Application to The Far Shore

[adventurology]

Player Information

Name: Ax
Contact: Plurk@AxiomaticGrue
Age: 30
Other Characters: N/A

Character Information

Name: Lara Croft
Canon: Tomb Raider (Survivor/Reboot Timeline)
Canon Point: Post Rise of the Tomb Raider
Age: 24
History: Here

Personality:
At her core, Lara Croft is a woman who is dedicated to succeeding at whatever she puts her prodigious mind to. It doesn’t matter what the task is, if she commits to it she will see it done, no matter how difficult it may be for her. Thanks to her dedication, natural talent, and no small amount of luck she very often she not only succeeds, but also excels. She is an individual who prizes doing things the right way, and never one to be cowed by a challenge.

Lara has always had a sense of adventure, a yearning to move forward into the unknown and explore. To shed light in the darkness and find out the secret truths of the world is all she’s ever wanted, in no small part thanks to her family. Her father was an archaeologist and explorer, her mother took to the adventurous lifestyle like a fish took to water, and her father’s friend Conrad Roth lived his entire life the way famous explorers of the 19th century did. Roth especially had a strong influence on Lara’s sense of adventure, teaching her to shoot, climb mountains, hunt, fish, trap, and a host of other skills she’d need on expeditions of her own.

Though she eschews the trappings of wealth, Lara is the product of an aristocratic household. Her childhood was not a happy one, and left her with emotional scars. She was a year ahead of most of her classmates, and because of her intelligence she was frequently quite bored, which led her to distance herself from them. Teachers often described her to her caretaker as rambunctious, incorrigible, and prone to acting out to get her father’s attention.

Her mother died in a plane crash when Lara was very young and her father coped with this very poorly. He was obsessed with his research, neglecting his daughter for the most part. He did make attempts to be there for her, which left her with some mixed feelings on him. He’d occasionally bring her along on his archaeological expeditions, giving her little plots to excavate on her own, or he’d bring her back books and other things as gifts. Though in time she began to realize that they were bribes, and grew to resent him and his fixation with ‘witchcraft’ and the supernatural. They argued about that rather frequently when he was around. These arguments coupled with his suicide in her early teens, led to some fairly unpleasant feelings about him, and a healthy sense of herself as a skeptic.

These feelings were slow to change and it wasn’t until the traumatic experiences she went through on the island of Yamatai that she really began to get through some of those issues. On Yamatai she was confronted by undead samurai, oni, and the sorceress Queen Himiko. This experience all but shattered that belief, forcing Lara to accept the magic her father believed in was real. The revelation changed her, caused her to take up her father’s research into immortality, and ultimately dedicate herself to continuing his legacy and clearing his tarnished name. She still resents him for his obsession, but says that she understands why he did what he did.

The experiences on Yamatai changed her in other ways as well. She began her journey as a relatively well-adjusted, educated, if somewhat socially awkward young woman fresh out of undergrad but in her efforts to survive she was put into many situations where she had to make snap decisions or die. This hardened her, making her a little bit cavalier when it comes to her own life.

On Yamatai she was forced to kill other people to protect herself and her friends, and the experience left her somewhat unsettled. She can and will kill people now, if the situation is dire enough, but as later experiences show she prefers to avoid it and will not do so out of hand. She has numerous chances to harm enemy agents during her adventures in Siberia seeking the Lost City of Kitezh, and unless forced into a conflict almost always chooses to spare them. She’s definitely seen her fair share of battles though, and is a little prone to fits of righteous indignation when confronted with an enemy she morally disagrees with. She won’t compromise, and stubbornly refuses to see their perspective, and is shown to be willing to commit acts of violence against people who piss her off enough.

She’s defiant about being ordered around too, often fighting with her domineering uncle Atlas about ownership of Croft Manor and her family’s legacy. She won’t give up ground easily, and it even comes to a point where her uncle threatens to sue her until she tracks down a legal loophole to get rid of him. Not because she wants to necessarily keep the manor, but because she doesn’t want her uncle to get his way.
In her adventures, Lara Croft often finds that she needs to be clever and outsmart her opponents, coming at them in unexpected and unorthodox ways. She’s less an action hero and more someone who succeeds through resourcefulness. Some examples are creating a bomb from a hand radio to deal with a group of wolves, solving a series of climbing puzzles with nothing but arrows and rope, or creating a formula to counteract a hallucinogenic poison with nothing but plants, animals, and chemicals found in an abandoned Soviet copper mine all while being pursued by highly armed enemies.

She is prone to reckless acts, throwing herself into dangerous situations like mountaineering and armed conflict with both human and supernatural forces. She’s incredibly brave, as while she does show fear when put into these situations, she still confronts them anyway. She often jokes about it, or throws out taunts and insults as an outlet in dangerous situations. Occasionally she talks to herself, chiding herself over small mistakes and vocalizing the next steps of the problems she’s currently working on solving.

Lara is a natural leader, inspiring loyalty in her friends and fear in her enemies. Conversations overheard between enemy soldiers often invoke the image of Croft as some sort of devil, and someone not to be trifled with. People on her side often express relief and gratitude that she’s with them, touting her as a sort of guardian angel who appears in the nick of time. Several times her allies are on the verge of breaking down and her appearance and a few words restore their morale, getting them moving again. She’s loyal right back, willing to put her own life and her mission at risk to help even one friend survive. She’ll fight whole platoons of enemies to give one friend a chance to escape, and risk life and limb climbing up a mountainous deathtrap to find a particular herb to treat an infection. Whatever it is, no risk it too great for friendship.

Much like her father, though, Lara is prone to obsession. If something catches her attention she’ll focus hard on that until the problem is solved or she’s gleaned all the information she can from it. This could be as simple as sweeping a library for all references to a particular subject or as complex as deciding to complete her father’s research into an elixir of immortality. When she puts her mind to something, nothing else matters. On top of that, she’s a bibliophile, and despite opening up some in college and getting out more, she’s prone to losing herself in books for days at a time. Sometimes it’s for research, other times for pleasure, and sometimes simply to escape bad memories, books are a constant companion and something she prizes extremely highly.

Unsurprisingly, Lara is something of an introvert. Growing up mostly distant from people her own age like she did, she’s not exactly the most talkative or chatty person. She is gregarious, friendly, and an excellent listener, but it takes the right crowd and situation to really get her to open up. She’s not ever going to be a party girl like her friend Sam, but she enjoys a good night out every now and again. Another friend, Jonah, comments that “I only worry when I haven’t seen you outside the library for a week. A few days is fine, but c’mon, you’ve gotta get out some too.” It’s yet another marker of her tendency to obsess, but it is also a way for her to recharge a little. She has a little bit of a morbid sense of humor, often cracking jokes about talking to herself, finding enough amusement in tombs she’s raiding to quip a little, and even seeming to find some dark amusement in using a catapult to smash up a group of undead Byzantine soldiers.

That’s basically it. Lara Croft, stubborn adventurer, explorer, and daredevil, and also a reckless introvert with a somewhat ghoulish sense of humor and real hang ups when it comes to family. She’s a loyal friend, hardworking, and willing to give herself over completely to a cause she believes in.

Abilities:

Lara Croft does not have any supernatural powers of her own. She is a normal human being, complete with all the normal human failings. She bleeds if cut, she dies if you shoot her, and she dies even harder if she tries to go toe to toe with a bear or something. She does, however, have a number of talents that set her apart from the crowd. Some do border on pseudonatural, and will be covered at the end.

First is her Survival Instinct. Through intense meditative training with Conrad Roth, Lara is able to focus her mind to better pick up on her surroundings. She can pick out things better than most people if she stands still and just takes in the area, heightening her awareness in a way few people can, but still within normal limits. Sort of like Sherlock Holmes on the RDJ films.

Second is her athletic talent. Lara is in peak physical condition for a human, with stamina, strength, speed, and reflexes that rival or exceed some Olympic athletes. These are the results of a harsh training regimen from Roth, as well as her trips to Siberia and Yamatai forcing her to get better or die. Because of this she has an incredibly high pain tolerance, enough to resist many forms of conventional torture. She’s a strong swimmer, an excellent acrobat able to walk highwires or swing from trees and ropes, and an experienced mountaineer as well.

Next, Lara is a highly skilled marksman, particularly with a bow and arrow. She is familiar enough with firearms to be able to pick one up and discern how to use it, as well. In hand to hand she’s reasonably skilled but tends to fight with a kind of brutal desperation rather than any real finesse. She’s a little heavy-handed but knows her way around an axe, a sword, and a combat knife. Tactically, she favors ambushes, guerrilla tactics, and utilizing her resourcefulness to avoid or disable. This includes weird talents like modifying radios into bombs, creating poisonous arrows from mushrooms, and creating traps of all kinds.

Lara is also an extremely intelligent young woman. Thanks to her bibliophilia, studious nature, advanced education, and her upbringing she is very familiar with most subjects related to archaeology, anthropology, and history. This isn't limited to those fields as she casually rattles off medical and scientific facts, too. She is able to identify artifacts and architecture with only a little bit of context, decipher maps and other clues without only a little difficulty, and solve a myriad of deadly puzzles left by ancient builders. Basically here she’s a smart cookie. She is also a talented linguist, understanding Japanese (with some difficulty translating archaic characters), Egyptian, Russian, Mongol, Greek (both ancient and modern), Latin, Italian, French, German, and Mandarin. She is also familiar with toxicology, herbology, and field medicine thanks to Roth’s mentorship.

Finally, there is one area where Lara does have some traits that border on the supernatural. In her journey to find the Lost City of Kitezh, Lara uncovered a series of ancient codices containing forgotten secrets of the Byzantine Empire. Some of these manuscripts are relatively mundane, teaching Lara ancient mining and metallurgy techniques, forms of advanced archery, or herbalist recipes. Others though, offer lessons on meditation and mind over matter techniques that help her heal more quickly. It’s not quite within the realm of Wolverine’s healing factor, but it keeps Lara going after pretty severe injuries, helping her shrug off harm more easily.

Strengths: Intelligent, Brave, Resourceful, Merciful and Kind, Loyal and Dedicated
Weaknesses: Stubborn, Resentful, Self-Righteous, Obsessive, Reckless

God/Shinki: God
Why?:

I feel that Lara Croft has all the makings of a good god, moreso than a shinki. She isn’t someone who is ‘wielded’ so much as she ‘wields’ in the sense that she’s become a leader and not a follower. She’s someone who comes to the aid of others when they need it (or because they wished it), just because she thinks it’s right and proper. She often speaks in absolutes, making judgements about others choices and decisions as though they’re wrong and can never be right, which feels very godlike in a Noragami sense. She’s also willing to defend those convictions, viciously if pressed, just to prove her point. Several characters in canon even compare her to a guardian angel, as she seems to turn up whenever she’s needed to help them. All that makes me feel like she’d fit the god category more than the shinki one. There’s also the admittedly amusing aspect of turning a canonically former skeptic into a deity as well, though, and I live for those kinds of awkward roleplay choices.

Top 3 Choices:

Athena - Greek Goddess of War and Wisdom
Pinga -Inuit Goddess of the Hunt and a psychopomp
Veritas - Roman Goddess of Truth

God Type:

Lara is the sort of person who would want to be the best possible god she can be. She wants to help people, to make the world a better place, and to uncover and share the truths of the world. The kinds of prayers she’d answer would be ones that call for protection, shelter, insight, guidance, or intellectual inspiration. The kinds of things Lara herself would pray for when she was in trouble, basically. I feel like these sorts of things would generally match up to the previous incarnations of the gods I’ve selected. Athena guides and protects, providing insight and advice. Pinga leads hunters to shelter, protects the hunter from harm, and guides the dead to the afterlife, and Veritas guides people to the truth. Even if she was assigned a different one, I think she’d generally try and live up to their name unless it was one completely morally opposite her own moral compass.

Power:

Adoptive Muscle Memory. With this power, Lara would be able to perfectly mimic and perform any movement or action she sees perfectly. Acrobatics, fighting moves, trick shots with a bow, hand motions, marksmanship, dances, sports, and really anything else that involves motion are copied into her headspace and are able to be replicated, combined with other motions, and strung together. She won’t be able to mimic anything that the human body couldn’t ordinarily do, so no copycatting other powers, but if it’s something a human could manage, even just barely, human she could repeat the action. It feels like a good fit for Lara specifically as it plays to her strengths as a normal person who’s just exceedingly competent at anything a human can possibly be competent at.

Writing Sample

Sample:

[Looking down the long hallway, Lara puffed out a sigh and rested one hand on the smooth brick to steady herself. Stuff like this was just not fun for her, and despite promising it, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t some game Jonah was playing with her. She smiled ruefully, staring at the doorway with just a hint of trepidation. The noise alone was enough to make her want to turn around and head back to her hotel but she’d promised.]

He always does find some way to wheedle favors out of me…
[She mumbled a little, bracing herself for the shock of noise and heat as she prepared to push open the door to the nightclub. As she reached for the handle, she stopped, a sudden buzzing in her pocket informing her of an incoming call.

Stepping back, she flipped on the phone.]

Hello? Ah! Hey!. No that’s all right, I’m listening. Just got a bit of music playing, that’s all.

[She paused, listening to the other end, stepping further away from the door and the thumping bass of the club’s sound system. Chewing her lip she nodded to herself.]

Right! Right, that’s excellent news. Glad you got back to me. Just in the nick of time, too. I was about to step out for the night, and this is quite a bit more urgent. You said Morocco, right? Just outside Rabat? Right, I’ll make the arrangements and be there tomorrow morning. I think I can still catch the late flight out of Heathrow. Thanks, Joslin! Can’t wait to see you.

[Closing out the call, Lara took a breath and turned away, heading back outside. Quickly she wrote out a text, pressed send, and started back down the street towards her flat to pack. He’d understand, probably. Hopefully?]

Sorry Jonah, but some things are just more important than a night out. I’ll just have to owe you another drink when I get back.


Other

Anything Else?:

I got nothing! Thanks for reading!