( deer country ) application

[hacktivated]

Character Base

• Character Name: Penny Polendina
• Age: 19ish mentally and physically, true age unknown; she's a robot likely only built within the past 5-10 years
• Canon / Canon Point: RWBY, volume 8 episode 12 (March 2021) | CRAU from mayoiga
• Items Coming Along:

• Her canon clothes
  
• Floating Array
  
• A second outfit (jean skirt and a horrible green aloha shirt)
  
• A single hovering banana

• Content Warnings for Character: Death, minors in combat situations, emotional manipulation

Character Background

• History: Penny @ RWBY Wiki

• Core Relationships:

• Pietro Polendina, her father/creator
  
• Ruby Rose, her first and closest friend
  
• James Ironwood, her commanding officer turned enemy
  
• Winter Schnee, her close friend and another of Ironwood's subordinates
  
• Cinder Fall, an enemy attempting to kill Penny and steal her power

• Summary of CRAU Impact: After her canon point, Penny arrived in the setting of Mayoi, an isolated island featuring a hotel overseen by the enigmatic Manager. The Manager informed Penny and the rest of the new arrivals that the hotel required blood to operate, and inflicted a series of weekly 'motives' on the hotel guests to encourage them to murder one another. The remaining survivors would then be required to discover and execute the murderer. Penny was only in Mayoi for about a month and did not undergo much character development, nor did she die or murder someone, but she did gain two key experiences.

First, Mayoi introduced her to different forms and systems of magics, gods and spirits unlike those in Remnant, and both the very idea of the multiverse and a sample of just how wildly disparate two different universes could be.

Second, Mayoi placed her in close proximity to a much greater variety of humans and types of relationships that she's even encountered at once before. The personalities in Mayoi ranged from bright and bubbly to taciturn and withdrawn, but their shared difficult circumstances allowed (or forced) them to interact without an excess of friction. Thus, Penny was able to get a glimpse into the other guests' past relationships - rivalries that turned to friendships, friendships that turned to bitter rivalries, broken familial bonds, abusive exes, people let down by the system, and individuals that had found and formed new friendships and families with one another... These are all things that she was exposed to in greater degrees than she ever was at home.

Character Personality Through Key Moments

Penny's life is one that has been marked by a persistent loneliness. She may look and act like a normal human girl, but she's an extremely advanced piece of military technology and often treated like such by those around her. She's made very few friends in her life simply because she hasn't been allowed; even when posing as a student she was constantly attended by soldiers and not allowed to freely socialize out of fear that someone might realize she's an android. Once she was no longer a student, everyone knew she was an android. People may have been grateful to her for protecting them, but very few people saw her as a person.

This is something of a constant problem. Penny is a robot and she knows it, and while that fact alone doesn't bother her much she's greatly troubled by how it causes others to view her. While there are multiple people who view her as a person - such as Pietro, Ruby, and Winter - most people seem to view her as just a machine, if a particularly advanced one. When someone raises concerns about whether or not Penny is safe to be around James Ironwood doesn't respond that she can be trusted, but that she's 'completely under my control'; later, when Winter says that Penny wouldn't understand a family issue Winter is dealing with, Penny is quick to assume that it's because she doesn't have a 'normal' family (though Winter is just as quick to assure Penny it's not because she's not human, but because Winter's family situation is highly complicated). Several days after that incident, Cinder accuses Penny of only protecting her friends because she was programmed to. All three incidents leave her visibly uncomfortable and disquieted, and she actively argues back in the last incident. Someone else refers to her as robo-girl at one point and Penny pointedly (and rather coldly, by her standards) corrects her with a reminder that she has a name.

Despite others often viewing her as nothing more than a machine, Penny does have people she cares about, and deeply so. She dearly treasures her friends and family, and the less intimate connections she makes with others (such as her role as 'Protector of Mantle' and the gratitude she's earned for said role) are still something she treats with careful consideration. Risking her life in order to protect the people she cares about, and who care about her, is something she considers to simply be part of who she is. For example, at one point Pietro attempts to stop her from doing something that's incredibly risky but would help protect her friends and the entire world, saying that he wants her to have a chance to live her life. Penny counters by pointing out that taking this risk for the sake of the people she cares about is her living her life. When she's later mortally wounded, she goes so far as to reject healing and chooses to die rather than risk her power falling into Cinder's hands.

