Post by Tempest on Jul 16, 2010 23:29:23 GMT -5
Name: Jaime Sebastian Cardenas. Goes by Jaime.
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Power(optional): Drum-based magic. It has potential, but he has only discovered the healing aspect of this power. He can heal people by going into a trancelike state while playing a hand drum. He loosens the bind between the spirit (anima, the spark... whatever floats your boat) and the body, allowing the magic to fill the void and heal the body from the inside out. The other aspects of his magic would be similar and have similar types of weaknesses. The drumming serves as the tool to focus his spiritual energy (chi, taw, whatever) on the task.
Desired Class/Desired Position: School nurse
Personality: Like his brother, he can be very happy-go-lucky much of the time. However, he often seems too blithe. Almost like he doesn't register anything dark or sorrowful. Nothing is further from the truth. He worries, in his own way, when he is by himself or when he thinks nobody is watching.
As such, he can be very restful to be around. He has no need to prove himself, no need to grandstand. While he might have been something of a bad boy once, he's cleaned up his act quite a bit. It's difficult to get him worked up about anything. The fastest way is to be rude or disrespectful to a lady or a member of his family. However, he tends to deal with this in the most unruffled manner ever. He'll keep smiling even while he tosses the offender out on his ass.
If and when he does seem to be angry, it's best not to get in his way. When he does fight, he fights dirty. He holds no illusions about his height and weight. This occurrence is incredibly rare, though. He doesn't like to fight anymore, not since he discovered his power.
Recently come from Cuba, his speech is very rough. He can speak English, but he doesn't let on how much he can. He has found that speaking Spanish more than English and stumbling through grammar and vocab makes other people think that he doesn't understand the language. This way, he picks up on a lot more than people realize. It is a survival technique, learned from his travels. Feigning ignorance typically leads one to valuable discoveries.
Once somebody sees through the facade, though, he tends to drop it completely. He can speak English rather well, despite his thick accent. He puts the act back up immediately when a new stranger is brought into the equation, sometimes to the distress of those who know him.
He's not textbook smart or anything, though he has plenty of common sense. He's always been better at music than at studying, finding a knack for percussion instruments at a relatively young age. His personality doesn't change much when he plays the drums, aside from adopting the intensity of whatever song he's playing. Jaime is capable of passion, but it doesn't come out often. When he's drumming, the internal flames of his spirit are much easier to see.
He is never without music. He hums when he doesn't have a music player on his person. He lazily taps out rhythms on tables and walls when he's not paying attention during a conversation.
Like his brother, he is rather good at procuring hard-to-find services or objects. This might be chalked down to street smarts mixed with his habit of playing dumb.
As explained in his weaknesses, he sometimes gets a craving for cigarettes. This craving will cause him to zone out a bit and move his fingers as though he were pulling out a smoke and lighting up.
Appearance:
The familial resemblance to his brother is striking. He's slightly smaller in stature, about 5'7" or so. He's not particularly bulky, muscle-wise. His build is rangier, roped with muscle, but only enough to impart a wiry sort of strength. His shoulders are particularly well-defined, due to his drumming.
Jaime's skin is darkly tanned, due to his heritage. It is distinctly Hispanic. His features lean toward brooding, but his nature doesn't let that stick as the first impression. His lips are full, but not overly so, and they usually rest in an easygoing smile. He usually has some stubble, but he tries to create the same sort of goatee/moustache shadow that his brother wears. His family sometimes teases him that he looks like a pirate on his more unkempt days.
His eyes are a dark, dark brown. Dark to the point of being nearly black. Their darkness is offset by a corona of a bronze-color around the pupils and a glint of goodwill when he's hanging out with people.
Where his brother's hair is curly, his is straight. He typically styles it so that his bangs don't lie flat on his face. He has a piercing in his left ear and he usually wears a small black hoop through it. He takes it out when he's working non-musical jobs, but that's only so he doesn't look quite so young.
