Carol Malus Dienheim

Player —

Player Name: Ski
Pronouns: He/Him
Are you over 18? Alas
Contact: Skiiage or Ski#0479 on Discord
Current Characters: None
Who Invited You?: Bugly

Character —

Character Name: Carol Malus Dienheim
Character Canon: Senki Zesshou Symphogear
Character Age: Mentally about 700, physically about 10
Canon Point: After-XV
Link to History: Wiki here
Inventory: Faust Robe Dur Da Bla, a cool hat

Powers —

Skills: Carol is a master alchemist, a high ranking member of the Illuminati back when that mattered. In a world where alchemy works, it essentially makes her both an extremely proficient scientist and occultist, skilled in all manners of lab work and study, natural and supernatural.

Superpowers:
1. Then there is applied alchemy, which is essentially just magic. It primarily takes the form of manipulating classical elements, also known as the Aristotles after their famous codifier, of earth, water, fire, and wind. However, with enough energy it is also possible to manipulate chemical elements such as the transformation of other matter into gold, or even theoretical elements such as the manipulation of gravitons or even the outer physics bodies of the gods. It is in essence an incredibly accelerated version of lab alchemy, usually turned to destructive ends. Other specific uses of alchemy include transforming her body into that of an adult's, storing bits of equipment inside a pocket dimension, and dissecting anything in the world. It is really just magic.
2. Carol can also equip the Faust Robe Dur Da Bla, a suit of armour built with fragments of the mythical harp as its base. Relic-based Faust Robes, much like the Symphogears, possess the ability to convert phonic gain, the energy created through song, into practical fighting power, and Carol possesses the Song To Destroy The World. It is said that her phonic gain is equal to that of seven billion superb songs, or the rest of the population of planet Earth's power at the same time. The specific manifestations of Dur Da Bla's power come in the form of the manipulation of harp strings, the vibrations of the harp can empower her alchemy to make it even more powerful than usual, and the strings themselves can be used as wires to directly tie up or cut through enemies or to form more complex constructs such as wrapping themselves around her arm like a drill to building a mechanical green lion practically impervious to all but the strongest of attacks.

Limitations: The first principle of alchemy is equivalent exchange. As she will tell you herself, her songs don't come cheap. Alchemy requires an external power source as a catalyst, and for most alchemists that either comes in the form of life energy or memories. While all who live usually produce more life energy than is strictly needed to survive, it is not sufficient to power all but the most basic of spells by itself. It is possible to harvest the life energy of others, but Carol's preference is to use the combustion of memories to power her alchemy. As an alchemist who has lived for centuries, she has vast stores of memories to draw on, but it is not infinite, and she has already experienced personality death once by completely exhausting her memories. She is not eager to do so again, which puts a strict time limit of her use of powers unless the situation is truly desperate.

Also, as phonic gain-powered Gears and Faust Robes require their users to sing to maximise their power, if Carol were to be restricted from singing somehow, such as being stuck underwater, the output of her Faust Robe would see a noticeable decrease.

Personality —

What were your character's most formative experiences?: Carol can count three extremely major events in her life:
1. The execution of her father in a very literal witch hunt for the sin of curing the town they were living in of the plague. The townsfolk believed that miracles were exclusive to God, and therefore someone wielding the miraculous power of medical science had to be some kind of demon. This incident inculcated within Carol a deep general hatred and taste for vengeance, with her ire targeted particularly at the idea of miracles and the fools who cling to them. It was this incident that led her to set the Apocalypse of All Things into motion, a centuries long plan to fulfill her father's final wish of understanding the world: by alchemically dissecting it to the last atom.

2. What Carol called the Apocalypse of All Things the world at large knows of as the Magical Girl Incident. Carol challenged the entire world and nearly won, but was ultimately defeated by the miracle-clad Symphogears and the memories of her father. Through her actions Carol cemented her role as the ultimate villain, but through the relentless efforts of Hibiki and Elfnein she also learned to forgive the world. Having burnt away most of her memories in the final battle and on the verge of personality-death, Carol would find some measure of redemption by donating her body to Elfnein, her clone.

