Schuldig (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
guilty_by_design) wrote2015-02-15 01:18 pm
guilty_by_design) wrote2015-02-15 01:18 pm
Application - Midnight Syndicate
PLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: Callie
ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER?: Yes!
CONTACT: FyreflyzBlaze on AIM/lymmea on Plurk
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Schuldig (codename: Mastermind)
CANON: Weiss Kreuz: Kapitel
CANON POINT: Post-series, immediately after the tower collapse in the last episode
CHARACTER AGE: 22
HISTORY: Schuldig's background is sketchy at best, never mentioned in the anime canon and with few details given even from other sources. Canon tells us that Schuldig is of German descent and spent time at Rosenkrüs, a facility touted as a special institute for children with psychic gifts. In actuality, Rosenkrüs was more like a Holocaust concentration camp than an institute, geared for churning out psychic super soldiers. (Canon compares it to Auschwitz in their level of brutality, such as their execution of children deemed failures or no longer useful.) It's known that Schuldig and Brad Crawford were at Rosenkrüs at the same time, and is presumably how they met, making them the two founding members of Schwarz. (They also both slept with the same woman around that time, another psychic named Silvia. Schuldig was the more enamored with her, and wasn't all that skilled in sex when they first met - though, given the likely timeframe, he may only have been a teenager. Again, this is all given as canon.) The other two members, Farfarello and Nagi Naoe, arrived later. All save Farfarello have psychic abilities - Crawford is a precognitive, Nagi is a telekinetic, and Schuldig is telepathic. Farfarello's skill is the inability to feel pain, and not psychic in nature.
What Schuldig's life was like before Rosenkrüs, or even while he was in the facility, is a matter of speculation(or headcanon). But his personality suggests he took the full brunt of Rosenkrüs' brutality. His sadism and hatred of humanity are either attitudes forced on him as a future Esset operative, a reaction to what he experienced, or both. There are some indications his own powers may also have some role to play, as well. He mentions in canon that sometimes it's difficult for him to separate his own thoughts from those of others, which carries certain implications. For one, it suggests the cruel minds of those around him at Esset might have colored his own. It also suggests that Schuldig likely can't shut thoughts other than his own out of his mind, which might make him hate other people for their forced intrusions upon him. That would also make his cruelty to others a form of personal retaliation, rather than just a sadistic pleasure.
Just what suffering Schuldig endured in Rosenkrüs is best not speculated on. But with its being like Auschwitz, one can assume children in Rosenkrüs experienced most human rights violations it's possible to conceive of. What Schuldig was like before Rosenkrüs, and even who he was, appear to have been erased. Unlike the other members of Schwarz, no real name or even a reference to a former self having existed is ever given. Given that Schuldig's domain is the mind more than any of the others, this may be an intentional choice on his part.
With that headcanon and speculation aside, we return to canon. Rosenkrüs was a training ground for Esset, a powerful and shadowy organization that took command of Schwarz after they left Rosenkrüs. Under their orders, Schwarz took up the role of bodyguards for Reiji Takatori, a corrupt politician aiming to becoming the Prime Minister of Japan. Esset had their own reasons for wanting Takatori in charge, not least of which being he was working for them. Schwarz's duties consisted of defending the Takatori family's shady dealings from a vigilante assassin group, Weiss. One of the Weiss assassins had a personal vendetta against Takatori, which meant that Schwarz's services as bodyguards were that much more necessary.
But even within the context of following Esset's orders, Schwarz had their own differing goals and interests. At one point, Schuldig goes to great lengths to torment the love interest of the Weiss assassin Omi Tsukiyono. He did this with no regard for the fact that she was Ouka Takatori - Reiji Takatori's beloved daughter. Ignoring any conflict of interest in his choice of targets, Schuldig set a chain of events into motion that led to Ouka's death at Farfarello's hands. (Though perhaps neither Schuldig nor Farfarello planned on that; it was a long range shot by a one-eyed man while Ouka was hugging Omi, followed by Farfarello cursing, so he might have been aiming for Omi and missed.) Her death was all the more tragic given that Omi had just come to terms with the fact that Ouka was, in fact, his half-sister. (Something Schuldig also revealed for his own sadistic amusement.) Ouka's death outraged Takatori to the point where he beat Schuldig and Farfarello with a golf club at some length. Crawford had to lie that Weiss had been to blame to get them off the hook. From this, it's easy to see that Schuldig either doesn't consider the consequences of his actions, or doesn't care. Doing whatever he enjoys takes precedence over business.
Despite such personal forays, Schwarz continued their work as Takatori's guards until Takatori did, in fact, become Prime Minister. But Takatori then spurned both Schwarz and Esset, wanting to enjoy his new-found power without their interference. Of course, this backfired on him - Schwarz slaughtered the guards he placed over them and then left Takatori to the tender mercies of Weiss. They remarked, upon leaving, that they had never been looking to install a despot. (At this point, Schwarz lets slip what was likely their goal all along - the extinction of the human race. Whether they shared this goal with Esset or it was their own private agenda, it's hard to tell.)
