User Name/Nick: Luna
User DW: starbroken
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: AppleBlossoms or PM to this journal
Other Characters Currently In-Game: N/A, I am fresh meat

Character Name: Gilbert Durandal
Series: Gundam SEED Destiny
Age: 33
From When?: His canon death at the end of the series

Inmate Justification: Durandal attempted to take over the world and impose a genetics-based system on it in which every human's fate would be determined by their genetic aptitudes. In order to achieve this goal, he's committed assassination attempts, identity theft, manipulation of the mass media, and also a whole lot of violence. He tried to wipe a country off the face of the planet, too. He also very personally manipulated a lot of vulnerable young soldiers. Needless to say, that's a lot of stuff to atone for.

The reason behind all of Durandal's actions is his deep aversion to loss. He cannot accept a reality in which people (him) get hurt and thus decides that what he needs to do is create a world in which everyone is "on the correct path to begin with". On the barge, he'd have to address this mental hang-up and slowly come around to accepting a flawed reality in its many facets.

Arrival: Brought against his will!

Abilities/Powers: Durandal is a Coordinator. Coordinators are genetically enhanced humans. Durandal is presumed to be a second generation Coordinator, which means his genes weren't individually tampered with but he inherited the enhanced traits from his parents instead. The core traits of a Coordinator are immunity to most diseases, as well as improved physical and mental ability compared to normal humans. In essence: they pick up new skills far faster than average. Coordinators are noted for their capability of being champions in a lot of different fields at once, due to their aptitude for pretty much everything being heightened. They still have to put some work in though. The skills a Coordinator develops are 'peak performance for a human' level, not supernaturally heightened beyond that.

Personally, Durandal is an extremely accomplished geneticist. He can analyze the human genome and pinpoint an individual's aptitudes with a good degree of accuracy. He does use this ability in-canon to appoint someone as a pilot who would later become a super ace of the military. While this type of analysis is founded on pre-existing science in the SEED universe, Durandal is a genius at applying it. His intellect has been noted as unusual for even a Coordinator.

Further, Durandal has pharmaceutical expertise. His friend Rau suffers from short telomeres as caused by cloning, which make his muscles deteriorate faster and causes seizure-like attacks. Durandal personally designed a medication that can subdue those symptoms and allow him to stay functional.

tl;dr: maxed out his science stat, leveling buff for all other stats

Inmate Information: Durandal's early backstory has received some add-ons in the sequel movie that was released a few months ago - just in case anyone is watching out for minor SEED Freedom spoilers, I hid those aspects. Without further ado, here are the key aspects of his past:

