![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Application for The Box
Jun. 29th, 2014 06:37 amPlayer Information
Player name: McGwiggles (Gwiggs, if you prefer)
Contact: I'm available on AIM and also on Dreamwidth, where my username is McGwiggles.
Are you over 18: I certainly am!
Characters in The Box Already: None.
Character Information
Character Name: Groot
Canon: Marvel Comics (616)
Canon Point: Annihilators #01. After the Guardians of the Galaxy have broken up, but before Rocket has saved Groot from his punishment on Planet X.
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive.
History: Groot's life began, much like any other Flora Colossus, on Planet X. He was spawned as Groot the 23rd, a descendant of one of the Arbor Masters – the leaders and protectors of Planet X.
He was a kind-hearted sapling, who enjoyed his simple life among the leaves and branches of Planet X, and who cared for the planet's countless other sapient inhabitants. Unfortunately, his sentiments weren't shared with every member of his species, and Groot often found himself getting into fights while defending the well-being of Planet X's citizens from other, less friendly members of his species.
Eventually, one of these fights took a turn for the worse, ending with Groot brutally smashing the other sapling into pieces. While this isn't enough to kill a member of their species, the assault was serious enough to warrant banishment from his home planet.
What happened in the years following is a mystery, but it's clear that his banishment effected him negatively. The next time Groot is seen (chronologically speaking) is in 1960, when he arrives on Earth for the first time. His years away from home (mostly spent alone in space) had made him bitter, angry, resentful and callous – an entirely different person than the starry-eyed young sapling he once was.
He arrived on Earth apparently with the intent on furthering his own scientific knowledge. This was some time before the Avengers or the Fantastic Four came into existence, so when Groot showed up from outer space – falsely claiming the many titles of his planet's royalty - and tried to abduct an entire small town, its citizens were on their own. Fortunately, with the help of some genetically modified termites, Groot was defeated and they were left alone.
Stranded, but far from dead, Groot remained on Earth for the next several decades, intermittently spent imprisoned by various Earth governments and heroes, or hiding from them. His transgressions (aside from the initial attempted mass-abduction) were all mostly minor, but that did little to dissuade various organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D. from bothering him, and all the while Groot grew angrier and more bitter.
Eventually Groot got his hands on a ship and traveled off-world, but his luck didn't last for long. Sometime before 2007, he drifted too far into Kree space and was detained – his existence apparently counting as some sort of crime in the Kree empire – and Groot found himself imprisoned once again.
His next bout of freedom came when the Kree themselves were invaded by the Phalanx, a techno-organic species reminiscent of the Borg. The Kree empire quickly found most of their technology hacked, and their citizens absorbed into the Phalanx hive-mind. Desperate to create a non-tech-based resistance, they drafted a group of prisoners into a response team which was lead by Peter Quill, the former Star-lord.
The battle against the Phalanx was hard-fought, and Groot nearly died twice (blown into pieces and burned to the ground, respectively), but Peter Quill's response team, along with the help of Richard Rider, Quasar and several other cosmic heroes. The Kree race was saved, and Groot and his fellow prisoners had earned their freedom.
Quill had taken a lesson from this experience: The galaxy is full of massive threats, and it can't be trusted to take care of itself. As a result, he formed a new team, consisting of the surviving members of his“dirty half-dozen,” and a few other major players in the war against the Phalanx.
They called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy and set up shop in Knowhere, a scientific research station located on the edge of the known universe. From there, they took it upon themselves to proactively keep the universe safe from any and all threats it may face. When the team was originally formed, Groot was still covering from his recent immolation, but as he regrew he quickly became a staple member of the team. By this point he had begun to mature into his species' form of adulthood, and thus lost the ability to communicate normally, but he was fortunate enough to have friends in Rocket, Mantis, and a few others who were able to understand his subtle, native language.
It was during this experience that Groot's childhood kindness began to show its face once more. Although he still acted gruff and pompous, he looked out for the teammates and did what he could to protect them from harm as they protected the galaxy itself, and did not hesitate to put himself in harm's way for the good of the team.
Things were good for a while (or, as good as they can be for a group struggling to keep the universe in one peace), but unfortunately things weren't meant to last. Tensions rose across the galaxy as the then-recovered Kree empire approached war with the Shi'ar. An incredibly large bomb set off by the Kree caused an enormous rift to form in reality itself, and although Adam Warlock (the Guardian's resident magic-user) was able to halt it's expansion, he ended up giving into his dark side in the process.
The newly awakened Adam Magus proceeded to create an illusion of an attack on the Guardians, where he appeared to kill Cosmo, Mantis, Phyla-Vell, Gamora and Major Victory and gravely injuring others before eventually being defeated by Star-lord. In reality, he had simply warped them away into a prison of his own design, leaving the Guardians to believe they had defeated the Magus at a great cost. Groot and his teammates grieved the loss of their thought-to-be-lost comrades.
This illusion was brought to light by Phyla-Vell's mental link to her soul-mate Moondragon, who revealed the plan to the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy, but not before Adam Magus was able to complete his plan and reopen the same rift that his good-side had sacrificed so much to close, and unleash the contents of an undying universe into their own.
The Guardians freed their companions (with the exception of Phyla-vell, who had been tragically slain by Thanos), and were left to face the unending onslaught of tentacled horrors spawning from the rift. Peter Quill took a small response team to escort Thanos into the rift, in hopes to use him as a means to kill the contents of a universe where death did not exist.
They were successful, but it cost the lives of Peter Quill, Drax the Destroyer, and Richard Rider.
Without their leader to keep them together, the Guardians of the Galaxy all went their separate ways.
Groot, having been changed by his experiences with the Guardians of the Galaxy, journeyed home after countless years away, in hopes of making amends with the Arbor Masters and “setting down roots,” so to speak.
This did not go as planned, however, as the Arbor Masters quickly learned that he had falsely claimed their titles, and found him guilty of Tree-son. He was sentenced to life on the aptly-named Punishment Isle, where he was to be routinely tortured by the equally aptly-named Cyborg Punishment Birds – mechanical woodpeckers designed to drill and burn holes into the wooden hide of criminal Floral Colossi.
Inevitably he would be saved by his closest companion, Rocket Raccoon, but this is the canon point that he would be taken into The Box instead.
Personality:
His Divine Majesty King Groot the 23rd is a prideful being, tasked with many responsibilities and a whole lot of prestige to go with it. He is known as the self-proclaimed Monarch of Planet X, the Custodian of the Branch Worlds, Ruler Over All he Shades and a Guardian of the Galaxy. Although none of these honorifics technically belong to him, he's taken them as his own and he honestly believes they're rightfully his.
As a result, he's gained a pretty high opinion of himself (and of his superiority in general). It's even to the point that when he was still able to speak properly, he referred to the other, more dominant species of the universe as “mammal-things” and “fleshy vermin.”
Despite this, his pride has never gotten in the way of his responsibilities. During the Phalanx invasion of the Kree, for example, he recognized the potential threat to the rest of the galaxy (specifically to Planet X) and he agreed to work with and under the command of Peter Quill, a humanoid. He did not object, nor did he hesitate for even a moment to put his life on the line and put himself through a great deal of suffering (by setting his larger body ablaze) in order to protect his teammates and complete the mission they'd been assigned.
Over the course of that mission, Groot formed a bond with his teammates (particularly with Rocket Raccoon), and after he had regrown himself from a twig he decided to remain with them as they formed the Guardians of the Galaxy. In doing so, he took the continued existence of the universe (and the safety of his teammates) as his responsibilities as well. He quickly came to care for all of his teammates and, perhaps more importantly, he has come to respect them.
Groot's initially rough exterior has become easier to see through since he lost his ability to speak properly. The mature form of his species has a stiff and inflexible larynx that only allows them to say the phrase, “I am Groot.” While the people closest to him have no trouble understanding what he's trying to say, with most people he is forced to communicate through his actions or not at all. And so it is through his actions that his feelings towards his teammates becomes truly apparent – be it the sudden intensity coming from him as he stomps one of the religious leaders responsible for Moondragon's capture or the look of concern on his face when he finds his friends imprisoned in stasis pods.
This nonverbal communication, combined with his enormous size, often leads people to assume that he is a mindless brute, which isn't true at all. Groot is actually quite intelligent – which is evident by the advanced vocabulary he used while he was still able to speak and by his impressive feat of quasi-dimensional super-positional engineering he use created (with the help of Maximus the Mad) to defeat the tentacled horror from the Cancerverse. Due to his royal lineage, he has been given the finest education by some of the most brilliant tutors the galaxy has to offer and, while he may not be able utilize this education often, he is far from stupid.
Items on your character at canon point:
Nothing!
Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
Growth: Groot can increase his mass at an alarmingly fast rate, either by consuming other types of wood as food, or by simply planting himself and growing on his own. The second method is typically preferable, but depending on the amount of mass he's growing it can take quite some time to do.
Tree physiology: Groot's wooden body provides him with great strength, proportionate to his mass. The bigger he is, the stronger he is. On top of this, most conventional weapons don't work on him. He has no organs (vital or otherwise), so guns are hardly effective, for example.
Cellular Regeneration: As long as a single splinter of Groot remains, he can regrow his entire body from that piece. Similarly, he can grow back lost limbs relatively quickly as well.
Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
http://box-network.dreamwidth.org/106977.html
Prose Log Sample:
[The enormous, currently one-armed, tree-being stomps furiously down the streets of Northtown.
Such impudence.
This is unacceptable. Unforgivable.
To steal Groot away at all is an affront to him and to the Guardians of the Galaxy as a whole. Today of all days, this should not have happened. So many Guardians... So many friends and comrades had just been lost. Good people died to save the Universe today. The Guardians have not even had the time to properly grieve.
And now someone deems it necessary to kidnap Groot?
No. Groot will not have it. As a King, as a Custodian, as a Ruler, and as a Guardian of the Galaxy, he will not abide such disrespect to himself and to his teammates. They should not be dealing with another loss so soon.
They – whoever the fools are that saw it wise to take him – should expect a reckoning for this.
The trouble is finding out who they are and where he can find them.
Groot stomps a wooden foot into the ground in frustration. His righteous indignation was not going to get him home by itself, he needs to think.
In order to get him out of Knowhere – and he was most certainly not in Knowhere anymore- required a powerful teleporter of some sort. And teleporters, in Groot's experience, require some sort of power source. Typically a large one.
Most of the buildings in this suspiciously earth-like biome lack any obvious signs of power. Certainly they lack one large enough to charge a teleporter to its full capacity. Not a teleporter powerful enough to move someone as large as he is, at the very least.
Perhaps further into the wilderness, then? Hiding from the prying eyes of the unfortunate beings who have been brought here.
Yes that makes sense, Groot nods to himself, agreeing with his own conclusion as he begins to make his way into a more heavily wooded area. This is surely where he will find his captors.
...
Blessed Creator, he hopes it isn't the Collector again.]
Player name: McGwiggles (Gwiggs, if you prefer)
Contact: I'm available on AIM and also on Dreamwidth, where my username is McGwiggles.
Are you over 18: I certainly am!
Characters in The Box Already: None.
Character Information
Character Name: Groot
Canon: Marvel Comics (616)
Canon Point: Annihilators #01. After the Guardians of the Galaxy have broken up, but before Rocket has saved Groot from his punishment on Planet X.
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive.
History: Groot's life began, much like any other Flora Colossus, on Planet X. He was spawned as Groot the 23rd, a descendant of one of the Arbor Masters – the leaders and protectors of Planet X.
He was a kind-hearted sapling, who enjoyed his simple life among the leaves and branches of Planet X, and who cared for the planet's countless other sapient inhabitants. Unfortunately, his sentiments weren't shared with every member of his species, and Groot often found himself getting into fights while defending the well-being of Planet X's citizens from other, less friendly members of his species.
Eventually, one of these fights took a turn for the worse, ending with Groot brutally smashing the other sapling into pieces. While this isn't enough to kill a member of their species, the assault was serious enough to warrant banishment from his home planet.
What happened in the years following is a mystery, but it's clear that his banishment effected him negatively. The next time Groot is seen (chronologically speaking) is in 1960, when he arrives on Earth for the first time. His years away from home (mostly spent alone in space) had made him bitter, angry, resentful and callous – an entirely different person than the starry-eyed young sapling he once was.
He arrived on Earth apparently with the intent on furthering his own scientific knowledge. This was some time before the Avengers or the Fantastic Four came into existence, so when Groot showed up from outer space – falsely claiming the many titles of his planet's royalty - and tried to abduct an entire small town, its citizens were on their own. Fortunately, with the help of some genetically modified termites, Groot was defeated and they were left alone.
Stranded, but far from dead, Groot remained on Earth for the next several decades, intermittently spent imprisoned by various Earth governments and heroes, or hiding from them. His transgressions (aside from the initial attempted mass-abduction) were all mostly minor, but that did little to dissuade various organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D. from bothering him, and all the while Groot grew angrier and more bitter.
