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User Name/Nick: Ryann
User DW: none
AIM/IM: cornichaun @ plurk
E-mail: cornichaun @ gmail
Other Characters: none

Character Name: Zane
Series: Mistborn series
Age: early to mid-20s
From When?: From when he's just about to die at Vin's hand at the end of Mistborn book 2.

Inmate/Warden: Inmate! Zane is a horrifically violent person who regards himself as insane, has been used as a tool and a weapon his entire life, and wants to break free of that but hasn't the slightest idea how. He has killed many, many people and could use a measure of redemption.
Item: n/a

Abilities/Powers: I apologize in advance for the length of this section. I promise it's not because the powers are ridiculous but more because their specific effects, properties and uses are extremely elaborately established in the book series.

Zane is a Mistborn, which means that he has the ability to ingest certain metals and burn them to gain certain powers. This subset of powers is called Allomancy. Allomancers can either be a Misting, who can burn one type of metal and release exactly one type of power, or a Mistborn, who can access them all.

Notes:
- Allomancy is subject to physical laws -- every action yields an opposite reaction, gravity/physics/acceleration still apply.
- Effects from Allomantic metals are very predictable, consistent and bring with them their own inbuilt weaknesses.
- If an Allomancer has no metals, they cannot wield any of their powers.

A breakdown of metals follows.
PHYSICAL METALS
Iron (external, pulling): Iron allows the wielder to pull metal directly towards them. Pulling is done from the center of one's weight, and it acts as an actual pull would. That means if an Allomancer pulls on a metal heavier than their own weight, they will be unable to move the metal and will be pulled towards it instead of it being pulled towards them.
Steel (external, pushing): Similar to iron, but steel pushes metal away where iron pulls it. A combination of Steelpushes and Ironpulls can be used to jump around in a combination of flying and barely controlled falling.

Tin (internal, pulling): Tin enhances the senses: feeling, sight, touch, smell, taste. It enhances ALL senses -- an Allomancer can't simply enhance sight, so if they want to see far away, they have to sharpen hearing, feeling taste, everything. Loud noises and bright lights are very painful when burning tin, and can stun or disable a Mistborn with tin burning. (A note: Tin burns very slowly, so very small amounts of tin can be used to enhance the senses for a very long period of time.)
Pewter (internal, pushing): Pewter enhances physical abilities. It's often thought of as just enhancing strength, but really it's all physical abilities across the board, including speed, balance, and agility (mostly to allow the body to handle the increased strength). The body may also endure more in terms of wounds. Burning pewter for a long period of time to counteract fatigue can have deeply negative effects -- it's like the worst caffeine crash ever once you run out of pewter, and the physical shock involved can kill.

MENTAL METALS
Zinc (external, pulling): Zinc allows the user to inflame or 'riot' the emotions of those nearby. It enhances emotions in others, but cannot create them. Allomantic touches on the emotions may be detected and shrugged off by someone who knows what to look for. Additionally, an Allomancer cannot sense the emotions of others or feel the effects of emotional Allomancy, so they are essentially working blind.
Brass (external, pushing): Brass allows the user to suppress, or 'soothe' the emotions of others. It works similarly to zinc but reduces emotions instead of enhancing them.

Copper (internal, pulling): Copper may be used to hide the use of Allomancy from Allomancers burning bronze. The dead zone that copper creates is called a 'coppercloud'. Burning copper also makes someone immune to emotional Allomancy (brass and zinc) from others.
Bronze (internal, pushing): Bronze allows the wielder to 'hear' Allomancy being used nearby. With practice, the wielder may distinguish between the type and strength of the Allomantic power being used.

Further metals that he may use include:
Aluminum: Eliminates all metal reserves in an Allomancer's stomach, leaving them powerless. If someone wants to disable Zane, he can be forced to burn aluminum and eliminate his metal reserves.
Atium: This allows the wielder to see a few seconds into the future and react supernaturally fast in a fight. Atium burns excruciatingly fast and is very expensive.
Gold: Allows the wielder to see an illusion of themselves, as they would be if they had made different choices. Basically a vision into an AU. This metal isn't well understood.
Duralumin: An alloy of aluminum. Lets the wielder burn any other metals they have on in a brief, intense flash.

