alcahest | CAN CRY APP.

Player

Name & Pronouns: Isa & they/them
Age: 25
Contact Details:

dragonstrike / isa#2727 on discord
Referral: Claire

superorbital

Character

Character Name: Cardia Beckford
Age: Unknown. She's a clone/homunculus grown in a tube; the age of the real Cardia's DNA she's based on is never stated, but she's probably around ~20. Chronologically, this "Cardia" has existed for ~6 years and she's been conscious for ~2.
Suitability: N/A, she's mentally over 13.

Canon: Code:Realize
Canon Point: Post-Code:Realize ~Future Blessings~, Finis Route

History: The wiki is absolute garbage, so summary it is.

Britain's history is dramatically changed in the mid-19th Century by a brilliant scientist, Isaac Beckford. After turning London into a fortress city, he vanishes and is presumed dead. In actuality, he is pursuing a much grander plan of his own: the resurrection of his deceased wife and children.

His first attempts are a failure. He can recreate a body that resembles his younger son, Finis, and give it life, but implanting memories into it doesn't make it behave like the real thing. He keeps trying, falling into despair over repeated failures. His focus begins to change as he loses sight of his humanity. He seeks immortality; to become a machine deity and wage war on God. He believes that, because technology advances in wartime, he will create endless war on Earth, until someday the technology to revive his family exists.

After 665 monstrous failures to clone a homunculus from his daughter Cardia's DNA, he finally succeeds. Unlike Finis, this is a true replica of the real Cardia. However, this homunculus Cardia only exists to incubate a gem called the Horologium as it undergoes an alchemical transformation into the Philosopher's Stone, the rumoured source of immortality. Together, his two "children" will someday be harvested as Isaac's key to eternal life: Cardia with the Horologium as an eternal heart and unending power source, and Finis as the vessel with an innumerable number of duplicate bodies and an AI mind. Because they only look like his children, their lives mean nothing to Isaac.

Unfortunately, the Horologium's alchemical transformation causes Cardia's body to constantly produce an extremely lethal toxin. Isaac hides her in the derelict mansion in Wales where his family used to live, and he leaves her there like a doll, intending to return for her only when his plans require. Isaac never returns. Four years pass until Cardia gains consciousness.

Given only her father's cryptic note warning her not to leave the mansion, Cardia awakens with very little ego, completely unaware of her purpose or the inhuman nature of her existence. She wanders from the mansion and finds a small village nearby. She loses one of her shoes in the process, and when the villagers see the earth rotting away at her touch, they decide she has been sent by the Devil to ruin them. A woman named Elaine takes Cardia in and protects her from their ire.

Living with Elaine and her young daughter, Cardia begins to develop emotions and a vague sense of self, feeling love for the first time. However, after a bad crop season, the villagers blame Cardia for "cursing" them and decide to kill her. When Elaine defends her, it is decided that there will be a test of Cardia's "true" nature.

Elaine and Cardia are put into a small cave together, and the entrance is sealed for two weeks. The villagers claim that if Cardia is evil, she will inevitably kill Elaine because it is her nature. At first, things seem to be going fine, but as time passes, Elaine grows ill — the poison in Cardia's body builds up in the air around her, and in an enclosed space, it begins to affect others. Cardia tries to break through the entrance with her poison, but by the time she makes it through, Elaine is already dead.

Heartbroken, Cardia finally heeds her father's parting words: "The more you learn of love... the more you will be made to suffer. Because you... are a monster." She returns to the mansion and decides to wait there forever in isolation.

In 1853, two years later, her slumber is disturbed. Finis has sent the British military to retrieve her, intending to carry out Isaac's plans and grant their father immortality as was always his purpose. However, the retrieval is interrupted by gentleman thief Arsene Lupin, who is trying to track down Isaac and prevent a rumoured terrorist attack that the Horologium is involved in. He steals Cardia away.

Though she's confused and hesitant at first, Cardia eventually agrees to go with Lupin for two reasons: firstly, she wants to find Isaac for herself, wondering why he never came back for her and why her existence is so monstrous. Secondly, Lupin makes her a promise that he will fulfil a single wish in return. Cardia's wish is to be able to touch him, without the poison, and Lupin vows that he'll find a way to remove it from her.

