◈ HIGHER THAN THE HOPES THAT YOU BROUGHT DOWN!

◈ OOC INFORMATION

Name: Elu
Age: 19
Pronouns: Any/All
OOC Contact: Tumblr @winifreya
Other Characters in Melodiae: None

◈ IC INFORMATION

Character Name: Therion
Series: Octopath Traveler I
Age: 22
Pronouns: He/Him, Any/All
Canon Point: Post-game, 100% story content, initial “protagonist” lock (see extra)
Devotion: Fangs
Defining Song: “can’t catch me now” (Olivia Rodrigo)

Application CW: All CWs in background section only → implied parental death or neglect, emotional abuse and manipulation, relationship abuse, non-parental death; (background only) Octopath Traveler I spoilers for all Therion content and the postgame plot

Personality:

Therion tries to define himself by thievery and little else: to mark himself as anything more is to mark as a toymaker’s fool. Therion has been treated like that before, and shame on him if he dares be treated like it again; so, he follows the most extreme methods to avoid it. With a body cast in shadows and a past in an unmarked grave, the most that the majority of his homeworld knows of him is as a master thief, calculating and callous, who works on his own. There is not a single thief in Orsterra that will ever match up to his deeds. To speak his name is to spread another rumor and to speak prayers for those richer rumormongers that he dares never visit their home.

And Therion is hell-bent on keeping it that way. Not all of it is a farce. Therion is cold and misanthropic to anyone in his path. He loathes working with others, and he hates to be given help. He got through almost eighteen years on his own, and he can continue to now. He is also, in many ways, a walking enigma, or a picture of contradictions. He is cunning enough to leave the richest in ruins without a trace, but his arrogance can make him shortsighted. A blend of arrogance and a desperation to remain alone is a vice to the degree of hubris, and it was what placed him in recent troubles in the first place.

Unfortunately, the contradictions extend beyond the mask. Therion has a bleeding heart for a core and heartstrings to expose for cruel puppetry. He seeks loneliness to avoid heartbreak. He has arrogance as a thief and only a thief: there must be nothing else to see in him. People are meant to be cruel to him and horrified by him, so being shown kindness and care and concern is overwhelming. His heart aches for this, too, more than it does to reject it. But it is always foiled by a broken sense of trust and a fogged, fearful isolation, and so, though he may repay it in his own way—fumbling theft and covers and ale—the care of others will always be turned away and broken.

Background:

Your name is Therion. It’s the only name you’ve ever had, if you exclude the jeers and scowling. This is the most you’ve made, in the eyes of those who think themselves better than you, of a life you’ve known since the first day you blinked.

When you were young, you were stupid, as all greenhorns are. You were smart enough to piece together how to survive on your own. You were foolish enough to get caught doing it, and you were thrown in the gaols of Riverford for it. Let’s set things straight, it wasn’t foolish to be held up in the gaols: you could have died—would have, maybe, should have, yes—but you were always going to escape. It was foolish for you to escape by working with the other who was trapped in your cell. But you believed him when he said you’d work as partners in crime, and you believed the motto of thick as thieves, and maybe your heart beat at the thought of the blood in a covenant running thicker than the water in a womb.

His name was Darius, and he was a self-professed tea leaf. The two of you first worked together ten years ago. You might’ve been the greatest thieves to ever live. Your title today rings clear, but you know his all the same: he made off with one thing which you could never reclaim, and that was all the love and trust you’d had left in your heart.

Gods, you were dumb. Gods, you were blind. A sentimental fool, he’ll call you for it later, six years after he pushed you off a cliff to your demise. You should have died in the ditches of the Cliftlands, and it’s one hell of a miracle you didn’t. You should have been tossed away earlier because he was growing sick of you, and this was inevitable, but you didn’t see it until you lost an eye for it. He pushed you down because you were getting in his way. You betrayed him because you angered him and a mark that offered him power, and he took it by ending your life.

But somehow, after everything, you’re smart enough to remain alive. The ravine carried you to recovery, though it left you to die. Betrayal didn’t kill you, but you won’t give it any more chances to try again. You force yourself to the lonesome road and make another name for yourself: a phantom thief that takes from all who they stumble upon and disappears with no trail. You thieve enough for a cache to stave you off until you die, should you ever quit the job. But your survival in your teens and twenties can’t depend on a retirement fund, so you keep going.

One heist blends into the next. You’re a master thief before long, infamous to aristocrats who dread your ghastly presence. You get arrogant. This is your life. This is you, now: not anyone else, not you and Darius, only you. Even if you wake up and live out your days plagued by the shadow of his hand and an endless laughter. No one else can rival you, and no one, no guards, no thieves, no one who knows naught of the betrayal and hardship and heartache you were dealt, will ever thwart you.

You’re bested at twenty-two when a fool’s bangle clasps around your wrist. A band of shame mars you for falling prey to a mark in the Cliftlands: a Lady Cordelia, heir of House Ravus, and her conniving butler Heathcote. They laid the trap: rumors spread by the town and tavern of a remarkable treasure hidden away, and every arrogant thief had been put in the gaols for trying to make away with it. It turns out that the treasure existed—four jewels known as the dragonstones, heirlooms of the Ravuses—but had been plundered long ago. Heathcote, the bastard who shackled you, presents you with knowing opportunity: reclaim the three lost dragonstones, and you can be set free.

You’ve made a fool of yourself few times before, and you refuse to let this be one of them. Thus, you shut up and take the deal. And when you try to work at it alone, your burden, your shame, you find yourself with allies by your side. Seven strangers see the blemish of your wrist and travel beside you anyway as you map the continent whole, pluck from every corner and aid every last soul.

You find one gemstone in a stuffy town of nobles and prickly scholars. You find the second in a black market in the desert cradled in Darius’s bloody hands. You feel your blood go cold, something opposite of bleeding. He mocks you for being sentimental. You barely make it out alive. He’ll kill you for sure if you go after him.

But you follow him anyways. You follow him to his lair by his village-kingdom and you take back the last dragonstones with your allies. You take back everything he stole from you except for a life. And you don’t even try. You watch him leave with his tail tucked in shame. That’s the last that you ever see of Darius again.

You should be alone after that. You’re not. You end up staying by your allies. You save their stories, and you save those of plenty others. Your own is told by play to the masses and is enshrined as a legend of hope. You find yourself at the end only once you’ve saved the whole world from a strange god past an ethereal gate. It’s a long, strange story, and you don’t think you have the time or care to explain it. So the story ends there, once your demons are dead, and once the voracious god is, too.

Finally, you’re on your own again—a nameless vagabond pickpocketing fools in Orsterra. You would be lying if you said you didn’t miss what came before. You disgust yourself wishing you were.

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Extra:

Discord: cliftlands