neosapien ◉ Application

[psychokinesia]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Lavvy
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: ya
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A
CONTACT: blueflewfeduqueen | Lavvy#1238 @ Discord
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Edward Grenore "Add"
CANON: Elsword
CANON REFERENCE:
◈ A Brief History of Elrios
◈ Main Story Timeline
◈ Add
◈ Psychic Tracer → Lunatic Psyker → Doom Bringer

AGE: 19
GENDER: Male
CHARACTER TYPE: Meta-human/cyborg
APPEARANCE:

Mostly matches his appearance as Lunatic Psyker with some elements borrowed from Doom Bringer. He has the shorter hair and still prefers to keep his neck covered up, but already has the black "tattoos" on his arms and chest from cybernetic augmentations. Still wears edgy clothing with way too much goddamn metal stuck to it. His anime hair sticks up because he's just really staticky all the time.

PERSONALITY:

A few key words to describe Add would be abrasive, self-centred, paranoid, awkward, lonely, ambitious, short-tempered, and somehow both smart and dumb in all the worst ways. He is, mostly, an awful person and unbearable to be around, though at his heart he still yearns to be better and to get along with other people. Another good key word for him is "hot mess".

A lot of Add's issues stem from the fact that his upbringing was... questionable at the best of times. He was abused both physically and mentally by his father, isolated from the rest of the world in his family home and later abused and tortured in the slave trade, then finally trapped in a weird time-travelling dimensional library for countless years of his life. He was never truly "free" until he was 16, and by then his social skills were thoroughly fucked beyond repair. He's lived a lonely, lonely life, and though he thirsts desperately for love and attention he has no idea how to acquire such a thing. Instead he's come to convince himself that he doesn't need anyone else—he can never fully trust that people won't try to take advantage of him, based on past experiences, so clearly it's better for him to rely on his own talents and nothing more. He only maintains positive relationships for his own personal benefit, making it clear to everyone he deals with that he only cares about himself.

Try as he might, though, Add can't help but want to believe in the good of others. Despite claiming his distrust in everyone and everything, he still defaults to trusting the people that he's come to spend his time with. This isn't always a good thing, unfortunately. His relationship with Wally is a perfect example of this: from the very start it was a business relationship that immediately lead to betrayal, and yet Add kept going back to Wally to make new deals with him, even after the last three times they worked together where Add ended up getting screwed over. On the other hand, there's his relationship with the El Search Party that he ended up joining after, uh, about 2-3 years of stalking them (look, I'll get to that). Like his dealings with Wally, Add joined the El Search Party with the intent of betraying them from the very start. Unlike Wally, however, the El Search Party was genuinely kind and welcoming to his presence, so... he just sort of kept putting off his grand schemes of betrayal. He still insists that he's using them and nothing more, but it's undeniably obvious that he cares about them and wants to stay a part of their gang. He trusts his teammates even when logic says he shouldn't, and he admires their selfless heroics even if it's too embarrassing for him to admit. They're the kind of good, kindhearted people that he wishes he could be, even if he doesn't believe he's capable of it.

The biggest hurdle preventing him from becoming a better person is his own rampant paranoia. Though he may believe in the good of the people close to him, he's also constantly expecting the worst-case scenario in any sort of interaction. His mind has a way of bending over backwards to turn even the most innocent of interactions into a potential threat or slight against him. Combined with his shitty social skills, he's absolutely awful at reading people's intentions and tends to assume by default that everyone is out to get him personally. He has an extremely difficult time opening up to people, even the people he's spent years of travelling with, and if left to dwell on an awkward situation for too long he might just collapse under his own wild conspiracy theories. Luckily, his friends are kind of used to this by now, so there's usually someone to snap him out of his weird paranoid daydreams when he gets a bit too antsy.

Another major issue of his is his temper. As much as he tries to act cool and calm, Add has an explosive temper that he does very little to curb—something that he unfortunately inherited from his abusive father. When something makes him angry he's prone to lashing out at everyone around him, both verbally and physically when things start to get violent. He's easily blinded by rage, and his worries and paranoia make it easy for someone to get under his skin with the right words. He's also a sadist, taking great pleasure in belittling and hurting others to make himself feel more powerful. Having spent so much of his life abused and forgotten, being able to definitively prove his superiority is all he knows how to do to make himself feel significant. This magnifies his shitty social skills and awkwardness even further—sometimes he'll offend someone completely by accident, but it's also not unheard of for him to belittle and insult people just because he can. Which is, of course, another thing his close friends have learned to try and curb him away from. The El Search Party are honestly saints for trying so hard to better this asshole.

