→ ( reverie - application )

[mentis]

PLAYER
» HANDLE: Sarah
» CONTACT: athosing
» AGE: 30
» CHARACTER(S) IN-GAME: Clary Fray ( creatio )

CHARACTER
» NAME: Charles Francis Xavier
» CANON: X-Men Cinematic Universe.
» CANON POINT: Just before returning to the Mansion post Erik shooting Raven.
» AGE: 40

» SETTING: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS x X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.

» SHORT DESCRIPTION: Intelligent, kind, emotional, controlling, resentful.
» INFLUENTIAL EVENTS:

Early Years

We learn very little about Charles' past in the first films. However we do get a glimpse into the kind of boy he would have been. He's clearly used to being by himself - probably because his mutation would give him a "strangeness" that he wouldn't know how to hide yet. He doesn't seem to have many friends - a fact which gets brought up again in his adult years. When Raven breaks into his house, he's delighted to find someone like him - not just a mutant, but someone his age. His kindness is evident even then, he knows she's a runaway, that she doesn't have anywhere to go, and he takes her in. How he does this is never explored, but one would imagine he uses his powers to either hide her, or make everyone believe she had been there all along.

Charles is a Professor of Genetics, so he's very clever. His thesis is based on the possibility of mutation. He seems to have devoted his life to getting the idea into the public sphere. And yet, he's hiding, and he makes sure that Raven is too. Charles is afraid of discovery. He would rather it be just the two of them, safe and sound, where nobody can hurt them for being different. Still, he has an ego, and he uses his power for cheap tricks and flirtations. His groovy mutation line gets repeated often. Sadly, he doesn't see the hurt this causes Raven, and thus doesn't really notice the rupture between the two of them growing.

Erik & The X-Men:

With the introduction of Moira, and the threat of Shaw, we see Charles finally shake off the mask of charming drunk, and move more into the man he actually is. He goes with Moira easily, because he thinks he can help. Shaw wants to encourage nuclear war, and if he can aid the CIA in stopping that, then he will. It's possible he's also just fascinated by the fact that there are others beyond him and Raven.

And then he finds Erik Lehnsherr. Charles throws caution to the wind the minute he hears Erik's thoughts. He doesn't know this man, but he can feel his pain, and he wastes no time in diving off a boat to try and stop him dying. This is the true core of Charles, he's kind, and he cares, and he doesn't like to just watch suffering happen. Erik is aggressive, and angry, and yet Charles takes to him immediately. He saves him, and then reassures him that he isn't alone. Being a mutant is an isolating existence, especially at the time where so many are forced to hide, and it's clear he desperately wants to offer others the same relief and happiness he gets from knowing he's not the only one.

Erik doesn't leave, and he and Charles end up on a road trip. There's something silly and boyish about how Charles reacts to each of them. He likes showing off, but he also enjoys discovering the different powers. This is a side of his research he's never been able to truly explore. He definitely acts like he's the delightful rich man coming to save his band of merry mutants. This is one of his flaws. He treats most of them like children, Erik is the only one who gets a free pass. Even though Raven is closer to his age than the others, he still behaves as though she is a teenager. He knows best. This means he's often clumsy with other people's feelings - outing Hank as a mutant despite usually hiding his own powers, criticising Raven's self-esteem issues, generally behaving as though Sean and Alex are unruly children. He tries, because he wants to help, but he can be stubborn and full of himself at the best of times and he comes across as more chastising than genuine.

Still, despite all of this. Charles opens his home to them. He wants to offer them a place of respite, a sanctuary where they can hone their powers without fear. He wants to fill that empty mansion with people like him. All in all, he's still desperate for connection, for friendships that mean something without hiding. His relationship with Erik perfectly encapsulates this. Charles unlocks a memory inside of his friend's head in an attempt to give him more than rage to work with. He's very clearly affected by it, by the love in the memory, and it cements something between them.

