meadowlark app

[998]

> PLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: Lindsey
PRONOUNS: she/her
AGE: 27
CONTACT: boots/bitterends

> CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Jon Snow
CANON: A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones
AGE: 21
CANON POINT: End of A Dance with Dragons

HISTORY: asoiaf wiki
PERSONALITY: Over the course of the books Jon's gone through many changes, but his quiet, serious affect remains one of his most salient points. Originally quite sheltered and self-involved, Jon's time with the wildlings and especially Ygritte has left him with a broader understanding of the world around him and a more fully developed sense of empathy. He's no longer as reserved as he used to be, nor as easily embarrassed. Bantering with Ygritte actually left him with a pretty good sense of humor.

Jon is a natural leader, and has a tendency to organize and mobilize people if no one else is around to do it. It can come off as bossy and presumptuous, and in combination with his aloof nature this can really bother some people. In a position of leadership he does feel the need to remove himself from the emotional sphere of those he considers to be under his command, because he believes it will give him the distance he needs both to be seen as an authority figure and to make impartial judgements. In canon this leads his friends to wonder if he doesn't think he's better than them now that he's Lord Commander. And while he's good at getting people on his side, like his father and brother he has a tendency to believe a little too much of them. He's not naive (anymore), but doesn't expect people to act against their best interest out of stupidity or spite.

His father taught him all the manners of a proper northern lord, but he has a sarcastic streak and a quick temper. Since he's lost so many people he loves, he feels like he no longer has anything to lose. On some level he blames himself for their deaths, but he consciously ignores his grief in favor of his duties as Lord Commander. He sees himself as the only thing standing between the White Walkers and the people of Westeros, and he's probably right. This gives him a sense of purpose. He genuinely wants to help everyone get through the winter, even though this it's a mostly thankless task. Being Lord Commander was always his dream and he does appreciate the honor, deep down, but he'd easily trade it away to have his family, and Ygritte, back. When his sisters are threatened he acts rashly, and when his authority is questioned he acts decisively. He's not afraid to execute a man if he believes it's the best course of action, and he's always ready to do battle if he believes he must. He actually enjoys the martial arts aspect of combat and takes on additional training and teaching as a hobby. He doesn't really have many other hobbies.

He's very loyal to his friends and those he considers under his command or his protection. If there's a task that needs doing, he'll be among the first to volunteer--even if it's unpleasant, but especially if it involves any kind of physical challenge. He's proud of his heritage and of the North, but he's willing to swallow his pride in order to protect it or anything else he cares about. When in doubt he falls back on a code of ethics not only instilled in him by Ned Stark but developed over the course of his experience in the Night's Watch--he admired the Wildling's philosophy and still kind of prefers it to feudalism sometimes, but ultimately he reminds himself that betraying them and rejoining the Night's Watch will ultimately save more lives. As Lord Commander he makes it his mission to settle the Wildlings on the other side of the Wall not only because he believes this is necessary to stop the White Walkers but because he feels it's the fair thing to do.

Unfortunately many men of the Night's Watch feel differently, and they've just organized a mutiny which has ended in his stabbing. Now his loyalties will be thrown into question, but ultimately he's the kind of person who will still want to protect a realm that's betrayed him--if only because his sisters are somewhere in it.

CRAU: His time at Clockbox put some distance between him and the traumatic events of the past few books. With the help of his sisters and eventually his mother he was able to find a comfortable equilibrium between the stressed-out Lord Commander he'd become and the boy he'd been at Winterfell. He found much of the persona he'd taken on among the Wildlings came back to him in a safe environment. He became fascinated with differences between cultures and worlds. He did his best to absorb as much new knowledge as he could, but he also became a bit defensive of the North and the world around it, and tried to show his friends that his home planet was more than just a brutal warscape by sharing bits of history and science he remembered from his lessons and the books from Maester Aemon he'd studied as Lord Commander.

Perhaps the single most powerful and transformative experience he had in Clockbox was meeting Lyanna Stark. She informed him of his parentage, though she was a bit cagey with the details. Jon was delighted to have a mother, albeit one a year or two younger than he was, and became a protective, doting son. He was less delighted with the revelation of his true heritage. He does not believe himself a legitimate Targaryen and has mixed feelings about his birth father. He is very concerned that if word of his royal blood were to get out he might be taken as some sort of Blackfyre figure, and his work at the Wall, as well as his relationship with Stannis Baratheon, to whom he owes a great deal, would be compromised. He is determined to keep knowledge of his birth parents within his close CR.

Though Jon initially thought he had died at the hands of the mutineers, he came to believe he might survive his injuries thanks to repeated conversations with Sansa. Despite himself he has some hope that he will be able to return to his work of protecting the realm from the White Walkers. However, he intends to prolong this period of respite between worlds for as long as possible, especially with his family present. He sees this as a sort of temporary suspension of his duties, as Sansa and others have assured him he will be returned to the time he left.

SPECIES: human
APPEARANCE: image here, his scars have faded slightly
SKILLS: Jon is a skilled fighter; his preferred weapon is a longsword (specifically a hand-and-a-half or 'bastard' sword), but he is proficient with a variety of melee weapons and a capable archer. He can hunt for his dinner, although his fondness for animals keeps him from being truly good at it (he compares himself unfavorable to Theon Greyjoy when he is enlisted as an archer in the battle of the Wall, and is consistently outshot by Ygritte). In Clockbox he received firearms training from Bucky Barnes and is a decent shot, though he is more comfortable with a longbow and prefers to use one if possible. He is not trained in any particular hand-to-hand discipline but growing up with a brother close to his own age left him a capable wrestler and brawler, if somewhat overly competitive and with a tendency to lean on underhanded tactics and improvise weapons when threatened (he throws a lamp at a wight in canon, and in the tv adaptation he grabs a convenient anvil when disarmed by a wildling during the battle of the Wall). Jon is confident in his combat skills and quite comfortable passing them on--he makes an excellent teacher and has had lots of practice training his friends and Arya both at the Wall and in Clockbox.

Despite his awkward manner Jon is something of a natural leader--he inspires a following on the Wall even before he is elected as Lord Commander thanks to his friend Samwell Tarlys' political maneuvering, and the previous Lord Commander did pick him to train as his unofficial successor. Six months or so in charge of the Night's Watch honed his leadership capabilities; he draws on his adoptive father Ned Stark's example to unite the Watch and the Wildlings in a defense against the White Walkers. The mutiny of the watch at the end of A Dance With Dragons left him shaken, withdrawn, and mistrustful, but after a few months at Clockbox, with the support of his sisters and various CR he began to trust his instincts again and slowly established himself as a leader in the game community thanks to his thorough investigations of its setting as well as his careful preparations for potential emergencies, which came in handy during events where scarcity of resources was a factor.

In fact without the pressures he faced in canon Jon was able to pursue his dream of being ranger in Clockbox, which turned out to be the perfect environment for it. He honed his powers of observation and carefully recorded everything he saw. He also developed his powers of 'warging' and 'borrowing' Ghost's senses (Ghost was understandably unwilling to let him wander off alone after the stabbing incident in canon). However, these are the powers that will be replaced in Meadowlark.

Jon has remarkable outdoor survival skills but they are limited to temperate and arctic climates. He's good at finding food and shelter, though he's never had to worry about water particularly as there's always been an abundance of snow. He can set up a decent campsite and build a fire with only flint and tinder, and he's used to walking long miles carrying reasonably heavy loads. He's also adept at ice-climbing, having had the ultimate crash course in it scaling the Wall with the Wildlings. He also has reasonable domestic skills for a man of his upbringing from his time as the Lord Commander's steward, who acts as a sort of valet/assistant--he can mend clothes, keep a fire stoked, dust and sweep, and so forth. He's especially good at hot spiced wine.

One of Jon's most important skills is his ability to keep an open mind. He's constantly aware of how much he has to learn. He's not ashamed to admit when he doesn't know something, though he doesn't always know the right questions to ask to find out. He's learned to listen to people more experienced than him and factor their knowledge into his decisions.

NEW POWER: healing factor
POWER REASONING: Jon recovers from several serious injuries in canon and displays a surprisingly high pain tolerance. He's pretty reckless and careless with his body (he has a bit of a death wish at his canonpoint, although he has mellowed out a little and found reasons to enjoy living in Clockbox) and it would be interesting to push that to its limits by allowing him to sustain massive injuries with the knowledge he'll recover.

It also functions as a literal manifestation of his stubbornness and tenacity. It allows him to keep fighting against overwhelming odds, which is a major theme of his character arc in canon.

> SAMPLES
SAMPLE ONE: with Sansa on the TDM
SAMPLE TWO: TDM thread