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palissantUser Name/Nick: Fiona
User DW:hardtostarboard
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hardtostarboard, hardtostarboard @ discord, DM
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Alexei (Cain), Hythlodaeus, R
Character Name: Verso (Dessendre)
Series: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Age: 100+ (physically - 67 years have passed in the canvas since the Fracture, we are not told how long he existed for before then), early 30s (appearance)
From When?: The end of the main story, Maelle’s Ending. Following their fight he successfully gommages/dies (though he is aware she can recreate him in the canvas).
content warning below for multiple references to suicidal ideation
Inmate Justification: Verso is a liar. To others, to himself, to his friends, to people who trust him, even to people he views as family. He justifies his lies to a point that he often seems to believe them, lying to both deceive people and to protect them. The front that he has created to present to the world is so heavily ingrained that it is difficult to get to know him ‘for real’ at all, and he has spent over sixty years carefully curating a persona to hide how he's really feeling.
Very aware of being a painted copy of someone else, he has a crisis of identity which being removed from the environment of his canon could very well have a positive effect on. It's difficult to feel like you are your own person when almost everyone you know knew your 'original', when you constantly feel in the shadow of someone you can never quite match up to and were essentially created to replace. This folds into his lies, of course - when it suits, he does use his 'connection' and his resemblance to the real Verso to his advantage, yet at the same time he knows they aren't the same. They aren't the same, but if they aren't, then who is he, really, outside of a symbol of somebody else's pain?
He also very, very much wants to die. That is, he wants to not exist anymore (since he does not consider himself real, and therefore he is not alive). This way of thinking wasn’t always the case for him - he once had a lot of hope that being able to reach the Paintress would mean that he could bring back people he had lost and that they would all have the chance to exist, but decades of seeing people dying without ever understanding the truth of their existence, as well as the ongoing damage done to and by Aline and Renoir, have worn him down to a point that he knows the only way to save the real-world Dessendre family is if the canvas is completely destroyed and every ‘real’ person inside it is expelled permanently.
Arrival: Entirely against his will.
Abilities/Powers:
Inmate Information: Verso was created within the canvas by Aline Dessendre at some point following the real Verso’s death, as a way for her to cope with her grief and keep some part of her son alive inside the canvas that he had created as a child. He lived in the painted city of Lumière with his mother, father, and two sisters, with no awareness that he was a Painted creation living inside a painting. Following the Fracture and Aline’s disappearance, with Lumière suddenly separated from the rest of the continent and the entire world thrown into disarray, Verso ventured out along with his father Renoir and several others to try and rescue survivors and discover the cause of the devastating anomaly.
When the group reached the Monolith they were confronted by a woman named Clea, a mirror image of one of Verso’s sisters, and Clea informed the group of the truth - that the world they lived in was a painted created, that they were painted creations, and Verso himself was made as a ‘replacement’ for Aline’s deceased son. Clea told the group she was the ‘real’ Clea Dessendre, that she was there to help the real Renoir remove Aline from the canvas, and then she attempted to wipe out the group. This was met with only partial success as Renoir and Verso had both been created as immortal by Aline, and what was left of the group retreated away from the Monolith.
Another member of the expedition group - a woman named Julie, who Verso had feelings for - grew suspicious of him after seeing him take what should have been a mortal blow and survive. Out of fear that he and Renoir had been the ones to betray the expedition and cause their deaths she captured Verso with help from other members of the group and attempted to interrogate him, causing him to need to fight back. The rest of the team and Julie were killed in this conflict - something which Verso still regretted decades later. At the time that it happened he was still hopeful that he and Renoir would be able to reach the Paintress and bring back the members of the expedition who had been lost to Clea as well as those he had been forced to kill in self-defence, too afraid to tell them the true nature of their existence as he did not think they would believe him. Later, while travelling with Expedition 33, he would think of Julie as someone he would still bring back if he could.