Cuba:

The X-Men finally become a team. It’s maybe not quite so well-oiled as it could be, since Charles has ignored his sister’s complicated feelings, overlooked Hank’s desire to be normal, and had a small argument with Erik over a chess set, but they still come together and work as a unit. All in all, it seems that they might be able to traverse the complicated mindfield of a Hellfire Club influenced Cold War. And then it all goes terribly wrong. Disaster averted on the waves, the attention is turned towards the Mutants on the beach.

Here we see Charles once more getting clumsy in stressful situations. He’s just physically felt Shaw die, having held on to him to stop him from fighting back against Erik. He can’t reach his friend due to the helmet, and he’s in a sense, blind to what he’s feeling and thinking. Charles relies on his mutation to navigate personal relationships. He gets too far into his own head when he can’t. So when they’re in danger, he says the one thing that is the worst thing he could. He presses on old wounds of Erik’s, trying to convince him not to kill the humans. In the end, it mostly just encourages him. They fight, despite Charles’ aversion to violence, because the only way he can think to stop Erik is by removing the helmet. And in the middle of this, a stray bullet from Moira’s gun gets richoched into Charles’ spine.

Charles doesn’t stop Erik and Raven from leaving. He doesn’t tell them the severity of his injury, or that he can’t feel his legs, in fact, he just seems to give up. He can’t see a way to help Raven, nor can he reconcile what he believes with what Erik does. He can’t condone killing, even if it’s in retaliation. If Charles wanted to, he could just as easily decimate great groups of humans with his own power, and that means he has to have such tight control over what he believes to be right. It would be a very slippery slope for him, and above all he considers himself a good person.

The Vietnamese War

Another time skip means we have to infer what happened through character conversations. Once Charles is healed enough to go back to Westchester, he and Hank and the others begin to build what is now known as Charles’ Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters. It starts well, by all accounts, but then eventually when the Vietnam War begins, and the students start to be drafted, there’s a quick slide into desolation. Being able to hear everyone’s fear, and pain, and suffering throughout the course of this, and with the school slowly emptying out, Charles turns to abusive coping methods. Hank has diligently worked on a serum for his own mutation, but it also eases the pain of Charles’ paralysis. Yet, instead of using it safely and sparingly, Charles takes enough that his power is completely shut off, thus giving him the ability to walk but no longer hear thoughts.

Completely alone in his own head, and still grieving the loss of his friend and sister - brought back into light through other’s plight during wartime - he also turns to alcohol. When Logan turns up at the mansion, Hank tells him “there’s no professor here”, and that’s true, because Charles is no longer the person he was. He’s bitter, and angry, and hurt, and it makes him prickly and unkind. The house is in disarray, and the same can be said for Charles. Whatever feeling has resided inside of him since Cuba has started to poison him the same way as the alcohol.

Prison Break & Paris:

And yet, when it comes to Raven’s safety, Charles agrees to help Logan. He still loves his sister. He seems to have been holding out on her coming back home. And so when the only choice is to break Erik out of the Pentagon, Charles goes with them. Of course, he’s not happy, and he makes this known throughout. His feelings on Erik are no longer kind, calling him a monster, believing wholeheartedly that his old friend could be capable of presidential assassination.

They fight, once they’re out. It’s the kind of bitter, snarling fight that would have been beneath Charles before. He accuses Erik of abandoning him, and the fact that he uses the serum is a definite contentious issue. Charles admits that he couldn’t sleep, that he needed to shut off his power to be able to cope with what he was hearing, and what he was feeling. But to Erik, that’s a betrayal of who they are. So many of their friends have died since Charles shut himself away in the mansion. So many mutant lives have been lost, presumably that he could have done something to save. They’re both at war with each other. They both fail to see the other person’s side.

However, when they find Raven, Charles still seems to have secretly been clinging to the idea that things can go back to the way they were. He tells her that they’ve come for her, making a point to show that Erik is there with him. Because he can’t read minds, he can’t tell Erik’s true purpose, and therefore cannot stop him from shooting Raven. He also can’t follow when the two of them, plus Hank, take their fight to the streets. All he can do is try and help Logan. Charles will come into game with a heap of guilt for not being able to stop Erik, and for not protecting Raven. His bitterness will probably be sky high.