Over time, they gather a group of people with similar goals: Impey Barbicane, an engineer; Victor Frankenstein, a scientist; Abraham van Helsing, a war hero; and Count Saint-Germain, the mysterious owner of the mansion they use as a hideout. Cardia comes to know all of them well, and spends many months with them, working towards the goal of tracking down Isaac.

Their search finally leads to an underground laboratory, where Cardia sees the place that she was created. Finis is waiting there for her, and he mocks her with the knowledge of what she is: a doll, an artificial creature that can never become human. Although they escape Finis' clutches, Cardia is deeply shaken by the truth, and she flees Saint-Germain's mansion in the middle of the night, afraid of what the others will think of her now.

That's the end of the common route. From there, the game branches, and we're going with the Finis Route.

Cardia decides to return to the mansion in Wales, intending to search there for clues and pursue her father alone. Finis meets her there, having anticipated her return, and he tells her the truth of her identity as the real Cardia's clone. He invites her to join him in Isaac's plan. Knowing she has no choice either way, Cardia takes his hand, following him to find her father and demand answers.

While Finis works towards Isaac's revival, he and Cardia repeatedly clash due to the distance between their self-actualisation. Seeing Finis desperately trying to please Isaac, and hearing from Isaac himself that her own self is simply "noise" inside the real Cardia, Cardia develops bitterness towards her father and sympathy for Finis, the person most like her in the world. She even decides to stay behind when Lupin comes to rescue her, fearing that the "happy ending" she would achieve is one that abandons Finis.

Finis has triggered the final stages of the Horologium's transformation into the Philosopher's Stone and the plan is moving towards completion when they're attacked by Saint-Germain, who reveals himself to be an immortal "Apostle of Idea," an organisation that exists to correct history when mankind is straying from God's path. Finis uses his bodies as human shields, and escapes to an airship along with Cardia and the "main body" housing his own and Isaac's consciousness. Hansel, another Apostle, pursues them.

Even in the midst of all this, Cardia continues to treat Finis as her real brother, and they get into an argument on the airship about their purpose, where Cardia attempts to persuade him that they could support each other and discard what Isaac wants for them. She tells Finis that she wants to love him, as an older sister would. But the Horologium interrupts their moment, wracking Cardia's body with pain, and Finis despairs over the futility of her words.

Hansel catches up and tries to destroy the main body that contains Isaac. Isaac's consciousness uses Finis as a human shield for the attack, and then possesses Finis to drag Hansel out of the airship in a suicide attack. For a brief second, before he falls, Finis regains control — and he cries out to Cardia in desperation before plummeting to his apparent death below.

Unbeknown to those in the airship, the Finis that fell survives and is picked up by Lupin and the others. Severed from the main body, this Finis rapidly finds individuality and questions his purpose. When at last it comes time to launch an attack against the airship to stop Isaac's plan and save Cardia, Finis joins the rescue party, determined to find a resolution to the conflicted feelings that Cardia has left him with.

With the help of Hansel, who finds himself won over by the Beckford siblings' desire to live together, Finis manages to save Cardia, putting an end to Isaac's plan. The two of them bid a final farewell to their father, destroy the main body once and for all. The ordeal has reduced them both to ordinary humans: Isaac's attempt to absorb her for the Philosopher's Stone has leeched the poison from Cardia, and Finis is no longer part of a collective. They return to the mansion in Wales where they begin a life together, learning to live as real people for the first time.

Personality:

In the beginning of her life, Cardia is a blank slate. There are impressions left on her because she holds the memories and personality of the real Cardia Beckford whose DNA was used to create her — but these are vague things that serve as the base of her identity more than any part of her as an individual. When she is "born" as the fully matured consciousness of a girl, Cardia only possesses a blind love for her father, an instinctive kindness inherited from the real thing, and a sense of curiosity born from isolation. She says herself that her "feelings were dimmer" in the early days of her existence, which shows in an almost robotic blankness and total lack of social or emotional awareness, which only changes later as she's able to become more than a doll.