Met with suspicion as the only survivors after they returned to Lumière, Verso and Renoir did not stay for long after the first work to get the remaining community back on their feet was done. They left along with Alicia and over the years Verso and Renoir’s aims began to diverge. Verso had grown tired of endless life and disillusioned with his role in the struggle of the real-world Dessendre family, while Renoir’s goal remained the persistent safeguarding of his family and the Paintress. The two of them could not agree, particularly when the Paintress’ version of Renoir had been created with an ingrained guilt about what had happened in the real world and a desire to protect the canvas from destruction, with the disagreement resulting in a fight between the two that left both of them visibly scarred. Though both of them could have ‘healed’ the marks they left on each other they both chose to keep them as a reminder.
Verso began to work with other expeditions, trying to help them reach the Paintress so they might kill her and free him, as well as his mother, from the grip of the canvas. None of them succeeded, and as the ‘clock’ continued to tick down, Verso began to lose hope in them as well. In Monolith year 49 Verso was informed by the real-world Clea that the real-world Alicia had been reborn into the canvas in the form of Maelle, and she asked that he watch over her while she grew up. He agreed, and would return to Lumière several times over the course of the next sixteen years, though he never made himself known to Maelle or anyone close to her in that time. Despite his feelings about his own existence and the canvas itself, Verso was undeniably painted with a deep love of his family and could not simply leave Maelle to stumble through her life without keeping an eye on her.
In Monolith year 33, following Expedition 33’s near-total annihilation at the hands of Renoir, Verso takes the then-sixteen year old Maelle to safety and leaves a message for others to follow her to the Manor. He tracks the small group for some time after, clearing their route and watching out for them, stepping in to save them from Renoir after Gustave’s death and finally stepping out of the shadows to join them. At this time, he did not tell them the truth about who he was, his relationship to Renoir and the Paintress, or who Maelle truly was. Later, Maelle would ask him if he was able to save Gustave at this time and chose not to - the truth is that yes, he could have, but he was afraid that if Maelle found out about the canvas and Gustave was there, she would refuse to help send her mother home. Gustave was in the position of guardian that Verso needed to take in order to earn her trust, and simply put, Gustave needed to be out of the way.
Over time spent travelling with the group he takes the place of Gustave as Maelle’s protector and guardian, bonding with her as well as Lune and Sciel. On his suggestion they add another member to their team - an intelligent and unusual gestral called Monoco who knew the ‘real’ Verso as well as the Painted one - and together they move through Old Lumière. There, their plans are thwarted by Renoir once again, and they have to move on to a more dangerous route to achieve the same aims - a means by which they can pierce the barrier around the Monolith and reach the Paintress. Against all odds they succeed in this, reaching the Paintress after battling their way through the various levels of the monolith, finding Aline in a severely degraded mental state, and following their victory against her they return to Lumière.
Verso, in possession of an unopened, undelivered letter from the painted Alicia to Maelle explaining who she is and the nature of the canvas, as well as the full knowledge of what will happen with the Paintress destroyed, sits on the docks of Lumière while the entire population of the town is gommaged. Verso, however, is left intact. Following the gommage of her ‘painted’ self, Maelle returns to the canvas with her real-world memories intact and saves a then-conflicted Verso from being gommaged by the real Renoir, who had been freed when Aline was expelled from the canvas. The two of them escape and Maelle is able to re-create Lune and Sciel, allowing a plan to be formed before they return to Lumière once again.
Following the final confrontation against Renoir Dessendre, with the older man finally defeated and control of the canvas turned over to Maelle, Verso is left deeply shaken and with the realisation that Maelle - despite her promises to her father - is never going to leave the canvas just as Aline never intended to. In a last desperate effort he breaks through to a section of the canvas where the last portion of the real Verso’s soul is trapped and still painting, and asks if he will stop (if he wants to stop). Maelle, insistent that she will have no life outside the canvas, while Verso believes that a life inside it is no life at all for her, tries to stop him and the two of them fight.
Verso is defeated, and in desperation he begs Maelle to let him go. That he does not ‘want this life’. He gommages there, not knowing what Maelle will choose but also knowing that his future will be up to her, as she has full control of the canvas now.
He is someone who, even long before his current canon point, no longer believes that his existence has any meaning outside of causing suffering to others. He is the focal point of the Paintress’ grief, a shadow of a much-beloved son, but at the same time somebody who can never fully replace him. He was unable to save Expedition Zero, both from Clea and then later from himself, and has spent years watching expedition after expedition throw themselves at the Paintress with little more to show for it than mounting piles of dead. Verso is tired, he wants all of this to end, and he could not even say how much of himself is the real him and how much of it is simply how he was Painted.