🧪 As a young teenager (ca.12/13), Durandal begins living on space colony Mendel, a colony specifically dedicated to genetic research of all kinds. There he catches the eye of the young adult researcher Aura Maha Khyber who notes his exceptional intellect and begins studying him. (The nature of this study is not disclosed, but there is no reason to believe this specific aspect was sinister - he probably volunteered to have some very standard tests run on him.)
🧪 The young Durandal already dreams of making a perfect world through genetic research - Aura thinks his ideals are fascinating and begins devoting herself to making them a reality. They devise an early version of the Destiny Plan, in which every human would be analyzed for their potential at birth and have their life planned out for them to maximize it.
In Aura's vision for the Destiny Plan, the people on top of society should surpass even Coordinators - she devises to make a whole new type of genetically enhanced humans who should be the master race acting as leaders to the new world order: Accords. The young Durandal was present in the baby Accords lives and is remembered very fondly by them. They think of him as a father.
🧪 As a young adult, working as a geneticist in his own right now, Durandal meets Talia Gladys and enters a relationship with her. Their love story ends when it is revealed that the couple is not a fertile combination. In their country, the law is such that only couples who can bear children are allowed to marry. Talia wants a child, so she leaves Durandal for a government-assigned husband, despite the two of them still being in love. Durandal has never gotten over the pain caused by this break-up.
🧪 Sometime around the same timeframe, Durandal meets Rau le Creuset. Rau is a clone who was created by Aura's scientific rival. Thanks to the imperfections of the cloning process, Rau has short telomeres that cause his cells to age rapidly. This induces seizure-like attacks in him and will cause him to die young. Durandal becomes fascinated with this young man and devises a personal medicine for him that keeps the seizures at bay.
🧪 Rau resents having ever been created, so Durandal hides the existence of the Accords from him. It is not confirmed but extremely likely that getting to know Rau made Durandal change his mind on the necessity of Accords.
🧪 Rau and Durandal find out about the existence of another Rau-type clone hidden away in the depths of Mendel. They free the child, Rey za Burrel. Rau, who's a career soldier, leaves Rey's care to Durandal who becomes his guardian from here.
🧪 Mendel is shut down thanks to a biohazard incident forcing evacuation of the colony. Aura and the Accords go hide in a remote country on Earth. While Durandal never formally cuts ties with them, they do not figure into his plans at all from here on out so it's safe to say he's totally abandoned them.
🧪 Durandal's country, PLANT, gets involved in a massive far with the Earth Alliance. Rau, who hates the world, tries to manipulate the situation into mutually assured destruction. He is stopped and dies. Rau's death fucks Durandal up - he considered Rau his dearest friend and always longed to convince him that life can be worth living. He begins hallucinating Rau regularly, somewhere between memories and imagined conversations.
🧪 Prompted by Rau's passing, Durandal is spurred into action and changes his career into politics so he can amass the power needed to enact his Destiny Plan. He becomes the Chairman (main government representative) of PLANT.
🧪 Another conflict between PLANT and Earth begins rising. A terrorist attack from a rogue PLANT faction leaves Earth devastated. Whether Durandal had a hand in that or not is unclear in canon, but at the very least he allowed it to happen.
🧪 In order to best enact propaganda, Durandal enlists a young singer to get plastic surgery and assume the identity of popular idol and activist Lacus Clyne, who's been absent from PLANT for two years since the last conflict. He tries to have the real Lacus Clyne assassinated.
🧪 Durandal makes himself extremely popular through having a peace-focused stance and sending relief to damaged areas on Earth. Then at the height of his popularity, he exposes a shadowy group of villains called LOGOS, who are basically a children's show stand-in for the military industrial complex. He calls for LOGOS to be eradicated so war profiteering won't cause more conflicts. Enraged mobs begin storming the houses of LOGOS members.
🧪 He also announces his Destiny Plan - jobs and life paths based on aptitude, for everyone! Fuck free will, we can have guaranteed happiness here!
🧪 Obviously protag-squad thinks this is a shit idea, so he gets into an armed conflict with them and also gets out the big old space death laser with which he tries to annihilate protag country. Oops.
🧪 At the final confrontation, it's Rey who winds up shooting him. Rey, who was always a fervent believer in his father-figure Durandal's ideals, has become affected by the protagonists and begun believing in a better tomorrow. Durandal appears to accept Rey's judgement quite graciously and dies.

(🧪 I don't know where to add this in the chronology, but throughout this whole ordeal Durandal is also a manipulative bastard turning war orphan Shinn Asuka into a loyal follower of his who is even willing to shoot down his own former comrades for the cause. Like, it truly cannot be overstated how much Durandal is manipulate mansplain manwhore-ing his way through this show. That just... feels relevant to the Crimes(TM)).

In his day to day presentation, Gilbert Durandal is very pleasant to be around. He always wears a gentle smile and speaks politely. If he disagrees with you, he'll phrase it as a suggestion rather than a rebuttal. Really, it's rare to ever see him get angry. Even when subordinates fail him or are disobedient, Durandal is known to show lenience and voice his understanding for their motivations. Matching this, he is also not shy about compliments for a job well done.
It's too bad, of course, that Durandal is not charismatic through sincerity. Rather, he is an skilled manipulator who knows exactly what buttons to push and what levers to pull in order to bind people to his person. His kindness is simply fueled by the knowledge that people respond best to affirmation. For the purposes of his manipulations, Durandal doesn't mind lying his face off. What he says to who and how much of it... it's all carefully calculated to preserve his image and serve his long term goals.
A favourite manipulation strategy of his is false humility. Whenever he does a particularly shady deed, he plays it off as something that embarrasses him to have to do. Instead of confidently declaring his intent, he pretends it's his own weakness that forced him to do something unfortunate - he'd much prefer to grow and be a bigger man, of course. It works astoundingly well. (The humility is naturally as fake as everything else - Durandal hates to lose.)