Though he lacks pretty much everything in the social department, Add's strengths shine brightest when it comes to his intellect. He's a natural-born genius, and despite his difficult upbringing the one good thing he gained out of it all was access to years upon years worth of advanced scientific research and texts. He's extremely skilled and knowledgeable when it comes to scientific topics, especially anything related to the ancient robotics of his world, and he's constantly seeking out new knowledge to innovate and grow as a scientist and engineer. He's damn proud of himself, too. Maybe a little too proud, since he tends to ramble incessantly if you can get him talking about his research... he's also prone to spacing out when he gets too caught up in a new idea, or obsessively harassing others with questions if he wants to learn more about something. He has a difficult time restraining himself when something interests him, which often leads to even more awkward situations.

Above all else is his unholy obsession with robots—or Nasods, as they're known as in his world. Nasods were once a lost technology, something that both his parents spent their time researching when they were alive. The knowledge of Nasod technology was something that was passed down through his family for generations, and so much of his childhood studies were spent examining and reconstructing Nasods. They were also a forbidden technology, however: Nasods became lost after they tried to overthrow humanity in a struggle for shrinking energy resources, ending in a devastating war that quite nearly brought upon an apocalypse. Researching such topics was deeply frowned upon, if not outright illegal, and it was a terrorist organization that eventually hunted down the Grenore family and put a stop to their work. And even after all of that, Add ended up stuck in a library filled to the brim with nothing but lost Nasod knowledge. His interest in the topic is derived from his upbringing surrounded by it, as well as not really having anything else to read about for a good chunk of his life.

Which finally brings us to what is quite possibly his most important canon relationship: Eve. Eve is the last surviving Nasod in modern day Elrios, you see, and Add is completely and hopelessly obsessed with her. He joined the El Search Party solely to try and study her, making all kinds of unfulfilled plots to kidnap and dismantle her for science—and even before joining them, he spent at least 2 years literally stalking the group everywhere they went just so he could watch her. Yeah. It's not entirely clear if he was successful at being stealthy all throughout this period, but at the very least the party decided he wasn't dangerous and politely tolerated his presence until they finally had a chance to tell him he could just hang out with them. Out of all the people in the El Search Party, Eve is the one he wants to be around the most, even though her feelings are quite the opposite. Over the years of travelling together they've come to build a more tolerable relationship, with Eve doing an excellent job of keeping Add's bullshit under control (she's one of the only people he'll listen to without question) and Add learning to be a touch more polite through her guidance. He's still a rude, arrogant prick, but he will 100% shut up if Eve tells him he's being an ass. His desire to research her has gradually grown into a more simple desire to know her as a person, possibly even a romantic interest towards her (though he'd be way too embarrassed to ever admit to that). He's grown protective of all his friends over the years they've spent together, but Eve is still his top priority.

Finally, a few other small quirks of his. Add talks to himself a lot, largely thanks to the many years he spent in complete isolation. He tends to mumble out loud even without realizing it, or trail off in the middle of a conversation if his mind gets caught up in another fascinating topic. He loves cats, even if he thinks its kind of embarrassing since it ruins his tough-nerd appearance. He can and will pet every cat he comes across. He's also been known to deliver some impressively inspiring speeches for a guy who can barely navigate small talk, though he also thinks this is super embarrassing and will deny that he even believes in stuff like selfless heroics or following your dreams or whatever. He's a mess, but he tries real hard anyway, and sometimes he's lucky enough to make friends who can understand that.

POWERS & ABILITIES:
Electricity Generation

Add's Meta-human abilities allow him to generate massive amounts of electricity within his body. He can turn this effect on and off (it would be kind of hard to interact with the world when you're constantly tasering everything you touch), though it's partially tied to his mental and emotional state—when stressed or excited he tends to generate a lot of static. The electricity his body produces has a distinct purple tinge to it and is a bit more visible than normal electricity, often in the form of bright purple sparks and wisps of light, so it's easy to tell when he has a live charge going on.

