OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Inkwell
Other characters: The Signless (69problems)

IN CHARACTER
Name: Klaus Wulfenbach
Fandom: Girl Genius
Canon point/AU: Hunger Games AU! So canon point is... now.
Journal: myblimpisbigger
PB: Canon art!
History: The wiki is here for his canon history (if you need something more comprehensive, since the wiki is kind of iffy at the best of times, let me know).

Klaus was born and raised in District 3 , and like many children from 3 he picked up technical skills early-on. His father owned a factory, meaning that their family was better off than most and they were able to live in relative comfort. Their life was not by any means luxurious or extravagant, but they never starved, and Klaus never needed to take tesserae like many of the other District 3 children they knew.

Still, despite those odds, Klaus was reaped at age sixteen for the 35th Hunger Games, along with a fourteen year old girl he didn't know. The two of them never became especially close in the short time they had together before the arena, but he did like her well enough. She was charismatic and, while untrained, had a boundless enthusiasm for fighting. Klaus lacked that. His mentor and stylists eventually decided to present him as quiet and severe, something he was good at and which complimented his size and intimidating profile. He wasn't a favorite to win, certainly not half as much as his loud and enthusiastic districtmate, but he made a good enough impression to warrant an 8 from the gamemakers.

And he won. He came out of his arena nearly missing the fingers on one hand, but he came out alive, and that was something.

When he moved to the victor's village, his mother and father didn't come with him. His father still had the factory to run, after all, but he visited them often between working on his talent (clockmaking) and coming to terms with the fact that he was now never going to be free from the Games. Every year he'd have to go back, help mentor children he might know. From now on he'd be watched, speculated on, dragged out every couple of years to be rehashed and talked about again when there were no other good topics of conversation.

Of course, he did his part willingly. He felt the least he could do, as someone who had survived, was do everything in his power to keep his tributes alive too. It hit him extremely hard, then, when both of the children he mentored in the 36th games died. The girl especially, given that she lived almost to the end but was manipulated and murdered by another tribute despite all of Klaus's efforts to help her. Since that Games, he's had a particular dislike for District 7 tributes, and usually forbids his tributes from forming alliances with them.

He went on like this for forty years, losing children, occasionally helping them win. Beetee and Wiress were both under his mentorship, as well as Sherlock Holmes, and he is fiercely proud of all of them. He faded mainly from the public eye, though, by virtue of just not being suited for celebrity. Occasionally his rivalry with District 7 would get trotted out again, especially if there was some new development, but otherwise he was mainly ignored by the Capitol in favor of younger and more charismatic tributes. Most Capitolites knew him best for his clocks.

He could have possibly fathered a son and daughter at some point during this time (I'm leaving this vague for any people who wish to play Gil or Zeetha). He did his best to remain emotionally closed-off, especially as the more he moved within the inner workings of the Games the more he began to realize just how dangerous it was to be close to people. He did have some romantic flings, but he never stayed with any one woman for any real length of time, and if he did have children they'd be in their twenties by the current year. He figures he's better off just not knowing about them either way.

He's now been a victor for forty years. His parents are dead; his only real company is provided by his clocks, and by the other District 3 victors. He's still adjusting to this new style of Hunger Games, but it hasn't really changed his approach any. He's going to get his tributes through alive if he can, no matter where they're from.

Presentation:

Klaus's team during his Games chose to present him as cold and intimidating, quiet but calculating, and they made the right decision, because he didn't even have to act. Partially because of his size (he's seven feet tall, even, and no twig) and partially because of how he carries himself (ramrod-straight posture, chin up, calculated movements), Klaus is a very intimidating guy. He just looms, even when he doesn't mean to. Though he's mainly stayed away from Capitol bodymods, he does have one visible one: a ring of stitching around the base of each finger on his left hand, to signify where he almost lost them. The person doing the modding went a little crazy with it when he went in for touch-ups and it now goes up his arms and across his chest as well, but he doesn't mind. The Games aren't a pretty thing and he feels he shouldn't be either.

His personality matches how he looks. He's quiet and critical most of the time, and tends to cut straight to the point of things rather than dancing around the subject. He's the kind of guy who just wants to get things done instead of wasting time on pleasantries. Like many inventors, he's very analytical and logical, and is good at thinking about things from a variety of different angles. After forty years in the Games he's gotten to be a brilliant strategist, and he never takes things at face value.

At the same time, Klaus is a stubborn man. He tends to place his own judgement over everyone else's, and once he's come to a decision it's very hard to change his mind. He's able to justify just about anything to himself with that aforementioned logical skill, which sometimes bites him in the ass when the things he justifies doing really aren't very good decisions on his part. Granted, he doesn't make bad decisions often, but when he does they tend to be pretty bad – he's experienced this before in his carreer as a mentor, having lost tributes because of his own bad decision making.

And when he gets angry, he gets angry. Klaus Wulfenbach furious is not something you want to meet down a dark alley. And once he's angry at you, he will never not be angry at you. He can hold a grudge for forever (and has, in the case of District 7; his distaste for them is as strong as it was back during the 36th Games and will probably never abate, either).

Still, he's not an entirely negative person. His cynicism is sometimes channeled into a wry wit, and he does genuinely have a love of knowledge and invention. With the right people (and those are few and far between), he can become, while not exactly cheerful, at least not just quiet and sour. He has very very few true friends but those he does have he trusts implicitly, even if he may not be the best at overtly showing it. Klaus is just... really bad at social interaction that isn't all business. He's not a social butterfly and, while charismatic, he's charismatic in a dark, quiet, imposing way more than a Caesar Flickerman sort of way. He's awkward about showing emotions and affection, even when he wants to.

Motivations:

Mostly, Klaus is bad at interpersonal relationships because he's purposefully walled himself off. As mentioned in his history, the longer he spent as a part of the Games culture, the more it became clear to him that being close to someone made them exponentially more likely to be hurt. He purposefully keeps most relationships to some level of distance because of this. He doesn't want anyone to die because of him. His tributes are in the Games where it's very, very difficult to avoid, but those that aren't tributes, he feels he really has no excuse if they get hurt.

That's his biggest motivation, now. Keeping his tributes alive. That's always been his motivation but it's just gotten stronger the more Games he's been a part of. Keeping his tributes alive is his most important goal, his stated job, and he won't let anything get in the way of that.

This includes any sort of rebellion. He thinks it's ridiculous to ignore the safety of the people the mentors are tasked with protecting in favor of a rebellion that's very, very unlikely to succeed instead of just resulting in the death of everyone and probably even crueler Games, and so while he certainly isn't the Capitol's biggest fan he's more on their side than that of the rebellion. He's a firm believer that what is best isn't always what is good, and given his ability to justify just about anything to himself, he's quite comfortable with that belief. The current governmental system, while cruel and oppressive, he thinks is far better than the utter anarchy that would result if the rebellion actually succeeded and then everyone fell to fighting about who would lead afterward and how.

He'd never say any of this to anyone, of course. He tries to remain a neutral force and given that he's one of the more forgotten victors, it works well for him. Ultimately, he serves himself and the tributes he's been tasked with protecting. Even with the new style of Games, where death is no longer entirely permanent, he keeps the same philosophy.

SAMPLES
Thread: A musebox post with him and another victor AU.

Prose:

It's been forty years since he's been in this room for this purpose, and yet it doesn't seem as though it's changed one bit. There are the same racks of weapons and the same shady figures looking expectantly at him and the same cold fury at the fact that he's here at all.

He can't remember what he did last time to earn that eight, but it doesn't matter. He needs to earn something good this time. It's owed him, dammit, after surviving their Games once and playing their pet for forty years and watching so many children die.

He searches along the racks of bladed weapons until he finds a machete, not at all unlike the one he used in his Arena. He knows they know the significance of the weapon choice. He hefts it from hand to hand as he selects a target, and then throws it. It hits the target squarely in the head, knocks it back several feet, and pins it to the wall with a dull noise.

He turns to look up a the Gamemakers, raises an eyebrow, and leaves the room.

What is your character scored: Now? He'd be scored a solid ten, I think. He's a past victor so they know very well what he can do in the arena, and beyond that he's crafty as all get-out. Though he's in his mid-fifties, time hasn't been able to do much to combat the fact that he's a seven foot tall brick wall – he hasn't let himself deteriorate like many victors have, and hasn't fallen to any addiction. In addition, he's had forty years of working as a mentor to learn the ins and outs of how to play the game he's expected to play.

For his first arena, he was scored an eight – potentially dangerous due to his strength and size, definitely smart, but not skilled like a Career to merit double digits.

Additional information:

Past victor: Klaus's arena, the 35th, was an island arena: six small tropical islands surrounded by deceptively deep ocean. The main hazards were huge snakes and spiders on land, muttated crabs with extra claws at the seashore, and twenty foot eels in the water. There was a volcano on the northernmost and largest island, as well as cave systems on a few of the southern islands that were full of blood-sucking bats. Most tributes that year not killed by other tributes were victims of the dangerous wildlife; there were no deaths by exposure or starvation/dehydration, though being significantly weakened by those things did make being killed by the mutts far more likely. The outfit was one designed for hotter weather and a rugged terrain: a white wifebeater with a black waterproof windbreaker over it (hooded, two pockets), fingerless black gloves, light and loose camo pants in the district-associated color (four pockets, cuffs with the ability to be laced tight), lace-up black boots with heavy tread.

A quick rundown of his arena: He went for the Cornucopia and was able to snag a machete, which he used to kill another tribute (the girl from 11) during the bloodbath to obtain a bag with several lengths of sturdy rope and a book of matches. In any other arena this may have been considered a bad haul, but after seeing another tribute try to swim to another island and be pulled under by the eels, he realized he could use his rope to lash together trees he cut down with his machete and engineer himself a raft to avoid that hazard, thus giving him access to the entire arena with significantly less inherent danger in moving around. It was considered by the Capitol to be one of the best uses of the arena environment that year, considering he not only managed to build a raft body but, using logic and his knowledge of engineering, made a working rudder for it as well.

He survived mainly on crabs and snakes, which he'd stab with his machete and then cook over the coals of the fires he could make with his matches. He also made sure to keep on the move, cycling through the islands rather than settling on one as several tributes did. He picked off a few other tributes over the course of the next few days: the boy from 8, the girl from 12 (who was already injured thanks to an encounter with a spider), the girl from 10. In the process he sustained some light injuries himself, but never anything debilitating enough to make him a target.

As the number of tributes dwindled, islands began to sink to force tributes closer together, forcing Klaus to spend quite a bit of time in transit between them or simply floating on the ocean waiting to see which would remain above water and was save to head toward. Klaus was not on the volcano island when it erupted, killing three of the final eight tributes, but his fellow district 3 girl was. A fourth boy was killed trying to flee the eruption via the ocean, having decided to take his chances with the eels.

The final four consisted of Klaus, the boy and girl from 2, and the girl from 5, trapped on the only remaining island, the one that held the cornucopia. Unable to enter the jungle or the water thanks to mutts doubled in size, ferocity and number, they wound up fighting it out on the beach. Klaus was able to kill the boy from 2 while his female partner backed the girl from 5 down to the ocean until she was pulled in and devoured, and so it wound up a final confrontation between districts 2 and 3.

She was armed with a hunting knife and he had a machete, and while he was large and strong she was fast and agile, and neither of them were terribly hurt except for fatigue and stress and some superficial wounds, so the finale was a good one. He made the mistake of throwing his machete at her and missed due to her speed but disarmed her a few seconds later by grabbing her knife by the blade as she swung it toward his neck and yanking it out of her hand. He almost lost his fingers, but the important part was they were now on ground that was far more unequal in his favor. She was close enough for him to get a grip on her which meant the next few minutes of the fight was just a violent struggle that she was pretty much bound to lose. Eventually he was able to force her to the ground, hold her down by virtue of weighing about three times as much as her, and choke her to death. This brought his official kill count to six, and marked his victory.

Hunger Games AU and OC: Klaus is from District 3. Before the Games changed to be running near-constantly he'd spend his non-Games time there, working at his talent. Like many district 3 victors, that talent is mechanical in nature. Klaus's specific take on that theme is clocks. In the past forty years he's built himself something of a sought-after brand, designing everything from miniscule clocks barely a centimeter across to large building installations. Since he uses his talent mainly as a way to keep himself sharp, challenge himself, and distract himself so that he doesn't die of boredom and cynicism, his body of work is highly-varied and many of his pieces are one of a kind. He also has a good deal of district loyalty, as mentioned in his personality section.

If they were to include Klaus's canon doppelganger, it would likely be as a preemptive strike to remind him who's in charge, or retaliation for him being accidentally a bit too obvious with his dislike of the Capitol should something set him off in-game. While he expresses no seriously vocal anti-Capitol sentiment at present he also doesn't put on a happy face just because he's told to; though he's never acted out and doesn't plan to, he walks a thin line, and sometimes his wry asides hit just a little too close to the mark. He has no one left they can hurt to keep him in line, so repeatedly murdering another version of him would be the next logical step.

.Contact Information.

[E-Mail] misterporcelain @ gmail dot com
[Instant Messengers] misterporcelain @ aim
[Plurk] mister_inkwell
[Other] n/a
[Preferred] aim pls

.OOC.

[Backtagging] backtagging god i love backtagging dear princess celestia etc etc
[Threadhopping] yes, pls ask first
[Plotting] COME AT ME BROS
[Offensive subjects] rape/homophobia/transphobia/general lgbtq phobia is a no-no. physical/mental abuse too. talk to me on a case by case basis but in general i try to avoid these things.

.IC.