With Takatori gone, Schwarz became the direct tools of Esset. The plans they set in motion varied, but they all had one thing in common - they sought to stir up as much unrest and anarchy in Japan as possible. (ie: using telepathy to influence a PTA group to 'cleanse' Japan's youth with napalm, assisting a composer whose music drove people to suicide, etc.) At last they kidnapped Aya Fujimiya - the comatose sister of one of the Weiss assassins, Ran. (Of course, they had to kidnap her from Schreient, the group that had kidnapped her first, but minor details.) Amidst the confusion surrounding Aya's double kidnapping, Schuldig had some more fun - this time with Sakura, a girl in love with Ran who happened to look like Aya. While this was no doubt only for his personal entertainment at first, Sakura turned out to have significant use to Schwarz. Esset's plans for Aya were to use her as a vessel to summon a demonic power; fans theorize it to either have been Hitler or some sort of demon that had possessed Hitler. They chose Aya as its vessel because, in her time spent comatose, her body hadn't aged, making her unique. But to the shock of everyone - including Esset - the girl Weiss rescued from the ritual wasn't Aya, but Sakura. Schwarz had switched the girls and taken possession of Aya for themselves.
Of the three psychic leaders of Esset, Weiss managed to take out two; the most powerful one fled, only to discover Schwarz and Aya. Furious at their betrayal, he lashed out at them - only to discover that Schwarz's psychic abilities outstripped his own. Upon informing him that they couldn't care less about Esset's ritual, Schwarz announced their intent to drop the world into chaos, an environment men with their talents would be uniquely suited for. The Esset leader attempted to bribe them, before Farfarello finally stabbed and killed him.
Of course, Weiss still needed to retrieve Aya, and coming to get her back finally spurred a full-out showdown between Weiss and Schwarz. But the battle didn't end with either side winning. The structural instability caused by Weiss' fight with the Esset masters, along with the failed ritual, led to the collapse of the entire building. Sakura, Aya, and Weiss' ally Manx made it out, but Weiss and Schwarz were both dropped through the floor of the building, with the entire tower dropped on top of them. That will be Schuldig's last memory before he wakes up in Eros.
PERSONALITY: One can sum up Schuldig's entire personality in one word in his native tongue- schadenfreude. Whoever coined the term might as well have had him in mind. Schuldig enjoys nothing more than making people miserable. He's a sadist, but he prefers to leave crude methods of physical torture to men like Farfarello; the pain he derives the most pleasure from in others is psychological. In the anime, he flat out states that ruined lives taste like honey to him. He likes to play people off of each other, as well as off their own fears. At one point he taunts Omi, asking him whether Omi is any better than the men he's killed, and teases him about what Ouka would think if she knew he was a murderer. Then he goes to Ouka and reveals to her that Omi, the boy she's in love with, is her half-brother. This lets him twist the emotional thumbscrews on both sides of the equation. He leaves them both confused and afraid to communicate with each other, neither being sure what the other knows.
Doubtless Schuldig's time in Rosenkrüs shaped him into the man he is, given what sort of environment it was for a child to grow up in and the nature of the work they prepped him for. But it's probable his telepathy itself had a hand in it. At one point he mentions that sometimes he can't tell which thoughts are his and which aren't, suggesting he doesn't have enough privacy in his head to make out his own thoughts. Something like that could twist anyone into feeling intense hatred and resentment for the people whose thoughts intrude upon him. And that's not even taking into account the dark insights into human nature a telepath would likely be privy to.
Of course, even if it might be understandable how Schuldig became the laughing, psyche-mauling monster that he is today, he's still a terrible person. Not even an underlying theme of vengeance taken upon the world for what he endures as a telepath and what he went through in Rosenkrüs justifies it in any way. Most of the people he lashes out at are innocent and unwitting to anything they might be inflicting on him.
As for Schuldig's behavior when he's not making someone's life hellish, he's more casual and laid-back than one might expect. He doesn't stand on formalities - indeed, he considers them annoying wastes of time, and he has the most relaxed manner of speaking of the Schwarz members. He's somewhat lazy, at least when it concerns anything that doesn't pique his interest. (He'll go miles out of his way for something that does pique his interest.) He's something of a hedonist in that respect; his pleasure and entertainment are his foremost concerns, with everything else taking a backseat. He's vain, arrogant, and has no respect for any authority - save that he seems willing enough to obey Crawford, perhaps due to their long history together. But even then he's likely to only obey the letter of the law, and take what fun he can in whatever ways he can find that haven't been explicitly forbidden. (I doubt Crawford approved or even knew of the Ouka affair; Crawford's precognition can't cover everything. And given that Crawford had to invent a cover story for him, one assumes Schuldig acted on his own.) He seems to get along well enough with Crawford, and often works alongside Farfarello. He appears to have the most conflict with Nagi out of the members of Schwarz. Schuldig appears to enjoy irritating him and Nagi doesn't seem to appreciate it. But even then, the two seem to have a decent working relationship. But outside Schwarz, Schuldig seems to have little use for anyone.
