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[haveyounoshame]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Kaito
Contact: kaitodoushi
Age: 32
Current Characters: Martel Yggdrasill


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Elliot Nightray
Age: 16
Canon: Pandora Hearts
Canon Point: Post-death

Background: Link to Wiki

Personality: A century of being subjected to defamation and contempt has taken its toll on the Nightray family. They're tasked by Pandora with assassinations and other underworld activity, and most of them have become inured to immorality and desperate to raise the family's status by any means or cost they see necessary.

In the midst of all of this, however, somehow there’s also Elliot.

It may not be that obvious for strangers to notice his differences at first, because outwardly a calm Elliot is always one degree away from boiling over. He becomes enraged in an instant, like how he goes from his initial shock of seeing Gilbert at school to yelling while violently swinging his sword at him the next moment. His typical loud, abusive speech and aggressive behavior can be rather off-putting, to say the least.

Because of this, some would be surprised to realize that most people who know him actually hold him in high regard. This is because Elliot is a very noble young man, and this isn't the case just because of his place in the aristocracy. He is proud and responsible, and takes the duty imposed upon him by his position very seriously. For example, when he encounters the Baskervilles in Lutwidge Academy, he is fully prepared to attempt to take them into custody or even try to kill them if necessary due to their perceived crimes 100 years ago.

Another quality some people find admirable despite all the screaming is his strong sense of morality. Elliot stands for what he sees as right or proper. On the one had, this can make him a bit irritating. He expects others to behave according to his standards, and when they don’t his short temper is almost always triggered. He kicks over a chair before telling Ada he thought she addressed him too informally, and berates Gilbert’s lack of shame when he wears a student’s uniform in his 20s. Even when he’s not consumed by anger, he has a habit of forcing these feelings on others, such as how he just takes Vanessa’s feather to give to Oz at his coming of age party because Elliot knew she was never going to do it.

On the other hand, his intrinsic nobility means he often puts others before himself. He generally shows concern when people are in danger and takes action regardless of what he knows about them or the situation. He went looking for Oz after he went missing in Lutwidge even though all the other boy was to him at the time was some annoying Edgar fan. Elliot gets more reckless in doing these things the more he cares about someone, such as the fateful time he and Leo went after the children in the hole in Sablier before Pandora arrived. After finding some of them dead and noticing Humpty Dumpty’s presence, Elliot rushed toward the Chain with his sword drawn to protect Leo and this resulted in him being mortally wounded. Additionally, as he lay dying, he immediately followed up his questions about what had just happened by asking if Leo and the children were all right as opposed to worrying about his own condition.

He’s far from having no regard for himself, however. He has an unshakeable sense of self and strives to maintain his individual honor. Leo and Vincent both note these things following his death, which happened in part because Elliot refused to let Humpty Dumpty keep controlling his actions and his memories. He firmly believes that people need to shoulder their own burdens, consider what their actions do to the people who care about them, and accept responsibility for their failings. He spends much of his first meeting with Oz pointing out that the self-sacrificial things he did to "keep others from getting hurt" were doing exactly that. He went on to say (or...well, shout) that having realized the problem was taking a step forward in and of itself and that from then on, it was up to that person to choose their own path. Elliot followed this belief himself while fighting Humpty Dumpty even though it cost him his life.

If this combination of traits hadn’t already made it obvious, Elliot is a nice guy who is simultaneously hostile. He’ll deny that he’s being kind whenever Leo calls him on it, and gets very defensive when people he’s not comfortable with like him, such as Oz or the children in the House of Fianna. It’s also shown mostly in supplemental material that Elliot proves just how tsundere he really is around cats. If he thinks no one is watching him, he’s been known to play with Ada’s cats while smiling and laughing, as was featured in a story in Caucus Race 2.

Part of the reason he tries to hide his affinity for felines is because that’s associated with the Vessalius family and not the Nightrays. Elliot loves his family very much and takes loyalty to his relatives and its honor very seriously. He seems particularly close with his mother and the younger two of his older siblings, Vanessa and Ernest, but the entire line is important to him. He's even the only Nightray to truly accept Gilbert and Vincent as family members, partly because he could never figure out why the others spurned them. He is serious about taking care of the family sword after it was entrusted to him, quite likely not even being aware it serves as the key to the Nightray’s door to the Abyss. Any attacks on his family trouble him greatly and he feels a responsibility to bring the murderer of his brothers to justice, of course while tragically unaware of the actual circumstances.

Perhaps because he is "the baby" and significantly younger than his blood relatives, Elliot was also never aware of some of the darkest, cruelest aspects of the family’s doings, such as the House of Fianna really being a place to experiment on orphans with Chains. When he does see the worst in his relatives, though, it's never enough to make him turn against them completely. As angry as he was at Gilbert for leaving in what Elliot considered an act of cowardice, he shows obvious concern for his brother’s well-being, such as when he goes after Gil, Oz, and Alice in Sablier. Elliot was even ready to confront Ernest and Claude after overhearing their plans to kill Gil and Vincent, but had no intention of seriously harming them until they threatened Leo's life and triggered Humpty Dumpty. On that note, he will stand against his relatives during the times he feels they’re in the wrong, like how he was not deterred by their objections to Leo becoming his servant.

