"Fighting in a game - even if the combat is 'real' - all boils down to reading the patterns of your opponent and striking at his openings - that's all there is to it. Still, I can hardly call this virtual reality easy. Dealing with people is as troublesome as ever. Ah... what a pain..."


Name: Alphonse "Al" Sahalin
Description: Tall, lean, and ordinary. These are three words that describe the young gamer, Alphonse. With short, roughly straight black hair generally ruffled up in an unkempt bird's nest of dark locks, somewhat pale skin, and a build that is generally rather scrawny compared to his rather large height of six feet, three inches, he possesses long limbs and broad shoulders, but not so much muscle as you might expect from someone of his stature. Actually, despite his size, he's rather unassuming, simply because most people just see a kid in unremarkable dark clothing with black hair and a bored expression usually adorning his face, and then their attention moves on.
His only two really distinctive features are his youthful, smooth skin that seems to violently refuse to grow any more facial hair than the occasional tiny amount of stubble - which he usually shaves off anyway so as to keep unsightly hairs from growing in on their own - and his eyes, which are bright blue, and almost seem to shimmer in the light - that is, when his glasses aren't reflecting it and blocking his eyes almost completely from view. Speaking of which, these, too, are ordinary - not too large, nor too small, or even particularly colorful. From his black shoes to his black slacks to his customary dark hoodie - worn to protect him from the sunlight that burns his skin so easily, as he's never bothered himself to tan - to his black hair, he seems very monochromatic, and generally, quite dull.
This isn't to say he's unattractive. At the very least, he isn't ugly, as despite his scrawny stature, he has a generally good, respectable look about him, with an amicable half-smile maintained perpetually out of habit that shows he's not entirely averse to interaction despite his formidable height and dark wardrobe, and his eyes and the softness of his hair could certainly be called charm points. It's just he's definitely not the sort of dashing, manly prince that you would call "handsome." He's just a guy - a very, very normal guy.
Age: 16
Sex: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Height: Six Feet, Three Inches.
Weight: 170 Pounds.
Hair Color: Jet black.
Eye Color: Bright, sapphire blue.
Body Type: Tall and lanky.
Blood Type: AB.
Skin Tone: Pale.
Voice Type: Actually, surprisingly deep - befitting somebody of his stature, but perhaps not someone of his youthful appearance. It fits his avatar Alistaire much better than himself, in any case - so he thinks, anyway.
Voice Example: Yeah, it's Levi. Deal with it. XD
Character Class: Myrmidon
Starting Weapon: Wooden Longsword.
Starting Level: 2
Starting Stats:
- HP: 27
- ATK: 8 - 1 Stat point spent, 1 hard Stat point earned, 0 extras gained.
- DEF: 5 - 0 Stat points spent, 1 hard Stat point earned, 0 extras gained.
- AGI: 11 - 1 Stat point spent, 1 hard Stat point earned, 1 extra gained.
- SKL: 8 - 1 Stat point spent, 1 hard Stat point earned, 0 extras gained.
- SPD: 11 - 2 Stat points spent, 1 hard Stat point earned, 1 extra gained.
Starting Skills:
- Sword: Lv 2
- Athletics: Lv 1
- Detection: Lv 1
- Sneak: Lv 1
Personality: Al is an interesting person. On the one hand, he seems polite, friendly, outgoing, and even witty, joking energetically with those who engage him in conversation. Most people would call him a well-adjusted, mature young man well on his way to adulthood, and everyone who talks to him, if you asked them, would probably say that he has a lot of friends - although if you asked them to name any, they'd probably have great difficulty producing even one name. He himself, however, feels anything but. Even if he interacts with others kindly when they speak to him, he shows almost no initiative when it comes to actually reaching out to others. Possessing a hyper-sensitive sense of self, he over-analyzes any potential course of action, always doubting how he's perceived and worrying that others will only find him strange for acting, even in the way he feels is normal. Consequently, he usually remains completely silent in the presence of others, awaiting someone to give him a reason to speak before he does so. Feeling stifled by his lack of experience with other people, he finds himself crushed by a sense of dread that he'll be perceived as strange, or stupid, or a nuisance, feeling obligated to meet up to the expectations of those around him, and to exceed them, because of this. Consequently, he finds himself spending most of his time just joking around, trying to amuse the people who actually bother talking to him, so that they won't notice that his outgoing facade is just that - a mask.
Highly intelligent, he's the sort of person who sits in the back of a class, raising his hand every time the teacher asks a question, rattling off the answer, and then lapsing back into silence as he ponders the world outside the window to his right. If you asked him, he'd probably joke that he sounds like the main character of some cliche story, and then shut his mouth again as he realized he'd just hinted at his fondness of anime, something most of his peers would look upon with scorn. Indeed, beneath his studious, socially awkward exterior lies an unparalleled love of fiction - largely video games, movies, and the occasional anime. But, like so much else about himself, he hides these facts, too afraid of how people would view him to stand up and state his hobbies plainly.