Yet there is an interesting caveat to Schuldig's general disregard for the rest of the world. He tends to obsess over those he finds interesting, even if they're his enemies, going so far as to be proprietary of them. (He's definitely one of those villains who won't allow anyone else to kill the hero; even in the series, he refers to Weiss as being his prey.) When he finds someone intriguing enough, he'll keep them around to study and/or torment at his leisure. He considers those who fascinate him his toys, and to kill his toys would be the same as breaking them...then he can't play with them anymore. He'll attack and hurt others, if the situation demands, but he'd much rather hurt people emotionally than physically. And he rarely seems interested in killing anyone outright himself, unless it's for the emotional distress he can cause with that person's death. (Though he appears more than willing to manipulate or mindjack others into killing for him.)
ABILITIES: Schuldig is an exceptionally powerful telepath. While canon never goes into exactly how his powers work, or to what degree, there are plenty of examples of it in action. He's able to read the minds of others as a given, of course. But on one occasion he dominates the mind of a girl (or at least her motor function; she retains her thoughts and personality) and forces her body to act against her will. He's also seen to have a more insidious effect on the minds of those he wants to influence without outright controlling. He seems to be able to persuade people, without any overt use of his powers, to extreme acts that they would otherwise find counter to their natural inclinations. (He convinces a PTA association to 'cleanse' the youth of Tokyo by setting teens on fire with napalm through a prior incident of psychic suggestion we don't see, after which point they proceed on his suggestion without any further effort or intervention on his part.) It may be that he's able to alter a person's feelings and priorities without their realizing, and without their losing their general autonomy. But Schuldig implies that he only manipulated a small group, and that the effect dominoed from there. This may hint at some form of implanted, memetic telepathic suggestion.
Further, Schuldig demonstrates his abilities in constructive ways with his teammates. The members of Schwarz, despite only Schuldig having powers of telepathy, are able to communicate with each other by thought rather than speech. This suggests Schuldig can establish two-way links between several people, something in the manner of a telepathic conference call.
But canon does reference a drawback to Schuldig's abilities; he admits in a conversation with a teammate that sometimes he can't tell which thoughts in his head are his. This implies that Schuldig has no actual shielding in regards to his telepathy, and no way to turn it off. He shows definite control over where his focus is and to what extent he probes into specific minds, of course. But it seems that in general he's a passive receiver of thoughts, and can't turn this ability off at will.
Non-canonically, I've established certain further limits and caveats to his telepathy:
• He can only access minds that are human, or at least close to human. (Example: a Homestuck troll's mind would be similar enough to a human's for him to be able to read it, even though trolls aren't human. The Doctor's mind would not be, even though the Doctor appears human.)
• He can get vague surface impressions from living minds he can't otherwise read - things like basic emotional state, or pointed thoughts aimed at him(such as GO AWAY). This applies to people whose deeper thoughts might be off limit to him for some reason(like the Doctor's). But zero intricacies, and never whole thoughts. Nonliving minds, such as a robot/cyborg brain, are blank spaces.
• He can't passively detect the thoughts of anyone unconscious, as they have no surface thoughts at the moment. He can only detect passive thoughts from sleeping people if they're dreaming, and then only the actual content of the dream. He can dive into sleeping minds with active effort, but it's extremely hard for him to get anything coherent or worthwhile out of them in that state. (He can affect basic body functions, however - for instance, he could force a sleeping person to wake up.)
• Anyone with a mind that holds an extreme amount of information is a special case. (ie: non-robotic data entities, characters who've lived hundreds of years, omniscient beings, precognitives.) They aren't exactly off-limits to Schuldig, but his trying to go into their minds is like putting on a hat of angry bees; it actively pains him because his mind can't keep up. So he only picks up surface thoughts from them(passive telepathy), and only ventures deeper in great need, at his own risk.
• Fellow psychics can make life difficult for Schuldig if he tries to get into their heads, though they would have to be quite powerful to stop him. (Note that only psychics who have some sort of mental ability can impede him. A telekinetic has psychic powers, but their powers work on the world around them and don't assist in battles in their own head.)
• The strong-willed can fight Schuldig's intrusions. This applies even to non-psychics, if they're perceptive enough to detect him in their heads. (Or if he lets on that he's in there, which he often does.) They can make it difficult for him to find information he wants, or to actively control them…but it takes extreme force of will. He was able to make a girl resisting with all her might shoot the man she loved, and at best all she could do was shift the aim a few inches away from a lethal shot. Not many without special mental training can seriously impede him.
• His abilities take exceptional amounts of energy to keep up with. To that end, Schuldig's metabolism is sky-high, and he has to eat more often than most. Further, he consumes extreme amounts of sugar and coffee, keeping himself on a near-constant sugar and caffeine high. (When he crashes, it's not at all pretty.) He also takes frequent catnaps, as much a product of not being able to sleep long through the noise in his head as from being too hopped up to stay down.
• Whenever he's deprived of sugar, coffee, or food for extended lengths of time, or he takes a severe emotional or mental hit, Schuldig's abilities start to get away from him. Bad Things happen when this occurs. Bad for Schuldig most of the time, but as he's a telepath capable of broadcasting into other minds, it can also be bad for people around him.
• Schuldig's effective telepathic 'range' is about half a mile from himself in every direction. This is unaffected by any materials in the way except for specific (and rare) metals. It's not common for many people to know or make use of telekill materials outside groups like Esset that deal with psychics on a regular basis. But if other canons in-game have telekill agents that shut down telepathy, or telekill spells within Eros exist, those would affect Schuldig.
• This is all on top of the fact that I'll have a permissions post letting people opt in/out of Schuldig's using his telepathy on their characters. I'll also be communicating with his thread partners to make sure I step on as few toes as possible.
• And of course, NPCs in MS will be off-limits. Schuldig won't even get their surface thoughts. This can apply to specific NPCs(like the witches), or it can be a blanket restriction where Schuldig can't even read the minds of random people on the street in Eros. I leave that up to mod discretion.
On more everyday abilities…Schuldig displays blinding speed in canon. I suspect this to be a combination of natural speed and his telepathy - reacting to his opponents' actions as soon as they think them while psychically interfering with their sight at the same time. He's also shown to be acrobatic and a remarkable jumper. He's able to leap straight upwards into the branches of a tree from a standstill on the ground, as well as bounding over rooftops even while carrying a body. This may well be from his training at Rosenkrüs. (It could also just be anime physics, but I do kind of like him being a roofmonkey.) He's stronger than an average person, more than someone with his thin build should be(he throws a man a few inches shorter than him across the room one-handed). But this strength doesn't appear outside the realm of human ability, so much as unusual for his build. We also see him using guns, though his accuracy is questionable; I suspect this to be him drawing out his fun on purpose rather than his having Stormtrooper Aim, though. If Esset trained him to be a super soldier, one assumes they taught him how to shoot a gun with deadly accuracy.
SINS & VIRTUES: I think Schuldig is actually a perfect candidate for Eva's house. Greed? As far as material possessions go, he's got a bright red sports car that's flashier than anything else in his canon, and he has the flashiest appearance in the series. As for wanting to possess things - he claims ownership over the right to hunt down his enemies. Pride? See above, and add into that his lording his abilities smugly over others at every opportunity. Wrath? Entirely aside from his sadism likely being a way of taking out his anger on everyone around him, he wants to make the human race extinct. Lust? Schuldig is a flat out hedonist in every sense. Gluttony? Not only is he a hedonist, but he puts his indulgences above all other concerns, sometimes to the active detriment of his team. Envy? I feel like a good portion of Schuldig's hatred for others is based on their having had lives better and more blissfully ignorant than his own. Sloth? Try getting him to do something that doesn't interest him. It's like trying to walk a very fat cat. (He also exemplifies it when he's low on energy, but that's more of an enforced example than one by choice, so it may not really count.)
Schuldig doesn't just demonstrate all the sins; he wallows in them.
SAMPLES
MS test drive: http://graveyardshift.dreamwidth.org/1070.html?thread=386606#cmt386606
Third person sample:
Schuldig's woken up in a number of ways over the course of his life. Tied up, pinned down, locked in lightless rooms, drugged, dazed, with broken bones and blood in his mouth. (Sometimes not even his blood.)
He's not particularly heartbroken that, for reasons unknown to him, 'waking up with an entire building on top of him' isn't going to be added to the list. Or 'waking up in the ocean', since presumably the collapse of the building into the sea would have invited the water in. He's honestly a bit surprised to be waking up at all.
He doesn't seem to be any worse for wear for the collapse, either - another inexplicable blessing. He gets to his feet, stretching his legs and cracking his neck as his body adjusts to the new circumstances. His mental adjustments are far more involved, as he braces himself against the waterfall of thoughts that crashes down on him. They'd been flowing around his mind like a river around a stone, but they promptly begin flowing through it again as consciousness reasserts itself. Unconscious, a telepath gets some relief - though they can't really appreciate it - but once they wake up...well, you either hit the ground running or you never regain your footing at all. That was a lesson he'd learned instinctively as a kid, and one Rosenkrüs had tattooed into his mind when he'd been trained. When a person drowns, they're said to go down three times; with a telepath, once is all it takes.
The thoughts help orient him, too; that's the other thing he learned fast. If he had to hear the thoughts of others, he'd use it to his advantage - instinct at first, practicality turned to vengeance later. He picks out the nearest minds to him, scans for any information immediately relevant…and is brought up short in confusion. Nothing he's getting makes even the slightest amount of sense…he's nowhere near the Esset building. He's nowhere near Schwarz, which is even more disturbing.
He doesn't even seem to be in Japan anymore. How the hell can he not be in Japan anymore? How could he have been out long enough to get him anywhere else? How could anyone get to him for him for him to have been moved someplace else? Because he's definitely here. A telepath has to grip their personal reality with both hands at all times; there's no way this is a dream, or a hallucination, or any product of his mind.
All this before he even registers the women in front of him. Surrounding him.
Schuldig is confused and uneasy, and he hates those feelings. But he finds himself grinning regardless…because when he's unhappy, he likes - no, loves to spread it around. It won't actually help him in any concrete way, but…well, not all pleasure is meant to be productive.
