[OOC: MAYFIELD APP]

[midgardserpent]

Name: Waffle
Personal LJ: captainlilith
Contact Info: AIM: theatrechocolate Plurk: withsyrup
Other Characters Played: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (How to Train Your Dragon)
Preferred Housing: N/A

Character Name: Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent
Character Series: Norse Mythology
Character Age: Several centuries.
Background: Once upon a time, the god Loki had three children with the giantess Angrboda. Of course, calling them “children” would be inaccurate. What they produced were three monsters. The eldest was Fenrir, the great wolf. The youngest was Hel, a girl who was half-dead, half-alive. Between them was Jormungandr, the serpent. When Odin, the Allfather, discovered Loki’s offspring, he pronounced them a threat. Fenrir he unsuccessfully tried to tame before chaining him for eternity. To Hel he gave governance over the dead who did not die in battle, and put her in a land of eternal ice and gloom. Jormungandr he threw into the ocean, where the serpent grew to be so large that he completely encircled the earth and took his own tail into his mouth. The day that he let go of his tail would be the end of the world.

Kind of a boring existence for a giant snake. Thankfully, he had his enmity with Thor the god of thunder to keep things interesting. Destined to kill each other during Ragnarok, the end of the world, Thor and Jormungandr met twice before the end times. The first time was in the halls of the giant king Utgard-Loki (no relation to Jormungandr’s father). As a massive prank on his guests, the giant king had them complete challenges that seemed innocent but were in fact impossible, one of which being that Thor was required to lift Jormungandr, who had been disguised as a cat. The great monster’s mass was conserved in cat form, so when Thor thought he was attempting to lift a cat, he was in fact trying to lift the entire Midgard Serpent. When Thor found out how he had been tricked and disgraced, he was not kindly disposed toward Utgard-Loki or Jormungandr.

The next time they met, Thor was fishing. He fixed a giant ox head to his line as bait, and used it to lure Jormungandr up from the bottom of the sea. The two fought mightily until Thor’s companion got scared, cut the line, and forced Thor back to the boat to ride home, leaving Jormungandr to await Ragnarok, alone at the bottom of the sea.

When Ragnarok finally arrives, they’ll engage in their final battle, and Thor will slay Jormungandr, but Jormungandr’s poison will kill Thor. Really, they’re the only beings badass enough to be the sworn enemy of each other.

Personality: Being the son of the god known for being intelligent and clever, Jormungandr himself is incredibly intelligent, which would probably come as a surprise to most. Just because he’s a giant sea snake doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of human thought. After all, it’s not like he has much else to do, circling the entire world and doomed by fate to hold on to his own tail until the end of eternity. This isn’t to say that Jormungandr isn’t also compelled by instinct, as evidenced by the fact he was lured by the bait Thor used to fish him up. Given the chance of course, Jormungandr might argue that he took it intentionally to break the endless monotony of his life, but it’s not like he was going to say no to a delicious ox head either.

Jormungandr has very little regard for individual human life. There are so many of them, crawling all over the earth’s surface and trying to traverse his seas (and they are his seas, make no mistake about that), really, would Midgard suffer if some of them were disposed of? No, it wouldn’t. So Jormungandr feels no remorse in sinking ships and making waves and stirring up the currents of the ocean to trap even the most experienced sailors. He doesn’t find it particularly amusing, doing such things, but it provides some interest, and it keeps the puny little humans in fear, wary of the sea, which is as it should be.

There is no love lost between Jormungandr and the Aesir, those gods who threw him into the sea in the first place. Yes, it gave him the opportunity to grow into a monster feared in all Midgard, which is very satisfying, but it is overshadowed by his imprisonment. For even if it is a prophecy, being prophesied to hold your own tail until the end of time is still a kind of imprisonment, and Jormungandr wouldn’t see it any other way. It has made him bitter and hateful, and honestly when Ragnarok does roll around, he’ll be glad to be a part of it. His situation has instilled in him a deep sense of nihilism. Very little actually matters in the grand scheme of things, because it’ll all be destroyed in the end anyway. Jormungandr has little understanding or sympathy for human plights because they are so far removed from his own situation. What should he care for the lives of puny mortals whose lives will inevitably make no difference? All he cares about is that they show the proper respect and fear toward him and his domain.

As for his own family, Jormungandr feels a sort of detatched loyalty to them. After all, they too have been imprisoned by the Aesir for unjust reasons, and despite the fact that he has had no interaction with his siblings or his parents since then, Jormungandr will still be glad to join them in bringing about Ragnarok. So to sum up: Jormungandr is a nihilistic, bored sea monster who will be glad to help destroy creation at the end of time.

Arriving at Mayfield, it would take him a very long time to get used to being human and everything that entails. He’d have to learn everything from the ground up, which would be incredibly frustrating, especially since he’d just come from being a giant fearsome sea monster and is now one of the puny worthless mortals whose lives are useless. As for speech, you’ll see in the sample posts I’ve linked that I have used a typing quirk to illustrate his speech patterns, but I’ll probably dispose of that in Mayfield. The way I see it, he learned language and so on when he was still living with his family, but since he didn’t need it for centuries under the ocean, it will take him a while to relearn it.

He'll be quiet most of the time, even after relearning how to communicate properly. He's not accustomed to conversation, after all. He sees no point in casual conversation. Talking is for exchanging necessary information, not casual chatter. If he sees no use in continuing a conversation, he'll probably just stare, and very likely just walk away. He's not knowledgeable at all in social skills. Politeness? Never heard of it. No reason for it. He's not the type of person to actively antagonize anyone. He's not generally hateful, nor does he generally take a liking to anyone. Personal relationships are meaningless to him, and he makes no effort to establish them or maintain them.

That being said, when he is roped into a conversation, whoever he's talking with will find that despite his overall air of nihilism, he has a wry, sarcastic sense of humor. He won't entirely eschew conversation, because there's always a chance that useful information will be exchanged. That, and there is very little else for him to do in his free time. So why not make things vaguely interesting?

His overwhelming sense of nihilism will extend to the town and its people, and when it comes down to it, he'll show no regard for property or people, destroying and killing whenever he deems it necessary. He doesn't do it for fun, but he derives some enjoyment from making things difficult for his captors, whoever they may be.

Abilities: Does being a bigass snake count as an ability? Well regardless, that’s one thing he’ll probably never regain, since he’d be way too big for Mayfield. In his original form though, he does have a poison that he can use by either spitting or biting. Also over time he may, with mod permission of course, regain aspects of his original body, such as serpent eyes, tongue, scales, proportionate strength, that sort of thing.

Sample Entry: I’m going to link a couple of threads and also make a sample prose entry if that’s all right. I just think that those threads are good examples of him interacting with people he knows, but it doesn’t illustrate the whole “hey look I am a giant god snake suddenly in a human body what is this madness” thing.

[It's been several weeks since Jormungandr arrived in Mayfield, and by this time he's grasped the basics of verbal communication, and someone was helpful and patient enough to show him how to use the phone. So he's making his first phone call, or trying to at least. His voice is low and quiet, and there's a slight hiss to it that suggests a general frustration at everything that's happened to him so far.]

I... everything is... [he pauses to search for the word] explained to me but I... question. What is purpose of... job. What do I... gain from it? No use in... [he has to pause again, and he is becoming more frustrated with his inability to properly express what he's trying to say] paper with words... no meaning. Useless. Explain. I do not like... being forced to do useless. Explain.