a young man's worries;

[alkahests]

OOC Information
Name/handle: Mauyn/M/Mii
Discord contact: unidentify
Other contact: pm
Pronouns: they/them
Permissions link: yeeteth
Other characters played: N/A
Do you have a reserve for this character?: N/A

IC Information
Canon: Mana Khemia
Character: Vayne Aurelius
Canon point: Ch12 - no paired character ending route
Canon intensity:

I always like to describe Mana Khemia to folks as 'boarding school SOL for magic nerds (because alchemists are the ultranerds of any kind of mage society, change my mind), if slice of life involved the club room regularly blowing up from experiments gone horribly wrong (or horribly right), likely maiming at the hands of the monsters you willingly and actively seek out for a good grade in combat class and general materials collection, and attempted/actual murder by at least one of your professors.' ...Don't worry about that last one, it's fine (no it isn't). It's for the most part a relatively lighthearted, comedic romp with a very normalized sense of danger ... right up until you hit the last of your three years in school, anyway, and the plot rears its head with a vengeance. Still, the most significant conflicts are interpersonal; demons, zombies, glass dragons, spirits, angels, all that? Just More Normal Monsters (that you can defeat and make into ingredience).

That said I am going to note upfront, and here seems like a decent place for it: there are suicidal ideation/assisted suicide warnings for this writeup, as it comes up regarding a significant backstory character that I cannot gloss over.

World information:

"What's the tech level of Mana Khemia?"
- Yes.

Take a vaguely European fantasy setting circa maybe 1600-1800s as your baseline, add elemental manifestations/embodiments of phenomena and concepts both concrete and abstract such as the Mana of Light, Dark, Time, Creation, Soul, Wind, Life, and so forth to the world ... then take many, many liberties with the tech level. And culture. Among other things. High magic, lots of elements, but they have walkie talkies and manga and sentai shows and will comment on overdone tropes as being straight out of cheesy movies. They've got refrigerators and vaccuum tubes and bioengineered living hair and dimensional bags of holding. The Far East exists? So did King Solomon and his seal of solomon (or something like it). It's still very much not AU Earth, given that the continents on the globes we see ingame look nothing like our world, even though there are multiple references to real world occult/alchemic figures (like, you know, Paracelsus! Theophrastus von Hohenheim, full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who will definitely not be relevant in this writeup) and concepts.

The world is at least somewhat decently connected considering the school is international and gets applications from all over the world, but the school setting the game takes place in is basically vaguely European (probably fantasy Germany, honestly) in classical invisible college style. And yet they also have insular villages from the middle of nowhere that will chase a stray out with rocks for the crime of daring to be (looks at smudged writing on hand) strange and coming from the isolated house in the middle of the woods. Also something about assuming he's a witch, and this being an unfortunate but known/understandable circumstance, because alchemy isn't well understood by the common populace despite being established internationally as a more or less reputable science, therefore he's clearly a witch.

Character Biofacts: 19 (9), male, usually-human-shaped Mana of Wishes
About the character:

'What's a Mana of Wishes,' one may ask! 'Why is there a 9 in brackets for the age?' How fortunate it is you're learning this all by reading it here instead of playing the game, because both of these are very lategame spoilers. But let's start with what Mana in general are first: Mana are beings who govern the various phenomena of this world. Wind, fire, earth, water, darkness & light, the moon & stars, emotions & heart. There are many kinds, but they’re all alike. In other words, pure power. Stick a pin in that for now.

Vayne Aurelius is an enigma. Both to us, the players, and himself; he is introduced at the very start of the game in a voiceover only memory sequence wherein he meets Sulpher for the first time, realizes that they're all the other has in the world, and learns his own name. As the memory ends and we reach the present time of the beginning of the game, Vayne is revealed to be a ragamuffin in threadbare, simple clothes, living out a simple existence in an abandoned house in the woods because none of the nearby villages will allow him to enter. As the game progresses, you quickly learn that Vayne has a pedigree: he's presumably the mysterious orphaned son of an equally mysterious yet famous alchemist, alumnus of a prestigious international academy, and that academy has a space open with his name on it.