He has a casual attitude about clothing. He tends to wear clothes that make him look younger than he actually is. Bracelets and necklaces are okay by him, as long as they aren't too girly-looking. If it has a chain, the links have to be angular and big. If it has beads, they have to be in strong earth tones or dark blues. Hemp and leather cords are good, arrowheads and shark teeth even better.
Weaknesses: He can only heal one person at a time, and it takes a lot out of him. His range is limited to a few feet. The patient has to be able to feel the vibrations of the drumming in order for it to work. In serious cases, he can actually make things worse if he is interrupted. The way the healing works is by loosening the bond between body and spirit so the drum-magic can enter the body and heal from the inside out. With a tenuous hold on the body, those who are close to death might slip away if the healing is not completed.
He goes into a trance when performing drum-based magic and is utterly open to attack. This sort of magic also takes time and energy. A single healing can leave him feeling drained for hours, days if the wound(s) were severe enough.
He doesn't know about the potential for his powers and is under the assumption that healing is the extent.
Jaime's size can be seen as a weakness. He doesn't have the reach or momentum of a larger man in a fight. He's not classically trained, so his technique is unrefined and sometimes haphazard.
He sometimes gets nostalgic for his family, knowing that he can't go back without risking getting stuck in Cuba again. He often gets cravings for cigarettes, which manifest in temporary dazes. He gets a faraway look in his eyes and a twitchiness in his fingers.
Strengths: He fights dirty. He will be honorable up to a point; it if means that he will lose, he stops fighting fairly. He's pretty fast, since he doesn't carry around any extra weight. His reflexes are good for somebody with a normal scope of human abilities.
He can pull off a bad-boy air, despite his size and tendency to be absolutely calm most of the time. Perhaps these factors aid in this. This aura of leashed dangerousness only appears when he feels that somebody has upset a friend or family member.
People often underestimate him. He makes friends relatively easily. He has a good handle on his emotions. He doesn't get into serious fights as often as he used to. He thinks that age has mellowed him, but it might just be experience and the sudden maturity that followed the discovery of his power.
Some history about the character: Born in Cuba. One older half-brother (Emilio.) Since Emilio himself is related to Caroline Harlequin by their mother, Jaime is technically not related to the English teacher at all. However, they behave like siblings and neither would ever look at the other in any other light. They met each other in person only recently, when Jaime came to visit out of the blue.
But I get ahead of myself. Jaime and Emilio grew up on the streets of Santiago, getting into scrapes right and left. They learned what they know from experience. Jaime didn't attend school past ninth grade, though his brother stuck it out until the end of high school. Emilio was always better at dancing, Jaime at playing the music itself. After experimenting with several instruments, Jaime settled on the drums. He practiced and practiced, finally joining a small band. They played small gigs, mostly for the fun.
As he continued in his path as a drummer, he began to pick up some bad habits. He got into fights a lot, he started smoking, he performed a couple of petty crimes... It was lucky for him that his power arose when it did.
He would never have discovered his power if Emilio hadn't given him a warning. The night before a gig, Emilio gave him a phone call and told him that there would be an accident and he would be able to handle it. It was cryptic and left Jaime utterly confused. Emilio wasn't able to offer any more information except the advice Jaime should turn to what he knows.
The next day, a man fell to the ground during the concert. He was having a heart attack. Jaime remembered his brother's words and wound up relying on instinct to play through his first healing. Eventually, he found that playing on a djembe or boku (any drum that uses his hands instead of a drumstick, really) made things simpler, and taking a spiritual stance on the matter simplified things even more.
This strange responsibility that his power wrought in Jaime forced him to examine his lifestyle and poor choices. He dropped the fighting and the smoking and began to think with a healthier attitude towards other people.
Eventually, the band broke up and Jaime decided that the money that his siblings had sent to him would be best spent on his ticket out of the country. Jaime organized the band so they could travel to Miami to do a gig there for a festival. They played the festival and Jaime made himself scarce afterwards.Defecting to the United States was definitely the most gutsy move he had made since the emergence of his abilities. He made his way to the island where Foresta is located, and was reunited with his older brother and Caroline. After some deliberation, he decided to get a job at the school and find a way to become a citizen.