Despite how calculated Durandal is about most social interactions, he is capable of loving deeply and all-encompassingly. His feelings for Rau and Talia are defining factors in all his actions. He wants to make a world in which he would never have gotten hurt so deeply by losing the ones he loves. This makes him a rather fragile person at his core, somebody who cannot grow past things. (Like, seriously, his break-up was 12 years ago and he is not over that shit.)

Path to Redemption: Due to growing up in Eugenics Country, Durandal views genetics as the be-all-end-all solution to everything. A starter point to having him progress as a person would be to question his belief that there's gotta be a scientific formula that can solve every problem.

But more towards the core of his issues, Durandal needs to learn to come to terms with loss and unhappiness. He needs to begin seeing negative experiences as part of a fulfilling life rather than as mistakes that need to be banished from existence. All his crimes were motivated by his radical attempt to avoid accepting emotional pain. Once he establishes an appreciation for even the sad events in his life, he'll be less likely to try and take over the world! Yay!

The best approach to making Durandal change is personal relationships - just as meeting Rau appears to have changed him for the better (no longer thinking mankind needs a ruler species), new bonds could have a positive impact on his mindset.

That said, Durandal won't be very receptive to being changed initially. He does not believe that he needs to change and redeem himself in any meaningful way and he would look down on a lot of other inmates for their crimes. He'd feel superior to anybody assigned to him as warden and not take them too seriously, despite treating them politely. However, his fatal weakness is a love of debate. Involving him in lengthy pretentious conversations is a good way to pique his interest and get closer to him as a person. Forming that base attachment can then become helpful towards actually getting through to him emotionally.

One thing that Durandal kind of refuses to think about is that his ideal world would be one where he could not have met either Talia or Rau (who wouldn't exist) - making him come around to consciously appreciating that he would not want to have lived a life without them could be a good angle for challenging him. A bit risky though, since it's a very touchy subject.
Another angle would be talking about Rey, his sort-of-son, and the fact that Rey rejected his world - Rey's perspective is one that is already emotionally relevant to Durandal so he can't totally dismiss it.

Meanwhile, Durandal would be entirely unreceptive to being lectured about the hurt or harm he caused. He knows, he did it intentionally, he won't regret it just because 'it was bad'.

History: Wiki! It does not appear to have been updated with the new information from the movie yet.

Sample Network Entry:

[ Hello Barge residents, inmates and wardens alike! Here's Durandal's pleasant voice on the network - he's perfected sounding like a soothing radio broadcaster. ]

Good morning. I don't need to inform any of you, but it seems gravity has gone missing from our humble abode. I might find this to be a little less disconcerting than most - I grew up in space and low gravity zones were commonplace.

And I'd call this current experience a welcome touch of home, if not for a tiny detail... The Barge really was not built with this in mind, leaving everything floating about unfettered and free.

[ Privately, he truly has to wonder why nobody thought to have zero-G-precautions on spaceship, but alas... ]

Come meet me in the Infirmary so I can give you some tips for navigating your weightless state - and in turn, you can help me save our more breakable equipment from gravity-free doom.

Sample RP:

[ Durandal has never put too much thought into matters of the afterlife. Even when hearing Rau's voice, seemingly coming to him from the great beyond, he'd refused to dwell on whether or not there was such a thing as an immortal soul. He'd been far too busy with fixing one world to try and grasp the concept of another. Now he thinks that maybe he hadn't done his due diligence when he had the chance. It's irritating enough to be dead - nevermind dead and disoriented.

