Zulf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
leaveyourstarburning) wrote2012-05-19 11:48 pm
leaveyourstarburning) wrote2012-05-19 11:48 pm
App for Route 29
Player
Name: Dal
Personal Journal:dalicious
E-mail: daletchica[at]yahoo[dot]com
AIM/MSN: AIM: AsylumBred
Timezone: EDT (GMT -4:00)
Current Characters in Route:
Solf J Kimblee | Fullmetal Alchemist |explosivecombat
Jean Descole | Professor Layton |scientificflair
GLaDOS | Portal |neurotoxined
Tokiomi Tohsaka | Fate/Zero |pretentions
Character
Name: Zulf
Series: Bastion
Timeline: Post-game, Restoration ending
Canon Resource Links: Information on the Bastion wiki tends to be a bit spread-out and not organized terribly well (it's a not-often-referenced indie game, so um), so please forgive the loads of links.
Zulf's page at the Bastion wiki. There's also a page describing the "Who Knows Where" segment of the game that explores Zulf's past, with the monologue from the game directly transcribed.
Zulf's status as a peace ambassador and missionary is an integral part of his character, as are the relations between his race, the Ura, and the people of Caelondia. As such, I'd also like to provide information regarding the Ura and their turbulent history with the Caels, to give a better idea of what Zulf is coming from and what he's experienced.
Personality:
One of the most important things to know about Zulf is that he's an ambassador of peace.
There are things about him that may seem more than a bit at odds with that: he's polite to everyone, but he's wary of new acquaintances; he's outgoing and he smiles often, but there's a solemn look in his eyes that he can't quite get rid of, resulting in his expressions seeming strangely insincere. He's slow to anger, but if left unchecked his rage is dangerously explosive; if pushed far enough, he isn't opposed to lashing out physically - he'll usually move to damage property first, but if he's provoked or someone tries to stop him before he's worked his anger out, he'll strike at others without a second thought. He's also incredibly blunt in speech; while his words are fancier and more refined than most within the Bastion canon, they're also completely untempered by tact - if a thought enters his head and he feels that it needs to be spoken, it's going to leave his mouth almost completely unfiltered. He won't go out of his way to be cruel, but he won't sugar-coat his opinions and thoughts for anyone; he also seems to have some difficulty knowing when something is becoming an uncomfortable topic, resulting in some of the things he says coming off as insensitive or cold despite that being far from his intentions.
However, despite all his flaws, bluntness and general lack of social grace, Zulf's message is actually a good one. He's an Ura, one of the races involved in a large war several years ago; as such, he's been subjected to casual racism from many the people of Caelondia, where the game takes place, and he's also witnessed more direct instances of hate aimed at other Ura by the Caelondians. Before the game begins, however, he was serving as a missionary within Caelondia itself - within a city that felt it had every right to be hostile to Zulf and the Ura in general. It's also worth noting that while Caelondia was the other faction involved in that war, Zulf didn't start his missionary work there in an attempt to insist that Caelondians needed to change; rather, he began spreading his message of peace and tolerance among the Ura first, believing in impartiality and the idea that change needed to come from both sides in order for complete, lasting peace to be sustained. On a casual basis, his presence is relaxing as opposed to confrontational; he's very conversational, and he's good at knowing how to get people to think - both about their own actions, and about possible reasons for the actions of others. He's also devoutly religious regarding the Bastion pantheon. Outside of the fact that the Ura generally seem to be religious/spiritual people overall, there's plenty of evidence regarding Zulf's personal beliefs scattered throughout the game - Zulf is explicitly mentioned as being the sort of person that are why Shrines are built in the name of the gods in the first place, implying he visits them frequently; he refuses to touch a doll created in the likeness of one of the gods, saying that the gods aren't to be used as children's toys. The song "Mother, I'm Here" from the Bastion soundtrack is considered Zulf's image song; it's been confirmed by Word of God to be a prayer to Micia, one of the goddesses within the pantheon.