Eventually Groot got his hands on a ship and traveled off-world, but his luck didn't last for long. Sometime before 2007, he drifted too far into Kree space and was detained – his existence apparently counting as some sort of crime in the Kree empire – and Groot found himself imprisoned once again.
His next bout of freedom came when the Kree themselves were invaded by the Phalanx, a techno-organic species reminiscent of the Borg. The Kree empire quickly found most of their technology hacked, and their citizens absorbed into the Phalanx hive-mind. Desperate to create a non-tech-based resistance, they drafted a group of prisoners into a response team which was lead by Peter Quill, the former Star-lord.
The battle against the Phalanx was hard-fought, and Groot nearly died twice (blown into pieces and burned to the ground, respectively), but Peter Quill's response team, along with the help of Richard Rider, Quasar and several other cosmic heroes. The Kree race was saved, and Groot and his fellow prisoners had earned their freedom.
Quill had taken a lesson from this experience: The galaxy is full of massive threats, and it can't be trusted to take care of itself. As a result, he formed a new team, consisting of the surviving members of his“dirty half-dozen,” and a few other major players in the war against the Phalanx.
They called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy and set up shop in Knowhere, a scientific research station located on the edge of the known universe. From there, they took it upon themselves to proactively keep the universe safe from any and all threats it may face. When the team was originally formed, Groot was still covering from his recent immolation, but as he regrew he quickly became a staple member of the team. By this point he had begun to mature into his species' form of adulthood, and thus lost the ability to communicate normally, but he was fortunate enough to have friends in Rocket, Mantis, and a few others who were able to understand his subtle, native language.
It was during this experience that Groot's childhood kindness began to show its face once more. Although he still acted gruff and pompous, he looked out for the teammates and did what he could to protect them from harm as they protected the galaxy itself, and did not hesitate to put himself in harm's way for the good of the team.
Things were good for a while (or, as good as they can be for a group struggling to keep the universe in one peace), but unfortunately things weren't meant to last. Tensions rose across the galaxy as the then-recovered Kree empire approached war with the Shi'ar. An incredibly large bomb set off by the Kree caused an enormous rift to form in reality itself, and although Adam Warlock (the Guardian's resident magic-user) was able to halt it's expansion, he ended up giving into his dark side in the process.
The newly awakened Adam Magus proceeded to create an illusion of an attack on the Guardians, where he appeared to kill Cosmo, Mantis, Phyla-Vell, Gamora and Major Victory and gravely injuring others before eventually being defeated by Star-lord. In reality, he had simply warped them away into a prison of his own design, leaving the Guardians to believe they had defeated the Magus at a great cost. Groot and his teammates grieved the loss of their thought-to-be-lost comrades.
This illusion was brought to light by Phyla-Vell's mental link to her soul-mate Moondragon, who revealed the plan to the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy, but not before Adam Magus was able to complete his plan and reopen the same rift that his good-side had sacrificed so much to close, and unleash the contents of an undying universe into their own.
The Guardians freed their companions (with the exception of Phyla-vell, who had been tragically slain by Thanos), and were left to face the unending onslaught of tentacled horrors spawning from the rift. Peter Quill took a small response team to escort Thanos into the rift, in hopes to use him as a means to kill the contents of a universe where death did not exist.
They were successful, but it cost the lives of Peter Quill, Drax the Destroyer, and Richard Rider.
Without their leader to keep them together, the Guardians of the Galaxy all went their separate ways.
Groot, having been changed by his experiences with the Guardians of the Galaxy, journeyed home after countless years away, in hopes of making amends with the Arbor Masters and “setting down roots,” so to speak.
This did not go as planned, however, as the Arbor Masters quickly learned that he had falsely claimed their titles, and found him guilty of Tree-son. He was sentenced to life on the aptly-named Punishment Isle, where he was to be routinely tortured by the equally aptly-named Cyborg Punishment Birds – mechanical woodpeckers designed to drill and burn holes into the wooden hide of criminal Floral Colossi.
Inevitably he would be saved by his closest companion, Rocket Raccoon, but this is the canon point that he would be taken into The Box instead.
Personality:
His Divine Majesty King Groot the 23rd is a prideful being, tasked with many responsibilities and a whole lot of prestige to go with it. He is known as the self-proclaimed Monarch of Planet X, the Custodian of the Branch Worlds, Ruler Over All he Shades and a Guardian of the Galaxy. Although none of these honorifics technically belong to him, he's taken them as his own and he honestly believes they're rightfully his.