His mindset and how he reacts to events is deeply seated in grief and suicidal ideation. Verso is capable of immense acts of bravery, of altruism and of love, but by the stage that he meets Expedition 33 much of this has been taken over by a simple desire to be able to expel Aline from the canvas and end his own life. He's tired of watching his family tear itself apart because of him, tired of watching people die, tired of watching the gradual but inevitable degradation of the world around him and knowing that its continued existence is only causing harm to the Dessendre family.
Verso does not consider himself a real person - he knows that he was created and why - and over the decades he has spent ‘alive’ this has come to define his worldview, right up to the very end when he is unable to internalise that Maelle sees him as real even if he does not. He is emotionally ‘tapped out’ and wants everything to end, and despite knowing this, Maelle still does not want to give him the peace he asks for.
Path to Redemption:
What does your character need to change about themselves, and what sorts of milestones do you envision them needing to reach before they're ready for graduation?
A main goal of Verso’s development would not be reigniting a desire to live. Verso does not need to be convinced to live. While this may be a side-effect of what progress he is able to make on the Barge, it is not something about him that needs to be fixed as a priority and would go against his character if used as a main focal point. What Verso needs is to value life again, to value himself, and to see the beauty and worth in existence. Whether that includes his own would ultimately be up to him.
He also needs to find a sense of self that is apart from the ‘real’ Verso, the man he was created to mirror and someone he feels inextricably linked to. Maelle tells him that he is not Verso - that despite having his face and memories, he is ‘himself’ and not just some copy of her brother, but this is not fully explored and Verso seems uncomfortable with the idea.
Being able to be at peace with his existence and move through the guilt of what he sees as his part in the suffering that the Dessendres and the inhabitants of the canvas have gone through because of him (either directly or indirectly) will be a much bigger part of the process than actually having him want to live. If he can find a sense of purpose and hope again, he’s more likely to come around to the idea that continuing to try is worth it on his own.
How will they react to being on the Barge?
Furious and despairing, at first, but likely to quickly shift to deep resignation. He will see the Admiral as no better than the Paintress, keeping him there against his will (and with no point, in his mind, as he does not want a ‘second chance’ at life), and will initially resist engaging with others and the Barge on the whole in any meaningful way.
He isn’t real, none of it matters, and being on the Barge as someone labelled as needing ‘redemption’ would be somehow more insulting than anything Maelle could have done to him in her selfish desire to prolong his life. Since he doesn't fear (and at this point actively desires) death he's likely to be, while not actively killing himself, incredibly reckless with his own life in dangerous situations such as ports, floods, and other issues that may arise on the Barge. The death toll will not be off-putting to him and since he'll come back anyway, dying won't matter either.
Eventually coming around to realising that the people on the Barge are actually ‘real’ and not Painted creations like himself may be the first step in piquing his curiosity, depending on the way it’s presented to him.
How will they react to being wardened?
Simply put, he won’t want to be. As far as he’s concerned he is a grown man and does not require a babysitter or someone to try to ‘correct’ his worldview, as well-intentioned as it might be by any who genuinely want to help. All wardens will be seen as complicit in whatever it is the Admiral is doing and it will take some work for him to put any trust in any of them beyond a shallow acknowledgement that at least some of them think they are doing the right thing.
And, well, he has plenty of his own experience with that.
Verso is likely to be a very difficult inmate for most wardens if he is paired with them, either temporarily or otherwise. While he will not be actively aggressive or violent towards them, he will also not look to ‘work’ with them in any deliberate way. Nobody understands his life better than he does and 'outside perspectives' are both unnecessary and unwanted. However, Verso has been alone (or mostly alone) for a long time, and simply interacting with others on a basic level is more than he's really been able to do in years. That alone would have an effect, but it's going to be slow-going to get him anywhere.
He is highly likely to simply lie to get people off his back if they push him too hard, if he doesn’t just walk away and leave them where they stand. Persistence without being intrusive is going to be key.