Picture:
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Power(optional): Drum-based magic. It has potential, but he has only discovered the healing aspect of this power. He can heal people by going into a trancelike state while playing a hand drum. He loosens the bind between the spirit (anima, the spark... whatever floats your boat) and the body, allowing the magic to fill the void and heal the body from the inside out. The other aspects of his magic would be similar and have similar types of weaknesses. The drumming serves as the tool to focus his spiritual energy (chi, taw, whatever) on the task.
Desired Class/Desired Position: School nurse
Personality: Like his brother, he can be very happy-go-lucky much of the time. However, he often seems too blithe. Almost like he doesn't register anything dark or sorrowful. Nothing is further from the truth. He worries, in his own way, when he is by himself or when he thinks nobody is watching.
As such, he can be very restful to be around. He has no need to prove himself, no need to grandstand. While he might have been something of a bad boy once, he's cleaned up his act quite a bit. It's difficult to get him worked up about anything. The fastest way is to be rude or disrespectful to a lady or a member of his family. However, he tends to deal with this in the most unruffled manner ever. He'll keep smiling even while he tosses the offender out on his ass.
If and when he does seem to be angry, it's best not to get in his way. When he does fight, he fights dirty. He holds no illusions about his height and weight. This occurrence is incredibly rare, though. He doesn't like to fight anymore, not since he discovered his power.
Recently come from Cuba, his speech is very rough. He can speak English, but he doesn't let on how much he can. He has found that speaking Spanish more than English and stumbling through grammar and vocab makes other people think that he doesn't understand the language. This way, he picks up on a lot more than people realize. It is a survival technique, learned from his travels. Feigning ignorance typically leads one to valuable discoveries.
Once somebody sees through the facade, though, he tends to drop it completely. He can speak English rather well, despite his thick accent. He puts the act back up immediately when a new stranger is brought into the equation, sometimes to the distress of those who know him.
He's not textbook smart or anything, though he has plenty of common sense. He's always been better at music than at studying, finding a knack for percussion instruments at a relatively young age. His personality doesn't change much when he plays the drums, aside from adopting the intensity of whatever song he's playing. Jaime is capable of passion, but it doesn't come out often. When he's drumming, the internal flames of his spirit are much easier to see.
He is never without music. He hums when he doesn't have a music player on his person. He lazily taps out rhythms on tables and walls when he's not paying attention during a conversation.
Like his brother, he is rather good at procuring hard-to-find services or objects. This might be chalked down to street smarts mixed with his habit of playing dumb.
As explained in his weaknesses, he sometimes gets a craving for cigarettes. This craving will cause him to zone out a bit and move his fingers as though he were pulling out a smoke and lighting up.
Appearance:
The familial resemblance to his brother is striking. He's slightly smaller in stature, about 5'7" or so. He's not particularly bulky, muscle-wise. His build is rangier, roped with muscle, but only enough to impart a wiry sort of strength. His shoulders are particularly well-defined, due to his drumming.
Jaime's skin is darkly tanned, due to his heritage. It is distinctly Hispanic. His features lean toward brooding, but his nature doesn't let that stick as the first impression. His lips are full, but not overly so, and they usually rest in an easygoing smile. He usually has some stubble, but he tries to create the same sort of goatee/moustache shadow that his brother wears. His family sometimes teases him that he looks like a pirate on his more unkempt days.
His eyes are a dark, dark brown. Dark to the point of being nearly black. Their darkness is offset by a corona of a bronze-color around the pupils and a glint of goodwill when he's hanging out with people.
Where his brother's hair is curly, his is straight. He typically styles it so that his bangs don't lie flat on his face. He has a piercing in his left ear and he usually wears a small black hoop through it. He takes it out when he's working non-musical jobs, but that's only so he doesn't look quite so young.
He has a casual attitude about clothing. He tends to wear clothes that make him look younger than he actually is. Bracelets and necklaces are okay by him, as long as they aren't too girly-looking. If it has a chain, the links have to be angular and big. If it has beads, they have to be in strong earth tones or dark blues. Hemp and leather cords are good, arrowheads and shark teeth even better.