Because she was kept from outside influences for most of the first two years of her life, what shaped the core of Cardia's identity was loneliness. It's the source of almost every way in which her personality later develops, given space to grow. She picks up traits from the people around her when there are people around her, because she is still half-formed when Lupin takes her from the mansion, but in her own company the only experience she can draw upon is being alone. She says as much to Lupin and the others, when they wonder why she's so insistent that Delacroix come and live in Saint-Germain's mansion with them rather than staying alone in his deceased family's mansion: "At first I didn't realise it, because being alone seemed so natural to me... but now that I look back, the years I was alone were a very painful and trying time in my life. I think there are a lot of things he won't see or understand... not as long as he remains here." She has always been deeply lonely. It's not something she ever adjusts to, and the only way she ever manages to endure it is by slipping into a depressive lethargy, sleeping just to be kept company by dreams.

Rather than being turned bitter by her loneliness, though, Cardia turns her worst memories into a reason to keep others from ever feeling the way she had to. Even the kindness embedded in the heart of her becomes her own because it is fed by her isolation. Labelled a monster and deprived of any human contact, she treasures deeply any scraps of kindness offered to her by others, and so it becomes something she wants to share and reciprocate. This is never seen more clearly than in her relationship with Finis, whose cruelty she responds to with sympathy and an outstretched hand, willing to expose her heart to him again and again despite every time he lashes out and hurts her, because she can't stand the thought of him suffering when she's right there to provide what she was never given.

To be expected from someone who has lived the life Cardia has, she finds most of her self-worth in what she can do for other people. She doesn't like to be a burden, and she really doesn't like being left behind to wait if she could contribute in any small way. When she's offered lessons in self-defence skills by Lupin's crew, she takes to each task with alacrity, eager to make herself someone useful and reliable; she throws herself whole-heartedly into learning, whether it's combat or history or engineering. She changes a great deal just between her first lessons and her last, too, her confidence bolstered by the possibility that she can be helpful to them someday with the skills she's learnt.

Much like her kindness that blossoms for the sake of others, and her desire to be useful to those she cares about, Cardia finds it easier to fight for someone else too. Although she isn't usually quick to stand up for herself, when someone she cares about is involved, she can be extremely stubborn and determined, to the point of becoming obstinate. Her bravery is absolutely unwavering if she's defending someone. This is exemplified in Finis' route: although she doesn't speak up much when Finis is cruel to her in the beginning, allowing him to call her a monster and a doll as he pleases, she starts to argue with him more and more as she comes to care about him, not for her own sake but for his. He treats himself as disposable, and that's what the two of them butt heads over, rather than the insults he hurls at her. Her own sense of self-worth gets strengthened specifically because she sees Finis going through exactly the same thing, and she wants to support him; if it were just her, it wouldn't be the same.

Cardia is ultimately a simple person who appreciates every little thing, overwhelmed by ordinary joys in life that she was deprived of for so long and thought she would never have. In one of the official artbooks, her only listed interest is "leisurely conversation." Her happiest memories are of days spent in Saint-Germain's mansion, sharing meals with the members of Lupin's crew and listening to their banter. She is brimming with curiosity and loves learning, always happy to be taught something new. Even her most desperate desire is so small and trivial: to touch. To feel the warmth of another person with her own bare hand, just once. She doesn't ever want to ask for too much — but that's not just because she's easy to please.

The only thing Cardia fears more than loneliness is her own monstrosity. Her ability to hurt others, the hurt she has already caused, the true nature of her existence and the extent of the destruction she could wreak just by living. She flinches away from touch in fear, even though she knows that her clothes protect them from her poison. She never feels like she belongs, and doesn't think she should; seeing people enjoying themselves and laughing, she asks herself, "Am I good enough to be here?" She hates what she is. She hates herself for the fact that she is shameless enough to want anything, to be happy, when she is a monster who ruins the lives of anyone around her. She is always waiting for the moment when someone sees her as that monster and turns against her, and she never blames them for it.

