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[dehallow]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Luna
ARE YOU AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLD?: Sure am!
CONTACT: AppleBlossoms
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Barok van Zieks
CANON: The Great Ace Attorney
CANON REFERENCE: Wiki!
CANON POINT: Post-canon!
CRAU HISTORY: N/A
AGE: 33
APPEARANCE: Here!
CONTRACT PAYMENT: Voyage home to his world. He does not trust anything else the demons from this world could offer...

QUESTIONNAIRE:

What does family mean to you and who do you consider a part of your family?

One does not choose their family.

[ To van Zieks, family is those who he is related to by blood or marriage. The concept of found family seems preposterous to the man. His father and mother died when he was likely still in his teenage years, so the family he remembers most clearly is his older brother and his older brother's wife. Out of these, his brother is the one who meant the world to him.

He pauses in answering the second part of the question, a silence so long it might seem as though he was not going to reply at all. ]

It's... an unbreakable bond.

[ … though that eventual reply is not very elaborate either.

It does hit the nail on the head though. For better or for worse, van Zieks feels that family defines him. He can add to his family as little as he can cut someone out from it.

Van Zieks has spent the past ten years defined by nothing but the loss of his brother who is looming over him like a shadow. And all the love he'd channeled into that ghost for all this time does not simply evaporate just by learning now that his brother had been a serial killer. How do you reconcile this? How do you love somebody who was never quite who you thought they were?

If Klint van Zieks weren't family, maybe Barok wouldn't have to ask these questions. Maybe he could have cut off his memory simple and clean. But Klint is his brother and his legacy winds up being Barok's responsibility. Family is a tie that binds. ]

What are your greatest regrets, if you have any? What would you have done differently?

…

There was a time I let emotion cloud my judgment in the courtroom. I closed my eyes to the truth and believed what I had already wanted to believe.

[ Hellbent on revenge for his brother's death, he had taken falsified evidence for the real deal and brought about the death sentence of a man he himself used to admire. He had paid for it with ten years in the shadow of that conspiracy, controlled by the gratitude he believed he owed to the very man who had orchestrated it all.

If he could go back in time and redo it all, he would have quieted his rage. Examined his biases. And in the end asked the right questions, leading the trial to the truth. Even if revealing the true identity of the serial killer would have been painful to Barok back then, it could have prevented a misinformed sentence and a lot of loss of life down the line. ]

What is your favorite diversion? Hobbies, indulgences, vices? Would you put off important things for that diversion, or would you be more strict about how you spend your time and/or money?

I happen to be something of an oenophile. I collect the finest vintages and, whenever possible, I like to visit the vinyards myself for a prior inspection. For the consumption of such hallowed drink, I personally see to it that only the finest chalices are made by expert artisans of global standing. And every week, I have an allocated slot of time set aside to perfect the storage system for these veritable treasures of drink.

Rather than as a diversion, I would refer to it as a kind of calling. There is no need to put off matters of import for it. It motivates one to settle work in a timely manner if the room for pursuit of one's true passion hinges on it.

[ … so yeah, he cares about wine a normal amount. Nobody else is even allowed to touch his casks of vintages.

There is a distinct possibility that his extensive focus on the ritual around drinking serves as a crutch to help him avoid slipping into genuine alcoholism. He is already known to drink during trials and he has set himself rules on a maximum amount of times he can refill his glass during their runtime (seven times). This indicates an awareness that his daydrinking could become a real problem for him at least professionally but likely also personally. ]

An enemy of your faction has asked for a meeting, proposing a truce of sorts to deal with a greater threat. On one hand, there is indeed a threat at hand, but on the other, this person double-crossing you is just as likely an outcome. Do you agree to the meeting? Do you trust them?

I am not a trusting man.

[ He used to say he trusts nobody but right now he maybe trusts one person, so there is a bit of an improvement going on.

However, I do not find that agreement and distrust are diametrically opposed in this scenario. Instead, I would consider it a matter of calculated risks. I consider a certain amount of danger to my life to be well worth it if the possible return is preventing the loss of life.

Naturally I cannot speak for the specifics of such a vague hypothetical, but it is likely that I would attend a meeting. I have survived numerous assassination attempts – should matters go sour, I will still have a fighting chance.

[ And if he dies, he dies. He still cannot bring himself to be that torn up about the possibility. ]

POWERS & ABILITIES:
Van Zieks has no supernatural abilities.
On the mundane side, he is a skilled prosecutor and an experienced sword-fighter. Born into the British aristocracy, van Zieks has enjoyed a state of the art education for his time period. His success in the courtroom shows that he is a rather talented debater as well.
His fighting skill has been tested time and time again when he had to thwart numerous attempts on his own life. He will be able to hold off any assailant with regular human strength and skill relatively well, but he will not be able to hold his ground for long against characters from battle canons or against demons, etc.

SUITABILITY:
Van Zieks comes from a murder mystery canon, which means he is accustomed to dealing with violence and crime by default. He has prosecuted a number of high profile cases involving organized crime or gruesome serial murders. Even on a personal level, his life has been touched by these experiences. His position in the judiciary has made him a target of the underworld of London and he has survived several attempts on his life, one of which presumably caused his facial scars. These assassination attempts have taken various forms – canonically noted are a poisoning and a street fight, the latter of which means that he will not be out of his depth even walking the more rowdy streets in-game.

Though his canon deals with neither the supernatural nor sexual content matter, I don't foresee van Zieks being difficult to play around either of these aspects. He is an adult who is used to persevering through external and internal hardship and he will make his way in Jigoku-cho as well.

FACTION SUITABILITY:
Shuten Clan: Though van Zieks is not at all rowdy nor criminally inclined, the dislike of liars in the Shuten Clan would resonate with him. Van Zieks is a man who wants to fight his battles fair and open, he has limited patience for subterfuge. This is someone who almost got poisoned and only was saved by the chemical reaction of his silver cup... and reacted to it by exclusively using transparent glass cups from there on out as a symbol of meeting his enemies head on.
He also has an extreme disdain for betrayals as much of his life was defined by a perceived betrayal he experience ten years ago. In that sense, he understands the loyalty code of the Shuten.
Tamamo Clan: This is definitely the clan that van Zieks has the least affinity towards. Not much about him suggests he would fit in, but his investigative power and his courtroom debate experience might make him an asset to the Tamamo clan's intelligence network. Van Zieks is fairly adept at keeping an eye on the power structures that lay behind the scenes in a city. Also I guess he can lift his nicely toned leg up really high in the air, that gotta count for something. However, personal freedom does not concern him at all, so he'd be as at a loss there as a wildly repressed Victorian man could be....
Sutoku Alliance: The mentioned skill at intelligence gathering would naturally also make him a decent fit for the Sutoku Alliance. Though he would find their methods disdainful, there is no denying that he could easily become useful to them. And he does prefer to not be oblivious to the power structures around him, nor to the misdeeds of those in power. Being with a clan that enables the collection of such information would suit this tendency.
Though van Zieks is part of the gentry in his world, he has a great distaste for those of the upper class that abuse their powers. In that sense, he relates a little to the Alliance's value of egalitarianism.
Department of the Enma: Well, van Zieks is a prosecutor and he could take up his job or an adjacent type of work in-game with ease. This department is both the work he'd feel most comfortable with and adept at as well as the department that is the most personally ironic for him. Back in London he was known as 'the Reaper of the Old Bailey' (shinigami in the Japanese) and he was working for (and being manipulated by) a chief justice pulling all the strings behind the scenes like a true demon king. Finding himself employed by the Derpartment of the Enma would feel almost like karmic punishment to van Zieks. He has just shed the Reaper role he'd begun to regret in his own world, so winding up doing the same work (for someone who does not care about justice as an inherent vaule! Again!) while being colleagues with literal Reapers? It would feel like being in hell indeed.
And yet, a part of him would be grateful for it, for the job that feels 'right' to him. At his canon point, van Zieks has just stepped out a little bit out of blind faith in the system of the judiciary, but he's been defined by fighting on the side of 'the law' without question for many many years. It would be easy for him to fall back into that mindset with the Enma, which would make it an intriguing personal struggle with development that could go either way.

SAMPLES

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