Dilandau Albatou (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
diabolicaladonis) wrote2026-06-07 02:35 pm
diabolicaladonis) wrote2026-06-07 02:35 pm
TLV App
User Name/Nick: Siobhan
User DW:fiercebadrabbit
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: plurk: fiercebadrabbit
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Wen Ning, Carl
Character Name: Dilandau Albatou
Series: A Vision of Escaflowne
Age: 15. Kind of. To the extent he is any age, because he isn’t really real. He thinks he’s fifteen anyway, and the body he lives in is. Probably. In any case, as a child soldier and brainfucked experiment from an evil empire, he has been treated as though he were an adult as long as he remembers, and he does a lot of slaughter of civilians and burning cities.
From When?: Somewhere around episode 16, after the death of the dragonslayers sends him into a spiral and destabilizes his fate-altered nature. He dies during one of his seizures instead of reverting to Selena.
Inmate Justification: Dilandau is an evil little shit. He is arguably a soldier at war, but he’s pretty shit at actually following orders when he’d rather do things his way, so that’s not much of an excuse. He will choose the most destructive method of carrying out a mission if he can possibly get away with it, because he thinks fighting is fun and destruction means you win. He won’t actively chase down civilians, but he won’t lift a finger (off the flamethrower trigger) to spare them. Call him out on the wreckage and the touch of pyromania and he’ll laugh at you for being a boring coward who doesn’t understand how cool war is and how great he is at winning it. He is, further, an arrogant bastard. He’s vain and petty and has never considered another person’s comfort in his life. He lashes out when he doesn’t get his way and will physically lash out at anyone he thinks he can get away with hitting.
Dilandau is a child soldier whose memories comprise nothing but propaganda and all-consuming training. (Those memories can be strangely patchy. Don’t ask questions.) He’s always understood being a war machine is what he’s for, and he’s the best at it, and all is permissible in service of the empire. Yeah, he has a little fun with it, but he’s doing what he’s supposed to. He’s been a commander for a year, and his hand-picked squad is the best there is. Yes, they’ve had some embarrassing failures, but after they’ve had a little sense beaten into them, they’ll be fine. And while he’s not one of them—he’s the commander after all—he’s allowed to be among them. They have stories and stupid habits and foibles and families and all the things he doesn’t get. And they’re devoted to him, of course. They’re his. If he puts a few bruises on them, it’ll make them better, and elevate them all, and he’ll go on hearing their quiet conversations through walls until he almost feels like he’s not alone.
Dilandau is not real. He’s one of the few surviving results of the Zaibach Empire’s experiments with the very nature of reality itself. His missing memories and the fuzzy stories he knows about himself are down to the fact that he didn’t exist at all until the original owner of this body went away. (Sometimes he remembers what he can’t possibly remember.) He has no idea what went into forcing him onto a reality that didn’t want him to exist, why his moments of instability turn into fits that turn into time disappearing into the sorcerers’ halls.
Dilandau never had a chance to be a person.
Arrival: Absolutely no agreement, kicking and screaming all the way.
Abilities/Powers: Dilandau is physically a normal human. His powers are “being able to pilot a mech” and “having a sword sometimes.” He may read as weirdly magical because causality got turned inside out to create him but he can’t do anything on his own.
Inmate Information: Once upon a time, the daughter of a minor Asturian noble went missing, and for ten years, that was the end of her story. Vanished without a trace. Within the boundaries of the neighboring and ostensibly allied Zaibach Empire, secret experiments into the use of the fate alteration engine, modeled after the power of lost Atlantis, proceeded apace. Altering the fate of specific subjects toward desired ends went poorly more often than not. They burned through a lot of orphans. Selena Schazar was a risky choice, a child who’d be missed, but her father was notorious for neglecting the family, and her only brother still a child himself. There was no one to come for her, and the potential fates of a child of relative privilege were a lot more interesting than those open to gutter rats and the whelps of beastmen that were easy to collect.