And when a woman (the ringleader?) tells him that he's sinned...he laughs. He is guilt. Do they think they're telling him something he doesn't know?
NAME: Callie
ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER?: Yes!
CONTACT: FyreflyzBlaze on AIM/lymmea on Plurk
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Schuldig (codename: Mastermind)
CANON: Weiss Kreuz: Kapitel
CANON POINT: Post-series, immediately after the tower collapse in the last episode
CHARACTER AGE: 22
HISTORY: Schuldig's background is sketchy at best, never mentioned in the anime canon and with few details given even from other sources. Canon tells us that Schuldig is of German descent and spent time at Rosenkrüs, a facility touted as a special institute for children with psychic gifts. In actuality, Rosenkrüs was more like a Holocaust concentration camp than an institute, geared for churning out psychic super soldiers. (Canon compares it to Auschwitz in their level of brutality, such as their execution of children deemed failures or no longer useful.) It's known that Schuldig and Brad Crawford were at Rosenkrüs at the same time, and is presumably how they met, making them the two founding members of Schwarz. (They also both slept with the same woman around that time, another psychic named Silvia. Schuldig was the more enamored with her, and wasn't all that skilled in sex when they first met - though, given the likely timeframe, he may only have been a teenager. Again, this is all given as canon.) The other two members, Farfarello and Nagi Naoe, arrived later. All save Farfarello have psychic abilities - Crawford is a precognitive, Nagi is a telekinetic, and Schuldig is telepathic. Farfarello's skill is the inability to feel pain, and not psychic in nature.
What Schuldig's life was like before Rosenkrüs, or even while he was in the facility, is a matter of speculation(or headcanon). But his personality suggests he took the full brunt of Rosenkrüs' brutality. His sadism and hatred of humanity are either attitudes forced on him as a future Esset operative, a reaction to what he experienced, or both. There are some indications his own powers may also have some role to play, as well. He mentions in canon that sometimes it's difficult for him to separate his own thoughts from those of others, which carries certain implications. For one, it suggests the cruel minds of those around him at Esset might have colored his own. It also suggests that Schuldig likely can't shut thoughts other than his own out of his mind, which might make him hate other people for their forced intrusions upon him. That would also make his cruelty to others a form of personal retaliation, rather than just a sadistic pleasure.
Just what suffering Schuldig endured in Rosenkrüs is best not speculated on. But with its being like Auschwitz, one can assume children in Rosenkrüs experienced most human rights violations it's possible to conceive of. What Schuldig was like before Rosenkrüs, and even who he was, appear to have been erased. Unlike the other members of Schwarz, no real name or even a reference to a former self having existed is ever given. Given that Schuldig's domain is the mind more than any of the others, this may be an intentional choice on his part.
With that headcanon and speculation aside, we return to canon. Rosenkrüs was a training ground for Esset, a powerful and shadowy organization that took command of Schwarz after they left Rosenkrüs. Under their orders, Schwarz took up the role of bodyguards for Reiji Takatori, a corrupt politician aiming to becoming the Prime Minister of Japan. Esset had their own reasons for wanting Takatori in charge, not least of which being he was working for them. Schwarz's duties consisted of defending the Takatori family's shady dealings from a vigilante assassin group, Weiss. One of the Weiss assassins had a personal vendetta against Takatori, which meant that Schwarz's services as bodyguards were that much more necessary.
But even within the context of following Esset's orders, Schwarz had their own differing goals and interests. At one point, Schuldig goes to great lengths to torment the love interest of the Weiss assassin Omi Tsukiyono. He did this with no regard for the fact that she was Ouka Takatori - Reiji Takatori's beloved daughter. Ignoring any conflict of interest in his choice of targets, Schuldig set a chain of events into motion that led to Ouka's death at Farfarello's hands. (Though perhaps neither Schuldig nor Farfarello planned on that; it was a long range shot by a one-eyed man while Ouka was hugging Omi, followed by Farfarello cursing, so he might have been aiming for Omi and missed.) Her death was all the more tragic given that Omi had just come to terms with the fact that Ouka was, in fact, his half-sister. (Something Schuldig also revealed for his own sadistic amusement.) Ouka's death outraged Takatori to the point where he beat Schuldig and Farfarello with a golf club at some length. Crawford had to lie that Weiss had been to blame to get them off the hook. From this, it's easy to see that Schuldig either doesn't consider the consequences of his actions, or doesn't care. Doing whatever he enjoys takes precedence over business.
Despite such personal forays, Schwarz continued their work as Takatori's guards until Takatori did, in fact, become Prime Minister. But Takatori then spurned both Schwarz and Esset, wanting to enjoy his new-found power without their interference. Of course, this backfired on him - Schwarz slaughtered the guards he placed over them and then left Takatori to the tender mercies of Weiss. They remarked, upon leaving, that they had never been looking to install a despot. (At this point, Schwarz lets slip what was likely their goal all along - the extinction of the human race. Whether they shared this goal with Esset or it was their own private agenda, it's hard to tell.)
