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[audiomancer]

▶ PLAYER HANDLE: Fal CONTACT: PM OVER 18? Y ▶ CHARACTER NAME: Lobelia CANON: Granblue Fantasy CANON POINT: After the completion of his last Fate Episode. It's ambiguously positioned in the broader timeline of the canon, but I kind of imagine him to have joined the crew after What Makes The Sky Blue and to have been pulled from the party somewhere around Chapter 126. AGE: 22 BACKGROUND: (Lobelia's history is scripted in the Lore/Fate Episodes/Encounter III - V of his gbf wiki entry, but because that's not the easiest thing to get through, here's a summation.) On a distant floating island in the Sky Realm, far beyond the Skydoms of Phantagrande and Nalhegrande, Lobelia was born into an extremely charmed life. While his parents were unexceptional magicians themselves, he quickly proved to be different: he was still a very young child when he manifested the rare talent of audiomancy, an ability that granted him not only remarkable destructive abilities, but practical utility in communication and recording. As a child, he only knew overwhelming love; his parents adored him and were deeply proud of him, doting on him hand and foot. They were forever in awe of his powers, and they would praise Lobelia endlessly as a genius. Ultimately, the most important thing they imparted onto him was the concept that 'everyone has a right to be happy'. His father would tell him, 'use that talent of yours, and you're guaranteed to find happiness! As a youngster, Lobelia didn't really understand the concept of 'happiness' or how to pursue it, and so these words didn't really make much sense to him. Still, the statement would play over in his mind, and he would always muse on what happiness might be. With such constant gratification, Lobelia came to believe that his immense brilliance would help him discover happiness eventually. One day, as he walked with his parents along the beautiful inland beach of his home island, he stepped on a conch shell that'd been washed up by the tide. It buckled under his foot, breaking into sharp shards like glass, and his parents were thrown into a state of panic as they hurriedly checked his injuries. Lobelia, meanwhile, was paying the pain and his parents no mind at all. He was absolutely enamoured with what he'd just heard: the sound of the shell collapsing under his feet have given him a feeling of happiness that he'd never known before, a jouissance bordering on a state of complete euphoria. In an ecstatic state, he realised he desperately wanted to hear that sound again. He wanted to record the noise of something being broken. Lobelia wondered: if a lifeless piece of scrap on the beach could make him feel this way, then how much more...? He used his powers to destroy his father instantly, bursting open every part of his body with his audiomancy. As he expected, he was rewarded with an even greater thrill, but it was over all too soon as his father's decimated body collapsed into the sand. His mother screamed at the senseless scene before her, before Lobelia turned his attention on her. He'd learned his lesson from killing his father: this time he went more slowly, breaking and crushing inwards from her fingertips. This was, Lobelia felt, the best way to embody their lesson and express his gratitude. With both of those terrible deaths recorded into conch shells, those sounds would soon come to embody his 'maman' and 'papa' in his day to day life. His parents would be the ones to fuel his happiness. But this was only the start of what would become a mass-murdering rampage. Keeping a low profile to avoid word of his abilities getting out, he would nevertheless prowl the Sky Realm, quietly seeking opportunities to destroy people he encountered and record their agonising, terrifying final moments on a collection of conches he could manifest at will. He would replay those sounds for himself long after the bodies were cold, prolonging his happiness, keeping each death fresh in his mind. And yet, despite killing them as he saw fit, no deaths could come close to the exquisite pleasure he experienced from hearing the sound of his own parents' deaths. Whether it was their bond to him or the waning effect of keeping his pleasure at its peak, somehow, nothing felt the same. The moment he killed his 200th person, a strange card appeared in his hand: the tarot card, The Tower. The moment he put his finger to the strange design, a massive, terrifying rumble shook the entire island. Buildings and walls crumbled and collapsed, people were instantly crushed under the weight of their own homes, and Lobelia, screaming and panicking as much as anyone else, could hear all of it as it happened. Before long, the entire town was in utter ruins; nothing remained. It filled him with immeasurable pleasure to hear it; destruction on such a scale was like nothing he'd ever heard. The Tower appeared before him; a giant, golem-like construction of unknown origin, but that didn't matter to Lobelia. He knew immediately that their meeting was intended, and that The Tower had come to find him for one explicit purpose: to destroy everything. The Tower was the agent of a primal beast calling itself the Inchoate World, which utilised the core of a primal beast killed in an ancient War to create a host of new ones, including The Tower. The