The presence of his rougher side may seem a bit strange, then, when looked at alongside his ideals as a whole. However, there's a very good reason for the discrepancy - that being that most of his positive behavior was taught to him, not something that came naturally. Zulf lived alone for most of his early childhood, having been orphaned by a plague that swept through the Tazal Terminals, the underground tunnels where the Ura made their home; he had no one to depend on but himself during his formative years, and as such he learned to be wary of others who might threaten his existence, and how to survive by any means necessary - sleeping where and when he could, hiding for most of the day, and stealing money and food from others. He learned to stalk those who were traveling through the Terminals and the surrounding areas, regardless of whom they may have been or why they were there, in order to steal from their supplies; he was eventually caught by a Caelondian missionary that he had been stalking, who decided to take him in and raise him properly. The missionary is said to have taught Zulf theology, history and mercy; he treated him like his own son.
Many of Zulf's flaws, then, come down to a matter of strong internal conflict - between that scared child living alone in the Terminals, and the gentleman that his adopted father raised him to be - and all things considered, it's a wonder that he's not more of a basket case than he is. His knowledge and understanding of mercy and compassion are entirely secondhand, learned behaviors instead of something that he simply grew up exposed to. It was that missionary's influence that ensured that Zulf turned out as well as he did; Zulf took up the missionary's work after the man died, making a respectable, influential, and overall generally decent person out of himself. He spread a message of peace and repentance throughout the Terminals, then went to Caelondia to make a case for tolerance and goodwill; he didn't resent Caelondia, rather falling in love with the city he had come to pray for - and he also ended up falling in love with one of the Caelondian women, eventually proposing marriage to her. She accepted his proposal, and at some point late that night...
...well, to be blunt, that night, the world ended. An incident referred to as The Calamity destroyed Caelondia, and only four people within the city were known to survive - Zulf had been underground at the time of the blast, sparing his life, but his fiancée had been killed among all the destruction. Everything in Zulf's life - his future wife, his friends, the City that had become like home to him - was gone in an instant; he decided then to take his life in the Hanging Gardens, where he had proposed marriage to the woman he loved.
The protagonist of the game saved his life by approaching him and offering to bring him back to the Bastion, a safe haven built by the Caelondians where survivors in the wake of a disaster were to gather; though he spent the first several days on the Bastion upset and lost, he came to relax a great deal around the protagonist and Rucks, another Caelondian survivor - he even agreed to help Rucks chart out skyways for the protagonist to use, in order to help find materials to build up the Bastion. After a while, someone else who had been in Caelondia at the time of The Calamity and was still alive was found - her name was Zia, and she was an Ura. Zulf was incredibly excited to see her; unfortunately, she brought with her a journal containing information regarding exactly what The Calamity really was.
Namely, it was caused by a superweapon that was intended to be a final blow against the Ura, killing them all by ripping their tunnels out from underground and destroying them. It backfired horribly and destroyed Caelondia instead. Making matters worse, the weapon was designed and worked on by Rucks himself.
Understandably, Zulf was not pleased. He was enraged at what was intended to be an unprovoked attack against his people, who were now peaceful; furthermore, he had lost everything in the backfiring of that weapon. Once again, he had been left alone, powerless and threatened, having had his family and friends taken away from him in an instant; on top of it all, a man he had come to trust had betrayed him. Zulf couldn't rely on anyone but himself at that point - Zia had no idea what had happened, being unable to read the Ura script the journal was written in; the protagonist was away from the Bastion gathering materials for its repair.
Driven to despair, Zulf did the only thing he could think to do - he lashed out. Badly.
He took his anger out on the Bastion first, destroying the central monument needed to get it to...do anything, really; when Rucks tried to stop him, he turned on him, physically beating him down until Zia got between them. Zulf was unwilling to harm Zia and so he retreated, claiming that The Calamity may have failed, but he would not.
And then he returned to the only place he had left, what remained of the highly damaged Tazal Terminals (they hadn't been destroyed in The Calamity, but they hadn't been spared, either); he told the Ura what the Caelondians had tried to do to them, and he used his powers of persuasion to convince them to attack the Bastion and destroy the one responsible, so that it could never happen again.