With Takatori gone, Schwarz became the direct tools of Esset. The plans they set in motion varied, but they all had one thing in common - they sought to stir up as much unrest and anarchy in Japan as possible. (ie: using telepathy to influence a PTA group to 'cleanse' Japan's youth with napalm, assisting a composer whose music drove people to suicide, etc.) At last they kidnapped Aya Fujimiya - the comatose sister of one of the Weiss assassins, Ran. (Of course, they had to kidnap her from Schreient, the group that had kidnapped her first, but minor details.) Amidst the confusion surrounding Aya's double kidnapping, Schuldig had some more fun - this time with Sakura, a girl in love with Ran who happened to look like Aya. While this was no doubt only for his personal entertainment at first, Sakura turned out to have significant use to Schwarz. Esset's plans for Aya were to use her as a vessel to summon a demonic power; fans theorize it to either have been Hitler or some sort of demon that had possessed Hitler. They chose Aya as its vessel because, in her time spent comatose, her body hadn't aged, making her unique. But to the shock of everyone - including Esset - the girl Weiss rescued from the ritual wasn't Aya, but Sakura. Schwarz had switched the girls and taken possession of Aya for themselves.
Of the three psychic leaders of Esset, Weiss managed to take out two; the most powerful one fled, only to discover Schwarz and Aya. Furious at their betrayal, he lashed out at them - only to discover that Schwarz's psychic abilities outstripped his own. Upon informing him that they couldn't care less about Esset's ritual, Schwarz announced their intent to drop the world into chaos, an environment men with their talents would be uniquely suited for. The Esset leader attempted to bribe them, before Farfarello finally stabbed and killed him.
Of course, Weiss still needed to retrieve Aya, and coming to get her back finally spurred a full-out showdown between Weiss and Schwarz. But the battle didn't end with either side winning. The structural instability caused by Weiss' fight with the Esset masters, along with the failed ritual, led to the collapse of the entire building. Sakura, Aya, and Weiss' ally Manx made it out, but Weiss and Schwarz were both dropped through the floor of the building, with the entire tower dropped on top of them. That will be Schuldig's last memory before he wakes up in Eros.
PERSONALITY: One can sum up Schuldig's entire personality in one word in his native tongue- schadenfreude. Whoever coined the term might as well have had him in mind. Schuldig enjoys nothing more than making people miserable. He's a sadist, but he prefers to leave crude methods of physical torture to men like Farfarello; the pain he derives the most pleasure from in others is psychological. In the anime, he flat out states that ruined lives taste like honey to him. He likes to play people off of each other, as well as off their own fears. At one point he taunts Omi, asking him whether Omi is any better than the men he's killed, and teases him about what Ouka would think if she knew he was a murderer. Then he goes to Ouka and reveals to her that Omi, the boy she's in love with, is her half-brother. This lets him twist the emotional thumbscrews on both sides of the equation. He leaves them both confused and afraid to communicate with each other, neither being sure what the other knows.
Doubtless Schuldig's time in Rosenkrüs shaped him into the man he is, given what sort of environment it was for a child to grow up in and the nature of the work they prepped him for. But it's probable his telepathy itself had a hand in it. At one point he mentions that sometimes he can't tell which thoughts are his and which aren't, suggesting he doesn't have enough privacy in his head to make out his own thoughts. Something like that could twist anyone into feeling intense hatred and resentment for the people whose thoughts intrude upon him. And that's not even taking into account the dark insights into human nature a telepath would likely be privy to.
Of course, even if it might be understandable how Schuldig became the laughing, psyche-mauling monster that he is today, he's still a terrible person. Not even an underlying theme of vengeance taken upon the world for what he endures as a telepath and what he went through in Rosenkrüs justifies it in any way. Most of the people he lashes out at are innocent and unwitting to anything they might be inflicting on him.
As for Schuldig's behavior when he's not making someone's life hellish, he's more casual and laid-back than one might expect. He doesn't stand on formalities - indeed, he considers them annoying wastes of time, and he has the most relaxed manner of speaking of the Schwarz members. He's somewhat lazy, at least when it concerns anything that doesn't pique his interest. (He'll go miles out of his way for something that does pique his interest.) He's something of a hedonist in that respect; his pleasure and entertainment are his foremost concerns, with everything else taking a backseat. He's vain, arrogant, and has no respect for any authority - save that he seems willing enough to obey Crawford, perhaps due to their long history together. But even then he's likely to only obey the letter of the law, and take what fun he can in whatever ways he can find that haven't been explicitly forbidden. (I doubt Crawford approved or even knew of the Ouka affair; Crawford's precognition can't cover everything. And given that Crawford had to invent a cover story for him, one assumes Schuldig acted on his own.) He seems to get along well enough with Crawford, and often works alongside Farfarello. He appears to have the most conflict with Nagi out of the members of Schwarz. Schuldig appears to enjoy irritating him and Nagi doesn't seem to appreciate it. But even then, the two seem to have a decent working relationship. But outside Schwarz, Schuldig seems to have little use for anyone.
