe they’ve created.