Player Name: Psi
Player Contact: PsiYamaneko | PM
Character(s) In-Game: N/A

Character Name: Link
Age: 18
Canon: The Legend of Zelda (specifically the manga adaptation of Twilight Princess)

World Description: Hyrule

History: Link


Death: (non-canon) His heart mysteriously stops after the events of Vol 5 (Which would be the Arbiter's Grounds).


What are your plans for this character in-game?

Mostly I am interested in ways Link could develop as a character.

He's died once before in canon but was restored by a Light Spirit. Not being resurrected a second time will make him wonder if he's angered the Spirits somehow or if he's been judged as unworthy of being the Hero. Dealing with this self doubt and trying to overcome it to help people will certainly be an aspect of his personal journey in game.

He was selected by the gods to bring Light back to Hyrule which means he will see some overlap between Beacon and his home. Deep down he may think the Master Sword killed him and brought him here to further temper his spirit. What he'll ultimately need to find is what it means for him, specifically, to be the Hero Chosen By The Gods. He needs to figure out who he is.

He's also taken from a canon point where he's about to go mentally off the rails due to blind arrogance. Instead of having this breakdown in Hyrule he'll confront it in Beacon out of his initial desperation to get home. Enjoy!

What aspects of this game and/or its setting are you most interested in having this character engage with?

The horror aspects are definitely appealing. I like exposing characters to rough situations and exploring how they react. Zelda is a famously family friendly franchise but the Twilight Princess manga is less so. Obviously, it's not a R-rated splatter fest but it does lean hard into PG-13 territory and tackles subjects like death, suicide and trauma and it has some dark imagery and plenty of graphic, bloody violence. This all means that the darker aspects of the setting are not necessarily outside Link's sphere of experiences.

Of course, it's easy for that sort of thing to cause stagnation in a character too which is why the exploration and puzzles are also very interesting to me. I think exploration and horror go very well together. Allowing a character some agency within a setting keeps them moving forward. Link is a warrior at heart so he will be keen on exploring especially and will be driven to protect people.

How does your character generally get along with other people?

For the most part, Link gets along fairly well with people as he is very kind. He's an older brother figure to the children in his life and is looked upon as a stellar role model. Usually, his first instinct is to be pleasant with people and do everything in his power to look out for them. In most groups, he tends to end up the pillar of strength for everyone around him. Being a pillar of strength means he has a slightly harder time working with people since his normal instinct is to carry the burden of a situation on his own. If someone is persistent about following him, however, he'll eventually allow them to do so.

People who end up on his bad side are another story completely.

His temper can be fiery and takes the form of almost boyish indignation at best or explosive rage at worst. He has very little tolerance for anyone who speaks down to him or his people or pushes people around. Since his life involves a lot of being pushed around by forces outside his control he is frequently upset, but he does his best to keep that to himself. He tries to vent his frustrations into fighting instead of uncorking emotional bottles of pressurized angst into unsuspecting people. However, to the people he's decided rub him the wrong way he is flat out unpleasant. He is rude, sarcastic, threatens violence and is capable of reacting with actual violence when cornered. Generally, if someone makes a friend in him they make a friend for life but if they make an enemy, they make one hell of an enemy.

What is your character's mental state upon entering the game?

Upon arrival Link will interpret his death as a failure to rescue Hyrule. As noted above he's also died before and not being resurrected again will fill him with questions. Was he not revived because he didn't die in a Light Spirit's spring or is there a deeper reason such as the gods being angry at him? If they're angry why are they angry?

He's also gone through a lot back home and is in a current state of mental chaos. To defeat Ganondorf he knows he needs more power. This lust for power is slowly deteriorating his mind.

Skills/Abilities:

Whispers of the Gods: Link has limited psychic ability that can give him visions and the power to communicate telepathically. This is an ability possessed by Link's people, the Hylians, in general and is not unique to him. In fact, his skill with it is underdeveloped. He has never shown any signs of being able to reach out to other minds, he can only receive messages. This telepathy is considered by Hylians to be whispers of the gods and they believe they evolved to have long, pointed ears so as to hear these whispers more clearly. Outside his home world, Link's psychic visions are bound to be much more scattered and less accurate than before if he even has them at all.

Hearing: Those ears are good for more than telepathic messages, however. Hylians also have incredibly good hearing. They can detect even the faintest sounds around them. Link, too, possesses this trait.