Weaknesses: He can only heal one person at a time, and it takes a lot out of him. His range is limited to a few feet. The patient has to be able to feel the vibrations of the drumming in order for it to work. In serious cases, he can actually make things worse if he is interrupted. The way the healing works is by loosening the bond between body and spirit so the drum-magic can enter the body and heal from the inside out. With a tenuous hold on the body, those who are close to death might slip away if the healing is not completed.
He goes into a trance when performing drum-based magic and is utterly open to attack. This sort of magic also takes time and energy. A single healing can leave him feeling drained for hours, days if the wound(s) were severe enough.
He doesn't know about the potential for his powers and is under the assumption that healing is the extent.
Jaime's size can be seen as a weakness. He doesn't have the reach or momentum of a larger man in a fight. He's not classically trained, so his technique is unrefined and sometimes haphazard.
He sometimes gets nostalgic for his family, knowing that he can't go back without risking getting stuck in Cuba again. He often gets cravings for cigarettes, which manifest in temporary dazes. He gets a faraway look in his eyes and a twitchiness in his fingers.
Strengths: He fights dirty. He will be honorable up to a point; it if means that he will lose, he stops fighting fairly. He's pretty fast, since he doesn't carry around any extra weight. His reflexes are good for somebody with a normal scope of human abilities.
He can pull off a bad-boy air, despite his size and tendency to be absolutely calm most of the time. Perhaps these factors aid in this. This aura of leashed dangerousness only appears when he feels that somebody has upset a friend or family member.
People often underestimate him. He makes friends relatively easily. He has a good handle on his emotions. He doesn't get into serious fights as often as he used to. He thinks that age has mellowed him, but it might just be experience and the sudden maturity that followed the discovery of his power.
Some history about the character: Born in Cuba. One older half-brother (Emilio.) Since Emilio himself is related to Caroline Harlequin by their mother, Jaime is technically not related to the English teacher at all. However, they behave like siblings and neither would ever look at the other in any other light. They met each other in person only recently, when Jaime came to visit out of the blue.
But I get ahead of myself. Jaime and Emilio grew up on the streets of Santiago, getting into scrapes right and left. They learned what they know from experience. Jaime didn't attend school past ninth grade, though his brother stuck it out until the end of high school. Emilio was always better at dancing, Jaime at playing the music itself. After experimenting with several instruments, Jaime settled on the drums. He practiced and practiced, finally joining a small band. They played small gigs, mostly for the fun.
As he continued in his path as a drummer, he began to pick up some bad habits. He got into fights a lot, he started smoking, he performed a couple of petty crimes... It was lucky for him that his power arose when it did.
He would never have discovered his power if Emilio hadn't given him a warning. The night before a gig, Emilio gave him a phone call and told him that there would be an accident and he would be able to handle it. It was cryptic and left Jaime utterly confused. Emilio wasn't able to offer any more information except the advice Jaime should turn to what he knows.
The next day, a man fell to the ground during the concert. He was having a heart attack. Jaime remembered his brother's words and wound up relying on instinct to play through his first healing. Eventually, he found that playing on a djembe or boku (any drum that uses his hands instead of a drumstick, really) made things simpler, and taking a spiritual stance on the matter simplified things even more.
This strange responsibility that his power wrought in Jaime forced him to examine his lifestyle and poor choices. He dropped the fighting and the smoking and began to think with a healthier attitude towards other people.
Eventually, the band broke up and Jaime decided that the money that his siblings had sent to him would be best spent on his ticket out of the country. Jaime organized the band so they could travel to Miami to do a gig there for a festival. They played the festival and Jaime made himself scarce afterwards.Defecting to the United States was definitely the most gutsy move he had made since the emergence of his abilities. He made his way to the island where Foresta is located, and was reunited with his older brother and Caroline. After some deliberation, he decided to get a job at the school and find a way to become a citizen.
Picture: