Forgive the spelling errors. I don't seem to have anything with spell check handy.
Name: Jacob Bocephus Elias, not that he'll identify himself as anything more than Jake Elias.
Sex: Male
Species: Human. Full-blooded. Maybe.
Physical Age: Early to mid 20s.
True Age: All versions of his records, and his memory, say 22.
Also Goes By: Storm God
Residence: An apartment in Midway, near Fantasyland.
Height: 5'10
Weight: 160lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Brown
Primary Goals:
To learn as much magic as possible.
To figure out the story behind the asylum and its surrounding dimensions.
To see as much of the world as possible, after fulfulling the above goals.
Secondary Goals:
To create a set of true runestones, as the mock stones he uses are limiting his power.
To learn a way to accelerate the enchantment process. As it stands, the above goal will take over 30 years to complete.
To get revenge for Episode 104. Thief and Ice aren't the only targets, though...
Strengths/Abilities:
Strong magical aptitude. Can usually sense changes in the ambient mana level and detect magical items without trying.
Extensive knowledge of rune magic, plus the ability to use cantrips and pun magic, allows him to improvise a variety of magical effects.
Passable skill with a knife and stronger than the stereotypical mage. He's not completely helpless without his magic.
Farm boy from magical town. Knows his way around animals and plants, some of which have yet to be classified by scientists. Can also deal with some of the more exotic beings, like faeries and elementals.
Weaknesses/Quirks:
First reaction to a problem is to break out the runes. If that doesn't work, a cantrip is in order. Bad things tend to happen when Jake uses cantrips, even if he gets what he wants.
First reaction to hostility is to throw lightning in its general direction. No good ever comes of this.
Tends to get flashy with the magic. Changing the weather and chucking lightning bolts is dramatic enough in itself, but his sleep spells are so flashy, it's a wonder the special effects don't wake up the target.
Terrible temper. Goes from totally calm to incredibly pissed with few stops along the way. Tends to make him look schizophrenic.
Rune magic is time and energy consuming. Cantrips can only be used once, and the wording is more important than the intention. Pun magic requires an audience. Jake's only normal spells are Healing and Information College.
Foot-in-mouth syndrome around women. Five minutes with Jake would make Kasumi Tendo act like Akane Tendo.
Has trouble keeping up with pop culture. He knows the latest happenings in Iraq, but he thinks Pokemon is new. This makes him look clueless.
Has *no* resistance to spells whatsoever. In addition, it is nearly impossible to screw up a spell thrown *directly* on him, even if people are beating the mage about the head as the spell is cast. Jake is the bitch of any Final Fantasy Oracle.
Casts no shadow. There are many people who are convinced that Jake isn't quite human...
Likes:
Magic, particularly air/lightning and water/ice magic.
Magical girl anime.
Brainy, somewhat socially-awkward women. He's convinced that his soul mate will be someone like Willow from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". That may change if he ever sees her as the Wicked Wiccan of the West Coast...
Rain.
CCGs. He's also a sucker for the phrase "collect the whole set".
Pokemon, and not just the game or anime. This is Dream City, after all.
Dislikes:
Dry weather.
The terminally self-righteous, especially if they're defending something that is clearly on the pitch black side of the gray area.
Militants, whatever the cause.
Being treated like a hick or an idiot.
People who can't give a straight answer. He's been known to set them on fire.
Violent sex. S&M totally creeps him out. As for scenes of rape... there's a reason why Charanda is the only person from ep. 104 that he *doesn't* want to hurt in some way.
Bears. Don't ask why.
Background:
Jake's past is something of a mystery, even to him. He remembers growing up on a farm in a small North Carolina town. Actually, from Jake's descriptions of the town, it's located in North Carolina only twenty days (which may not be consecutive) out of the year. In any event, the Elias family isn't your typical bunch of farmers. After all, how many people till soil with Earth spells, or use Air-Golems armed with scythes to harvest grain?
Jake's life was relatively uneventful (well, there was that time when he animated the army of zombie field mice) until he fished a large crystal out of an old well. Upon touching it, he was transported to the location of a similar crystal in a strange parallel world. He immediately encountered a pair of Elves, named Lorne and Arlen. Meeting them has given Jake some doubts as to his life story.
Lorne claims to have seen Jake and Arlen before - in an insane asylum. Touching the crystal where Jake appeared sent the group into an alternate, run-down version of an office in said asylum. Records indicate that Jake, Lorne, and Arlen are all patients there, suffering from various delusions. Lorne stated that while travelling through yet another dimension linked to the asylum, he met several people he recognized as fellow patients. Some of these patients, in their various incarnations, have implied that the asylum isn't what it seems. All things considered, that's one hell of a feat.
According to the records, Jake is Arlen's son, and Lorne is his brother. Lorne briefly traveled through another dimension with other inmates, a human soldier named Duke (Jake and Lorne's father), and an alien named Kaltar (Arlen's brother). The enigmatic family patriarch, Duke's father, is a man named Kaliba, the only member of the family who isn't an inmate. He lives in North Carolina...
After exchanging Lorne for a Shaolin monk named Fivel, Jake & Co. went off to meet Kaliba, which involved a train ride from China to North Carolina, across the Pacific, with stops in Atlantis and a Midwestern town that is now nothing more than an impact crater. At a stop in Nashville, Jake stepped off the train... and right onto another crystal. He appeared in Dream City, and none of the crystal's mates were in sight. He has yet to see Arlen or Fivel.
That was over a year ago. Since then, Jake has made a living doing magical odd jobs. Because of his experience, most of these jobs are in the farms and villages in Fantasyland (boosting crop yield, removal of vermin and low-level monsters, altering the weather to favorable growing conditions, along with the occasional Healing spell). To be close to his work, he's rented an apartment in neighboring Midway. This seems to be tainting his views, as he thinks this is typical for "The Big City(tm)".
Fellow Authors, please ask me before you:
Have Jake use a cantrip. Since they can only be used once, I'd like to keep track of what was used.
Have Jake start a fight. He may have a temper like a nuclear weapon, but there are guidelines to arming the warhead.
Work with the asylum dimensions. *I* barely understood what was going on.
Use the background characters from Jake's stage. I only own one of them.
Fellow Authors, please do not:
Saddle Jake with a Southern accent. He doesn't have one, despite his alleged state of origin. An apparent side-effect of the movements of his hometown is that Jake doesn't speak with any identifiable accent, unless he uses words unique to a particular dialect.
Write Jake as an idiot. The hamster may be a little lazy, but he can get some pretty good mileage out of the wheel when he wants to.
Write something with Jake in it and not let me see it.
Let me know if I screwed something up.
-Z
Posted on May 11, 2003, 3:52 AM from IP address 24.130.81.103