(But anyone can read it if they want. Obviously. Otherwise I'd have made it private.)

( Cut because long. )

(imported from livejournal)

Second draft. Revisions in blue.

Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Z
OOC Journal: billybobfred0
Under 18? 21.
Email/IM: billybobfred@gmail.com is both my email and my AIM username, because apparently that's how AIM assigns usernames now.
Characters Played at Singularity: None yet.

Character Information ;
Name: Micah
Name of Canon: Rune Factory 3
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon (not sure if he counts as a malleable PC since the only major decision is which girl he marries, but, uh, I guess I don't have to make that decision since I appear to be the first)
Reference: TVTropes page for the game. TVTropes character page for the series.
Canon Point: After clearing the four seasonal dungeons and suggesting the Unity Festival.

Setting:
Sharance Town is a quaint little ThrivingGhostTown in an indeterminate location. The town's major feature is the Sharance Tree, which hasn't bloomed for 50 years -- apparently it needs the "bond beyond the races". Nobody remembers the original cause of their strife, but the fact is, the mayor of Sharance hates monsters, and the elder of the monster village hates humans, so it's pretty well hopeless to repair relations between the two settlements. It did grow a second floor when Micah became the only person in good standing with both villages, but hey, what are the odds that's connected? Micah lives in the naturally-hollow trunk of the Sharance Tree, at the suggestion of Shara, the mayor's granddaughter. In the space under its roots is the farm he works for a living -- complete with barn, pond, and woodshed. It's a big tree.

On what is probably a completely unrelated note, rifts from the Forest of Beginnings have been opening around the town lately, summoning strange monsters. (What makes these monsters different from the monster village monsters? Aside from three villagers being demihumans rather than mons, canon doesn't make that clear, actually, but--) In their confusion, they tend to cause great harm to humans, so there's a bit of resentment there. Luckily, the summon magic is broken by, of all things, beating up the summoned monster -- or the rift itself. (--there has to be some reason the village monsters are exempt from this. The most plausible theory is that they were born on the "normal" plane, so they don't count as summoned and, accordingly, can't be unsummoned.) And many of the monsters are quite useful, if you can get them to calm down and stop attacking you blindly. While an individual rift can be banished temporarily, the rifts as a whole aren't going anywhere, so everyone might as well get used to monsters being around. The rifts have been in the world for quite a while now, it's only around Sharance Town that they're a new occurrence.

It's a pretty standard renaissance-esque fantasy world. The most advanced technology commonly available is a refrigerator, and even that seems to be an outlier on the tech curve. The military, particularly the Sechs Zzyzx Empire, has more advanced technology, like rift-controlling devices that don't actually change the way the things operate at all, and tanks that were defeated by turnips breathed into existence by the dragon god of earth. ... Did I really not mention the elemental dragon gods? Yeah, there are four of them: Terrable, Fiersome, Ventuswill, and Aquaticus. They were long believed to be a myth, until the first game happened and they started popping up in plot-relevant capacities, usually as a final boss. How convenient.

Probably worth mentioning somewhere -- the "majority" population ("majority" in scare quotes because it's by virtue of having two members to the second-place four-way tie of one) in the monster village is univir. Univir are essentially humans with unicorn horns. Down to innate healing magic and everything. They also have pointed ears and extra-long lifespans, but so do elves and dwarves.

As far as important non-final-boss people go... well, it's a Harvest Moon game. Every character is important in one way or another. The importance only extends into the setting for three of them, though:
Wells. Mayor of Sharance. Racist against monsters. The source of 99% of the tensions on the human side.
Kuruna. Elder of the monster village. Racist against humans. The source of 99% of the tensions on the monster side.
Ondorus. Not a leader, technically, but he's the go-to guy in the monster village when you have questions and want an answer other than "because humans are evil". There's not a lot to do in the desert other than research, apparently.

Personality:
Micah stumbled into Sharance Town one night with nothing but the clothes on his back and total retrograde amnesia. Accordingly, he's not at all sure of his lot in life. The value of hard work, self-sufficiency, and friendship are pretty well ingrained in his psyche, since he's seen them all first hand over the short course of his remembered life. Being the child of a human and a monster, he's very much unsettled by racism of any kind. Yet he lacks the courage to say anything about it without a lot of pushing. Beating up giant raccoons or skeletal lizard things is easy, speaking out against a village elder when she says humans are the source of all evil is hard. He's always willing to help someone out -- in fact, one could say that helping people out is a more accurate description of his occupation than farming is. He's also grateful to those who help him.