» FIT: Charles is a scientist. Therefore he will want to try and discover the secrets of Reverie Terminal. He’ll also be useful in talking to people, soothing worries, rallying the troops, helping out those who are feeling overwhelmed and lost. With the eventual return of his powers, he will also be able to try and utilise his telepathy in uncovering secrets - most notably if there’s screaming again, or people are seeing visions, he can help them escape those.

» POWERS:

Charles is one of the highest level natural born telepaths in the Marvel universe. At his canon point that is either very much undiscovered or yet to be explored. His power remains mostly untapped because of a fear of discovery, and then through the use of Hank's serum. However, with Cerebro helping him exceed his reach his potential he's able to find more and more of his kind.

He can also wipe out large chunks of memory from a person's mind and it stands within reason he'd be able to place them too. He can project images and visions, something that fights against their view of reality and keeps them believing him. He can make people see what he wants them to see, can push pictures into their heads to aid his own needs. Charles can also speak directly into a person's mind when he wills it and hold conversations that would not easily be discovered.

Information is easily found with his telepathy ( when he plucks knowledge about the food in the commissary up until the point where he helps Erik access a memory of his mother ). He's also able to manipulate a person's mind ( "Get in the car." ) and use it to help control a situation. Charles is able to pause a person mid-action just by taking hold of their thoughts and turning them with his own. He's also able to detect other mutants nearby, he feels Emma Frost on the boat and knows Erik is in the water immediately, outs Hank by accident because he can feel it. He can sense the specific mental wave of other people like him, is able to pick it out from human when he gets close enough.

His power leads itself to picking up other untapped abilities as well. He can access the language centers of a person's brain and use it for himself as we see when he's in Russia. He uses his power in something of a comforting manner in that particular scene, hijacking knowledge to use it to provide peace to frightened people.

It's also known that due to his telepathy he'd presumably have an eidetic memory - the ability to recall things he's seen before without prompting. Charles is a genius in his own right too. He is a world-renowned geneticist, a leading expert in mutation and possesses considerable knowledge of various life sciences.

» NOTES: At Charles' canon point, he does not have use of his powers. However, the serum would be wearing off, as it does so in the next scene. Without this, he'll lose the use of his legs but gain his telepathy back. As he's a new character, he wouldn't have bonus ac to trade for the serum, so I was wondering how we'd go around that. Would he find a chair, or is there any way for him to be provided with an initial dosage of the treatment? I do want to play out Charles asking for help and trying to gather supplies to make more / or slowly coming to terms with his paralysis, but I was aiming for that in the future to see where cr takes me.

» SAMPLES: REVERIE TEST DRIVE

un: greymalkin.
( The man on screen looks like he has definitely seen better days. His hair is lank, dark hollows under his eyes, and a mouth that’s been bitten rough. When he talks, there’s a thread of exhaustion in his voice, as though the very words he’s speaking are too heavy. )

My name is Charles Xavier. I’m aware I’m not the first person to be unwillingly brought here, nor will I be the last. I imagine we’re all in the same predicament. That’s not really what I want to talk about anyway. I need to know if there are any people aboard familiar with Earth medicine. Preferably someone who knows of the existence of the X-Gene, but I can fill you in on that if not.

( It would be easier if Hank where here. Charles can already feel panic clawing at his throat. He’s not going back into the chair. He’s not. He’ll find a way.

Then, with something more gentle in his eyes. )

And if anyone has seen an injured girl around, can you let me know? She’s about this high and has blonde ha --. ( Christ, he’s doing it again. ) Blue. She’s blue. And she’s hurt. And I need to know she’s okay.

( Rubbing a hand over his eyes, Charles seems to consider saying more, but then he’s reaching out with a shaking hand to turn off the feed. )