Timid and retiring at first, he's dragged quickly into shenanigans and a friend group by more extroverted classmates, and there, as he becomes more comfortable among the people of said friend group, he begins to flourish. He's kind and well-meaning and thinks of others before he thinks of himself. He's clumsy and inarticulate. He's easily bullied into being the one who has to do all the work on the group project. He's infuriatingly talented, the type of student who tops the class lists effortlessly, much to the would-be ire of whoever second place is (if Al-Revis was that kind of school, anyway). He's willing to reach out to someone who's declared they hate him, because he genuinely thinks they can be friends. He's the glue of the group, and oftentimes he's the one to demonstrate a generally intuitive understanding of people, smoothing (or at least trying to) over ruffled feathers when some of the more colorful personalities he keeps in close contact with start to come into conflict with each other.

He's happy to simply spend time among people regardless of how often they make him play the straight man to their hijinks. After being alone for so long before, shunned and driven away from community, it's nice to have something like home. As far back as he can remember, it's only ever been him and Sulpher. He's simply accepted that he has amnesia, that the reason he can't remember back further than about six years (at game start, anyway, the game spans three years) isn't important...

So of course, when the promise of being able to learn more about his mysterious, late father is dangled in front of him, of course he takes it. Of course he wants to know where he came from. Of course he wants to know more about himself?

And that... is a journey that spirals through several twisty turns before it culminates in this:

Vayne Aurelius, presumed son of the late Theofratus (sic) Aurelius (sic), is not actually his son at all. The late Theofratus Aurelius was an alchemist of unparalleled skill, garnering the envy of many, which is why he didn't stay in academia despite his genius and instead left to become a wandering physician– but not even he was immune to making mistakes. And the mistake he did end up making–of curing a young girl of her terminal illness, but at the cost of most of her remaining lifespan–ended up breaking him. For a man who had never before known failure like this, to be confronted with his own lack of power? Distraught, he secluded himself in a lonely house in the woods, whereupon he set upon his final great work.

Perhaps in the beginning, it could have been an attempt at fixing his mistake. We will never know, because the extended seclusion ended up warping him. 'Conceit of being a genius. Vengeance against mockery. Vanity to spite others.' Theofratus' final work was to create life; that is, to create Vayne: a refined form of artificial Mana. Vayne doesn't have amnesia; he simply just has not existed for that long. And in a world where the most talented alchemists partner with and contract themselves to Mana if the Mana so deigns to acquiesce to a pact and share their wisdom and power, the assumption has always been that Sulpher is Vayne's Mana.

The reality is that Sulpher has been hiding Vayne in plain sight all along. Rather than Sulpher being Vayne's Mana, Vayne is Sulpher's Mana. And Sulpher– is merely a normal cat. An old one, at that, one who allowed Vayne to come to Al-Revis partially because he knew he couldn't stop him, but also because he knew Vayne would need to have friends, people he could trust, when Sulpher reached the end of his lifespan. Especially because Vayne is not just any simple Mana, but the Mana of Wishes, able to make things happen and defy the laws of the world because he wants it.

What are his limits? We just don't know. No one does. He may very well have subconsciously been warping reality and influencing events around him all along, or he might not have, but who could know? Who could prove otherwise? He may very well have no limits at all, save for the ones he thinks to impose on himself. And this is the crux of the argument for why he can't be allowed to live, because if ever his existence became known to people at large, then you don't need to stretch the imagination much to think of what people might be willing to do to control him, what they might be willing to do with that kind of power. Just glance over at the Fate/ series to see a short list of what atrocities people would be willing to commit in order to earn even the prospect of a single wish. We know from the other endings that he's capable of severing himself from/denying-slash-suppressing his power such that he registers as human on every possible test thrown at him, but given that this, too, was accomplished via his own wishes... well. Nevermind that in the crossover jamjar nexus mobage, he's explicitly from post canon per his character profile, yet it still very clearly titles him "The Power to Grant Wishes".

In any case. The teacher who reveals these truths to Vayne also declares that he cannot be permitted to exist, that right now, as his power is still maturing, before it becomes full-fledged, he needs to disappear. And though Vayne and his friends do defend themselves from her... he can't fully shake that off.