Tower had only one purpose: it was created to destroy the current world, and make room for the Inchoate World's new one. For eons, it had waited patiently for the right pactbearer, and at last it had found Lobelia — a natural born destroyer. The moment he touched The Tower's massive leg, Lobelia knew everything The Tower desired of him. Together, they were able to wreak a form of destruction that would have been impossible for Lobelia on his own. They inflicted ruination on villages, towns, cities, whole islands. Between The Tower's ability to bring whole mountains crashing down and Lobelia's endless lust for decimation, they could move from place to place, leaving nothing in their wake — and still, true satisfaction proved elusive to both of them. Something was still amiss. At last, one day, the Captain came across Lobelia as he was being attacked by two highwaymen, and 'rescued' him. Lobelia knew immediately that the Captain and his crew had a purpose in The Tower's plan, but that there was no way they would agree to do anything for him if he was completely honest about his intentions. On the spot, he came up with a perfect lie: He told them that within the card was the memories of a primal beast, and that the beast was repeating the memories of the War in order to find some secret that would allow it to obliterate the world. Its memories ran like a simulation, each time trying to find the best way to win. Bringing them to his favourite restaurant, Lobelia explained that he had been entering the memories to fight it off, but now that he was injured by the highwaymen, he needed the Captain to fight in his stead. The Captain was convinced they were fending off the primal beast, but in reality, the Inchoate World was gathering data on how to best destroy the world. In the end, the Captain defeated the Beast in the world of memory, and was transported back to the real world. It was only then that Lobelia revealed absolutely everything to them: he presented his 'maman' and 'papa' as two conches, playing out his parents' grotesque final moments to the horrified and disgusted crew. He explained his origins, his desires, his fateful meeting with The Tower, and his true intentions: to end the world, the very thing the Captain thought they'd been fighting against all this time. He cheerfully informed them that they'd been the source of a wealth of data for The World and for The Tower. Incensed and betrayed, the crew stood up to him and condemned him. Lobelia was disappointed by their rejection, but ready for the inevitable; snapping his fingers, he summoned them to a new battlefield to do battle with he and The Tower. Arrogant as he was about his abilities, there was no doubt he expected to win, and was excited for the Sound he was going to derive from the body of the Captain. He was sure it would make him happy. It wasn't to be, though. The crew was able to defeat Lobelia. In the aftermath, they had to bear witness to a truly horrific scene. Lobelia realised, in that moment, why a pactbearer was so hard for The Tower to find, or why they no sooner appeared than vanished. On his first failure, Lobelia had to die the same agonising, excruciating deaths he had carried out on everyone he had ever killed. By that point, it was an almost countless number of people. Before the eyes of the crew, The Tower exploded Lobelia's body, clenched its fist to return him to life, and obliterated him again, over and over, with mechanical precision. And yet, between his grotesque deaths, Lobelia was in the throes of a shameless ecstasy, praising The Tower's brutality and relishing the Sound of his own eternally-repeated end. Powerless to do anything, the crew were forced to retreat, leaving Lobelia behind. They returned to the restaurant, and the card was left in the Captain's hands. It was later that Lobelia made a return to the crew, who were shocked to see him in one piece. He explained then that he was still in the process of carrying out his sentence, vaguely describing himself as 'still connected to his nerves', and that his ability to be in two places at once was a result of his audiomancy. In this way, he was persistently supplied with the sound of his own savage pulverisation. Lobelia insisted to the Captain that he no longer needed to go on destroying others to live; instead, he wished to supply the Captain with his power, and join their crew. After much deliberation, they were convinced to accept him — if only because keeping an eye on him was better than letting him roam around freely. PERSONALITY: On first impression, Lobelia is a well-spoken and perfectly polite man — and always very happy to be chatting. He's obviously born into a little bit of privilege with the way he carries himself, but he's very agreeable and quickly energised by positive conversations and subjects that inspire his passion — good food, entertainment, all the pleasant things life has to offer. He can integrate and befriend others easily, although his sense of self-importance does come through from time to time. Brought up in such a pampering environment, Lobelia very much still asserts himself as a genius and a person of brilliance, for his powers and also just in general. He has huge confidence in himself, and clearly has a bit of self-righteousness and egotism about his own goals. While he is always keen to show off what