Ironically, this sort of mindset is what led to The Calamity in the first place.
Zulf's actions during this time weren't excusable; they resulted in many of the Ura being killed and the Terminals invaded, he very nearly destroyed the mechanism within the Bastion that could be used to save the world, and his acts of violence went against all of his ideals. At the same time, he did exactly what he knew to do - he lashed out against someone who had tried to harm him. He fended for himself, he tried to take care of himself and his people; he just did it in the worst way possible.
Zulf is a peace ambassador, but his title given to him in-game, when you first meet him in the Hanging Gardens, before you know his real name, is far more apt:
He's called The Survivor.
Given that he manages to effectively destroy everything he stood for, it's apt that one of the final acts in the game can restore them all, just as you've been restoring the Bastion and, in at least one of the endings, the rest of the world; after the Ura realize how destructive he is and how many lives have been lost due to his orders, they turn on him, beating him and leaving him for dead - it's here that the protagonist can choose to show him mercy, lay down the one weapon and means of defense that he has left, and save his life. In one of the possible endings, this act of compassion seems to instill at least some sense of balance back to...whatever went horribly wrong in Zulf's head.
For the most part, Zulf is a good person. He's friendly to those around him, if a bit guarded; perhaps he has a bit too little restraint sometimes, but he generally means well. He's a peace ambassador. A messenger of good will.
At the same time, first and foremost, Zulf is definitely a survivor.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ Tolerant - This is essentially the lynchpin of his beliefs; he's willing to deal with/put up with a lot in the name of tolerance.
✔ Nonaggressive - While he doesn't believe in complete nonviolence and he will move to defend himself, he won't attack/lash out unless he's seriously wronged and he's more than willing to play peacekeeper.
✔ Persuasive - Some may find his blunt nature to be off-putting, but at the same time, he managed to get an entire society that hated his race on principle to accept him and be all right with him marrying one of the women of their race, to say nothing of the fact that he managed to convince his own race that, uh, maybe they were wrong about that entire war thing.
✔/✘ Capacity and willngness to fend for himself and others - Basically the entire point of his character. On the plus side, he won't be easily shoved around; he isn't a doormat, and he'll do whatever he needs to in order to ensure that he (and others, if possible). On the negative, he often has no sense of boundaries for what is appropriate and what is not in terms of reacting to potential threats. He'll try talking if the threat isn't immediate/massive, but he tends to overreact horribly otherwise because his concepts of mercy and tolerance are learned behaviors.
✔/✘ Religious - He strongly believes in the Bastion pantheon. It's something that certainly keeps him centered, and it basically helps him deal with a lot of things that tolerance alone will not; at the same time, this can get...rather grating, to say nothing of made of a lot of "what the hell are you talking about" to those not from his world (aka literally everyone in Johto) at the moment.
✘ Irrational when angered/wronged - He nearly destroyed a potential way to save the world and undo the damage done to it, and sent hundreds of people, if not thousands, to their deaths in an attempt to kill one person. Everything is survival and ensuring it when he's like this, and it's very difficult to stop him.
✘ Lack of impulse control when it comes to substances - Outside of the above, it's implied several times in canon that he likes to party a bit too hard (he survived The Calamity by merit of being drunk as hell and passed out underground somewhere) and he's got a pipe with him in canon that appears to contain, for all intents and purposes, some incredibly magical LSD or something that makes you pass out in one drag.
✘ Somewhat difficult to interact with - At least at first, this will be a problem; he was very talkative and sociable before the Calamity, but the ending he's taken from after introduces the concept of Stable Time Loops; he doesn't remember everything that happened before, but he's already been through The Calamity once, he's going through it a second time, and he's going to be something of a mess. There's also the general aspect of "How do I social" that comes from having spent his formative years more or less on the street; he's incredibly blunt, saying exactly what he means, and his grasp on tact and what's appropriate to say and what is not is...more than a bit lacking.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Breeder
Starter: Chinchou
Password: Raspberry Lemonade
Samples
First Person Sample:
...destroyed it entirely, did it...