Vayne Aurelius is the butterfly who has been convinced that it would be better for the people it cares for if it died within the chrysalis. After all, nearly the entire school, students and faculty alike, rejects and fears him as a potential danger to the world or what he could do to them after the revelation of what he actually is comes out. After all, one of his friends was already killed because of him, and that was only to prove a point. Even if he managed to bring them back, the point still stands that it wouldn't have happened at all if it wasn't because of him. After all...

Vayne is the man-made manifestation of the concept of human desire, the elemental embodiment of what people want, and the first wish he ever granted was his own father's creator's wish for death, long before he was aware of his own wishes enough to be able to say no. With that sort of intuitive empathy, that passive knowledge of what people want suffocating him, and the desire to help make things better for the people he cares about, what choice did he have otherwise?

Abilities: Mauyn play characters with a normal powerset challenge failed yet again goddammit i swore that after the Kirby character i wouldn't do this to myself again–

Shockingly, Vayne, the lead character of the canon Mana Khemia, Alchemists of Al-Revis, is an alchemist. This effectively means he is the ultimate upcycler. Give him your random junk and he will make you better random junk, or much less random not-junk out of it. I don't know how exhaustive of a list you want for the kinds of things he can make given the appropriate equipment and or materials, but a brief but definitely incomplete selection of some examples includes:

• wide assortment of metals, enchanted and mundane alike, including gold
  
• fabrics and cloths
  
• a very wide variety of various intermediary reagents and solvents and materials, many of which double as viable standalone items of their own
  
• a bunch of musical instruments?
  
• magic food!
  
• magic bombs!
  
• medicines galore!
  
• so many weapons of varying types and clothes and armor and accessories, including things like mechanical swords, dimensional bags of holding, funky transforming mech-hammers, donut cat collars,
  
• ...why don't i come to the mods if there's anything particularly relevant/broken, huh.

Anyway, Mana Khemia's world as a setting does distinguish between alchemy and other forms of magic such as witchcraft, but pinpointing what that distinction is exactly is kind of difficult when the setting is a school of alchemy and as such, everyone in the party practices... alchemy. That said, abilities that in universe people figured were normal, reasonable skills for a human capable of both combat and alchemy, or at least didn't raise any questions:

• Analyze - exactly what it sounds like. 'Using Sulpher's power' (which you now know thanks to reading this app is a lie), Vayne, well, does rapid analysis of a subject/enemy and just... learns its most prominent/notable traits, weaknesses, and resistances.
  
• Eluding Thorn, Blade Pillar, Rising Pillar, Violent Pillar et al - lots of swords on demand, in varying configurations of his choosing. field of swords? you got it!
  
• Chaos Devotion - due to Vayne's power, Sulpher is a transforming living weapon, so you know, why not have the two of them become a giant sword with an eye on it before throwing themselves at enemies, right.
  
• Shade Shift - it's a shadow clone jutsu. Vayne can split off an independent shadow of himself that can take its own actions. for the record Vayne is extremely darkness/shadow magic coded.
  
• Overrealm - it's a 'you get three turns back to back without advancing the turn gauge/timer any' skill, so i'm going to assume it's some sort of super speed time dilation nonsense. he go fast, but only after a little bit of prep time.
  
• Einzelkampf - you know the ribbony bits around him in the art on the journal layout. yeah, think those, but now there's more of them and they are so many bladed ribbon chains, able to spear through and snare an enemy. also another giant magic sword i guess.
  
• Common skill elemental magic - if you enchant your weapons/accessories/armor a certain way while making them you can also use elemental magic along the lines of fire, wind, ice, lightning, or earth. There's a couple more esoteric non-elemental spells like Choke (silence status) or Nightmare (sleep status) and similar, as well as healing spells, but these are all like, base spells (though not necessarily weak; the high level spells like Blizzard and Meteor and Tempest are all still common skills) from a common pool of spells just about any alchemist could cast if they know what they're doing as opposed to any of the more specific ones like in his above skillset.

You can also conclude from the above that he is a capable swordsman. Though 'swordsman' might not be quite the right term for it; his fighting style with a blade is more or less akin to using it as claws; it's very wild and breakneck weaving rather than following any more formal school of swordplay, and can be contrasted quite clearly against the other two sword wielders in the party. Raised by a cat, etc etc.

For more mundane skills, alchemists in his canon are quite adept at roughing it, it seems. They tend to their own student farms, they can forage for useful stuff, they can mine, fish...