he can do, he's lousy at explaining how it works and is generally bad at talking about anything too technical. He claims his powers mostly grew from his own intuition, and so he simply can't teach anyone how to do it. He doesn't really seem interested in comparing his abilities to that of others — perhaps because he doesn't consider most people remotely comparable. His credo, as taught to him by his parents, is that 'everyone has a right to be happy'. While it's a largely innocuous and selfless phrase, in practice, Lobelia uses it to justify ranking his own happiness above all other things, including the lives of others. For him, happiness has historically meant the destruction of other people in as painful and gratuitously grisly way as possible, and he's sought that out with cold-blooded determination. He fundamentally associates destruction with pleasure; he experiences a euphoria from hearing things break, and the more visceral and grand in scale, the better. Humans, their homes, their entire islands, anything he can hear destroyed gives him a satisfaction beyond all description. It's historically been like an addiction for him, a reason to be alive. He refers to such noises as the Sound. When questioned on how he can say that 'everyone has a right to be happy' when he's killing other people, Lobelia flippantly replies that he's not so much of a pushover as to concern himself with other people's happiness. In this way, he finds his loophole: the right to be happy doesn't necessarily mean happiness is guaranteed, or that he needs to care about anyone else's happiness at all. Like a magical Ayn Rand. He doesn't really show much interest in others beyond what they can do for him, and is quite happy to deceive people in order to get what he wants, as he initially does with the Captain. It's only when he sees the Captain fight that he begins to experience a sort of bond with them — anyone who can fight so mercilessly, who feels the thrill and excitement of combat and death must, in some way, be just like him. But his closest living bond, bizarrely, is The Tower. In The Tower, he finds a kindred spirit who exists purely to destroy, and the two of them seem to share a deep understanding. The Tower, a mere instrument of destruction, doesn't communicate through words as some of the other Arcarum do, but that doesn't stop Lobelia speaking to him at great length, enthusing on the things they enjoy doing together. The Tower's connection to him ultimately changes everything, and Lobelia gladly embraces his role as an instrument when he realises that it will lead to the destruction of the world. So pure and concentrated is his desire for the Sound, he's ready to throw away the entire planet and himself just to hear the crack it makes when it's destroyed. However, after they meet the Captain, it also leads to the turning point. When Lobelia fails against the Captain and is punished horrifically by The Tower, he soon discovers that he can attain pleasure beyond measure from his own destruction. At the moment, even as Lobelia manifests his form in the real world, The Tower constantly supplies his body with the euphoric experience of dying over and over in the world of the primal beast's memories. This satisfies the needs of The Tower through Lobelia's infinite punishment, while satisfying Lobelia's need to hear that beautiful sound of something broken, and ultimately puts an end to Lobelia's grotesque tendencies. Through his constant repetition of death in the Card, he's liberated in the Sky Realm to find other pursuits. For now, the Captain has been able to talk him into never hurting anyone else in the Sky Realm again, and Lobelia has agreed so that he can join the crew. But Lobelia is still very open about the joy he experiences in the Sound. It's a delicate balance of things that keep Lobelia from tipping, but in conversation, he's still incorrigible. He is by far the most morally bankrupt of the Captain's recruits, and is only recruited in the first place because it was better to keep an eye on him than to let him roam free. POWERS/ABILITIES: Lobelia is an audiomancer, which is apparently a rare ability in the Sky Realm. With it comes a number of peculiar and vaguely-defined abilities: Lobelia can use message to speak to others over long distances, by making a conch appear. It's similar to a mobile phone. He also has registre which allows him to record and play back audio in his conches. He can manifest countless numbers of these conches and make them appear and disappear at will. He can cause people to explode using his audiomancy, but elects not to use it on others any more. In addition, he has some vaguely-defined ability to project himself, which is always in use now that the Tower's pulverising him. It's unlikely it can be used more than once at any given time, so it'll never be implemented in Prismatica. INVENTORY: The Tower card: this grants him access to the battlefield where he exists being eternally punched to death, and allows him to manifest The Tower itself. The Tower would, in Prisma, not be nearly as game-breaking as it's implied to be, but more like it is on attainment; allowing for improved defense and Lobelia's protection. At full size, The Tower is implied to be massive, so it would be scaled down to about 8 foot in Prisma. MOONBLESSING: Sanguis ▶ SAMPLES link #1 link #2