Speaking of, Elliot is easily closest to Leo out of everyone he cares about. He often throws complaints and accusations at him, but this is because he sees Leo as his equal. Elliot couldn’t stomach the idea of having a valet who was really just some back-talking aristocrat faking kindness for their own benefit. On a personal level, he’d much rather ignore status and be with someone who is upfront and honest with him and who he can do the same for, and this is exactly the relationship he has with his best friend. Elliot has just as much concern and respect for him as any member of his family. After Isla Yura begins the attack and fire in his mansion, Elliot heads further in to look for Leo, thinking out of all things that he still needed to apologize for the fight they had earlier that night. Later, after he realizes the truth and accepts his fate, Elliot uses his last breaths to apologize specifically to Leo.

Internally, Elliot was also unwilling to burden Oz with killing him when he rejected Humpty Dumpty. Elliot is far more tsundere about their friendship, mostly because Oz is from the Vessalius family. Bernard Nightray raised his son to hate the family of the "hero" and blame them for all their troubles. His extended first meeting with Oz before he even knew who the kid was eye-opening enough to make him doubt his immediate aversion, and made it hard for Elliot to keep resisting the truth he was actually seeing. This made him realize that he needed to judge everything for himself and not let his feelings be dictated by someone else's past.

It's not as though his independent thinking is unprecedented, however. Elliot can be quite the nerdy fanboy when it comes to books, for example Holy Knight, and does not hold back his unpopular opinions. He asks Oz about his thoughts on the Edgar character just so he can go on a tirade about why he hates him. Leo mentions that Elliot has a tendency to drag people into arguments he himself started just so he can his force his own feelings on them. The fact that he can be such a nerd is worth noting on its own, too. While nowhere near as much of a book aficionado as Leo, he gets really passionate and excited about the stories he enjoys. Holy Knight is most prominently featured, but in Caucus Race 3 he loans another book he liked to Oz. He's also shown spazzing out in his youth after he learned that Reim is a real person and not a fictional character.

That mostly happened because he'd heard that Reim had bested Pandora's best fighter, Xerxes Break, whom Elliot idolizes because he really admires strength. Be it the fictional-in-his-world Edwin, Break, or even Alice at one point in the Unbirthday Party side story, Elliot reveres any sort of highly skilled fighting. He appreciates other varieties of skills, too, such as Leo's piano playing even though Elliot is annoyed that his friend is self-taught.

Also, some of his more noble qualities can work against him, especially mixed with his other weaknesses. He may be persistent, but he's challenged Break to duels 26 times despite receiving a crushing defeat every time. As Leo describes to Oz, Elliot may be clever, but he's also an idiot. During Caucus Race 2, he kicks open a door to loudly confront a group conspiring against another student for his sake, completely ignoring the fact that he'd accidentally ended up in the girl's dormitory and was supposed to be sneaking out of that forbidden territory.

He’s got a bit of extra baggage that canon didn’t get to deal with much, obviously because it deals with his death and the circumstances around that. Having shaken off the influence of Humpty Dumpty, Elliot remembers exactly what happened and everything he did. He's not the sort to make excuses or blame others anymore, including the Chain even though it had a powerful control over him. All the doubts, fears, regrets, and hatred he said took he with him are going to have to be dealt with, which is likely what would have happened had he survived. He knows that multiple people were killed at his own hand, including beloved family members Claude, Ernest, Vanessa, and his mother. It's probably worth noting the only one of those four who was killed instantly was Vanessa, so he'll be carrying their own awareness in their dying moments with him.

Elliot also will have to contend with what he did to the survivors who cared about him (and vice versa). His previous dislike of self-sacrifice because of what it does to those loved ones will instantly have this on his mind. His dying apology to Leo is evidence enough of how much it bothers him, and he knows him well enough to be all too aware of the things Leo would blame himself for. Even though his actions actually lessened their burdens, he also can't be okay with how it was going to affect Oz, Gilbert, and probably even Vincent despite him being the one with him in his final moments.

While most of those in the Nightray line had lost their true nobility (Duke Nightray was fully aware that Elliot had become an illegal contractor but cared more about having a unique Chain in his possession than his son's life, for example), Elliot has managed to develop and maintain the integrity one would hope someone in a position of power would have. On the whole, he's a shining example of a member of the aristocracy. Well, at least when he's not screaming in your face and trying to beat you up.


Abilities: Nothing extra-human at this point. He’s a moderately strong and competent swordsman, but nothing special. He's also a very good practiced pianist and amateur composer.

Alignment: Sosyne, seeing as Elliot's anger is so quick that Leo rarely lost his short temper around him.

Other: n/a


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉

General Sample: On the September Test Drive

Emotion Sample: On the toplevel (Prompts B & G) and here with Leo.


Questions: I know they arrive with anything that might reasonably be on their person, but for a recently deceased character would that include the blood that got all over them even if the injuries are magically gone? Actually, would any non-fatal injuries carry over?