As for what he can do with it, he can charge his body with electricity and then discharge it. This normally requires contact and larger charges take more out of him, so it's not something he can use too recklessly, but if he's going all-out he can blast something with the full force of a point-blank lightning strike. The normal rules of physics apply here. With a bit of precision, he can create electromagnetic fields around his body to either pull or repel metal objects around himself. His unique physiology also makes him highly resistant to electrocution, for kind of obvious reasons. He's used to handling large amounts of electricity in his body and not killing himself, so even getting struck by lightning wouldn't do much to phase him. He can "absorb" external sources of electricity in this way to add to his own energy, though he can't do anything too crazy like actively drain an energy source dry or control it over large distances. He can only absorb electricity while in direct contact with it, and it's basically just the difference between plugging something in over using a built-in battery. His abilities and limits remain exactly the same, he just doesn't have to push himself quite as hard to maintain his energy.

His body does have its limits, though, even when it's his own energy being used. Much like a muscle being strained and injured by overuse, pushing his powers too hard can have deadly side-effects. If his control were to falter while carrying a massive charge of energy, he'd pretty much just fry himself from the inside out. He usually has to stop long before that point though since he'd already be hurting himself from the constant electrical shocks. Other Meta-humans with electrokinetic abilities are also a potential issue, since he's not completely immune to other people hijacking his energy or trying to fight over the flow of it.

Cybernetic Augmentations

In addition to his natural talents, Add has also been integrated with a variety of cybernetic augments that have been specifically designed to work with his powers. While not the most exceptional as far as modern cybernetics go, these are military-grade augments with quite a bit of computing power behind them and a completely unique design—anyone who knows a thing or two about cybernetics would be able to tell they're high quality even with the slightly-outdated components. Add has made a few of his own upgrades to them over the years (and, y'know, adjusted them to fit his growing body), but they're still mostly the design his father created for him when he was young.

All of the cybernetics in Add's body are controlled by an implant connected directly to his brain, located somewhere just behind his left eye. This unit assists with various mental tasks ranging from calculations to memory backups (he has a very literal photographic memory). Having spent most of his life connected to the device, he's come to rely on it heavily—not an issue that tends to come up often, but if something were to cause it to shut down he'd have a lot of trouble with his memory and keeping track of things around him. He can use it to interface with other electronic devices, but generally doesn't do so out of paranoia. This paranoia isn't completely unfounded, though, considering the device was originally intended to control his mind. Add has managed to get into the code and make enough tweaks to cover up this glaring issue, but it's still a very real risk for him—if someone were to gain access to his cybernetics and "repair" the mind control program, it would quite easy to wipe his memories and alter his thoughts. So, yeah, he prefers to not keep any open signals active.

Both of his eyes are prosthetics, working in conjunction with his brain implant to display vital information and enhance his overall performance. He has exceptional vision in both light and dark conditions and can even zoom in to a degree, not unlike a modern camera. He can quickly calculate visual information such as the speed or distance of an object, and through training he can do the reverse as well by calculating a necessary value and applying it to his own body (ex. measuring the exact distance and force needed for a punch). He has superb accuracy and precision due to all of this, though he has to constantly train his body to keep his reflexes up to par.

The last major component of Add's cybernetics are the "tattoos" covering his arms and around his chest. There markings are actually thin, flexible layers of highly conductive circuitry located just under his skin. The purpose of these circuits is much more straightforward: they can gather the electricity from Add's body all into one place, allowing him to harness and control his power with advanced precision. Without these augments his ability tends to be very difficult to control, since the energy is spread out over his whole body and can disperse at the slightest touch of metal. While these augments are active, however, the markings glow a blinding white and he can focus all of his energy into his arms. This allows him to basically punch people with lightning, or at the very least give extremely powerful electrical shocks alongside any kind of physical strike. He has similar (if slightly more lowkey) circuit layers in his legs as well. He can channel his powers through them in other ways as well, such as making his arms and legs highly magnetized, or absorbing his natural electricity to a small degree so he can work with delicate electronics without frying anything.

Intelligence

Cybernetics and superpowers aside, Add is exceptionally bright when it comes to science, robotics, and other topics that interest him. Having been raised and homeschooled by two scientist parents (one of which who, despite being an asshole, held his son to extremely high standards) he was immersed in advanced topics at a very young age, and his interests in knowledge and technology have flourished despite his troubled history. He spent significant years of his life studying the technology forced on him and teaching himself the ins and outs of cybernetic augmentation, from the complex programming to all the delicate physical components. He's quite the talented mechanic and picks up on knowledge quickly—his brain implant helps him cheat a little too, of course. He's especially fascinated with AI and has a bit of an unhealthy fixation on advanced weaponry. He dabbles in designing and creating strange new drones, often with numerous illegal functions, and sometimes sells his creations to fund further inventions. He much prefers to keep his creations to himself, though.

He likes to design devices that he can be used to compliment his own abilities and cybernetics, though they don't always work exactly how he plans. For now I'm not planning to have him invent anything too crazy or overpowered, though in the future you might be hearing from me about what sort of technological creations would be allowed, how long it would take to make something IC, etc.

Physical Strength

... he has some!

Surprisingly, Add actually isn't that strong on the physical side despite how he presents himself. He has a lean, fit build with a bit of muscle, but it's more like the build of a guy who likes to stay active than a guy who regularly gets into electrical fistfights. His fighting style is very rough as well, and a more experienced fighter would easily be able to tell that he's entirely self-taught. His strikes seem powerful, but he actually pulls his punches most of the time to avoid hurting himself—most of the damage he can cause comes from his electricity, not from physical impacts.

In a similar vein, Add's physical endurance is average at best. Ignoring the superpowers, his body isn't exceptional and his cybernetics don't do anything to improve his strength or durability. He can take a few punches, but he goes down about as easily as a normal human would. He probably goes down easier, in fact—the thing about being a human lightningrod is that people don't tend to want to touch you in a fight. Since he's used to getting through most scrapes with minimal contact, he's surprisingly ill-prepared for receiving any kind of serious injury. He's also a little bit squeamish when it comes to blood. He's kind of a huge baby. A huge fighty baby that can electrocute people.

AU HISTORY: (CW: lots of child abuse, manipulative & abusive relationships, unwilling human experimentation, etc.)

The Grenore family descends from a long line of famous scientists, with numerous important and groundbreaking discoveries to their name. In more recent years, however, the family has lost much of its former prestige, in part due to fewer and fewer children taking an interest in the sciences. Asker Grenore was one of the last members to live up to the family name, becoming a very well-known cybernetics researcher while he was alive. He worked with several large companies to design highly specialized cybernetics, contributing to several major breakthroughs in modern cybernetics technology. He married young to a woman by the name of Grace—a fellow scientist he met at university, though her specialty was in genetics and botany. They were a fairly private couple who rarely made public appearances and kept to their large home in the Central Ward, but they were both very successful in their careers and there was little to suggest that they weren't happy. Only a year after their marriage they had a son, Edward Grenore, and secluded themselves further from the public in order to raise their only child and heir to the Grenore name.

Tragically, there was a devastating fire that engulfed their home, and the entire family was killed in a single night. The cause was deemed to be accidental. The then 10-year-old Edward's body was never found. There were some appropriately mournful news articles about the tragedy for a few weeks after the incident, and then the Grenore family and its legacy promptly faded out of the public attention.

This is the version of the story that most people know about, but the reality is far more complex. Though he kept up appearances when in public, Asker was a terrible husband who only cared for his own research. He was practically obsessed with his family's lineage, determined to bring the Grenores back into the history books no matter what. He manipulated his way through his relationship with Grace, wooing her with a fake persona and showering her with attention until she agreed to marry him. In the end, he only chose her for her superior intelligence compared to the other girls he knew, hoping that their combined genius would create an equally intelligent child. As soon as their son was born the act was dropped and he returned to his obsessive work without sparing his wife even a glance, though as Edward grew he also began aggressively tutoring the child to carry on the family legacy.

