absolutely shaking you /pos about your persona fit designs for the oct2path cast, I gotta know if you have any persona thoughts about them
Aw thank you!! Right now, I don't have any set ideas for all the gang's specific Personas; I think initially, I was gonna have the progression be OT1 travelers for everyone's initial Personas -> gods for ultimate Personas, but I felt like I could do something more with it, so that didn't stick.
I do have detailed ideas for the healers' Personas at least, along with approximations for how long everyone's had their powers.
Since I went into this not wanting to have a specific wild card since everyone's a protagonist, everyone can use multiple personas and access the Velvet Room. However, due to the *gestures* natures of some of Temenos and Castti's storylines, they get some unique stuff w/ their ultimate personas.
...Specifically to do with Temenos 3 SH and Hunter & Apothecary 2.
— Temenos
Regarding canon divergence
I mentioned it on Twitter (albeit, not here) that Crick does not die in this AU. This tends to go for anything I write involving Temenos' storyline, since I generally do not agree with Crick's death as a writing decision; mostly for Temenos' writing's sake than anything.
He works best when interacting with another character (e.g. Crick, Throné) so when you kill off the one character he has a real rapport with, a lot of his scenes in Temenos 4 suffer as a result. Not to mention, it does read like Crick got killed off to give Temenos a personal reason to pursue Kaldena as if she didn't already kill his adoptive father.
Note: I love Kaldena though. Crick is a friend but his murderer is an oomf to me. I've been cooking up a fic for her and I like her a lot.
It's not an uncommon occurrence to kill off a detective's ally when they get too close to the truth. But in this instance, I can't say I like how it's pulled off. NTM Temenos already gets to deal with a pretty significant loss, discussed below.
(The joke answer here is that I need one of every element covered in the team, so Crick lives to see another day.)
Roi
Remember that snippet I wrote about Ochette killing a shadowy monster? That was Roi. He was experimented on by the MO (most comparable to Strega here) in an attempt to fuse Shadows with living humans, and it didn't go well. It resulted in him becoming a monster like he did in canon.
Temenos learns of this a bit before when SH takes place —which is around mid-October here— and he and Ochette are both horrified. He doesn't blame her for having to defend herself, especially when it's clear Roi was beyond saving at that point, but he's still upset over the circumstances regardless; and it's opened up a wound he's been trying to ignore.
So at this point in the story when SH takes place, Temenos' mental state isn't doing too great. And it'll only get worse for a bit longer!
Stormail
During when SH happens here, it happens pretty similar to canon: Temenos and Crick realize that Vados is dead, Crick begins to doubt the institution he's working for, and is attacked by Kaldena— who, here is probably like. Chief Prosecutor or something.
Crick is attacked near the local courthouse while investigating on his own during the Dark Night (our Dark Hour equivalent). He's bleeding out, and can't heal himself. Lucky for him though, only being able to operate for an hour means Temenos and co. are active around that time, and the team finds him losing consciousness fast.
One fun thing to note about Persona is that a living person can become a Persona for a specific user through a strong desire to protect their loved ones after death.
So, when Temenos finds Crick bleeding out with wounds too deep to heal normally... he thinks of all his loved ones screwed over by the law, how Crick may very well join that number, and thinks only that he cannot —he will not— allow that to happen.
This, combined with Roi in canon thinking of protecting Temenos despite everything, repeating only snippets of his last conversation warning him to protect him... Roi becomes Temenos' ultimate Persona, and the surge in magical strength is enough to keep Crick alive long enough to get serious medical treatment.
— Castti
Eir's Apothecaries
Like in canon, all of Eir's Apothecaries have died prior to the travelers finding Castti. While IDK if all of them were Persona users (Malaya, Castti, and Trousseau definitely were tho), rn I think all of them were aware of Persona stuff and tried to use their resources to heal people affected by Shadow attack.
Claude, as part of the MO trying to bring Vide into the world, tried to recruit them for their medical and scientific knowledge, but they refused.
Trousseau, however, was swayed and soon enough, tried to kill the rest of the team as part of his desire for humanity's end. The rest of the group, aside from Malaya and Castti, died trying to get the two as far away from him as possible; and even then, the two were on their last legs due to his Persona's debilitating attacks.
Malaya, realizing that they both couldn't survive, instead used all of her power to fully heal Castti. This causes whatever Persona she had to, not fuse with Castti's (not yet), but just transfer over to Castti p much.
Castti doesn't remember this. When the travelers (the team atm being Temenos, Osvald, Ochette, and Throné) find her, she starts off with two personas.
Castti's memories
When Castti recovers her memories and fights Trousseau, she and Malaya's Personas fuse to become a completely new and stronger one. It combines their Personas' designs, and carries some elements of Malaya's physical appearance too— representative of her loss, albeit, with the knowledge that she will always be loved and watched over by her departed loved ones.