Micah's motivations... well, let's look at the things he's willing to fight monsters and risk death for.
The spring dungeon contains a giant raccoon who has been messing with the townspeople. (He regretted having to send it back to the Forest of Beginnings, but you can't exactly teach a raccoon that acting like a raccoon is bad, so what are you gonna do.) The orb containing one of Micah's memories was a good incentive to check into the other dungeons, too. This one reminded him that he's half-monster and can transform into a Wooly. (Or that he's -- wait, I already did that joke.)
The summer dungeon contains the monster village, which Micah only ran across because he happened to see Zaid (the dwarf who lives there) run off in that general direction. So he clearly has a sense of curiosity. And then of course he helps out the monster village and accidentally a Skelefang and he has to beat that thing up so it doesn't kill everyone. Here he learned that he used to be a guard. Because he wanted to help people.
The fall dungeon contains two giant cat-things that have been stealing everyone's food, which brings "helping people" back for yet another appearance. The orb in here explained, finally, why Micah was in Sharance to begin with -- he was assigned to take down five powerful monsters. Since he just beat a DualBoss, that leaves only one.
The winter dungeon contains the fifth mark, of course. He's not going to accidentally stumble through 80% of the job only to leave the last step unfinished just because he has no other reason. He doesn't know who gave him the job, or why, and he has no particular reason to believe it's of any importance, but it's his job and he's gonna do it.
Oh, and he also spends most of his time taking requests from the town bulletin board. Yes, many requests do require him to fight monsters.

So, what have we learned?
*He helps people. All of the help, for all of the people. Even if it's not particularly urgent, if he knows someone could be benefiting from his actions, he'll act.
*He gets the job done, even if he doesn't remember why he took the job or most details of what it even is.
*When he sees a mystery, he investigates it.

Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
+Farming: Immediately after waking up in Sharance Town, he found himself thrust into the position of "local amnesiac who works the abandoned farm". It's been his main job for a year, so he's pretty good at it.
+Forging: The rusty hoe and watering can Shara gave him, while certainly sufficient for the task, are far from optimal, and let's face it, buying upgrades is expensive. Tools, weapons, and equipment can be upgraded with various materials (iron, razor claw, magic dust) to boost stats slightly and change their elements. Each upgrade increases their level by 1, and once they hit 10 that's the end of the upgrading. Most items can also be reforged into entirely new things.
Limitations?: Even in canon, Micah needs specialized large equipment to do any of this, and for obvious reasons, he hasn't brought it with him, so he won't be able to actually do any of this until he picks it up. If he bothers. (This is a logical limitation, not a balancing one.)
+Fighting: It all started with a mischievous raccoon, one thing led to another, and in the end, Micah became the go-to guy for beating up the local accidentally-summoned nuisances.
+Fooding: a bit of a stretch for the alliteration gag, there When you farm all those crops, you start to get ideas. Delicious ideas. And some that are not so delicious, but hey, you'll find a hundred recipes that don't work for every one that does. Food is also leveled, from 1 to 10 as usual, though it depends entirely on the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the chef, with no upgrading possible.
Limitations?: Food-as-healing might need to be downgraded, given the large number of recipes that restore 80% or more of one's health and energy. Ice cream in particular doesn't even fit into the canon power curve, being made from nothing but milk with no special tools and restoring at least 68% RP. And again, 90% of the recipes require specialized large equipment that he left back at home.
+Magic: It is, admittedly, made much easier to cast magic when it's all prepackaged into books or staves. It can be divided into any number of broad types (that kind of thing is all conceptual, really), but Micah knows the classes of magic as Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Light, Dark, and Love. (The first six are self-explanatory, but Love magic covers healing. And nothing else. No, I don't know why they didn't just call it Healing magic.)
Limitations?: The Teleport Tome, like all other teleportation magic and technology in Sacrosanct, will now only move Micah within a single Zone. This means he will no longer be able to cast it rapid-fire and be guaranteed to end up back in his bedroom in three casts.
+Born of Two Bloods: One of the advantages of being half-monster is having a cute fuzzy Wooly as an alternate form, which you can change to at will. Alternately, one of the advantages of being half-human is having a tall, opposable-thumbed human as an alternate form. Both interpretations are equally valid, as is "One of the advantages of being a hybrid of two species is having a form from each and the ability to switch at will".

-Monster Pride: Micah's problem with monster pride is that he doesn't have it. He won't reveal his shapechanging ability to anyone he isn't very close with, because (and this is a quote straight from the game) "they might think it's weird". He doesn't feel any need to hide that a mysterious golden Wooly (or a mysterious amnesiac human, depending on who he's talking to) exists, but he doesn't want people to know that the Wooly they saw that one time and the human they're talking to right now are the same person.
-Amnesia is actually pretty inconvenient: Of his time before Sharance Town, he remembers pretty much nothing. Not where he's from. Not what his parents look like. Not why he left home. Not how old he is. Not what his bedroom looked like growing up. Seriously, the four memories he recovered up in the "Personality" section are all he knows of his past life.
-Critical Fatigue Failure: Rune energy, as Micah knows it to be called, is essentially fatigue and mana in the same stat. Once he runs out, doing anything that uses it (swing a sword, tip a watering can, cook a meal, cast a spell) will instead drain large amounts of his health, bringing him to the point of fainting in just three actions. (Luckily, walking and eating do not use rune energy. Neither does communication of any kind.)
-Technology: The renaissance-esque world Micah lives in has, obviously enough, not educated him on the finer points of electronics and gadgetry. He's a fast enough learner, but nearly everything he encounters is going to be a first-time thing for him, and he's gonna be lost for quite a while.
-Toughness: There's a reason Micah carries around stacks of food that heals him for 70% or more of his health in three bites. In a fair fight (judging by the game's difficulty curve), it'll only take a few good hits to put him down and out for the count. (He's pretty good at dodging, but not "Bro Strider" or "anyone from Dragon Ball Z" good.)