There are other metals that Mistborn are generally unaware of. I don't see any reason Zane would know of them and try to use them, but for the sake of thoroughness, those include cadium and bendalloy, both of which manipulate time in a bubble around the wielder. Electrum, an alloy of gold, allows the wielder to see a few seconds into their own future. Chromium and nicrosil are metals that allow an Allomancer wielding them to affect the metals inside another Allomancer.

Finally: Zane also has a Hemalurgic spike. This is a literal spike that was driven through his chest in the past (causing his internal anatomy to re-arrange so he survived). In a very basic sense, this can be thought of as giving him an extra measure of steel Allomantic ability, which gives him an additional boost in Pushing on metals. It means that he can do incredible things like rotate in midair above a coin, or aim metal extremely precisely during a push. He may also handle more than his own weight in this area, due to the strange Hemalurgic effects.

Now! Limiting these powers. It could easily be done simply by limiting the amount of ingestable metals that Zane has access to, but I think the best way otherwise is making the metals just burn out quicker. He can have the same amount of power, but for much shorter durations. This will annoy the shit out of him and force him to start finding alternatives to depending on Allomancy.

Also, the Hemalurgic spike can produce other weaknesses. It's mentioned in personality, but it can be used (in particular, by a god of his universe) to conduct very subtle, long-term nudges in personality and mind control, and to communicate via voices. I think it would be interesting to have this sort of hook up to the setting instead and lead him to have disproportionate effects from things like floods, making him more vulnerable to them. Removal of Zane's spike will eliminate both advantages and disadvantages coming from the Hemalurgic effects.

Personality: Outwardly, when he has no reason to put on an act, Zane is calm, quiet, lethal. He does not speak without need. He considers himself first and foremost a weapon. So darkness, mystery, a willingness to kill -- this is all part of his usual behavior.

Beneath the surface, he is in deep and terrible turmoil. He loves his father, the man who had him nearly beaten to death, who treats him as a tool: he wants his father's approval, is willing to go to incredible lengths to protect him and serve his interests. His affection expresses itself in twisted, strange ways: he allows his father to believe that he's constantly trying to poison him just so that he'll know Zane respects him. (And, in fact, when he tries to assassinate Zane in turn, he takes it as a mark of approval.) For him, violence is an expression of affection, and with the people he kills he's a little like a puppy depositing dead squirrels on his father's doorstep.

Zane is a follower, outwardly. He does not take personal responsibility for the violence he inflicts; in his mind, he is a knife. He is a tool to be used by others, as all Mistborn are. As such, without leadership, Zane would be aimless and volatile, unstable and prone to purposeless violence.

This, however, isn't exactly what he wants. There's a burning desire, deep within him, to become more than just a weapon. He wants to be the one at the hingepoint of the world, with the fates of thousands depending on him. He wants to be the best. The general, not the general's quiet and feared bodyguard. But this option is not open to him. He is not the legitimate son and heir -- Elend is. Elend, in fact, has the life that Zane never could, and that leads to a certain amount of jealousy.

And brings us to the purpose of Zane's character, and the role he served in the story, which was as a foil to Elend and as a mirror of Vin herself. Where Elend represents security and affection, Zane represents danger; he appeals to the assassin side of Vin, the violent street-kid side, and he very nearly steals her away from Elend entirely because there's a part of her that believes she should be like him: untrusting, violent, out for himself. And there's a part of her that sympathizes with his plight, too, in wanting to be more than just a weapon. He is the alternate love interest for Vin, the wrong choice, the one who is something she could have become if Kelsier hadn't interjected himself into her life.

Mistborn can be very, very dark characters, as they are often used as assassins. Zane revels in his own power to kill but also detests it being used by other people -- Why do we always have to be their knife? he asks Vin, in order to start to turn her against Elend. He longs for freedom but doesn't move towards it because, in a really fucked-up way, he still loves his father who has used and abused him his whole life. His father is all he knows, and so he can't leave.

There is an additional factor in Zane's personality that isn't the result of his upbringing. During a fight, in the past, Zane was speared with a steel spike through his heart. This wasn't an ordinary spike -- it's a Hemalurgic spike. This means that the spike was imbued with Allomantic power, and the act of touching it to Zane's bloodstream meant that he picked up Allomantic power from it. (This will be covered in the powers section.) It also means that he is able to hear and be influenced by the voice of Ruin, an adversary-type god in the Mistborn universe. Most of the time, this voice manifests itself as constant pushes to kill. "Kill him." "Kill them." "Kill her." -- Ruin's main goal is to drive Zane insane and make him cling to Vin, for plot reasons that are fairly elaborate and I won't go into here.