[The words are muttered quietly over a mostly-dark feed; from the sound of it, the person speaking doesn't even seem to have realized they've managed to turn the Gear on - he sounds distracted, clearly speaking to himself rather than to any audience, and there's a good amount of jittercam action before he seems to realize that it's broadcasting.
The speaker is male, dark-haired and deathly pale; he's smiling a bit, but the expression doesn't reach his eyes at all. The look there isn't cruel, however; just rather lost.]
Is this how this works?
[His speech is a bit odd; it's in the common language spoken by all in Johto, but there's something there - a strangeness in pronunciation that indicates that he would have a hell of an accent in whatever world he just came from, as though he didn't grow up speaking whatever it is he's trying to utilize now. The statement is still oddly blank, though, as though he's addressing himself more than an audience; at least he doesn't seem to be expecting an answer - he simply checks something on the Gear before moving on.]
I understand that there are more survivors out there; from the look of it, there are many of you. I come to you seeking information - I mean you no harm, nor do I expect anything of you. [His gaze darts offscreen, focusing downward for a moment before he continues speaking.] This isn't anything like what I was told the Motherland would be; some of the machinery involved in transporting us may have taken some severe damage.
["May have." He uses the term lightly. He definitely knows it took damage of some sort; he broke the thing. He just doesn't know how severely he broke it; given that he's currently...nowhere near where he's supposed to be, he's assuming he broke it pretty spectacularly. He's a bit uncomfortable with the half-truth, though.
...that said, Zulf has seriously just informed all of Johto that he does, in fact, come in peace. There are some things that you just don't blatantly say...
However, he isn't dwelling on it; his gaze is darting downward again. Clearly there's something fascinating down there; he pauses for a moment before tilting the camera downward - there is a very small Chinchou rubbing against the lower half of his clothes, which appears to be a...very ugly skirt, if we're going to be honest.
Whatever it is, the Pokémon seems determined to love all over it; Zulf's tone has actually lightened a bit when he speaks, seeming much more comfortable now that he's not being focused on.]
Although, Motherland or not...it's good to see these creatures being so trusting. We've done enough to the rest of them.
[...someone please inform the guy that he's not in Kansas anymore.]
Third Person Sample:
There were some things that living in Caelondia had prepared Zulf for - on the pessimistic side, he had learned that not everyone would accept him for who he was, that sometimes horrible things happen to good people, that once in a while the abovementioned bad things happened repeatedly, and that sometimes, no matter how many times you looked at a situation, literally everyone was wrong, nothing was beautiful and everything hurt.
On the...slightly more practical side - for his current situation at least - it had taught him to not be surprised by just about anything in terms of his new profession; if he could accept that Squirts and Scumbags were somehow part of the same family line, he could at least accept that one of the creatures his was raising was really taking far too much interest in one of the Pokémon he'd managed to capture in Ilex Forest. A quick flip through the Guide to Breeding had been enough to indicate that, at the very least, he was not imagining things, reading too far into it, or losing his mind entirely - his Kirlia did, in fact, want to court a sentient balloon.
Admittedly, the Guide didn't go into exactly how any of this was supposed to work - it essentially left the logistics of it at a "When a boy and a girl love each other very much..." speech and left everything else up to Zulf's imagination; this was a fact which he was both a bit wary of and immensely grateful for, but at the same time, this was one of those things where he would have appreciated some indication that this was even physically possible. He didn't need a diagram or anything; just some reassurance as to how this would actually work - or that it would actually work, for that matter, outside of the general sentiment of "Trust us, it just will."
He sighed, snapping the book shut one-handed; tolerance was the lynchpin of everything he had believed back in Caelondia. Even now, an entire dimension away, that hadn't changed. Perhaps that was naive of him; just the same, he knew he wouldn't separate his Kirlia from her...friend, just because the entire situation was, to be blunt, weirding him out quite a bit. If this was what she wanted, then so be it.