As much as her loneliness, her self-loathing is pervasive, and has had a heavy hand in shaping her, as her only other constant companion. Even when she thinks she has overcome the worst of that feeling, it is still what she always falls back on in the end. She is prone to self-sacrifice even when others are willing to fight for her sake, quick to blame herself for disaster, terrified of anyone sacrificing for her because she isn't worth it. Cardia isolated herself willingly after Elaine's death, even though that loneliness was like torture to her; she would always rather suffer herself than allow others to suffer because of her. When telling the story of Elaine's death to Saint-Germain, she fiercely denies the sympathy he offers, insisting that, "I'm not the one who suffers. I'm the one... who makes others suffer. I wonder if I really am a monster... And whether I deserve to live." These thoughts have plagued Cardia for all of her waking moments, and they leave a mark that lingers. In Fran's route sequel, she still says that she fears wanting any more happiness than she already has, because she thinks she might be punished for it.

This view of herself has made Cardia selfless to an extreme, and it's present in her happiest moments as well as her most despairing. When she loves someone, she doesn't ever seem to expect anything in return. Maybe she fears that they'll meet the same end as Elaine if they give her too much; maybe she just thinks it would be "asking too much"; likely, she isn't even conscious of it. She just wants the other person to be happy, and she's grateful to be given the chance to love them at all. Her desire to love Finis as his older sister is not conditional, and similarly in other routes, the things she does out of love for any of the boys do not require reciprocation. She's willing to let Saint-Germain kill her, even if she doesn't want to die, because she loves him and wants to take away his conflict. She stubbornly follows Van Helsing not because she expects his gratitude or affection for it, but because she wants to be able to help the person she loves. She's a girl of grand, romantic gestures, and it never really crosses her mind that someone might love her for them. She's just happy to experience love on her own.

Sin:

SLOTH — I wanted to stay in my slumber forever. I wanted to stay with my dreams forever.

Cardia has had a tendency in the past to respond to crisis with despair. After causing Elaine's death, she fully intended to spend the rest of her life in the mansion, sleeping until either her father would come to retrieve her or she simply died. Even with all her character development in later parts of the game, many bad ends involve her committing suicide or allowing herself to be killed because it's the easiest solution to the problem of her existence. She's proactive when the problem is someone else's, but she's rarely willing to stand so firmly when it comes to her own right to live or be happy, instead sinking into self-loathing or running away from the matter entirely.

ENVY — I never wanted to be a monster! I wanted to be normal!

As an artificial doll made to resemble the deceased daughter of Isaac Beckford, with a body so poisonous that her touch melts through any material, Cardia cannot live as a normal human. Envy is inevitable. She envies humans for all the things they take for granted that she can't have, and she envies the real Cardia for the loving family she had. But the hatred born of Cardia's envy isn't directed towards other people; instead, she hates herself for what she is. She curses herself, and more than once wishes to die because she can't live with her monstrosity when she so desperately wants to be human. She is never truly happy as herself for as long as she remains a monster.

LUST — I want... to touch you. I want to feel you... Your warmth.

Although Cardia doesn't think of it as a lustful desire, her wish "to touch someone" can definitely be construed as such. She's deeply lonely, and she does desperately desire other people; it's not a sexual desire, but still an indulgence and a yearning. Physical sensation is literally her only conscious desire — she appreciates everything she experiences in her life outside of the mansion, of course, but the one thing she wanted of her own free will, even as a living doll, was touch. She wants other people, even though she knows that her poisonous body puts them at risk. She wants to feel something. Also, she's an otome game protagonist so I think it's extremely fucking funny to put lust here. Damned for having 6+ love interests.

Executor Title: Magnum Opus
Memoria:

- Lupin's promise.
- Her father's words to her.
- Elaine's death.
- [SKILL] Lessons with Lupin: Lock-picking, pick-pocketing, and stealth.
- [SKILL] Lessons with Impey: Mechanical engineering and driving.
- [SKILL] Lessons with Fran: Smokescreens, flash bombs, and basic first aid.
- [SKILL] Lessons with Van Helsing: Basic self-defence and staying calm in combat.
- [SKILL] Lessons with Saint-Germain: Navigation and information about the setting she comes from.
- The encounter with Finis in the lab.
- Meeting Finis at the Wales mansion.
- Isaac's first awakening.
- The argument with Finis on the airship.
- Finis rescuing her from Isaac's main body.
- A memory of a time when the group was all happy together.

Extra: Is there anything else we need to know, that we didn't mention above? Note it here!

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