Yet there is an interesting caveat to Schuldig's general disregard for the rest of the world. He tends to obsess over those he finds interesting, even if they're his enemies, going so far as to be proprietary of them. (He's definitely one of those villains who won't allow anyone else to kill the hero; even in the series, he refers to Weiss as being his prey.) When he finds someone intriguing enough, he'll keep them around to study and/or torment at his leisure. He considers those who fascinate him his toys, and to kill his toys would be the same as breaking them...then he can't play with them anymore. He'll attack and hurt others, if the situation demands, but he'd much rather hurt people emotionally than physically. And he rarely seems interested in killing anyone outright himself, unless it's for the emotional distress he can cause with that person's death. (Though he appears more than willing to manipulate or mindjack others into killing for him.)
ABILITIES: Schuldig is an exceptionally powerful telepath. While canon never goes into exactly how his powers work, or to what degree, there are plenty of examples of it in action. He's able to read the minds of others as a given, of course. But on one occasion he dominates the mind of a girl (or at least her motor function; she retains her thoughts and personality) and forces her body to act against her will. He's also seen to have a more insidious effect on the minds of those he wants to influence without outright controlling. He seems to be able to persuade people, without any overt use of his powers, to extreme acts that they would otherwise find counter to their natural inclinations. (He convinces a PTA association to 'cleanse' the youth of Tokyo by setting teens on fire with napalm through a prior incident of psychic suggestion we don't see, after which point they proceed on his suggestion without any further effort or intervention on his part.) It may be that he's able to alter a person's feelings and priorities without their realizing, and without their losing their general autonomy. But Schuldig implies that he only manipulated a small group, and that the effect dominoed from there. This may hint at some form of implanted, memetic telepathic suggestion.
Further, Schuldig demonstrates his abilities in constructive ways with his teammates. The members of Schwarz, despite only Schuldig having powers of telepathy, are able to communicate with each other by thought rather than speech. This suggests Schuldig can establish two-way links between several people, something in the manner of a telepathic conference call.
But canon does reference a drawback to Schuldig's abilities; he admits in a conversation with a teammate that sometimes he can't tell which thoughts in his head are his. This implies that Schuldig has no actual shielding in regards to his telepathy, and no way to turn it off. He shows definite control over where his focus is and to what extent he probes into specific minds, of course. But it seems that in general he's a passive receiver of thoughts, and can't turn this ability off at will.
Non-canonically, I've established certain further limits and caveats to his telepathy:
• He can only access minds that are human, or at least close to human. (Example: a Homestuck troll's mind would be similar enough to a human's for him to be able to read it, even though trolls aren't human. The Doctor's mind would not be, even though the Doctor appears human.)
• He can get vague surface impressions from living minds he can't otherwise read - things like basic emotional state, or pointed thoughts aimed at him(such as GO AWAY). This applies to people whose deeper thoughts might be off limit to him for some reason(like the Doctor's). But zero intricacies, and never whole thoughts. Nonliving minds, such as a robot/cyborg brain, are blank spaces.
• He can't passively detect the thoughts of anyone unconscious, as they have no surface thoughts at the moment. He can only detect passive thoughts from sleeping people if they're dreaming, and then only the actual content of the dream. He can dive into sleeping minds with active effort, but it's extremely hard for him to get anything coherent or worthwhile out of them in that state. (He can affect basic body functions, however - for instance, he could force a sleeping person to wake up.)
• Anyone with a mind that holds an extreme amount of information is a special case. (ie: non-robotic data entities, characters who've lived hundreds of years, omniscient beings, precognitives.) They aren't exactly off-limits to Schuldig, but his trying to go into their minds is like putting on a hat of angry bees; it actively pains him because his mind can't keep up. So he only picks up surface thoughts from them(passive telepathy), and only ventures deeper in great need, at his own risk.
• Fellow psychics can make life difficult for Schuldig if he tries to get into their heads, though they would have to be quite powerful to stop him. (Note that only psychics who have some sort of mental ability can impede him. A telekinetic has psychic powers, but their powers work on the world around them and don't assist in battles in their own head.)
• The strong-willed can fight Schuldig's intrusions. This applies even to non-psychics, if they're perceptive enough to detect him in their heads. (Or if he lets on that he's in there, which he often does.) They can make it difficult for him to find information he wants, or to actively control them…but it takes extreme force of will. He was able to make a girl resisting with all her might shoot the man she loved, and at best all she could do was shift the aim a few inches away from a lethal shot. Not many without special mental training can seriously impede him.
• His abilities take exceptional amounts of energy to keep up with. To that end, Schuldig's metabolism is sky-high, and he has to eat more often than most. Further, he consumes extreme amounts of sugar and coffee, keeping himself on a near-constant sugar and caffeine high. (When he crashes, it's not at all pretty.) He also takes frequent catnaps, as much a product of not being able to sleep long through the noise in his head as from being too hopped up to stay down.
• Whenever he's deprived of sugar, coffee, or food for extended lengths of time, or he takes a severe emotional or mental hit, Schuldig's abilities start to get away from him. Bad Things happen when this occurs. Bad for Schuldig most of the time, but as he's a telepath capable of broadcasting into other minds, it can also be bad for people around him.