And then of course we have the elephant in the room. All things considered, we don't see very many explicit usages of Vayne's power as a Wish Mana, mainly because he's a baby elemental embodiment of wishes (several of the other mana attached to the party, if any indication of age is present at all, are centuries old and then some) and is still coming into himself. What we have seen is...

• He has explicitly raised the dead on three separate occasions, and not in the standard RPG 'just throw a phoenix down/life bottle/etc at em to revive from KO' way. This has worked on a burnt tree, a cat who died of old age (with the added bonus of apparently reversing some of the aging process; Sulpher notes that he feels younger after getting revived), and the friend who got murdered by a professor to prove a point.
  
• Unwittingly freed a being from a very powerful seal that's lasted hundreds or more years without any apparent sign of weakening.
  
• Made an unwinnable fight winnable, in game terms. The party's extremely outclassed and in over their heads against a dangerous, powerful dragon, to the point where their attacks are doing basically single digit damage; Vayne makes it so that without any real apparent change in the situation otherwise, they can deal more meaningful damage to their opponent.
  
• Crafted a non-euclidean pocket dimension out of memories and fragments of the space it swallowed up. This one he did accidentally/subconsciously in his sleep; he went to bed to sleep off the depressing things that had happened during the day and woke up to 'huh. oh. that's a thing.'
  
• This thing! I did say usually human shaped.
  • Speaking of that thing, me having to grab that screencap reminded me it has some weird skills sigh. Notably it can spawn shadow copies/reflections of the people close to it (Mirror of Desire), as well as various eyeball minions based off of emotion, apparently (Tears of Rage, Tears of Sorrow, etc etc). This is not all, of course, but this section is getting long and I'd rather only go into detail if somehow this form ever becomes relevant.

Also he levitates in the air and glows whenever he's using his powers on a more significant wish of some sort, I guess there's that. There's enough stuff I probably forgot something minor somewhere. You want me to propose a nerf for the subconscious reality warping, screw the laws of the world I can probably (maybe?) do whatever as long as I can wish hard enough for it thing? Mana aren't gods, they don't need devotion or worship, they just are, but I figure the whole lack of people and therefore general wishes and desires and wants in the world might be a decent excuse for why his power might be more prone to fizzling out as the plot demands. If there's less of something out in the world then the concept of that something can be accordingly weakened now or something, whatever best suits the narrative. Plants and ghosts count for less now than a whole alive person or something shhhh sorry ghosts. Alternatively maybe there's too much influence from the ghosts/other entities present and that introduces the possibility of wishes going horribly wrong because other things decided to hijack the hypothetical wish in order to make themselves known? Vayne essentially does all he does on instinct, soooo...

Noteworthy items:

Sulpher - Vayne's friend and guardian, a cat that has been with him as long as he can remember.

I'm making things easier on myself inventory wise (at least to start) by saying he's basically just got the stuff on him (so, endgame armor of Bleak Veil, a darker than black kind of shadowy veil/cloak, probably some sort of enchanted/runic collar for Sulpher, and a couple accessories enchanted with Useful Elemental Spells), his uniform, and that's it. Most of the stuff he had is probably with his party, who he told to go ahead of him because he has something he needs to do first before he catches up. :') He's probably got a few sundry vials of medicine, his student journal/notebook, and little besides that.

Mixed gender room ok?: yeah sure
Player content notes/squicks: the only things that i know for sure are squicks are like, visceral eye gore and cordyceps style mind control slash parasitism, both of which are covered under general body horror/gore so uh. i'll note things as/if they come up?
Anything else: listen i'm like. well aware what sort of ridiculous powerset this is, but i also distinctly recall a [ominous mod voice] i'll allow it so,,, i pwomise i won't powergame he's currently terrified of his own potential and what he could do to people anyway
also, in the interest of full disclosure and because the about was already getting long enough, there's two vaynes. the second is content to be a lurking voice in the back of vayne's head generally, he's the one with more of a connection to/knowledge of what they are (in fact he's the one who remembers killing their father), but he is capable of manifesting independently in canon, albeit while they were already in a construct that vayne created subconsciously titled 'heart's prison', so.
Voice samples: ein • zwei