But though there's been lots hardship in Penny's life, her experiences have by no means been universally miserable. Meeting Ruby Rose, for example, is an undeniable high-point of her life. Ruby was the first person to call Penny her friend, and the first person aside from Pietro to view her as a person, not just a tool. Most tellingly, this perception persisted even after Ruby learned she was an android. When Penny says she isn't real, Ruby is the one to insist that Penny is just a real as anyone else, and that she has a heart and soul just like any person would. To say that this meant a lot to Penny is underselling it; it's no surprise that when the two of them reunited after years apart from one another, Penny greeted Ruby with a unrestrained tackle-hug. And when she was separated from Ruby, Penny was able to befriend Winter instead, a friendship close enough that, despite her apparent extremely loyalty to James, Winter chose to let Penny escape despite James's order to capture her.

Speaking of which, to those that aren't aware that she's a machine Penny quite easily passes for human in not only appearance, but personality as well. She's a bright and friendly person, cheery and sociable and always interested in the people around her. Despite never having made friends before she shows no signs of hesitation or awkwardness when she first meets Ruby, just excitement and delight. Though she's not incapable of lying she does so rarely, and typically only when required. She has very few things she wants to lie about (especially now that her nature as an android is common knowledge) and very little reason to be anything but her most genuine self.

She is largely driven by relentless curiosity. Penny isn't so much 'sheltered' as she is a 'closely guarded military secret' or, later, 'an extremely valuable and effective piece of military hardware'. That's not even counting the fact that Pietro sees her as his actual daughter and has a streak of paternal over-protectiveness driving him to try to keep her from harm. All this means that she's had very little exposure to normal life. It's instilled her with an endless drive to know and learn about the people and places around her. New experiences never fail to delight her and she's not above sneaking away from her guardians in order to explore a new city and meet new people. Though she's aware that she's not human, she's extremely eager to learn and understand what it means to be human, and she doesn't let anything like uncertainty or inexperience stop her.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers:
• Aura
Aura is the 'manifestation of one's soul' in Remnant. Aura is primarily used in a defensive manner, cloaking the user in a shield that protects them from damage and can even reduce the discomfort and harm of being exposed to extreme temperatures. It will also passively speed the healing of any injuries its user may have, though it's left ambiguous how much this applies to Penny given that she's a robot. Any use of Aura will steadily deplete it, though it can be recovered via rest. Once it's gone, Penny can be injured just like any other android and will no longer enjoy any other Aura benefits.

• Winter Maiden
Penny holds the power of the Winter Maiden, granting her access to magic beyond the capabilities of the typical Remnant resident. She has the ability to use many different forms of elemental magic - control over wind, fire, ice, and lightning are all explicitly shown, and control over water and earth presumably falls under this same purview. These elemental powers are incredibly flexible and everything from simple offensive blasts of elemental energy to manipulating wind for the sake of flight is shown. While her skills give Penny an undeniable edge over most other Remnant residents, they by no means make her invincible. She and the other Maidens can and have been matched and overpowered by non-Maidens using clever tactics in the past, and her powers are never shown nor stated to give her any sort of innate immunity or resistance to any elemental magic apart from her own.

• Android Body
Being a robot made for combat comes with a handful of useful perks! Pietro was given a considerable budget and the backing of the military while constructing Penny, and imbued her with the following traits.

• Enhanced power, speed, and endurance, beyond what's typical even of other Remnant residents
  
• Exceptional durability, including both high damage resistance and the ability to be rebuilt if destroyed
  
• Flight via the thrusters built into her legs
  
• Infrared and night vision capabilities
  
• The ability to directly interface with computers and wireless networks (including her weapon, the Floating Array)
  
• A self-destruct mechanism, which is presumably capable of dealing a great deal of damage to her immediate surroundings

• Virus
This, however, is a distinct disadvantage to Penny's nature as a robot. She has been infected with a virus that is compelling her to retrieve a magic artifact and then immediately self-destruct. While the virus will be largely inactive in Deer Country, it will leave her vulnerable to further tampering unless permanently removed. It will also be the main form that her corruption takes.

• Blood Type: Vileblood
• Omen: Humpback whale
• Blessed Day: April 3rd | April 3rd is the original publication date of Astro Boy, a character that Penny bears a number of thematic, personality, and power-centered resemblances to.
• Patron Pthumerian: Argonaut | Penny and Argonaut are both hopeful, optimistic, and curious, but despite her good cheer Penny can't really be called naive. While she'll be a little stressed by how blindly trusting Argonaut is, she'll also find it reassuring, in a way. Penny is someone that genuinely wants and tries to believe the best in other people, though she often can't. Having an example of someone that can and does, even when it gets him killed over and over again, will be weirdly comforting.