However, her character development (and unique Persona stuff) doesn't stop there.
Hunter & Apothecary 2
In this Persona AU, Personas are formed from the knowledge of limited time and that life is given value through the existence of death. This is the contract that binds Personas and their users, thus making it possible to go against that.
When Hunter & Apothecary 2 rolls around, I imagine that it happens real late into the year— like, mid-December as everyone's preparing to face Vide. I imagine the tone here is... honestly a lot like P3's fourth movie, where because of the sudden time limit (and feeling of responsibility) everyone's really stressed out.
Like canon, Vide's main target to get rid of is Castti due to her vast medical knowledge, battle prowess, and her being a source of emotional strength for her allies. He plays on her feelings of powerlessness as a medical professional, along with exacerbating her guilt that comes with being Trousseau's mentor.
At first, the group notices she's less social and starts to skip meals. But for a day or two, chooses to not leave her room. While the rest of the group aren't doing... fantastic, this is especially alarming.
Because Persona contracts are formed around valuing limited time... if a user becomes apathetic towards death, what do you think it means for them when they break that contract, even briefly?
They can go berserk— at least, in the movie adaptation. Warning for depictions of strangulation in the video linked.
So, Castti gets attacked by her Persona. It isn't Malaya like Temenos' is Roi, but is a separate entity summoned through her love and grief. Becoming apathetic towards life and death goes against her contract, thus making it go berserk.
Ochette finds her and like canon, has to fight it to get it under control before it kills Castti; but afterwards, she has to rest and recover from that.
How long everyone's had their Personas
Ochette, Agnea, and Partitio's are awakened mid-story.
Hikari's was forcibly awakened as a child, and underwent experiments growing up. He wasn't born with the ability to summon a Persona, he was forced to learn how.
Throné's in a similar situation. For the sake of adaptation, the main part I'll focus on when adapting Claude is his desire to find the best candidate for a Vide vessel. Throné is an artifical Persona user created for the MO's experiments, but does not need suppressants where her former colleagues did.
Because I follow the theory that Temenos is a claudelet, the same also applies to him. He's adopted by Jörg at age 6, and was found after one of the MO's experiments went terribly wrong during a full moon — during an early (failed) attempt to bring Vide into the world. He was about to die due to injuries from an explosion, right when the Velvet Room (likely run by like. the OT1 cast taking shifts basically. probably) realized it needed outside power to combat Vide's descent. It reached out to Temenos, having him sign a contract to accept a limited amount of time, and to value what time people have left alive.
Temenos does not remember any of this, and in this specific adaptation, did not originally have white hair. He has the Velvet Room's white hair as a result of his contract... which is renewed prior to the beginning of the story when he and Osvald began their investigations. It's how the team is able to find the Velvet Room in the first place (but can all use it), as Temenos pretty much got the key sealed inside him as a kid. This is how I'm adapting him being chosen by Aelfric for now, but could be subject to change.
Temenos will be fine. He'll die for like 5 minutes though.
Castti's was awakened before the story with no issues. She has some later though, as you can see.
Osvald awakened his when he realized Harvey framed his family, but couldn't train it until Temenos got him out on parole.
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When they meet again after AM I headcanon all the Lions realising the tension between him and Claude, before Dimitri does. Ashe will think it's one of his knightly love stories, Annette will make a song about it, which Felix will love and hate at the same time bc "ugh, feelings and the boar", and Sylvain laughs "how can Dimitri be so blind", and Ingrid will roll her eyes bc now she has THREE "love-dumb" childhood friends, but ofc Sylvix are "just bros" who wanna stay together until they die ;)
Yes!! Ashe could even make a book about it with Annette's song to go with it!
I feel like everyone would be all interested in their conversations and Dimitri is confused as to why everyone is leaning in so intently. He's not sure why they're so invested, which is ironic coming from the outright "wish we could be together forever" guy.
Also, even better if Claude is like "how's Failnaught doing :D", come to find out Dimitri kept it safe in Fhirdiad because there were no Riegans to watch over it and he wanted to make sure it would be safe.
It’s like a little party in there because the Lions are cute little nuts and Dimi is like ??? why are they so excited (except Felix, he’s grumbling like usual), but they’re all like our king is in love!, and Dedue just walks in abruptly because he called from outside the door like five times and nobody answered because they were too invested in Dimi and Claude hjgsjhgd.
Claude finds them all adorable though and thinks they’re a little similar to the GDs from back in the day. Dedue has no idea what was just going on but everyone’s pretty happy so he’s also happy.
Dimitri is happy because everyone else is happy even though he’s pretty sure nothing special happened for them today??? But okay, they’re happy and that’s good enough.
He’s just also really happy because Claude is there. He just hasn’t realized that’s part of why!
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