[DIADEM] APPLICATION

[mechatheism]

Player Information

Player: Whit
Contact: whitticus OR discord at whitticus
Invitation OR characters played: Mod invite
Are you over 18?: ye

Character Information

Character: Viktor
Canon: Arcane, post-series
Age: 33 but also he’s not human anymore so what does it mean really
History: Link
Possessions: His blue blanket (which has seen better days) and staff, which serves no magical or offensive purpose now that the Anomaly is gone—it is his old mobility device that he still prefers to use.
Weapon: N/A, powers will be considered his weapon.

General Content Warnings: This app contains discussion of terminal illness and reference to attempted suicide.

Powers/Abilities:
By the end of the series, Viktor is nebulously some kind of unstoppable machine god with comprehensive control over runic magic and the Arcane, the in-universe term for ambient magical energies. The good news is that the anomalous construct that supercharged him to an apocalypse-level threat is gone, and also he is very sorry for going insane and almost destroying the world. He will mostly self-nerf. Still, there are a few things I want to play around with regarding his powers, so you get an exhaustive list of them anyway. All psychic abilities, healing, etc. will have a requisite opt-in permissions post.

✵ Academics - Even before becoming a magic supercomputer, Viktor is a genius-level intellect. Though this is, of course, a fantasy setting where all scientists are unrealistically multidisciplinary, he’s primarily a mathematician and physicist, with some knowledge of biology, chemistry, and botany.

✵ Engineering - He’s shown to be a resourceful tinkerer and inventor from a young age, and over the course of the series helps develop, design, and execute a variety of magitech devices, ranging from a stable power source for portable equipment to tools for miners and artisans to what is essentially a large-scale fast travel mechanism. Even his commune seems to rely on Hextech water pumps and the cultivation of plant hybrids that clean the toxic Undercity environment.

✵ The Arcane - The bulk of his work in the series involves harnessing arcane powers via technological methods (Hextech). In developing this technology he gains an understanding of a rune-based magic system and creates an evolving magical conduit that responds to and transmutes organic matter, which he uses to physically augment himself (first purposefully, then against his will). In his ascended form he is essentially a full-fledged mage and living conduit for magic.

✵ Augmented Physiology - Viktor is a techno-organic cyborg, made of living metal and powered by magic, the result of his physical merger with an adaptive rune matrix originally intended to cure his terminal illness. As such, he has enhanced strength, speed, and durability, and after a life-saving transfusion from a biological experiment with incredible regenerative power, becomes entirely self-sustaining, able to access all of his power without draining himself. It takes a bomb made of time paradox from a different universe to do any damage to his person, and even then, it, uh. Doesn’t seem like he has any internal organs or real weak points.

✵ Healing - Viktor's primary ability post Hexcore-merger is healing—he is shown to cure addicts, remove disfigurements, and resolve disabilities. It requires raw materials (metal) with augmentation localized to the afflicted areas, and Viktor gains a psychic connection to anyone he heals (hivemind-style, with the bonus ability to see through the eyes of and possess his followers). The process requires digging around in his subject’s mind palace to diagnose and excise various afflictions (like so), and in his pursuit of eliminating "senseless pain", it’s heavily implied that he scrubs away undesirable personality traits alongside physical ailments.

Having released everyone in his thrall, he maintains a latent psychic connection to Jayce which Jay and I mostly plan to use for flavor and codependency. I’m also interested in perhaps having him learn how to use his healing abilities on someone without directly tying their consciousness and life force to his and/or it might be a fun thing to offer if someone does want to do fun mind palace stuff (hivemind not included).

✵ Insight/Psychic Plane - Viktor has touch telepathy, meaning he can read minds via physical contact whether he’s healed an individual or not. This is can be purposeful or involuntary, and in at least one instance he has memories forced on him. Assimilation into his shared consciousness negates the need for physical contact because by that point he’s already in your walls.

Part of this enhanced perception includes access to a kind of astral realm, where his view of the world is made more abstract. By the end of the season, he sees exclusively through the lens of the Arcane, though he’s able to multitask, as shown when he continues piloting all his little robots individually in the real world while also carrying on a conversation with Jayce in the mind realm.

In the astral plane he appears as an idealized version of himself (first without his illness, and then as the Herald), and having recovered his humanity may inhabit this space as he used to be.

✵ Transmutation - Viktor can transmute organic matter by expending substantial psychic energy. He mostly does this to gloriously evolve his followers into a hivemind of immortal robot murder drones, which he’s since learned was bad. The Anomaly negated the need for him to have previously healed someone to evolve them, allowing him to bring others into his cosmic fold with convenient sky beams. Without it, he has to go about it the old fashioned way. He promises not to do it again but I’m listing it here anyway because YOU NEVER KNOW.

✵ The Hexclaw - Viktor’s third arm acts as a spellcasting tool that brute-forces runic sequences to achieve desired effects (basically the original function of the Hexcore). Mostly it casts laser beam but it can also do things like perform feats of telekinesis and adjust the personal gravity of himself and others (ability to fly/teleport will be appropriately nerfed but maybe he can still float around a little bit). It is, as a bonus, kind of gross.