Though the base concept of the Barge has been explained to him the first time he cautiously stepped outside his cabin, Durandal is left with a mountain of questions. The only benefit to it is that the questions are more fun to focus on than the premise of his stay. (Redemption sounds like a bad joke. He escaped a treason punishment in life only to be imprisoned in death? Really?)

In his search for answers, Durandal has found himself at the Chapel. He didn't have affinity for or interest in religion when he was alive, but the presence of this room on the Barge fascinates him. So much of religion appeared to him to have been based on preparations for death, so the event coming to pass in none of the predicted ways really ought to have erased any grounds to keep going with worship. Yet, humans are creatures of habit. The familiar remains comforting even in absence of reasonable explanation.

It strikes Durandal as unlikely that any of the religious texts stored here would include a vision for the afterlife that plans in a concept like the Barge, but he still has a pile of them placed next to him on a bench and is reading through them with curiosity. Doing so in such a public venue comes with dual purposes, of course. Should someone enter, it's easy to strike up conversation: ]

Do you follow one of these faiths? I won't bother you in your prayer time, but I'd love to hear a bit about it afterwards.

[ After all, it's useful to build rapport by finding what gives the people comfort. ]

Special Notes: N/A

OOC:

Player Handle: Luna
Contact: appleblossoms or DM!
Pronouns: she/her

Invite/Current Player: Invite Link
Other Characters: N/A.


IC:

Character Name: Gilbert Durandal
Age: 33
Canon: Gundam SEED Destiny
Canon Point: post-death

History: man who is so divorced and so widowed (no actual marriage involved)

Personality:

Charming. On the surface, Gilbert Durandal is very pleasant to be around. He always wears a gentle smile and speaks politely. If he disagrees with you, he'll phrase it as a suggestion rather than a rebuttal. Really, it's rare to ever see him get angry. Even when subordinates fail him or are disobedient, Durandal is known to show lenience and voice his understanding for their motivations. Matching this, he is also not shy about compliments for a job well done.

On top of being friendly and approachable, Durandal is a confident leader. He is diplomatic but also capable of making swift decisions. This combination earns him the loyalty and support of the masses with ease.

Manipulative. It's just too bad then, that Durandal is not charismatic through sincerity. Rather, he is an skilled manipulator who knows exactly what buttons to push and what levers to pull in order to bind people to his person. His kindness is simply fueled by the knowledge that people respond best to affirmation. For the purposes of his manipulations, Durandal doesn't mind lying his face off. What he says to who and how much of it... it's all carefully calculated to preserve his image and serve his long term goals.

A favourite manipulation strategy of his is false humility. Whenever he does a particularly shady deed, he plays it off as something that embarrasses him to have to do. Instead of confidently declaring his intent, he pretends it's his own weakness that forced him to do something unfortunate - he'd much prefer to grow and be a bigger man, of course. It works astoundingly well.

Motivated by relationships. Despite his scheming nature, when Durandal loves he loves with dedication. Maybe with a little too much dedication. He's still hung up on a woman who broke up with him over a decade ago. In fact, the cruelty of a world that did not allow them to be together is one of two core points that drove him to the extremes he takes in canon. The other is the fate of his best friend Rau le Creuset, who is a clone destined to die young. Durandal wants to prevent suffering like his from ever repeating.... which would be almost reasonable, except Durandal isn't normal about this one either. After Rau dies, Durandal spends two years hallucinating conversations with him because he's just that haunted by their ideological disagreements.

A good part of Durandal's motivation to create a utopia is to disprove Rau's nihilism and prove that life can be worth living. He envisions this as a chess match between himself and Rau's ghost, which is why he always has a chess board with him.

At his core, Durandal simply wants to be happy with the people he loves the most. But since that isn't possible... Well.

Unwilling to accept loss. Durandal hates to lose - be it games or things precious to him. Rather than acknowledge loss and move on, Durandal is the type of person to decide the whole world is wrong for having allowed the hurt to occur in the first place. Durandal's Destiny Plan in essence aims at creating a world in which he'd never have had to experience the painful events that define him to start with.