Zane interprets this as the voice of god, and he absolutely and completely believes that he's insane. His grip on reality is tenuous at best, and the constant push to kill twists him into an even more violent creature than he already was. In fact, in the books, this compulsion leads him to cut himself -- dagger-slices on his arms both to help him ignore the voice and to unsettle his father. (Personally, I believe that these slices are also a compulsion by Ruin, in order to make Zane more like Kelsier -- a man who had scars on his arms, and a man who was very important to Vin, thus making Zane more important to Vin.)

Barge Reactions: Zane has a... flexible grip on reality, and a creative approach to situations ahead of him. He adapted very well to the fall of the God of the Final Empire -- the Lord Ruler -- and masterminded most of a siege himself by maneuvering between all three armies involved. He's intelligent and he's adaptable and he fully believes that he is insane.

As such, I think he'll be pretty deadpan on the Barge. He would take things as they come, do his best not to make any assumptions (he'll be surprised when things don't line up with what he experiences from his world, from green plants to people who aren't horrible and exploitative), and try to maneuver events for his own advantage. In this case, I believe he'll very quickly learn to expect the unexpected, and thus won't have a complete meltdown over everything new and strange.

Path to Redemption: Starting off: Zane knows he's a terrible person. Which means that there's some moral compass in there to salvage, yay! He understands and acknowledges that he is extremely gifted at killing, deceiving and betraying, but he doesn't really take moral responsibility for it, as his father was the one giving all the orders. But he does think that people using him as a weapon is wrong. It's a situation where he does bad shit because he's told to, even though he knows the orders are wrong.

Moreover, he wants to be saved. He only gets truly violent with Vin when she cuts off the possibility of saving him, in the end of book 2. When she makes it clear that she isn't going to be the salvation he wants, that's when he feels he has no choice but to kill her.

So first: getting rid of God's voice is a big first step, and Zane will already start out willing to listen. It's a matter of nudging that moral compass into defining his actual actions, and giving him a chance to step out of the shadows, no matter how much he thinks he belongs there. It's probably best to have a warden who has experienced some of the same things before, someone who has gone to a violent place and who's come back from it, if only so that they won't take Zane's shit.

History: http://mistborn.wikia.com/wiki/Zane

Sample Journal Entry:
[ He asks, because it plagues on his mind. The answers he had from Vin were not satisfactory, and in the Final Empire, there were no others who could understand the dilemma. Who could answer the question.

Perhaps there are some here. ]

Great men need knives. It is taking that makes them great men, and taking is best done at the point of a blade. They are not supposed to acknowledge the tools they use. A knife does not expect to be thanked.

But I wonder what makes the knife stay and be wielded. Where is it that this loyalty comes from?

[ The key question: ]

Is it insanity?

Sample RP:
This place has retained an impression of his own chambers. Like a seal ring pressed into hot wax, is the impression that Zane has: the materials are the same, with stone on the floor and wood in the walls, and the furniture is of the same fine make that he had in the accommodations provided for him by his father. As with the hot wax, something in this prison is moldable, mutable; he thinks that perhaps the seal ring in this scenario is something Zane carries within himself. Some rigid setting that he holds with him even when taken entirely from the world.

It is odd, standing in the center of it. It feels different from his chambers. Subtle vibrations, no smell of ash, the absence of a scorched feel in the air itself. The sight out of the window: different, too.

He inhales, smells air scrubbed flat and clean. His eyes pick out microscopic flaws, duplicated as faithfully as the macroscopic. Silence greets his ears.

And then, abruptly, his tin runs out.

He is wrapped in numbness. His skin is dull to the air around it; his eyes will not focus as finely. His ears cannot attune themselves to the softest sounds.

He growls, low and annoyed, and breaks from his stillness, striding to the window. Tin burns far faster than it should, here -- about twice the rate, it seems, perhaps a bit more -- and he's already through his reserves. The other metals? Even worse.

He has been ... not unwilling to leave the room. Reluctant. He rarely left Straff Venture's camp unless it was night, after all -- unless it was a time when he could move freely among the mists. He belongs in the night, and in the darkness, and the exposure involved in stepping into the ship's corridors leaves him stiff and discontent.

But out there is the only way to get metals. The only way to see the rest who find themselves here.

Will fear stop him?

He grits his jaw, and moves towards the door.

Special Notes: