App for Metaheros

Player —

Player Name: Parcel
Pronouns: She/Her
Are you over 18? Yes
Contact: Caligraphunky
Current Characters: None
Who Invited You?: Korel

Character —

Character Name: Augustus “Gus” Porter
Character Canon: The Owl House
Character Age: 12
Canon Point: Season 3, episode 1, Thanks to Them, the night before they investigate the rebus
Link to History: From the TOH Wiki
Inventory: -Palisman. Emmiline Bailey Marcostimo, which serves as his familiar and his main mode of transportation. She’s a magically animated carving of a blue chameleon that can serve either as a pet or a staff Gus can fly on.
-Magical amplifier. A small mirror that can be worn as an earring or necklace. This enhances Gus’s illusions to the point where they can be indistinguishable from reality, at least by sight and sound. This also allows Gus view other people’s memories. I’d like to keep this ability if at all possible; Gus’s good nature and kind heart preclude him from doing this to anyone who isn’t his worst enemy, and it didn’t even work the way he wanted it to the one time he did. (He thought it would subdue Belos, instead it sent him into a frenzy.) While there are plenty of other reasons he might need to or want to read someone’s mind, this won’t be done without explicit permission from the other player and careful planning for the scene.

Powers —

Skills: Gus is a born showman, with an easy and confident charisma that allows him to command the stage. He’s good at entertaining audiences, and often serves as an MC or color commentator.

Gus also has a really good eye for fashion. When given access to human clothes, he gravitates towards stylish, well-coordinated outfits. Presumably this is also true of when he’s wearing clothing native to the Boiling Isles, but the canon text is inconclusive.

While Gus isn’t particularly physically strong, he is athletic, able to do what are essentially skateboarding tricks on his Palisman.

Superpowers: -Illusion Magic. All Witches have a bile sac attached to their hearts that provides a sort of organic battery for magical energy. All a Witch needs to do is draw a spell circle with their hands or feet and the spell they want will be cast. While all witches naturally can perform all kinds of magic they all have their particular strengths and weaknesses. Gus is considered a particularly gifted illusionist, uniquely powerful among his peers.

Illusions can be free-floating illusions or glamours. Free-floating illusions are life-like images of people, animals, or things. The images aren’t tangible (the canon itself is slightly inconsistent on this; for game purposes they are intangible), but they can speak and be semi-autonomous. For example, if Gus makes an illusion of himself to serve as a get well card, he doesn’t need to control them directly to comfort the person or try to cheer them up or if the illusion is meant to scare, he can set it to chase the person and make spooky noises.

Glamours on the other hand, are illusionary disguises placed over people, animals, and things. These illusions match the person’s movements exactly. This is the only way he can make his illusions physically touch people. He can also use this technique to cover places, fooling his target into thinking they’re somewhere they aren’t, or simply to black everything out to hide himself or others. This has a fairly large, but limited range, about the maximum of a typical high school.

-Telekinesis: Gus has minor levitation powers. He doesn’t demonstrate this much, but it seems limited to anything Gus can lift with his arms and only a short length away from him. I.E. he could pick up a small object from the bottom of a lake clear enough to see the bottom of, but he couldn’t start throwing boulders as an attack.

-Flight: As long as Gus has access to his Palisman staff, he can use it to fly by riding on it. Gus in particular rides his staff by standing upright on it like a skateboard, and he uses this position to gain extra speed and maneuverability. He’s also capable of doing jumping and flipping tricks on it.

Limitations: Because Gus’s magic is biological in nature, it’s very heavily affected by things such as his energy level, his emotions, his mood, his personal knowledge of whatever he’s creating an illusion of or feelings towards same. He can lose control of his magic when he’s highly distressed/breaking down emotionally and he won’t be able to use it at all if he’s exhausted enough.