Dilandau is not Selena. When there is Dilandau, there is no Selena, and vice versa. Dilandau could have been if there’d never been a Selena. Which means he… Wasn’t, for the most part? The experiments began when she was five and weren’t meaningfully successful for years. He has no childhood and is missing big chunks of his early adolescence, one reason he is so emotionally regulated and mature.
Now, he doesn’t know any of this. He was told a plausible story about being the son of old allies of the emperor’s and the only survivor of a fire who had to be sent to the imperial sorcerers to have a hope of surviving. Fires are traumatic and can cause all kinds of injuries and complications. It’s a story that eats up inconvenient questions and points him at his purpose, to serve the empire that saved him and be an asset valuable enough to justify the trouble. To cooperate when he has flare ups of ill health, memory trouble, and seizures. To not bring up the fact that he thinks fire is pretty fun, but he’s terrified of being alone.
But he’s not going to make much sense to a warden who doesn’t know all this. Because the surface Dilandau is a shitty little bastard. He’s a honed blade, but for mecha warfare, meaning he has basically no transferable skills to non-giant-robot-based warfare. He likes fighting, winning, ruining things, and being in charge. He treats those beneath him in the hierarchy like garbage and those above with wary contempt, knowing they think he’s a deranged little freak just for being a good soldier. When he’s sent on a mission, he uses his hand-picked squad and their state-of-the-art equipment to annihilate all possible opposition, and he can’t see why people are weird about that. What the hell else is war? He’s a terrible loser, and vain, and an absolute coward if he thinks he’s actually going to get hurt, all of which crafts a truly toxic stew. What if you gave the worst teenager there ever was a mech?
But there are cracks in his armor. He treats his subordinates like shit, but he’ll kill for them. Their deaths sent him spiraling into instability and losing his connection to reality. Their ghosts defended him on the very battlefield where he led them to their deaths. He has dreams and fears he can’t explain, someone else’s traumas, that leave him desperately craving connection that everything about his life denies him. He is a weapon and was never anything else. He’s broken. He’s alone. He’s a child without a history who became a monster who giggles at fires.
Path to Redemption: Dilandau is a danger to himself and others, and both need fixing. The former is more fundamental but may need to be backburnered if he can’t stop trying to wreck everyone around him. Ideas like “you are not a perfect engine of war you are fifteen” and “people would not like you to set fire to their homes for your immediate gratification” aren’t new to him. He’s aware that others exist and have stupid and terrible opinions. Immediately addressing his conviction that violence is the answer and fighting back is cheating will likely mean a lot of headaches. Fortunately he has the subtlety of a truck and is very small. A firm hand and a lot of appropriate consequences will probably slow down the atrocities, at least. Sometimes you gotta pick him up by his scruff and shake him. He respects strength. If he thinks you’re allowed to have it. (He may be a particular pain in the ass for any wardens who can’t play in the fantasy miltary hierarchy space. He doesn’t listen to peasants.)
The more fundamental change that gets him to understand life has value and total war in service of the emperor is not a good goal is likely to be a matter of slow, gradual application of the power of friendship. He is desperately lonely and unhappy and profoundly traumatized by losing his dragonslayers. Who, it really must be said again, he treated like shit. He’s always treated everyone miserably unless they were clearly in charge of him, and even then he was a pet project of the sorcerers and treated like a pretty trophy. Being able to get actual human connections and also discovering he will lose them if he sucks will be important for him.
And eventually he’s going to have to learn what he is. That will go poorly and probably be a long way off before he’s at all willing to accept it as truth.
History: Here
Sample Network Entry: Here
Sample RP: Here
Special Notes: For all supernatural purposes, Dilandau has come to the barge separate from Selena, meaning getting too upset or being reminded of something scary will not cause him to transmogrify back into a different person, though he will expect that to happen because it’s what he’s been told about why his brain just goes offline sometimes. To his knowledge this is the result of lingering damage from his recovery from the "fire" and it’ll be really confusing when he’s just upset instead.