[What's okay to mention around him/her] nothing! go wild pls
[Is there anything you need us to know about interacting with this character? Special physical features, special abilities, etc] klaus is SEVEN FUCKING FEET TALLAND BUILT LIKE A BRICK HOUSE so yeah have fun with that also he is exceptionally scarred up whups
[Can I hack that strike or otherwise find out information they'd prefer to keep hidden?] please ask first, the answer will probably be no since he's an adult
[What would be a suitable way of disciplining them?] nothin' he's a teacher YOLO
[Can I troll/mindscrew/mess with in general?] yes yes yes yes yes ask first but in general yes
[Can I spit at/jinx/step on/etc? (i.e. fighting)] you can try, bro. you. can. try.
[Can I flirt with/hug/kiss/use other means of non-violent physical contact with this character?] he's a married man so imma say go ahead and try but he won't be into it and will make that clear.
[Anything else?] NOP

A. Morning; Around Mayfield

[Klaus is taking his adorable class of drone kindergartners on another field trip around town today! And guess what the subject is? The people of the town and how they all, to a one, have some horrible and irredeemable flaw. If he knows you? That flaw is going to be very specific. But can you really get mad at him in front of a group of adorable children?]

Shhh, class, look. There's another one now.

B. Afternoon; 729 Anderson; Locked to Tarvek Sturmvoraus

[There is a very large green pod dragging down the front of the miniature Castle Wulfenbach, which is trying to very valiantly to float proudly in Wulfenhaus airspace nonetheless. It's listing pretty badly. Who cares about the pod, someone help the airship!]

C. Late Afternoon; Around Mayfield; Locked to Garviel Loken

[There are two Klaus Wulfenbachs beating the shit out of each other on a street near you, Mr. Space Marine! Wat do?]

( Prose Introspection Goes Here )

A; Action

[So, people of Mayfield, there is a man sitting in the driveway of 729 Anderson next to an open wooden crate full of books. He seems to have sat himself down right there to read, and likely isn't going anywhere -- you're perfectly welcome to come up and pester him, if you wish.]

B; Phone

A question, Mayfield -- what is a Hero? Is a Hero by nature nothing but an embodiment of all that is deemed 'right' and 'good' within the culture he serves, or is he perhaps something greater and more difficult to define? 

C; Phone: Waver Velvet

[Well, this is awkward. But he feels it must be done.]

Herr Velvet, I would like to discuss what happened.

If you're willing.

[Hey, Mayfield! Guess who's no longer droned? This guy! Now, can you guess who is not at all pleased about suddenly having lost all of his hard-won regains? This guy again! And finally, can you guess who's looking at a certain letter while eating his morning waffles, and debating what the hell he should do about it? 

If you guessed half the people in Mayfield, you're probably right. But for the purposes of this post, it's this guy. One one side of his plate sits the letter, which he's read at least five times by now. On the other side sits the photo of Gilgamesh that came with it. He'll be here all morning, contemplating. Family, feel free to notice that the man of the house is no longer a drone!

And later on, he'll be making a phone call.]

Does anyone here actually believe for a moment that the person who wins this ridiculous competition will actually receive the prize offered, without a catch? 

A. Action for 729 Anderson
(mostly Hiccup but Lucrezia can tag in and be her usual Lucrezia-ish self too)

[This morning, Klaus made waffles for breakfast like usual. However, unlike usual, he has a motive. These waffles are extra-delicious and made with even more care than usual, and do you know why? Because he has a question to ask his son, and he wants to make sure said son is in a good mood.

You see, today, Klaus plans to be a Parent. And that means being nosy. He sits across from Hiccup and steeples his fingers.]

So.

Who are you taking to Prom?

B. Action for Ples Tibenoch

[All schools go on break this Friday, including the little kindergarten attached to Mayfield Elementary. To top it off, this week the kindergarten has been having short days, so Klaus is done with work much earlier than he usually is. Given that it's around lunchtime and he has nothing better to do, he decides to bother Ples at the bank.

Ples, there is a Baron stopping in to say hi and maybe convince you to take your break and come have lunch with him. Wat do?]

C. Phone for Garviel Loken

I was wondering if you were interested in joining me tonight, perhaps for dinner or merely a drink?

[Not that Garviel can really 'drink', except for the social aspect. But it's the thought that counts, right?]

[Good day, Mayfield. You may notice that there is a young man you have never seen before walking down your streets. Every now and again, he pauses to inspect cars and hydrants and signs and really, everything that is fairly standard in a town from the 1950s.

Unfortunately, this young man is from some time in the 1800s, and furthermore, an alternate version thereof. So really, don't be too confused when he stops in the middle of the road, puts his hands on his hips, looks up to the sky and says:]

Bill? Barry? Very funny, you two, but you can shut off the simulator now. I'm sorry for ever doubting that it would work! Good lord, if this is how you two intend to prove your point to Professor Beetle, I want no part of it...

[Do you approach this strange young man?]

{All replies will be from idkmybffeuropa }