As a result, he's gained a pretty high opinion of himself (and of his superiority in general). It's even to the point that when he was still able to speak properly, he referred to the other, more dominant species of the universe as “mammal-things” and “fleshy vermin.”
Despite this, his pride has never gotten in the way of his responsibilities. During the Phalanx invasion of the Kree, for example, he recognized the potential threat to the rest of the galaxy (specifically to Planet X) and he agreed to work with and under the command of Peter Quill, a humanoid. He did not object, nor did he hesitate for even a moment to put his life on the line and put himself through a great deal of suffering (by setting his larger body ablaze) in order to protect his teammates and complete the mission they'd been assigned.
Over the course of that mission, Groot formed a bond with his teammates (particularly with Rocket Raccoon), and after he had regrown himself from a twig he decided to remain with them as they formed the Guardians of the Galaxy. In doing so, he took the continued existence of the universe (and the safety of his teammates) as his responsibilities as well. He quickly came to care for all of his teammates and, perhaps more importantly, he has come to respect them.
Groot's initially rough exterior has become easier to see through since he lost his ability to speak properly. The mature form of his species has a stiff and inflexible larynx that only allows them to say the phrase, “I am Groot.” While the people closest to him have no trouble understanding what he's trying to say, with most people he is forced to communicate through his actions or not at all. And so it is through his actions that his feelings towards his teammates becomes truly apparent – be it the sudden intensity coming from him as he stomps one of the religious leaders responsible for Moondragon's capture or the look of concern on his face when he finds his friends imprisoned in stasis pods.
This nonverbal communication, combined with his enormous size, often leads people to assume that he is a mindless brute, which isn't true at all. Groot is actually quite intelligent – which is evident by the advanced vocabulary he used while he was still able to speak and by his impressive feat of quasi-dimensional super-positional engineering he use created (with the help of Maximus the Mad) to defeat the tentacled horror from the Cancerverse. Due to his royal lineage, he has been given the finest education by some of the most brilliant tutors the galaxy has to offer and, while he may not be able utilize this education often, he is far from stupid.
Items on your character at canon point:
Nothing!
Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
Growth: Groot can increase his mass at an alarmingly fast rate, either by consuming other types of wood as food, or by simply planting himself and growing on his own. The second method is typically preferable, but depending on the amount of mass he's growing it can take quite some time to do.
Tree physiology: Groot's wooden body provides him with great strength, proportionate to his mass. The bigger he is, the stronger he is. On top of this, most conventional weapons don't work on him. He has no organs (vital or otherwise), so guns are hardly effective, for example.
Cellular Regeneration: As long as a single splinter of Groot remains, he can regrow his entire body from that piece. Similarly, he can grow back lost limbs relatively quickly as well.
Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
http://box-network.dreamwidth.org/106977.html
Prose Log Sample:
[The enormous, currently one-armed, tree-being stomps furiously down the streets of Northtown.
Such impudence.
This is unacceptable. Unforgivable.
To steal Groot away at all is an affront to him and to the Guardians of the Galaxy as a whole. Today of all days, this should not have happened. So many Guardians... So many friends and comrades had just been lost. Good people died to save the Universe today. The Guardians have not even had the time to properly grieve.
And now someone deems it necessary to kidnap Groot?
No. Groot will not have it. As a King, as a Custodian, as a Ruler, and as a Guardian of the Galaxy, he will not abide such disrespect to himself and to his teammates. They should not be dealing with another loss so soon.
They – whoever the fools are that saw it wise to take him – should expect a reckoning for this.
The trouble is finding out who they are and where he can find them.
Groot stomps a wooden foot into the ground in frustration. His righteous indignation was not going to get him home by itself, he needs to think.
In order to get him out of Knowhere – and he was most certainly not in Knowhere anymore- required a powerful teleporter of some sort. And teleporters, in Groot's experience, require some sort of power source. Typically a large one.
Most of the buildings in this suspiciously earth-like biome lack any obvious signs of power. Certainly they lack one large enough to charge a teleporter to its full capacity. Not a teleporter powerful enough to move someone as large as he is, at the very least.
Perhaps further into the wilderness, then? Hiding from the prying eyes of the unfortunate beings who have been brought here.
Yes that makes sense, Groot nods to himself, agreeing with his own conclusion as he begins to make his way into a more heavily wooded area. This is surely where he will find his captors.
...
Blessed Creator, he hopes it isn't the Collector again.]