Suffering from a relatively minor case of chronic depression, he's well aware of how pathetic the way he lives his life is, and of the fact that not a single person he regularly interacts with really knows, or particularly cares, what he's actually thinking. Even so, he's reluctant to step out of the mold he's made for himself, conditioned by years of avoiding others into maintaining his aloof, shy mindset. He'll help people if they ask for it, as he loves nothing more than being useful to others, but at the same time, he doesn't go out of his way to meet and hang out with his peers. It is for this reason that he hasn't actually had any notable female friends at any point in his life, let alone a girlfriend - another embarrassing secret he hides from the public. Another important thing he lacks is a goal for the future, as, aside from going to college when he graduates to please his parents, he doesn't really have any dreams or goals set for himself - a fact which worries him, as the youth he so cherishes is almost over. He knows he'll have to face reality sooner or later - he's just not sure how he'll manage it. Life Untold is an attempt for Al to escape all those things, and embrace his passion as a gamer one last time before he has to move on with life. This VRMMORPG is meant to be his last dance, and he fully intends to succeed and become one of the best players in the entire game, to give himself memories to look back on.
Strengths:
- A former novice practitioner of Aikido, he's gotten incredibly good at maintaining his balance, predicting the paths taken by incoming attacks, avoiding them, and counterattacking. He also knows how to control his opponent's momentum, allowing him his most valuable skill: the natural talent to counterattack enemies without actually using a Sword Skill, redirecting their momentum either with his blade or his hand and knocking them off balance, giving him the perfect window to strike.
- An avid gamer, he's incredibly good at reading subtle patterns in his opponents' attacks, finding flaws in their defenses, and luring them into exposing themselves so he can strike. He's also done extensive research on the different conditions that can be inflicted within the virtual reality, and uses every advantage he can get, throwing in random hand-to-hand combat maneuvers - even those completely unrelated to his area of martial expertise, like kicks - to break his opponents' defenses, striking precise points in their anatomy to inflict various status debuffs on them and cripple them, or locating weak points in their weapons and breaking them.
- Determined, jovial, and charismatic when he tries to be, he can be a genuinely enjoyable person to be around, a trait which makes it easy for him to make friends and allies - although keeping them is another story.
Weaknesses:
- Lacking social initiative, he finds it difficult to actually reach out to others, worrying how they'll react. This isn't to say he lacks confidence, as he doesn't entirely suffer from what one might call an inferiority complex - his self-image is just largely dictated by how he sees other people acting towards him.
- He views "Defense" as a dump stat, favoring jumping around and generally going as fast as physically possible, pushing his speed stats to their limits by min-maxing towards them and equipping only a sword and light armor so as to minimize his load. While this does make him hard to hit, it also makes him incapable of withstanding more than one or two blows.
- He's kind of a doormat, unable to say no to people who ask for his assistance. This has a tendency to get him into a great deal of trouble, more often than not.
Starting Equipment: Wooden Longsword, Novice's Basic Light Armor.
Biography: Born as an only child, Al didn't exactly have much experience interacting with kids his age due to his father needing to move a great deal for his job, which varied between the different branches of a US-spanning corporation at least once a year. Consequently, Al spent his first six years of school taking courses from his mother, who stayed home to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't get lonely. Introducing him to video games as a means of passing the time when he didn't have anybody his age to play with, he started with puzzle games and... never really stopped, moving on to strategy games, then action games and RPGs. Even when his father finally managed to get a stable job in one place, and they settled down with Alphonse going to public school for the first time, he kept up his hobby.
He wasn't very good at sports, and hated the heat due to how often he ended up sunburned while playing outside, and so avoided baseball teams and basketball games - the latter especially, as he was often scouted or otherwise pressured due to his height - like the plague, favoring swimming as a physical hobby, and pretty much nothing else. He felt awkward in public school, as many people disagreed with the more "uptight," conservative worldview his mother had taught him, and mocked him for staying true to his ideals. Not really able to relate to the experiences of anyone else, he found himself turning away every time he made eye contact with someone, and avoiding anybody who didn't directly approach him. Taking up more and more gaming hobbies to pass the time, he found himself spending most of his days staring at a monitor and browsing the web. He stumbled across anime, and became quite a fan of it, as it was a medium that ran almost entirely on the mechanics he was familiar with from his roleplaying experiences. He also became a major fan of the game "Dark Souls," a difficult, challenging experience which shaped most of the strategies he uses today, and gave him the experience to dominate most other RPGs, as he could predict most of the tricks, ambushes, and other threats in similar games. For a brief time, he took up Aikido, as the martial art which focused solely on redirection of the opponent's momentum rather than any physical strength on the user's part and which also contained elements of swordfighting held a great deal of appeal for the fantasy-loving, scrawny young Al. However, after rising quickly to the rank of Blue Belt, he got bored and gave it up.
But through all this time, he still found himself nigh unable to connect to others - even those who shared his passions. He could put on a smile, joke, and clown around with his classmates, to be sure - but he still never felt like he was really part of their group. He knew that, but, too afraid to speak up, he simply kept his words bottled up as he always had. He'd find a way to interact with others someday, and until then, there was no point in worrying his parents. He was probably just going through ordinary teenage angst. His problems were nothing special. He himself wasn't anything out of the ordinary. So he'd just keep acting normal, pretending it wasn't an issue, and distracting himself with amusing fancies. That was one of the reasons Life Untold caught his eye - it presented an opportunity to really cut loose and enjoy himself, free of all bonds that restricted him - even the laws of reality itself! And so, preordering a copy, he set to work immediately on beginning his grandest exploits, a final eulogy to his childhood, which was swiftly slipping away...