What sorts of wardening styles would they be likely to respond best to, and conversely, what wardening styles would likely be ineffective or unhelpful?
He is around a hundred years old and treating him like a child or like someone whose desire for death is short-sighted or foolish will be the first way to ensure that he shuts someone out. Anybody trying to work with Verso from the angle of a warden will need to be very patient and be able to deal with his clear levels of bitterness and anger at being on the Barge as well as having his life prolonged in a way he absolutely doesn't want. He will not be subtle about it and won’t pull any punches verbally when it comes to that topic of discussion.
Verso would need to be approached as a peer, not as someone who needs to be fixed, and while his suicidal ideation may feel like the biggest red flag that needs to be addressed it is really the last thing that needs to be focused on. Find out what interests him, be patient and slow in getting to know about him and his background (he would take a very dim view of a permanent warden reading his file without permission), and you’ll have a much better shot at him ‘working’ with you even if he isn’t doing it intentionally.
He does not need a parental figure - he’s had one of those and it didn’t turn out well. He needs a friend who will try to work with him, not a faux-authority figure or some kind of overseer/teacher-type to act like they know better than him or treat him like a psych case.
What methods can a warden use to get through to them, and what are some ideas for things that might trigger or motivate them to change?
Any warden - indeed anyone - who is hoping to ‘get through’ to Verso is going to have to find their peace with the fact that he wants to die. Attempts to push at this deliberately or change his mind will only result in them being shut out of much meaningful development in a relationship with him, at least in the short to mid term.
Verso has a deep love of music and has never really been able to follow it as he would have liked, as he was pressed into Painting by family and societal expectations. He was Painted with this preference as well, and a warden able to discover this may be able to use it to their advantage to get him to engage. He is also passionate about his family - even if it is also the source of a great deal of grief. As he says - ‘families are complicated’.
He also likes trains, if anyone can work that into anything, and has a very whimsical sense of imagination even as an adult. He also enjoys verbally sparring with others.
Being able to work him around to talking about himself and being open to listening to just why he views things as he does without judging him for it would be a much better route than simply trying to get him to change his mind about what he wants. Verso is not an unreasonable person, he is simply tired and does not want to continue existing if existing means causing pain to his family. However, offering him a warden deal to get what he wants or to change things to make living a more bearable option isn't going to work as some kind of shortcut.
He is going to be a very difficult person to try to warden, but not impossible. It will simply be a matter of finding the right things to focus on for him, not for what the warden thinks is right.
History: wiki link
Sample Network Entry: TDM 1 (first tags), TDM 2 - let me know if more is needed!
Sample RP: TDM link (take 2 of a thread after getting more settled with the voice and deciding to be less Dramatic)
Special Notes: n/a
User DW:
hardtostarboard E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact:
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Alexei (Cain), Hythlodaeus, R
Character Name: Verso (Dessendre)
Series: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Age: 100+ (physically - 67 years have passed in the canvas since the Fracture, we are not told how long he existed for before then), early 30s (appearance)
From When?: The end of the main story, Maelle’s Ending. Following their fight he successfully gommages/dies (though he is aware she can recreate him in the canvas).
content warning below for multiple references to suicidal ideation
Inmate Justification: Verso is a liar. To others, to himself, to his friends, to people who trust him, even to people he views as family. He justifies his lies to a point that he often seems to believe them, lying to both deceive people and to protect them. The front that he has created to present to the world is so heavily ingrained that it is difficult to get to know him ‘for real’ at all, and he has spent over sixty years carefully curating a persona to hide how he's really feeling.
Very aware of being a painted copy of someone else, he has a crisis of identity which being removed from the environment of his canon could very well have a positive effect on. It's difficult to feel like you are your own person when almost everyone you know knew your 'original', when you constantly feel in the shadow of someone you can never quite match up to and were essentially created to replace. This folds into his lies, of course - when it suits, he does use his 'connection' and his resemblance to the real Verso to his advantage, yet at the same time he knows they aren't the same. They aren't the same, but if they aren't, then who is he, really, outside of a symbol of somebody else's pain?