• Schuldig's effective telepathic 'range' is about half a mile from himself in every direction. This is unaffected by any materials in the way except for specific (and rare) metals. It's not common for many people to know or make use of telekill materials outside groups like Esset that deal with psychics on a regular basis. But if other canons in-game have telekill agents that shut down telepathy, or telekill spells within Eros exist, those would affect Schuldig.
• This is all on top of the fact that I'll have a permissions post letting people opt in/out of Schuldig's using his telepathy on their characters. I'll also be communicating with his thread partners to make sure I step on as few toes as possible.
• And of course, NPCs in MS will be off-limits. Schuldig won't even get their surface thoughts. This can apply to specific NPCs(like the witches), or it can be a blanket restriction where Schuldig can't even read the minds of random people on the street in Eros. I leave that up to mod discretion.
On more everyday abilities…Schuldig displays blinding speed in canon. I suspect this to be a combination of natural speed and his telepathy - reacting to his opponents' actions as soon as they think them while psychically interfering with their sight at the same time. He's also shown to be acrobatic and a remarkable jumper. He's able to leap straight upwards into the branches of a tree from a standstill on the ground, as well as bounding over rooftops even while carrying a body. This may well be from his training at Rosenkrüs. (It could also just be anime physics, but I do kind of like him being a roofmonkey.) He's stronger than an average person, more than someone with his thin build should be(he throws a man a few inches shorter than him across the room one-handed). But this strength doesn't appear outside the realm of human ability, so much as unusual for his build. We also see him using guns, though his accuracy is questionable; I suspect this to be him drawing out his fun on purpose rather than his having Stormtrooper Aim, though. If Esset trained him to be a super soldier, one assumes they taught him how to shoot a gun with deadly accuracy.
SINS & VIRTUES: I think Schuldig is actually a perfect candidate for Eva's house. Greed? As far as material possessions go, he's got a bright red sports car that's flashier than anything else in his canon, and he has the flashiest appearance in the series. As for wanting to possess things - he claims ownership over the right to hunt down his enemies. Pride? See above, and add into that his lording his abilities smugly over others at every opportunity. Wrath? Entirely aside from his sadism likely being a way of taking out his anger on everyone around him, he wants to make the human race extinct. Lust? Schuldig is a flat out hedonist in every sense. Gluttony? Not only is he a hedonist, but he puts his indulgences above all other concerns, sometimes to the active detriment of his team. Envy? I feel like a good portion of Schuldig's hatred for others is based on their having had lives better and more blissfully ignorant than his own. Sloth? Try getting him to do something that doesn't interest him. It's like trying to walk a very fat cat. (He also exemplifies it when he's low on energy, but that's more of an enforced example than one by choice, so it may not really count.)
Schuldig doesn't just demonstrate all the sins; he wallows in them.
SAMPLES
MS test drive: http://graveyardshift.dreamwidth.org/1070.html?thread=386606#cmt386606
Third person sample:
Schuldig's woken up in a number of ways over the course of his life. Tied up, pinned down, locked in lightless rooms, drugged, dazed, with broken bones and blood in his mouth. (Sometimes not even his blood.)
He's not particularly heartbroken that, for reasons unknown to him, 'waking up with an entire building on top of him' isn't going to be added to the list. Or 'waking up in the ocean', since presumably the collapse of the building into the sea would have invited the water in. He's honestly a bit surprised to be waking up at all.
He doesn't seem to be any worse for wear for the collapse, either - another inexplicable blessing. He gets to his feet, stretching his legs and cracking his neck as his body adjusts to the new circumstances. His mental adjustments are far more involved, as he braces himself against the waterfall of thoughts that crashes down on him. They'd been flowing around his mind like a river around a stone, but they promptly begin flowing through it again as consciousness reasserts itself. Unconscious, a telepath gets some relief - though they can't really appreciate it - but once they wake up...well, you either hit the ground running or you never regain your footing at all. That was a lesson he'd learned instinctively as a kid, and one Rosenkrüs had tattooed into his mind when he'd been trained. When a person drowns, they're said to go down three times; with a telepath, once is all it takes.
The thoughts help orient him, too; that's the other thing he learned fast. If he had to hear the thoughts of others, he'd use it to his advantage - instinct at first, practicality turned to vengeance later. He picks out the nearest minds to him, scans for any information immediately relevant…and is brought up short in confusion. Nothing he's getting makes even the slightest amount of sense…he's nowhere near the Esset building. He's nowhere near Schwarz, which is even more disturbing.
He doesn't even seem to be in Japan anymore. How the hell can he not be in Japan anymore? How could he have been out long enough to get him anywhere else? How could anyone get to him for him for him to have been moved someplace else? Because he's definitely here. A telepath has to grip their personal reality with both hands at all times; there's no way this is a dream, or a hallucination, or any product of his mind.
All this before he even registers the women in front of him. Surrounding him.
Schuldig is confused and uneasy, and he hates those feelings. But he finds himself grinning regardless…because when he's unhappy, he likes - no, loves to spread it around. It won't actually help him in any concrete way, but…well, not all pleasure is meant to be productive.
And when a woman (the ringleader?) tells him that he's sinned...he laughs. He is guilt. Do they think they're telling him something he doesn't know?