User DW:
fiercebadrabbitE-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: plurk: fiercebadrabbit
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Wen Ning, Carl
Character Name: Dilandau Albatou
Series: A Vision of Escaflowne
Age: 15. Kind of. To the extent he is any age, because he isn’t really real. He thinks he’s fifteen anyway, and the body he lives in is. Probably. In any case, as a child soldier and brainfucked experiment from an evil empire, he has been treated as though he were an adult as long as he remembers, and he does a lot of slaughter of civilians and burning cities.
From When?: Somewhere around episode 16, after the death of the dragonslayers sends him into a spiral and destabilizes his fate-altered nature. He dies during one of his seizures instead of reverting to Selena.
Inmate Justification: Dilandau is an evil little shit. He is arguably a soldier at war, but he’s pretty shit at actually following orders when he’d rather do things his way, so that’s not much of an excuse. He will choose the most destructive method of carrying out a mission if he can possibly get away with it, because he thinks fighting is fun and destruction means you win. He won’t actively chase down civilians, but he won’t lift a finger (off the flamethrower trigger) to spare them. Call him out on the wreckage and the touch of pyromania and he’ll laugh at you for being a boring coward who doesn’t understand how cool war is and how great he is at winning it. He is, further, an arrogant bastard. He’s vain and petty and has never considered another person’s comfort in his life. He lashes out when he doesn’t get his way and will physically lash out at anyone he thinks he can get away with hitting.
Dilandau is a child soldier whose memories comprise nothing but propaganda and all-consuming training. (Those memories can be strangely patchy. Don’t ask questions.) He’s always understood being a war machine is what he’s for, and he’s the best at it, and all is permissible in service of the empire. Yeah, he has a little fun with it, but he’s doing what he’s supposed to. He’s been a commander for a year, and his hand-picked squad is the best there is. Yes, they’ve had some embarrassing failures, but after they’ve had a little sense beaten into them, they’ll be fine. And while he’s not one of them—he’s the commander after all—he’s allowed to be among them. They have stories and stupid habits and foibles and families and all the things he doesn’t get. And they’re devoted to him, of course. They’re his. If he puts a few bruises on them, it’ll make them better, and elevate them all, and he’ll go on hearing their quiet conversations through walls until he almost feels like he’s not alone.
Dilandau is not real. He’s one of the few surviving results of the Zaibach Empire’s experiments with the very nature of reality itself. His missing memories and the fuzzy stories he knows about himself are down to the fact that he didn’t exist at all until the original owner of this body went away. (Sometimes he remembers what he can’t possibly remember.) He has no idea what went into forcing him onto a reality that didn’t want him to exist, why his moments of instability turn into fits that turn into time disappearing into the sorcerers’ halls.
Dilandau never had a chance to be a person.
Arrival: Absolutely no agreement, kicking and screaming all the way.
Abilities/Powers: Dilandau is physically a normal human. His powers are “being able to pilot a mech” and “having a sword sometimes.” He may read as weirdly magical because causality got turned inside out to create him but he can’t do anything on his own.
Inmate Information: Once upon a time, the daughter of a minor Asturian noble went missing, and for ten years, that was the end of her story. Vanished without a trace. Within the boundaries of the neighboring and ostensibly allied Zaibach Empire, secret experiments into the use of the fate alteration engine, modeled after the power of lost Atlantis, proceeded apace. Altering the fate of specific subjects toward desired ends went poorly more often than not. They burned through a lot of orphans. Selena Schazar was a risky choice, a child who’d be missed, but her father was notorious for neglecting the family, and her only brother still a child himself. There was no one to come for her, and the potential fates of a child of relative privilege were a lot more interesting than those open to gutter rats and the whelps of beastmen that were easy to collect.