Magic Sense: On rare occasion, Links have demonstrated the ability to sense intense magic. Like many other things in the Zelda franchise the mechanics of this ability are never explained. Odds are, as the Hero Spirit, Link can detect dark magic when it becomes an imminent threat. Sometimes this takes the form of him sensing magic, sometimes he can literally smell it. He cannot sense all magic, just powerful and evil magic.

Black Magic: After accidentally destroying his home town in the Gerudo Desert, Link has devoted over a year of his life to studying tomes of magic with the ultimate goal of learning how to turn darkness into light. This obviously means he could end up having strong opinions about Beacon but nothing he knows in terms of spells will help him here. Even when alive this particular Link was not as magically inclined as others. Still, it's something he knows about on an academic level.

Swordsmanship: Link is a highly skilled warrior. He is most accustomed to the sword but is able to use a wide variety of weapons with reasonable skill and is quick to learn new ones. His fighting style relies on quick footwork, acrobatic tumbles, aerial flips and smooth swordplay punctuated with slow, powerful strikes.

Marksmanship: He is also skilled with the bow and can hit moving targets while riding a horse.

Wolf Form: Link's tendency to become a blue eyed wolf in the Twilight of his own world will cause him to become a wolf when he strays too far from a light source or his lantern. He'll die as quickly as anyone else if separated from his light for too long but he'll die a wolf. This will be explained as the Triforce of Courage kicking in to try and protect him. Since he did study Black Magic back home he may eventually learn how to use shadow magic on himself to transform into a wolf at will but that will depend on what happens in game.

In his wolf form, Link can sense spirits through a magical "third eye" in his forehead and has exceptional speed and powerful jaws. He also has the abilities one would expect from a wolf like a greatly heightened sense of smell. This form is able to communicate with animals and certain spirits but not humans.

Unbreakable Spirit: Link is extremely courageous and won't back down even if faced with overwhelming odds. His spirit is "unbreakable" both in terms of him not giving up and in a more literal sense. Even under immense stress, Link will bend before he breaks. His spirit has been tempered across many lifetimes to allow him to be a living weapon of the gods. Tempering his spirit in each new life also connects each Hero to the Master Sword.

Triforce of Courage: An emblem that represents and contains the essence of the goddess Farore which lies in Link's left hand. The Triforce of Courage has been with him since his birth, marking him as a living Hero Spirit. It protects him from certain forms of dark magic. For example, it is what turned him into a wolf when he was first dragged into Twilight allowing him to maintain a physical form there.

Enhanced Strength and Agility: Link is much stronger than his small frame might suggest. He can lift and hurl boulders bigger than his head, heave ancient marble slabs and flip up to three times his own height straight into the air. With a little assistance from strength boosting artifacts (of which he currently has none) he can throw boulders the size of a barn door.

Lateral Thinking: Link is mentally agile enough to utilize a battlefield or improvised weapon to his advantage in unusual ways. He has the potential to be a gifted puzzle solver, too, but currently his thinking is more aimed at finding efficient ways of killing things.

Flaws/Weaknesses:

Physical Mortality: Anything that can kill a normal human can kill Link and he receives damage the same way a human would.

Trauma: After accidentally destroying his home, failing to save a village that he'd considered a second home from a sacking, dying in said sacking, waking up again, getting dragged into Twilight and turned into a wolf, Link is understandably on edge. He often suffers from stress nightmares and can have a bit of an ill temper if someone catches him in a sour mood. Slowly, he's losing some of his faith in the basic unity of reality and he questions whether or not he's even really human anymore. All of this makes him see himself as a person who is dark and broken at the core of his being. He has embraced the path of the Hero out of necessity to save his friends but he has a nagging feeling the gods chose the wrong person. As he says in his own words "Deep down, I'm not that great."

Pride: Link is very humble when it comes being a hero but is dangerously arrogant about his strength. After being tossed around by a sorcerer named Zant and learning a bit more about his heroic purpose, Link became intent on gaining power. Now he has the Master Sword and his power lust has only grown as a result. It's reached the point where his companion, Midna, will soon become concerned that everything that's happened is finally taking a toll on his mind and changing him in unpleasant ways. Despite his warmth and kindness outside combat, he's becoming a berserker while in combat, relying more on brute force than agile thinking. Dying and coming to Beacon is what will really heighten his power lust to where it eventually gets to in his canon.

Predictably Heroic: If something happens that threatens people, Link will leap into action to protect everyone sure as the sun rises. He will fight until he reaches a point of such physical exhaustion that he collapses... and even then he might pull himself back to his feet to reenter the fray if his enemy makes the mistake of not killing him. In some ways this could be seen as a beneficial tendency but it also makes him extremely easy to manipulate.

