Folkmore App

[survivalthroughhate]

★ Character Information ★

Character Name: Darth Maul Reyes
Character Age: 38-ish
Character Species: Dathomirian Zabrak (+ Vileblood blood type from Deer Country) - Dathomirian Zabraks are a species with intense sexual dimorphism. The males have naturally-occurring horns on their head, are extensively tattooed (Maul's skin is naturally red with the black parts being his tattoos), and two hearts, which allows them to have greater stamina and oxygen intake than humans. They also can naturally roar like some species of big cats. Vileblood means he's got putrid green blood that smells a bit like rotting flowers when it's spilled. It gives him the ability to heal when ingesting other people's blood and allows him to purge corruption from someone's body. It also allows him to summon his Omen, a spirit animal named Vengeful Snuzzle that serves as protector and advisor to him.
Current Health: Perfect health from the waist up, perfectly working cybernetics from the waist down.
Outfit: Something similar to this with a black cloak layered on top. He is also wearing a black, sparkly wedding band.

Character Canon: Star Wars
Link to History: "At last we reveal ourselves to the Jedi."
Canon Point: After the short story "The Ghosts of Maul" in Stories of the Jedi and the Sith.
Canon Iteration: CRAU
Canon Iteration Explanation: Maul went through three years of character development. When he arrived in Deerington, he'd just lost pretty much everything. He was an angry, embittered mess who was still clinging to the idea of revenge on all those who had wronged him.

He began to slowly and cautiously make friends, though he insisted they were merely allies. He opened up a little as the months went by. His first big test came when a boy named Ben he'd grown fond of was injured. Enraged, Maul sought to Force Choke the person he held responsible, but Ben begged him to stop. Surprising even himself, he did. He tentatively entered a relationship with a man named Reaper (Gabriel Reyes) and his tough shell broke open when his little brother Savage Opress arrived. After a incident where everyone was stranded in a hotel, where his relationship with Reaper deepened, he saved the life of Raleigh Becket without even thinking about it. That was a first.

Alas, any progress he made was halted as he became brainwashed by a specter of his master and went on a killing spree, hurting many people and shattering the trust he'd built up in a lot of the community. The consequences of this would have repercussions that lasted through the rest of both games. He left the game magically cursed so that he would cause no more harm until he broke it.

His progress continued once in the city of Trench. He kept working on himself. This wasn't without backsliding, as he still killed three people during his time there, and the rampage he'd caused in Deerington had continuous consequences. He broke his curse and caused a bit more chaos. Maul formed deep relationships, with Usagi Tsukino being cemented as his best friend, finding an adoptive brother in Albert Wesker and marrying Reaper.

When the game ended, he'd become a version of himself that could take responsibility for his actions instead of always blaming others, who had become a teacher to many younger characters in the game, and who could finally acknowledge that what he'd always wanted wasn't power and control but a family who loved him for who he was. Maul also finally shook off the ghost of his master. He still has a long way to go on the emotional journey of healing himself but the most important steps have already been taken.

★ Folkmore Roles & Attributes ★

Skills: - A surprisingly good teacher for combat, extraordinary powers of all kinds, and meditation.
- Able to effectively lead groups of people.
- Very flexible to new and unusual circumstances.
- High pain tolerance.
- Skilled at strategies for war and combat.
- Able to repair cybernetics and advanced tech with some degree of skill.
Canon Abilities: Saberstaffs, Force powers, and hand-to-hand combat, oh my!
Role: Familiar
Role Qualities/Attributes: As an echo back to his time in the Deer games, Maul will take on the appearance of a spooky black deer when in animal form. He will also while in his normal Zabrak sometimes sprout antlers and his lower half will transform into the lower half of the black deer, complete with fur, tail, and hard hooves. Basically he's now the world's creepiest and angriest faun.
Role Reasoning: Maul coming right out of canon would be a Myth, there's no doubt about it. He's an angry psychopath who will kill anyone who gets in the way of his revenge against those he feels has wronged him. But this Maul has gone through three years of character development. He's learned that revenge is a hollow thing and never gives him what he wanted. He learned to forgive one main person he wanted revenge against: Obi-Wan Kenobi, after realizing he only targeted him because he couldn't reach his true goal in the form of his master. He learned to no longer be afraid of his master, Darth Sidious, and that he no longer had to be chained mentally by what he became under his horrendous apprenticeship. He learned the lesson that it is better to have friends and family to care about and a significant other to love, with no amount of power able to replace how they make him feel. He's gone along a better path than his canon version ever could and is no longer purely evil, though he does remain on the Dark Side, for it is a comfortable place for him to be in. For this, he's better suited as a Familiar.

★ Personality ★

Please choose one of the follow options for your personality section. Please clarify which option you have picked and, if option 2, which questions you are answering: Option 2!