Dilandau is not Selena. When there is Dilandau, there is no Selena, and vice versa. Dilandau could have been if there’d never been a Selena. Which means he… Wasn’t, for the most part? The experiments began when she was five and weren’t meaningfully successful for years. He has no childhood and is missing big chunks of his early adolescence, one reason he is so emotionally regulated and mature.
Now, he doesn’t know any of this. He was told a plausible story about being the son of old allies of the emperor’s and the only survivor of a fire who had to be sent to the imperial sorcerers to have a hope of surviving. Fires are traumatic and can cause all kinds of injuries and complications. It’s a story that eats up inconvenient questions and points him at his purpose, to serve the empire that saved him and be an asset valuable enough to justify the trouble. To cooperate when he has flare ups of ill health, memory trouble, and seizures. To not bring up the fact that he thinks fire is pretty fun, but he’s terrified of being alone.
But he’s not going to make much sense to a warden who doesn’t know all this. Because the surface Dilandau is a shitty little bastard. He’s a honed blade, but for mecha warfare, meaning he has basically no transferable skills to non-giant-robot-based warfare. He likes fighting, winning, ruining things, and being in charge. He treats those beneath him in the hierarchy like garbage and those above with wary contempt, knowing they think he’s a deranged little freak just for being a good soldier. When he’s sent on a mission, he uses his hand-picked squad and their state-of-the-art equipment to annihilate all possible opposition, and he can’t see why people are weird about that. What the hell else is war? He’s a terrible loser, and vain, and an absolute coward if he thinks he’s actually going to get hurt, all of which crafts a truly toxic stew. What if you gave the worst teenager there ever was a mech?
But there are cracks in his armor. He treats his subordinates like shit, but he’ll kill for them. Their deaths sent him spiraling into instability and losing his connection to reality. Their ghosts defended him on the very battlefield where he led them to their deaths. He has dreams and fears he can’t explain, someone else’s traumas, that leave him desperately craving connection that everything about his life denies him. He is a weapon and was never anything else. He’s broken. He’s alone. He’s a child without a history who became a monster who giggles at fires.
Path to Redemption: Dilandau is a danger to himself and others, and both need fixing. The former is more fundamental but may need to be backburnered if he can’t stop trying to wreck everyone around him. Ideas like “you are not a perfect engine of war you are fifteen” and “people would not like you to set fire to their homes for your immediate gratification” aren’t new to him. He’s aware that others exist and have stupid and terrible opinions. Immediately addressing his conviction that violence is the answer and fighting back is cheating will likely mean a lot of headaches. Fortunately he has the subtlety of a truck and is very small. A firm hand and a lot of appropriate consequences will probably slow down the atrocities, at least. Sometimes you gotta pick him up by his scruff and shake him. He respects strength. If he thinks you’re allowed to have it. (He may be a particular pain in the ass for any wardens who can’t play in the fantasy miltary hierarchy space. He doesn’t listen to peasants.)
The more fundamental change that gets him to understand life has value and total war in service of the emperor is not a good goal is likely to be a matter of slow, gradual application of the power of friendship. He is desperately lonely and unhappy and profoundly traumatized by losing his dragonslayers. Who, it really must be said again, he treated like shit. He’s always treated everyone miserably unless they were clearly in charge of him, and even then he was a pet project of the sorcerers and treated like a pretty trophy. Being able to get actual human connections and also discovering he will lose them if he sucks will be important for him.
And eventually he’s going to have to learn what he is. That will go poorly and probably be a long way off before he’s at all willing to accept it as truth.
History: Here
Sample Network Entry: Here
Sample RP: Here
Special Notes: For all supernatural purposes, Dilandau has come to the barge separate from Selena, meaning getting too upset or being reminded of something scary will not cause him to transmogrify back into a different person, though he will expect that to happen because it’s what he’s been told about why his brain just goes offline sometimes. To his knowledge this is the result of lingering damage from his recovery from the "fire" and it’ll be really confusing when he’s just upset instead.