Edward was a bright child, but his father was extremely strict. Even the tiniest error would be met with harsh discipline. He was rarely allowed to interact with other kids his age, spending the majority of his time locked indoors studying. His only solace was in the time he spent with his mother, helping her in the greenhouse where she carried out her own work studying hybrid plants and genetic modification. Though troubled by her husband's harsh behaviour, Grace still believed that he was simply thinking of their family's best interests and assured her son that his father still loved them dearly.

The situation worsened as Edward grew older, however, and his Meta-human traits began to surface. The stress from his father's lessons made it all too easy for his powers to act out unexpectedly. Electronics were easily damaged in his hands, and whenever some delicate piece of equipment got shorted and destroyed his father would lash out violently at his son. It would still take several months before his parents finally realized what was going on. His mother was immediately accepting, of course, but his father's reaction was far less clear. The lessons immediately stopped, and Asker began pouring even more of his attention into his work, barely acknowledging the rest of his family. This would eventually lead to him leaving abruptly one day, claiming a "business trip" that ended up lasting six months with no contact or explanation whatsoever. These months were some of the best of Edward's childhood, which is in itself depressing. His mother still firmly believed that the man she fell in love with cared about them and wasn't going to do anything crazy, and so they waited patiently for his return as Add's powers continued to develop.

When Asker returned he was no less distant, but there was a change. He took an interest in Edward once more, though this time instead of lessons he subjected his son to a variety of questionable tests and experiments. Taking samples, measuring the output of his electrical abilities, giving him various drugs and observing the results... Edward was being treated more like an experiment than a human child, but he was desperate enough for his father's recognition that he went along with it all blindly. That want for attention became less and less, however, as the experiments continued to escalate, and he was instead forced to cooperate out of fear—both for himself and his mother's safety, as she was quickly becoming the new target of Asker's abuse. All of this lead up to the most terrifying experience of his life, being forced to undergo invasive surgery and weeks of recovery after his father implanted him with experimental cybernetics. He would spend those weeks being prodded at even further, adjusting to all the uncomfortable changes to his body while his father became even more obsessed with studying the results.

Grace was horrified by all of this, and whatever delusions she still held about her husband were promptly abandoned for good. She uncovered more of Asker's plans in secret and, realizing that her son's life was definitely in danger, began making discreet efforts to sabotage his work.

Unfortunately, Asker wasn't the only one invested in Edward. He had to get his funding from somewhere, and the concept of cybernetics that could control or even weaponize Meta-humans was something that a lot of companies would pay for—under the table, of course, at least until the laws could be relaxed enough to allow such a thing. KOG Inc, a subsidiary under Douman Zaibatsu, was one such company. As Asker's latest project progressed it became increasingly obvious that he had no intention of handing over his work. Not only that, but Asker's illegal research had become a liability. The decision was made to eliminate him, and so both parents of the Grenore household were shot dead and burnt into an unrecognizable mess along with their family home by private mercenaries working for KOG. A cover-up was arranged to make it look like the fire was an accident, and Edward was declared dead along with his parents.

Instead of being dead, Edward was taken by the company and sent to a top-secret testing facility where he became one of many unfortunate human test subjects there. For months he was again prodded at and abused, treated like an animal by cold scientists as they attempted to reverse-engineer the technology built into him. They were unable to activate the mind control programming, thanks in part to his mother's sabotage, and after awhile it was determined than Edward was of no further use to them. A weaponized Meta-human that can't be controlled was yet another liability that had to be eliminated.

Edward doesn't remember much of what happened during that time—a mix of traumatic suppression and a head injury, perhaps. Somehow, he was able to escape the facility and ended up on the streets of New Gate City. He had no money, no idea where he was, no leads to follow except for a single set of coordinates stored in the back of his mind by his father from years ago. With the help of some kind-hearted strangers he was able to survive and make his way to the mysterious coordinates. It's there in the Industrial Ward that Edward found his father's secondary lab, abandoned but untouched thanks to careful measures taken to keep its existence a secret. Edwards cybernetics once again granted him access, and he began to explore and examine the lab's contents in hopes of finding some kind of answer to his problems.