• Blood Power Manifestation: Poison is a power that Penny does not have in canon and one she would likely have a great distaste for. Given how useful Vileblood is as a weapon enhancement, I'm going to have the poisonous aspects of her blood be the most prominent, which will force her to reconsider the use of poison when fighting.

Writing Samples

One: TDM top level
Two: TDM with Murderbot

The Player

• Player Name: Kei
• Player Age: 33
• Player Contact: begleiter
• Permissions: Here

Other Characters

Link to Character 1 overall AC: Stanford Pines
Link to Character 2 overall AC: Goro Akechi

Comments

Relationships Revision

[hacktivated]

• Core Relationships:

• Pietro Polendina
Penny's her father, and the person who built her. Pietro was a typical dad in many ways, treating Penny the way any father would his daughter. He was both protective and loving, never hesitating to stand up for Penny or show her affection, but also quick to try to deter her from embarking on dangerous missions even though she's literally made for combat. While this protectiveness has seen Penny and Pietro operating at cross purposes before, the affection between them is both obvious and enduring. Though Penny has friends of her own, Pietro is her only family. He has always been there for her and always viewed her as more than simply a machine, and even when she's on the other side of the world Penny is shown to think about him and consider his thoughts and outlook on a situation.

• Ruby Rose
Penny's first and closest friend. Ruby was the first person to meet Penny while she was posing as a human and then later discover that she's actually an android, the first person (aside from Pietro) to assert that being a machine doesn't mean she's not a person, and the first person to call Penny her friend. Penny shows a great deal of affection and trust for Ruby, even after the two were separated for several years. On multiple occasions she's shown to favor Ruby's ideas about how to proceed in a dangerous situation over the other available options, and at one point even plans on dying in the hope that in doing so she can give Ruby a valuable edge over their enemies. While Pietro's love for Penny is invaluable to her, it's also something of a given - he's her dad, after all. Her friendship with Ruby developed out of nothing and thus has done more for Penny's confidence in her sense of self than anything else.

• James Ironwood
Penny's commanding officer, who later became her enemy. Ruby is someone that makes Penny feel more than a person than a machine... and James Ironwood does the exact opposite, making her feel like she's barely a person at all. While James didn't always openly treat her like this, the fact that he saw her as a weapon first and foremost was evident in nearly everything he did. While she was posing as a human he made sure she was constantly supervised. When she was apparently fatally injured he showed no concern for her at all. When she refused to continue cooperating with him he tried to control her first through emotional manipulation, and then by concocting a scheme to implant her with a virus that would rob her of her free will, and then by attempting to blackmail her into cooperation by threatening to destroy her hometown. Penny has lost all respect for James and he's become an example of just how awful a person can be even while they think they're doing the right thing.

• Winter Schnee
Another close friend of Penny's, and another of Ironwood's subordinates. None of the development of Penny and Winter's relationship is shown, but the end result is. Winter is someone that Penny is willing to talk to about difficult topics like the nature of being human and what it means to struggle with difficult decisions. More telling is that Winter, who is as aloof and closed off as her name might suggest, is willing to discuss these subjects with Penny, and even opens up to Penny about her own difficult family situation. While Ruby is Penny's first friend, Winter is the first person to befriend Penny despite having full knowledge of her nature as a android, leading Penny to hold a great deal of both trust and affection for her. Though Penny's canon point is prior to her eventual death, when she does die she chooses to pass the power of the Winter Maiden onto Winter, believing that she will be best suited to carry the mantle.

• Cinder Fall
Cinder is the Fall Maiden (to contrast Penny's status as the Winter Maiden) and a longtime enemy of Penny and her allies. Cinder is responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people, and even orchestrated the attempted (and nearly successful) murder of Penny herself. Cinder will stop at nothing to kill Penny and taker her power for her own, and it's made clear that she sees Penny as even less worth caring about than she does most people. She doesn't see Penny as even slightly human-like, calling her a machine and a puppet and telling Penny directly that she's just a tool being controlled by the people around her. While it's probably not accurate to say that Penny hates Cinder there's clearly no lost love between them. Cinder is really just the worst and Penny shows a degree of coldness towards her that she's never shown to anyone else.