3. Despite being technically dead, Elfnein's experiments on her brain allowed the fragments of Carol's memories to reassemble themselves into an approximation of her personality. This version of Carol, neither truly alive or dead, threw itself into the battle against Shem-ha, the last remaining member of the progenitor god-race who sought to absorb all of humanity into herself as part of a single perfect super-being free of strife and conflict. Carol, now freed of her thirst for vengeance, found herself capable of grasping a higher level of knowledge than she did while alive. Her alchemy was no longer merely seeking an understanding of the physical make-up of the world, but mankind's place in the universe and simultaneously a single man's place within mankind, a higher level of knowledge that allowed her to help ultimately strike down Shem-ha and go from the world's greatest villain to arguably its greatest defender. It can be said that ultimately, love was the answer all along, and it was this truly final lesson that Carol took with her back to the grave.

What values, morals, and/or philosophies does your character live by, and how are those beliefs demonstrated? What happens when they have to compromise what they believe in?
For Carol the desire to live in harmony is her stated philosophy. To forgive those who have wronged her is one of the ways she wishes to demonstrate her understanding of the world.
She is not very good at it: possessing centuries of rage that now lack a clear target and the arrogance of a woman who once fought the entire world, even her self-defence can be shockingly destructive.

However, while it might not be truly possible for a former villain such as herself to ever live in harmony with others, she earnestly seeks to guide those who can towards it, dedicating her considerable power and intellect towards protecting people such as Hibiki Tachibana and Elfnein, even if they don't necessarily know it yet.

For Carol, who has so much trouble living up to her own standards on this front anyway, she is actually perfectly happy to make full use of an opportunity to put her stated values aside. She will give anyone a chance to demonstrate that they deserve her forgiveness, but persistent troublemaking is simply an excuse for her to unleash her pent up rage and frustration. To trample over others like the villain she once was.

What is your character afraid of? How does avoiding or preventing these fears influence their actions and decisions?
Carol's greatest fear is being forgotten. As someone who uses her memories as fuel for her alchemy and has willingly made herself into a blunt and very violent tool, she has resigned herself to eventually losing all of her own memories. Therefore she relies on the memories of others to build her own self-image. It is why she is capable of throwing herself into the fight despite the high personal cost, even after the failure of the Apocalypse of All Things where she was basically looking to die alongside everything else. It is also why Carol generally tries fairly hard to maintain a certain reputation, both as a villain and an alchemist.

What goals does your character have right now? What do they want, and how do they go about getting it?
The ultimate goal of all alchemy is to approach perfection through understanding and synthesis. To turn that which is base and vulgar, such as lead, into that which is refined and pure, such as gold. Carol, given a full second lease on life, will simply try to continue working towards that goal. Of course, there is only really going to be one way to get there: A lot of living in the world, followed by extremely boring laboratory work. It does not seem likely that she will attempt anything as extreme as the Apocalypse of All Things again.
But of course, she finds it fairly unlikely that she was called back from the dead just to get back to lab work. If there is a purpose to her being here, then she intends to find it. For an alchemist it is important to understand both the macrocosmos, the universe, and the microcosmos, smallest complex system known simply as a human being. One inevitably reflects the other.

Gameplay —

Areas of Interest / Brainstorming: Carol is genuinely for realsies a reformed villain. That will broadly be where her interests and talents lie, even if she ends up more than a little weirded out that nobody else seems to take the "reformed" thing seriously at all. As a secondary plot, Carol will probably be looking to find an alternate source of power for her alchemy. Given that she is no longer basically suicidal or as haunted by her own nightmares, the continuous combustion of her own memories no longer sounds appealing to her.
Samples: Sample 1 Sample 2