Inventory:
1 lv 1 Sturdy Hoe (to till fields, can be charged to till 9 "squares" of land per hit)
1 lv 1 Tin Watering Can (to water plants, can be charged to water 9 plants per pour)
1 lv 1 Chopping Axe (for wood chopping, can be charged to chop wood in 3 "squares" per hit... this is rarely useful)
1 lv 7 Shortsword (upgraded to be fire elemental and slightly boost all stats)
1 lv 1 Small Shield (for... shielding) (This is the same item as in the first draft, I had just called it the wrong thing.)
3 lv 10 Ice Cream (recovers 102% of one's potential rune energy when eaten, and no, I don't know how they found the extra 2%)
2 lv 10 Baked Rice Ball (recovers 118% of one's potential health when eaten)
1 Tired Sword Magic Seed (becomes a sword plant when used, tires out after every use, recovers after 24 hours)
1 Skelefang Skull (can be used in upgrading to boost attack and magic attack at the cost of vitality)
1 Fireball Tome (basic fire magic, throw a fireball in a straight line)
1 Cure Tome (basic healing magic, recover a little health, self-targeting only)
1 Cure All Tome (medium healing magic, more draining than Cure, but recovers more health and affects party members as well)
1 Mediseal Tome (cures anti-magic conditions, can still be cast while under anti-magic conditions, self-targeting only)
1 Teleport Tome (return to the entrance of the Zone, return to your front door when in your home Zone, return to your bedroom when at your front door, can still be cast while under anti-magic conditions, no rune energy cost)
Appearance: Human. Wooly.
Age: Unknown, thanks to amnesia. He considers himself to be "of age" for marriage and alcohol purposes, but in a renaissance-esque world like his that only means he's at least 16 -- or more accurately, that he thinks he's at least 16. Though he's probably not wrong.

Samples ;
Log Sample:
(Previous log deleted to make way for a new scene, which should be more helpful. Also because it was a transition log and I moved the canon point.)

"The Sharance flowers..."

Micah pondered these words, a fleeting snippet from someone he was sure he knew but couldn't remotely recognize. What about the Sharance flowers? Were they needed for something? Why did they send him? And what did it have to do with his mission to take out those five dangerous monsters? ... Actually, it wasn't inconceivable that he had simply had two assignments. Which pretty neatly answered the third question -- he's already sent off for the dangerous mission, tell him to deal with the simple one while he's there. And while he couldn't figure out what the flowers were needed for, it was plainly obvious that they needed to exist to be used for it. "Right. I'll ask Wells."

...

"Well, that wasn't a complete waste of time. I at least learned that they haven't bloomed for 50 years." He didn't believe for a second Wells's knee-jerk theory that the monsters were poisoning the tree as a passive-aggressive attack for being evicted from the village. But the tree had stopped blooming when they were kicked out. Three minutes in the library and three very depressing pages at the end of the botanical record repeating "no change" on every line verified the truth of that. Unfortunately, that didn't tell him how to make it start blooming. For all he knew, univir horns might give off some gaseous fertilizer or some even more off-the-wall thing he'd never consider. "Well, I do know two univir personally. Maybe I could ask. Heck, they might have been there when it happened..."

...

The "bond beyond the races". It made sense. The tree had grown when he met the monster village. Micah could see himself as an extremely tenuous connection between these particular humans and monsters, if he squinted real hard. A physical explanation was hard to imagine, but it could be based in Love magic. But Ondorus was right. There was no way he could connect the two villages any further. Not without revealing his... "Wait. There's an obvious answer staring me in the face." He couldn't possibly do it without revealing the other half of his origins. So he would have to do it with. "I have to tell them everything. No matter how weird they think it is. It's the only chance." And if he could just get everyone involved in the first place, the rest of it would be easy. Relatively easy. "How am I going to convince Wells and Kuruna? That's going to be the real hard part."

Network Sample:
[ audio ]

So I can just talk into this thing and it'll record for me? Is... that how it works?
[ log part 1 ends ]

Hey, that is how it works. Cool, this'll be a lot faster way of keeping a diary than by hand. Though, I guess reading it back will be slower... Maybe this can take the words I say and turn it into writing? I don't see a way to make it do that...
[ log part 2 ends ]

Whatever, I can't figure this thing out, I'll get someone else to explain it if I have to. For now, I'll just... say what I'm gonna say.

I'd say I want to go home, but I don't really have a home to go to.

I guess I'd rather be back at Sharance Town than here, though. That's like home, at least.

But nobody has ever left this place. So going home is just not possible.

(sigh)

I guess I'll settle down again. Set up another farm. Help people out. Try to build a connection.

Who knows, maybe there's some mystery to uncover here, too.
[ log part 3 ends ]