Though its master was long dead, an AI drone remained within the lab as its caretaker and security system. Upon giving the AI his name it immediately made an attempt to activate Edward's mind control program, which thankfully failed to do anything but give the boy a terrible headache for a few minutes. Once that was out of the way the AI was completely friendly and helpful to him, eager to assist its new designated master with whatever tasks he required. He decided to name the AI Dynamo, because that was the model name etched into the back of it and he didn't really care enough to think of a better one.

He also asked it to start calling him "Add", because it kept screeching ERROR: ADD VARIABLE and glitching out every time it tried to repeat his name and that was getting kind of annoying.

For the next few days, Edward would spend most of his time at the lab and return to his few contacts in the residential district whenever he needed food or someone to talk to besides a chatty, malfunctioning drone. He didn't know what his goals were yet, but he wanted to know what his father had done to him and what he could do to prevent it from fucking him over again. Progress was slow and he found very little useful data in the lab, but Dynamo was eager to provide everything it knew to make up for it. He decided to adopt the name Add for everyone else he spoke to as well, figuring that it'd be too risky to use his real name anymore.

Alas, Add still isn't allowed to catch a break. After only a little over a week of freedom he was tracked down by his pursuers, caught outside the entrance to his father's lab. He would've been captured again if not for Dynamo flying in to save him, cracking itself against the skull of one of the hired mercenaries and giving Add the opportunity to make a run for it. He escaped back into the lab with Dynamo, locking the place down as he desperately tried to think of a way out of this situation. Responding to its master's desperation, Dynamo revealed that the lab they were in was actually still a decoy and that a second lab was hidden beneath it—because that's just how deep the paranoia runs in this family. Lacking any other escape routes, Add followed Dynamo to the inner lab: an underground bunker filled with all of Asker's hidden research, discarded experiments, and the supplies to survive there for years in an emergency.

Staying in the bunker for that long wasn't exactly part of Add's plan, but it swiftly came to that when Dynamo suddenly shut down—the damage it received from protecting Add turned out to be much more severe than previously thought. Because the lab's security was run entirely by Dynamo, Add was now locked inside the bunker with no way to get back out again. This was far from ideal, but since no one could get to him either it was still a step up from going back to being an experiment. So... stay in the lab he did.

And so, over the next five years Add read every single piece of data stored inside the lab, surviving off of rations and talking to Dynamo's unresponsive robocorpse to stave off the crippling loneliness. He made several attempts to repair the drone or transfer its AI to another device, but all of his efforts proved to be completely fruitless. He instead focused his efforts on overriding the lab's security, and through a couple years of self-taught programming and desperation he finally managed to crack the code to his escape. The only catch remaining was an emergency protocol to delete all of the lab's data if the security was compromised—having worked so hard just to get there, Add decided he had to make the best of this situation and learn as much as he could before returning to the surface. He poured over his father's research with restless enthusiasm, teaching himself everything he needed to know about cybernetics, the true purpose of his augments, and how to better defend himself with the tools he was given. He also swore revenge on the people who ruined his life, naturally, dreaming about the day he'd finally emerge from hiding and make those bastards pay for what they did to him and his mother.

Eventually that day would come once his food supplies started to dry up. Now an angry and maladjusted teenager at the age of 16, Add made his escape from the underground lab and back into the modern world.

And... well, he still couldn't quite catch a break. Add would spend the next three years adjusting to society with questionable success. Looking into KOG Inc early on, he was surprised to discover that the company had already been dissolved due to numerous illegal activities—none of which were human experimentation, though there were apparently some suspicious fires at their office shortly before all the arrests. So, his revenge plot was mostly shot down before he even had a taste of that satisfaction. He earned himself a place to live working with shady black market cybernetics dealers, offering his expertise and mostly just getting taken advantage of. He came to be extremely distrustful of other people, though he was still naive and desperate enough to keep going back even when he knew he was being used. As he grew older and learned more about the world he started striking out on his own, finally, and managed to cobble together a livable situation for himself in the Last Ward.

He has a shitty apartment with an equally shitty landlord, but at least he can provide his own electricity in a pinch. He has some decent connections through the black market and his personal business mostly involves back alley cybernetics upgrades and mechanical work. He's gained a bit of a reputation for being a talented, if completely insufferable technician. Add is the guy you turn to when you need a job done right and won't have to stay in the same room as him for very long.