OPTION 2 QUESTIONS (PICK 4-5) 100-300 WORD LIMIT EACH:

What experience challenged your character's core beliefs? How did they handle this or change from it? As far as CRAU goes, meeting Usagi Tsukino aka Sailor Moon had a huge effect on the way Maul saw life. Before then, everyone had always been an enemy or someone to manipulate to get what he wanted. Not Usagi. The moon goddess took one look at this Dark Side warrior and saw he was friend-shaped. Beneath the anger, rage, and psychopathic nature, she could tell there was someone badly damaged, a lonely, broken-down man who wanted friends who could support him but didn't know how to ask for that from the people around him. She staunchly stood by him through thick and thin. Nothing he could do could push her away. Eventually, he began to realize she was right about him. He didn't just have to be evil and cruel, molded into the heartless warrior his master wanted him to be. He could learn to love again, to care about the people around him, and even teach his students to become better versions of themselves. While he backslid a lot, eventually he came to realize Usagi was and always had been right about him. He became a better person and quite a bit of it was due to her unwavering belief in the goodness she could see within him, even at the very start.

What is a headcanon (or two) you feel strongly about and that you prefer playing your character with? How is this supported in canon and why do you think it benefits the character's story?
cw: Mentions of physical and emotional child abuse below

Something which is hinted at but never directly shown in canon is that Darth Sidious frequently used Force Lightning on Maul as a child. The one instance we see his master use it on him as an adult, he's left begging for mercy, though not in the sense of asking an enemy to stop torturing him. He's asking his master to kill him rather than continue to hurt him anymore, knowing this is just the start of it all. It's easy to infer that this was a scene which happened many times over the course of his life and particularly in his childhood. In those moments, he's no longer a tough, angry Sith Lord who can live through almost anything. He's reduced to being a scared abused child, afraid that the closest thing he has to a father is going to keep hurting him no matter how much he begs him to stop. This helps to establish Maul as someone who was not born evil. He was created through systematic abuse in his childhood, broken down repeatedly by his master until he had no wants, thoughts, or feelings of his own. He was created to be the perfect assassin rather than allowed to be a person of his own. As a small secondary headcanon established from this, I like to think he wears the gloves he does because his hands are covered in permanent Lichtenburg figures, scars that can happen at the direct contact point when a person is struck by lightning, and something he wouldn't want anyone to see.

What does your character feel like they struggle with still? Where could they improve? This could be physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise. Since Maul is a CRAU, he's done a lot of work on his personality. He's learned that actions have consequences, so if he kills someone or mutilates them by cutting their arm off, there's going to be ripples from that action that he can't just run away from off into his galaxy like he would at home. He's also learned about forgiveness to some extent, able to let go of some of the anger he's held within himself for so long. What he really needs to work on is his social skills. One is to let go of grudges. Due to his code of honor and sense of self, he takes any insults extremely personally no matter how the other person means them. He then will hold onto that grudge until the day he dies. Getting him to let go of that is his next challenge. He also has a very prickly personality and doesn't much care about getting along with others. His abrupt, gruff, and rude personality tends to put off a lot of people. Learning to at least attempt to be a tiny bit nicer and doing things like apologizing to people is a monumental task but one he definitely needs to focus on.

What famous folklore, legend, or myth would you associate your character with? Are they literally inspired by Snow White? Do they have similar struggles or energy as Red Riding Hood? So, fun fact, Maul's main voice actor Sam Witwer directly compared Maul to Sisyphus of Greek mythology. Sisyphus was a villainous, cruel king who cheated death a couple of times and was cursed to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity by the gods, only for it to roll back down and crush him just as it got to the top. So it goes with Maul. Maul's a villainous, cruel character who cheats death on multiple occasions but he never gets what he wants for long despite also being somewhat a sympathetic figure. Anytime he comes close to satisfaction or happiness, there is an outside force (the "boulder") usually in the form of Darth Sidious, who takes it away from him again. He finally is reunited with the beloved family he was separated from as a child? They're both dead within six months at the hands of his master. He finally gets revenge on Obi-Wan Kenobi? Darth Sidious comes in, kills his brother, deposes him as ruler of Mandalore, and leaves him to be tortured for months on end. It leaves him more unhappy than he ever starts out as but he also never learns from these lessons either, preventing him from growing out of the behavior that leads him to these circumstances in the first place.

What is a time where your character failed drastically at something and how did it impact them, what did they do about it? Darth Maul failed to kill Obi-Wan Kenobi when he was sent to kill the two Jedi protectors of Queen Padmé Amidala when he was still rather young and subsequently lost the duel between the two of them. This one act changed the course of his entire life. Sliced in two and thought to be dead by both the Jedi and his master alike, he was forgotten about. Stranded on a junkyard planet, he was simply too angry to allow himself to die. Instead, he used the Dark Side to continue to live, though the price was a broken body and his sanity. He became fixated even in his madness on the idea of revenge. When at last his mother restored him body and soul, he decided instead of any other course of action, he would get revenge on Kenobi for what he saw as the ruination of his entire life. He cut a swathe of violence, rage, and death through the galaxy to achieve it, leaving many bodies in his wake, most notably Duchess Satine Kryze, Obi-Wan's lady love.

★ Player Information ★

Player Name: Shade
Pronouns: She/her
Are you over 18?: Yep!
Contact(s): Light_shade or .lightshade on Discord
Who Invited You?: Here!
Current Characters: N/A
Permissions: Here
Writing Samples: TDM thread and Deer Epilogue thread