...as much as he disliked himself for it, however, he did find that he couldn't help but question her taste.
Name: Dal
Personal Journal:
daliciousE-mail: daletchica[at]yahoo[dot]com
AIM/MSN: AIM: AsylumBred
Timezone: EDT (GMT -4:00)
Current Characters in Route:
Solf J Kimblee | Fullmetal Alchemist |
explosivecombatJean Descole | Professor Layton |
scientificflairGLaDOS | Portal |
neurotoxinedTokiomi Tohsaka | Fate/Zero |
pretentionsCharacter
Name: Zulf
Series: Bastion
Timeline: Post-game, Restoration ending
Canon Resource Links: Information on the Bastion wiki tends to be a bit spread-out and not organized terribly well (it's a not-often-referenced indie game, so um), so please forgive the loads of links.
Zulf's page at the Bastion wiki. There's also a page describing the "Who Knows Where" segment of the game that explores Zulf's past, with the monologue from the game directly transcribed.
Zulf's status as a peace ambassador and missionary is an integral part of his character, as are the relations between his race, the Ura, and the people of Caelondia. As such, I'd also like to provide information regarding the Ura and their turbulent history with the Caels, to give a better idea of what Zulf is coming from and what he's experienced.
Personality:
One of the most important things to know about Zulf is that he's an ambassador of peace.
There are things about him that may seem more than a bit at odds with that: he's polite to everyone, but he's wary of new acquaintances; he's outgoing and he smiles often, but there's a solemn look in his eyes that he can't quite get rid of, resulting in his expressions seeming strangely insincere. He's slow to anger, but if left unchecked his rage is dangerously explosive; if pushed far enough, he isn't opposed to lashing out physically - he'll usually move to damage property first, but if he's provoked or someone tries to stop him before he's worked his anger out, he'll strike at others without a second thought. He's also incredibly blunt in speech; while his words are fancier and more refined than most within the Bastion canon, they're also completely untempered by tact - if a thought enters his head and he feels that it needs to be spoken, it's going to leave his mouth almost completely unfiltered. He won't go out of his way to be cruel, but he won't sugar-coat his opinions and thoughts for anyone; he also seems to have some difficulty knowing when something is becoming an uncomfortable topic, resulting in some of the things he says coming off as insensitive or cold despite that being far from his intentions.
However, despite all his flaws, bluntness and general lack of social grace, Zulf's message is actually a good one. He's an Ura, one of the races involved in a large war several years ago; as such, he's been subjected to casual racism from many the people of Caelondia, where the game takes place, and he's also witnessed more direct instances of hate aimed at other Ura by the Caelondians. Before the game begins, however, he was serving as a missionary within Caelondia itself - within a city that felt it had every right to be hostile to Zulf and the Ura in general. It's also worth noting that while Caelondia was the other faction involved in that war, Zulf didn't start his missionary work there in an attempt to insist that Caelondians needed to change; rather, he began spreading his message of peace and tolerance among the Ura first, believing in impartiality and the idea that change needed to come from both sides in order for complete, lasting peace to be sustained. On a casual basis, his presence is relaxing as opposed to confrontational; he's very conversational, and he's good at knowing how to get people to think - both about their own actions, and about possible reasons for the actions of others. He's also devoutly religious regarding the Bastion pantheon. Outside of the fact that the Ura generally seem to be religious/spiritual people overall, there's plenty of evidence regarding Zulf's personal beliefs scattered throughout the game - Zulf is explicitly mentioned as being the sort of person that are why Shrines are built in the name of the gods in the first place, implying he visits them frequently; he refuses to touch a doll created in the likeness of one of the gods, saying that the gods aren't to be used as children's toys. The song "Mother, I'm Here" from the Bastion soundtrack is considered Zulf's image song; it's been confirmed by Word of God to be a prayer to Micia, one of the goddesses within the pantheon.