Casting glamours on himself or others requires much more energy to maintain than a free-floating illusion because he has to spend extra effort matching their movements. He can only keep these kind of illusions up for a short time and there are sometimes “tells” that indicate when he’s disguised something. (I.E. when he disguised Hunter as Luz, his tooth gap was still visible.) He also can’t disguise voices. The semi-sentient nature of his constructs mean they sometimes cause minor mischief or do tasks incorrectly. Gus cannot see or hear through his illusions and they are instantly dispelled into puffs of smoke when touched.

Use of his magical amplifier requires his full concentration, to the point where the other person’s memories take up his entire perception and he can’t see or hear the world around him. This leaves him fully vulnerable to attacks if he’s not protected by someone else.

Gus is a skilled Palisman flier, but he has to be standing on his staff to do it rather than flying astride or sidesaddle like most witches. The higher center of gravity makes him a larger target and more likely to fall off if hit.

Due to the deadly nature of water on the Boiling Isles, Gus can’t swim.

Personality —

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Gus is an eccentric and goofy ball of youthful energy. Precocious and enthusiastic, he approaches everything he does with optimism and gusto. His common sense is occasionally overwhelmed by his unbridled curiosity, particularly when aspects of the human realm come into play, but also towards anything that catches his attention. His flair for the dramatic make his enthusiasm infectious, or at least good for working himself up into a lather. He lives in the moment until the moment is over. He never puts anything but 100% of his effort into everything he does, which means trouble if he’s working from flawed premises or towards an end goal that turns out to be disastrous.

Much of Gus’s identity has been shaped by being a gifted child who started high school at the age of 12. This has left him on a sort of self-esteem Tower of Terror; On one extreme, he finds his chosen area of study so easy he thinks of himself as an Illusion master at age 12 and on the other he couldn’t find one single friend that wasn’t only interested in having him do their homework until he met someone in on entirely different track. This has left Gus with a volatile sense of his own worth outside of his academic pursuits. He’s deeply hard on himself when he makes mistakes and can’t immediately make up for them, sulking at best, falling into a self-loathing spiral at worst.

However, mixing his compassionate and kind nature with self-doubt frequently drives him to reach out to people who are lonely or left behind. His deep well of love, strong emotional intelligence, and natural charisma make him something of a social chameleon, able to connect with people from all walks of life. He is totally capable of acting out of spite or selfishness -he’s not a saint, and is still very young and unevenly mature- but his intentions are never to hurt anyone. He’s almost always willing to lend a helping hand to anyone who seems amenable to it, even to people who’ve treated him badly in the past. While he can be bad at determining who is being honest, and has developed a deep-seated belief that he’s gullible, it’s also lead him to some of his closest friendships. Time and experience means he’s gotten better at looking before he leaps and no longer takes everyone at face value, but he’s still deeply trusting and fiercely loyal to the people he cares about.

His experiences, both in school and out, have also made him extremely resilient and very brave, and he rarely, if ever, shrinks from a challenge or an enemy if he knows he has a chance to conquer it. His lack of real firepower means his main weapons are his quick wit and his creative mind, both of which are bolstered by a keen sense of observation. He’s fairly good at trusting his gut and calling out when he feels like things are wrong. He can miss details if he’s under emotional stress, but despite some occasional dramatics, he’s good at keeping a cool head under pressure.

Gameplay —

Areas of Interest / Brainstorming: I went back and forth on this, to be honest. First off, I figured he wouldn't be joining a guild unless in some way forced. The whole thing is a bit too Coven System for his liking and the Day of Unity is a wound that's way too fresh. Also: witch solidarity.

Realistically, I'd like Gus to meet people from different worlds with different realities and get hype for the various levels of tech and magic involved. I'd also love to have him get involved in the action even though his powers are more about support. Seems fun!

Ideally though? I'd love love love to develop the impulse that drove him to lead a mob in a chant of "let Eda go" in his own canon. Basically? Gus Porter, budding revolutionary.

Samples: May TDM