So how does he want to rewrite the world?

That's where the eugenics come in. Durandal, being a geneticist for a eugenicist country, decides that being screwed over by those very eugenics means that there simply isn't enough eugenics yet. (A reasonable conclusion anyone would draw, surely.)

Durandal proposes that unhappiness comes from desire. Desire, then, comes from having taken a path in life that does not correspond perfectly to one's aptitudes. To give a made-up example: if your aptitude is to be a mathematician but you have lived a life that allowed you to try being a singer, you might wind up miserable because you do not have the talent for that career you came to long for. If you'd simply never aspired to sing in the first place and understood your true calling sooner, you'd be able to be satisfied with your place in life.

Durandal's Destiny Plan thus envisions a world in which one's position in society is defined from the ground up by a genetic analysis of individual aptitude. Everyone would simply be raised appropriately to what they are most gifted at. Thus we'd have world peace because nobody would ever need to fight. After all, what reason is there to fight but the desire for something different? Erase that desire, erase war. (So he says.)

Those ends justify any means. To make his Destiny Plan a reality, Durandal will steal identities, order assassinations, try to wipe out entire countries with massive superlasers... Behind the facade of the gentle politician, Durandal behaves just like a bonafide supervillain. Still, he thinks of himself as a fundamentally good person. What's a few million lives for an eternity of peace?

Abilities: Durandal is a Coordinator. Coordinators are genetically enhanced humans. Durandal is a second generation Coordinator, which means his genes weren't individually tampered with but he inherited the enhanced traits from his parents instead. The core traits of a Coordinator are immunity to most diseases, as well as improved physical and mental ability compared to normal humans. In essence: Durandal picks up new skills far faster than average.

He is also an extremely accomplished geneticist. Durandal can analyze the human genome and pinpoint an individual's aptitudes with a good degree of accuracy. He does use this ability in-canon to appoint someone as a pilot who would later become a super ace of the military. Generally, genetics in SEED universe have advanced to a point where you could theoretically manipulate an unborn child to have specific aptitudes, so this knowledge is not just his own genius though.

Further, Durandal has pharmaceutical expertise. His friend Rau suffers from short telomeres as caused by cloning, which make his muscles deteriorate faster and causes seizure-like attacks. Durandal personally designed a medication that can subdue those symptoms and allow him to stay functional.

Inventory: A gun. That's it.

Eternal Reward: An afterlife that makes continued existence of the soul unquestionably worth it.

Is this just the same goal he had in life but in a different font? Yes, absolutely. As long as Durandal exists, he wants to prove that existence is not pointless and suffering can be erased. While he has accepted his own death and exit from his own world, he's not going to give up on his general ideology - least of all if Rau is also still around.

Goals/Ideas: Durandal is going to be extremely interested in figuring out how Requiem ticks - both on the social and the metaphysical level. As such, he's going to be naturally drawn to both Atropos University and Styx Inc. His knowledge and experience should hopefully be enough to get him hired at either, which means he'll be insane and try to pursue a dual loyalties thing of University Researcher By Day and Styx Shady Pharmacologist By Night. (If this doesn't actually work, I'll just pick one of these to focus on!) He wants to research Souls and he wants to know what Styx is up to, and ideally see how these may co-relate. Give him knowledge so he can turn the world of the dead into a utopia....!! Maybe. (Hopefully not.)

If he and Rau both get in, they will probably attempt to play 5D chess trying to gain influence over the city in different factions. Everyone is their plaything in their ongoing ideological debate over the nature of life, unfortunately. It's good that a panfandom roleplay game won't let them get away with that.

I don't have a specific arc lined out further than that. I am very interested in challenging his ideas as the game goes on. Further, he's no longer in the super-charismatic final boss category here, so he'll have to get used to a shift in social dynamics. That is going to be an interesting paradigm shift in itself.

Samples: TDM

Secret Code Phrase: My curse is my redemption.