The presence of his rougher side may seem a bit strange, then, when looked at alongside his ideals as a whole. However, there's a very good reason for the discrepancy - that being that most of his positive behavior was taught to him, not something that came naturally. Zulf lived alone for most of his early childhood, having been orphaned by a plague that swept through the Tazal Terminals, the underground tunnels where the Ura made their home; he had no one to depend on but himself during his formative years, and as such he learned to be wary of others who might threaten his existence, and how to survive by any means necessary - sleeping where and when he could, hiding for most of the day, and stealing money and food from others. He learned to stalk those who were traveling through the Terminals and the surrounding areas, regardless of whom they may have been or why they were there, in order to steal from their supplies; he was eventually caught by a Caelondian missionary that he had been stalking, who decided to take him in and raise him properly. The missionary is said to have taught Zulf theology, history and mercy; he treated him like his own son.
Many of Zulf's flaws, then, come down to a matter of strong internal conflict - between that scared child living alone in the Terminals, and the gentleman that his adopted father raised him to be - and all things considered, it's a wonder that he's not more of a basket case than he is. His knowledge and understanding of mercy and compassion are entirely secondhand, learned behaviors instead of something that he simply grew up exposed to. It was that missionary's influence that ensured that Zulf turned out as well as he did; Zulf took up the missionary's work after the man died, making a respectable, influential, and overall generally decent person out of himself. He spread a message of peace and repentance throughout the Terminals, then went to Caelondia to make a case for tolerance and goodwill; he didn't resent Caelondia, rather falling in love with the city he had come to pray for - and he also ended up falling in love with one of the Caelondian women, eventually proposing marriage to her. She accepted his proposal, and at some point late that night...
...well, to be blunt, that night, the world ended. An incident referred to as The Calamity destroyed Caelondia, and only four people within the city were known to survive - Zulf had been underground at the time of the blast, sparing his life, but his fiancée had been killed among all the destruction. Everything in Zulf's life - his future wife, his friends, the City that had become like home to him - was gone in an instant; he decided then to take his life in the Hanging Gardens, where he had proposed marriage to the woman he loved.
The protagonist of the game saved his life by approaching him and offering to bring him back to the Bastion, a safe haven built by the Caelondians where survivors in the wake of a disaster were to gather; though he spent the first several days on the Bastion upset and lost, he came to relax a great deal around the protagonist and Rucks, another Caelondian survivor - he even agreed to help Rucks chart out skyways for the protagonist to use, in order to help find materials to build up the Bastion. After a while, someone else who had been in Caelondia at the time of The Calamity and was still alive was found - her name was Zia, and she was an Ura. Zulf was incredibly excited to see her; unfortunately, she brought with her a journal containing information regarding exactly what The Calamity really was.
Namely, it was caused by a superweapon that was intended to be a final blow against the Ura, killing them all by ripping their tunnels out from underground and destroying them. It backfired horribly and destroyed Caelondia instead. Making matters worse, the weapon was designed and worked on by Rucks himself.
Understandably, Zulf was not pleased. He was enraged at what was intended to be an unprovoked attack against his people, who were now peaceful; furthermore, he had lost everything in the backfiring of that weapon. Once again, he had been left alone, powerless and threatened, having had his family and friends taken away from him in an instant; on top of it all, a man he had come to trust had betrayed him. Zulf couldn't rely on anyone but himself at that point - Zia had no idea what had happened, being unable to read the Ura script the journal was written in; the protagonist was away from the Bastion gathering materials for its repair.
Driven to despair, Zulf did the only thing he could think to do - he lashed out. Badly.
He took his anger out on the Bastion first, destroying the central monument needed to get it to...do anything, really; when Rucks tried to stop him, he turned on him, physically beating him down until Zia got between them. Zulf was unwilling to harm Zia and so he retreated, claiming that The Calamity may have failed, but he would not.
And then he returned to the only place he had left, what remained of the highly damaged Tazal Terminals (they hadn't been destroyed in The Calamity, but they hadn't been spared, either); he told the Ura what the Caelondians had tried to do to them, and he used his powers of persuasion to convince them to attack the Bastion and destroy the one responsible, so that it could never happen again.