Application Questions

Who is the most important person in their life and why? What might be different if this person hadn't been around?
Unquestionably, the most important person in Viktor’s life is Jayce Talis. His trajectory is set in motion when they collaborate to create Hextech, and from there the two are inextricably bound in a way that is eventually revealed to be cosmic. There is little he values more than their partnership.

Viktor is drawn to the research, first, but ultimately it’s Jayce’s passion that causes him to intervene. Jayce is a like-minded individual who shares his convictions—a desire to improve lives through technology. The two men become best friends and partners, and Viktor considers Jayce the only person who truly knows him, even as they are pulled apart by his own illness and various political entanglements. When he’s warned that his increasingly transgressive pursuits will destroy his legacy and ensure his rejection from Piltovan society, his only response is that "Jayce will understand". Ultimately, Viktor trusts him to carry out a request to destroy the Hexcore, a testament to their bond, and is betrayed when Jayce saves him with it, instead.

Viktor is desperately lonely without him as a friend and intellectual equal, and he delays his own ascension in an attempt to show Jayce his accomplishments in the Commune. Jayce rejects him, seeing the glorious evolution for the delusion it is, and in a fit of cosmic insanity Viktor destroys his own capacity for emotion and concludes that humanity must be saved from itself. At the moment of his victory it is revealed that a version of him has been scouring countless timelines to ensure that he and Jayce meet, create Hextech together, and that Jayce is given the tools to stop him, when the time comes. Realizing the truth, Viktor is reminded of their shared dream and sees the true destruction wrought by his desire to end the world’s suffering. It is Jayce’s love for and belief in him that breaks the Hexcore’s influence, and together they end the evolution and close the loop.

If Jayce and Viktor never meet at specific points along the timeline, they both die—to an ill-fated journey through a blizzard, to suicide, to illness, to an attack on the Council. In defiance of fate, Jayce and Viktor choose to save each other over and over again, just for the chance to be part of each others’ lives.

Is there an event in your character's life that they'd do differently? How so and why?
Though Viktor now knows that he and Jayce are effectively bound by cosmic forces outside of their direct control, the chain of events caused by Hextech is disastrous. A logical conclusion might be to prevent the discovery of Hextech entirely, as some combination of its existence and Viktor’s attempts to use it as a cure ends in disaster.

But it’s important to Viktor that Jayce lives, and important that they meet, as selfish as it may seem—the years they spend as partners are valuable to him, and it’s unlikely he could bring himself to change the circumstances under which they meet, or never meet him at all. Instead, he would choose not to create the Hexcore, which he would identify as the inciting incident of his own downfall.

His obsession with the device brings out the worst in him. Under duress, Viktor is an obsessive workaholic with no patience for a cautious approach and little thought for his personal needs, chasing after advancement at any cost once he’s run out his clock. Faced with a premature death brought about by the very living conditions he once hoped to change, Viktor’s reckless tendencies only compound as he withdraws into his research, disregards basic safeguards, and tampers with unknown powers. Unable to cope with his impending death, Viktor accidentally takes a life in pursuit of his own survival. He considers this an unacceptable price to pay, to say nothing of what comes after.

Viktor knows that Jayce shares responsibility for what becomes of him, and that the chain of events is an ouroboros of sorts—but he would designate the Hexcore as the point of no return, and would take responsibility for it. If accepting and prematurely succumbing to his illness saves even one life and prevents further calamity, he would find it a fair trade.

What's the greatest challenge you foresee your character facing in the setting?
Viktor is deeply regretful of his actions in Piltover, the damage he caused, and the lives he took—brought here and denied the opportunity to atone, he now needs to learn to live with what he’s done. It’s been revealed that at least one other version of him (if not many versions) ends the world in an attempt to save himself from a premature death, so a very large part of him wonders if he should not exist at all. For a time, he may not be able to determine whether this is some kind of cosmic punishment or a second chance, not that he believes he deserves the latter.

His first obstacle will be overcoming the knowledge that it would probably be better for everyone if he’d succumbed to his illness when he was “supposed” to. He’s also been divorced from his humanity, with the Hexcore having tempered his emotions, leaving him adrift. There is no going back from his transformation, but he’s now fully aware of what his plan to eliminate human suffering almost wrought (the apocalypse), so he’ll need to spend some time re-learning how to be himself. Freed of the Hexcore’s influence but still responsible for his own actions, he will struggle to remember that he is someone with the potential to do good.

What's the easiest thing you foresee your character adapting to in the setting?
Technology! Despite all of his cosmic shenanigans, Viktor is first and foremost a scientist and engineer, and he might appreciate taking a step back from robot godhood and learning about his new environment and how it works. He needs to trust himself as a scientist again, and focusing on something simple like car engines and day-to-day survival will probably be a relief. Sure, his crippling guilt means that he feels personally responsible for keeping Jayce alive, but after a foray into phenomenal cosmic power to the detriment of everyone else, the simple task of machine repair and returning to his engineering roots will be familiar and easy, especially with Jayce by his side.

The setting will be relatively painless to adjust to, in comparison to everything else. Having awoken to his powers and having spent a not insubstantial amount of time wandering the mindscape, eldritch and/or cosmic horror happenings will not surprise him. He is a cosmic horror, after all. His last moments in Piltover were spent expecting to be atomized by the acceleration rune. To be flung to some backwater edge of the world, well. That might as well happen.


Samples

Sample:
with Jayce + Vi
with Alucard