Guilt: Link is haunted by the memories of people he's failed to save. If he can't protect someone, he hates himself for it. Since he died before achieving his goal of saving Hyrule he will be thinking a lot about his friends; Ilia and the children of Ordon most especially.

Personality:

Link's temperament is, suitably, wolf-like. He's a friendly puppy dog to people he considers part of his "pack", a devout guardian in times of trouble and pure fang and fury towards enemies.

Many know him as a kind, brave young man who smiles a lot and acts like an oafish clown to put those around him at ease. While some of this silliness is genuine, especially when he's interacting with children, much of it is actually a mask. If he acts like a goofball it distracts people from seeing any of his inner pain or hints of his past. He can snap into this act instantaneously if anyone asks too many questions which makes the fact that it is an act plainly obvious to anyone who isn't a literal child.

Beneath the feigned goofiness he is an ideal knight. He is strong, courageous, loyal, fiercely determined and always ready to fight for his people. If something goes wrong you better believe Link will be on the front lines to protect everybody. The task of protecting people is one he takes extremely seriously which allows him to shift from "goofball" to "fierce warrior" in a blink of an eye. This rapid mental oscillation can be jarring to people who witness it. One of Link's friends, Ilia, once watched him fight as she lost consciousness and her last thought was wondering if this man, who'd just impaled a monster through the spine with a sword then threatened to hack off its arms, was really the kind person she thought she knew. He's a warrior and like any other warrior he is capable of unleashing extreme violence. He prefers not to start a fight but he will always finish one. Once engaged with an enemy he won't back down unless he's killed or feels he needs to focus his attention elsewhere to prevent an even bigger disaster. When confronted with those who are unapologetically sinister and willing to hurt others his anger is immediate and intense. These are the people Link will kill without hesitation or remorse. He can be a lethal pragmatist when fighting evil like this, or when fighting demons and monsters in general. If the enemy has no honor, Link is willing to fight dirty and resort to underhanded tactics to win. Anything that will rid the world of such wickedness is fine with him. Despite this potentially frightening nature, his willingness to fight has a way of inspiring people so it's no wonder that so many have embraced his title of "Link the Hero".

He has mixed feelings about the title of "Hero". He knows he's chosen by the Gods and he wants to be the Hero they need but it's rough. In many ways he finds the job of being a hero emotionally exhausting and horribly thankless. It's also terribly confusing. Gods and mortals alike keeping requesting things from him and he feels like he's never given the context of why. Why him? He blames himself for past failures and spent much of his journey thinking the gods could surely have picked someone better. He doesn't lament his fate, at least not often, he just doesn't see why he's the man for the job. No matter how bad he feels, however, he'll always answer a call. He can't help it. If he were to refuse anyone's cry for help, if he allowed anyone to be hurt when he knew he could intervene, he'd never forgive himself. Put someone in danger and he will leap into action with little regard for his own safety. It's in his nature.

His humility when it comes to his title of hero does not extend to his sense of his own power. He is extremely proud of his strength. The first time he got to experience the abilities of a wolf after his first transformation Midna chided him saying "Now you're so confident and arrogant...". It was a sign of things to come as the powers of his wolf form pale in comparison to the power of the Master Sword. His obsession with power is slowly darkening his heart and he will have to confront his inner ugliness someday. Letting power get to his head, untempered by wisdom or true courage, would prevent him from becoming the Hero he needs to be. An obsession with power, after all, is part of what led to the creation of one of Hyrule's greatest enemies.

...In summary, he's a shonen protagonist. He's strong, brave, arrogant about his power, kind to everyone he meets, humble about his destiny and he can be a little stupid.

Items:

His clothing, consisting of gauntlets, boots and a chainmail tunic. He also has a scabbard, the Hylian Shield, a bow and quiver of arrows, and the Master Sword AKA The Blade of Evil's Bane-a magical blade created by the gods and reforged by Link in his first lifetime that can only be wielded by Link's hands. If someone other than the Hero Spirit attempts to to wield the blade without its permission it will judge them based on their physical and spiritual strength. As it does this, it will drain the vitality from the person rapidly. Weaker individuals are immediately struck dead.

The Master Sword, being attuned to Link's immortal soul, grants him a new set of abilities when he has it on hand, most notable of which is the ability to fire shots of energy from the blade (the other abilities generally involve adding magical damage to his more standard attacks). It also lights up around evil, but this light will no longer be capable of illuminating anything.

...He also has a floppy green hat.

.

TDM Top Level containing network and log threads