Ironically, this sort of mindset is what led to The Calamity in the first place.
Zulf's actions during this time weren't excusable; they resulted in many of the Ura being killed and the Terminals invaded, he very nearly destroyed the mechanism within the Bastion that could be used to save the world, and his acts of violence went against all of his ideals. At the same time, he did exactly what he knew to do - he lashed out against someone who had tried to harm him. He fended for himself, he tried to take care of himself and his people; he just did it in the worst way possible.
Zulf is a peace ambassador, but his title given to him in-game, when you first meet him in the Hanging Gardens, before you know his real name, is far more apt:
He's called The Survivor.
Given that he manages to effectively destroy everything he stood for, it's apt that one of the final acts in the game can restore them all, just as you've been restoring the Bastion and, in at least one of the endings, the rest of the world; after the Ura realize how destructive he is and how many lives have been lost due to his orders, they turn on him, beating him and leaving him for dead - it's here that the protagonist can choose to show him mercy, lay down the one weapon and means of defense that he has left, and save his life. In one of the possible endings, this act of compassion seems to instill at least some sense of balance back to...whatever went horribly wrong in Zulf's head.
For the most part, Zulf is a good person. He's friendly to those around him, if a bit guarded; perhaps he has a bit too little restraint sometimes, but he generally means well. He's a peace ambassador. A messenger of good will.
At the same time, first and foremost, Zulf is definitely a survivor.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ Tolerant - This is essentially the lynchpin of his beliefs; he's willing to deal with/put up with a lot in the name of tolerance.
✔ Nonaggressive - While he doesn't believe in complete nonviolence and he will move to defend himself, he won't attack/lash out unless he's seriously wronged and he's more than willing to play peacekeeper.
✔ Persuasive - Some may find his blunt nature to be off-putting, but at the same time, he managed to get an entire society that hated his race on principle to accept him and be all right with him marrying one of the women of their race, to say nothing of the fact that he managed to convince his own race that, uh, maybe they were wrong about that entire war thing.
✔/✘ Capacity and willngness to fend for himself and others - Basically the entire point of his character. On the plus side, he won't be easily shoved around; he isn't a doormat, and he'll do whatever he needs to in order to ensure that he (and others, if possible). On the negative, he often has no sense of boundaries for what is appropriate and what is not in terms of reacting to potential threats. He'll try talking if the threat isn't immediate/massive, but he tends to overreact horribly otherwise because his concepts of mercy and tolerance are learned behaviors.
✔/✘ Religious - He strongly believes in the Bastion pantheon. It's something that certainly keeps him centered, and it basically helps him deal with a lot of things that tolerance alone will not; at the same time, this can get...rather grating, to say nothing of made of a lot of "what the hell are you talking about" to those not from his world (aka literally everyone in Johto) at the moment.
✘ Irrational when angered/wronged - He nearly destroyed a potential way to save the world and undo the damage done to it, and sent hundreds of people, if not thousands, to their deaths in an attempt to kill one person. Everything is survival and ensuring it when he's like this, and it's very difficult to stop him.
✘ Lack of impulse control when it comes to substances - Outside of the above, it's implied several times in canon that he likes to party a bit too hard (he survived The Calamity by merit of being drunk as hell and passed out underground somewhere) and he's got a pipe with him in canon that appears to contain, for all intents and purposes, some incredibly magical LSD or something that makes you pass out in one drag.
✘ Somewhat difficult to interact with - At least at first, this will be a problem; he was very talkative and sociable before the Calamity, but the ending he's taken from after introduces the concept of Stable Time Loops; he doesn't remember everything that happened before, but he's already been through The Calamity once, he's going through it a second time, and he's going to be something of a mess. There's also the general aspect of "How do I social" that comes from having spent his formative years more or less on the street; he's incredibly blunt, saying exactly what he means, and his grasp on tact and what's appropriate to say and what is not is...more than a bit lacking.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Breeder
Starter: Chinchou
Password: Raspberry Lemonade
Samples
First Person Sample:
...destroyed it entirely, did it...
[The words are muttered quietly over a mostly-dark feed; from the sound of it, the person speaking doesn't even seem to have realized they've managed to turn the Gear on - he sounds distracted, clearly speaking to himself rather than to any audience, and there's a good amount of jittercam action before he seems to realize that it's broadcasting.
The speaker is male, dark-haired and deathly pale; he's smiling a bit, but the expression doesn't reach his eyes at all. The look there isn't cruel, however; just rather lost.]
Is this how this works?
[His speech is a bit odd; it's in the common language spoken by all in Johto, but there's something there - a strangeness in pronunciation that indicates that he would have a hell of an accent in whatever world he just came from, as though he didn't grow up speaking whatever it is he's trying to utilize now. The statement is still oddly blank, though, as though he's addressing himself more than an audience; at least he doesn't seem to be expecting an answer - he simply checks something on the Gear before moving on.]
I understand that there are more survivors out there; from the look of it, there are many of you. I come to you seeking information - I mean you no harm, nor do I expect anything of you. [His gaze darts offscreen, focusing downward for a moment before he continues speaking.] This isn't anything like what I was told the Motherland would be; some of the machinery involved in transporting us may have taken some severe damage.
["May have." He uses the term lightly. He definitely knows it took damage of some sort; he broke the thing. He just doesn't know how severely he broke it; given that he's currently...nowhere near where he's supposed to be, he's assuming he broke it pretty spectacularly. He's a bit uncomfortable with the half-truth, though.
...that said, Zulf has seriously just informed all of Johto that he does, in fact, come in peace. There are some things that you just don't blatantly say...
However, he isn't dwelling on it; his gaze is darting downward again. Clearly there's something fascinating down there; he pauses for a moment before tilting the camera downward - there is a very small Chinchou rubbing against the lower half of his clothes, which appears to be a...very ugly skirt, if we're going to be honest.
Whatever it is, the Pokémon seems determined to love all over it; Zulf's tone has actually lightened a bit when he speaks, seeming much more comfortable now that he's not being focused on.]
Although, Motherland or not...it's good to see these creatures being so trusting. We've done enough to the rest of them.
[...someone please inform the guy that he's not in Kansas anymore.]
Third Person Sample:
There were some things that living in Caelondia had prepared Zulf for - on the pessimistic side, he had learned that not everyone would accept him for who he was, that sometimes horrible things happen to good people, that once in a while the abovementioned bad things happened repeatedly, and that sometimes, no matter how many times you looked at a situation, literally everyone was wrong, nothing was beautiful and everything hurt.
On the...slightly more practical side - for his current situation at least - it had taught him to not be surprised by just about anything in terms of his new profession; if he could accept that Squirts and Scumbags were somehow part of the same family line, he could at least accept that one of the creatures his was raising was really taking far too much interest in one of the Pokémon he'd managed to capture in Ilex Forest. A quick flip through the Guide to Breeding had been enough to indicate that, at the very least, he was not imagining things, reading too far into it, or losing his mind entirely - his Kirlia did, in fact, want to court a sentient balloon.
Admittedly, the Guide didn't go into exactly how any of this was supposed to work - it essentially left the logistics of it at a "When a boy and a girl love each other very much..." speech and left everything else up to Zulf's imagination; this was a fact which he was both a bit wary of and immensely grateful for, but at the same time, this was one of those things where he would have appreciated some indication that this was even physically possible. He didn't need a diagram or anything; just some reassurance as to how this would actually work - or that it would actually work, for that matter, outside of the general sentiment of "Trust us, it just will."
He sighed, snapping the book shut one-handed; tolerance was the lynchpin of everything he had believed back in Caelondia. Even now, an entire dimension away, that hadn't changed. Perhaps that was naive of him; just the same, he knew he wouldn't separate his Kirlia from her...friend, just because the entire situation was, to be blunt, weirding him out quite a bit. If this was what she wanted, then so be it.
...as much as he disliked himself for it, however, he did find that he couldn't help but question her taste.