He also very, very much wants to die. That is, he wants to not exist anymore (since he does not consider himself real, and therefore he is not alive). This way of thinking wasn’t always the case for him - he once had a lot of hope that being able to reach the Paintress would mean that he could bring back people he had lost and that they would all have the chance to exist, but decades of seeing people dying without ever understanding the truth of their existence, as well as the ongoing damage done to and by Aline and Renoir, have worn him down to a point that he knows the only way to save the real-world Dessendre family is if the canvas is completely destroyed and every ‘real’ person inside it is expelled permanently.
Arrival: Entirely against his will.
Abilities/Powers:
Chroma manipulation - on an individual level (without additional external chroma), this allows for the summoning of weapons using chroma, or the ‘life force’ of the canvas inhabitants.
Picto/Lumina - these are enhancements / ways in which ‘buffs’ are applied in combat, granting certain effects. They are a known mechanic in-game and talked about by the characters, so worth mentioning as potential future ‘regains’ (similar to magic).
Painting - like the ‘real’ Verso and the rest of the Dessendre family, Verso is a Painter. As such he is capable of creating living things using chroma. However, given his self-professed desire to be a musician and not a painter, it is likely that while he knows how to do this (as he demonstrates the method to Maelle), he has not really practiced it much (and certainly not recently).
Swordplay - he dual wields a shortsword/dagger combo, which he has several decades of skill in mastering.
Immortality - Verso is immortal and can survive and heal from injuries that would easily kill anyone else. This includes (in canon), having half of his chest blown off by a nevron, and cutting himself in half for funsies to make the rest of the people in camp laugh. He does feel pain, however, and these kinds of injuries do hurt like hell.
Inmate Information: Verso was created within the canvas by Aline Dessendre at some point following the real Verso’s death, as a way for her to cope with her grief and keep some part of her son alive inside the canvas that he had created as a child. He lived in the painted city of Lumière with his mother, father, and two sisters, with no awareness that he was a Painted creation living inside a painting. Following the Fracture and Aline’s disappearance, with Lumière suddenly separated from the rest of the continent and the entire world thrown into disarray, Verso ventured out along with his father Renoir and several others to try and rescue survivors and discover the cause of the devastating anomaly.
When the group reached the Monolith they were confronted by a woman named Clea, a mirror image of one of Verso’s sisters, and Clea informed the group of the truth - that the world they lived in was a painted created, that they were painted creations, and Verso himself was made as a ‘replacement’ for Aline’s deceased son. Clea told the group she was the ‘real’ Clea Dessendre, that she was there to help the real Renoir remove Aline from the canvas, and then she attempted to wipe out the group. This was met with only partial success as Renoir and Verso had both been created as immortal by Aline, and what was left of the group retreated away from the Monolith.
Another member of the expedition group - a woman named Julie, who Verso had feelings for - grew suspicious of him after seeing him take what should have been a mortal blow and survive. Out of fear that he and Renoir had been the ones to betray the expedition and cause their deaths she captured Verso with help from other members of the group and attempted to interrogate him, causing him to need to fight back. The rest of the team and Julie were killed in this conflict - something which Verso still regretted decades later. At the time that it happened he was still hopeful that he and Renoir would be able to reach the Paintress and bring back the members of the expedition who had been lost to Clea as well as those he had been forced to kill in self-defence, too afraid to tell them the true nature of their existence as he did not think they would believe him. Later, while travelling with Expedition 33, he would think of Julie as someone he would still bring back if he could.
Met with suspicion as the only survivors after they returned to Lumière, Verso and Renoir did not stay for long after the first work to get the remaining community back on their feet was done. They left along with Alicia and over the years Verso and Renoir’s aims began to diverge. Verso had grown tired of endless life and disillusioned with his role in the struggle of the real-world Dessendre family, while Renoir’s goal remained the persistent safeguarding of his family and the Paintress. The two of them could not agree, particularly when the Paintress’ version of Renoir had been created with an ingrained guilt about what had happened in the real world and a desire to protect the canvas from destruction, with the disagreement resulting in a fight between the two that left both of them visibly scarred. Though both of them could have ‘healed’ the marks they left on each other they both chose to keep them as a reminder.
Verso began to work with other expeditions, trying to help them reach the Paintress so they might kill her and free him, as well as his mother, from the grip of the canvas. None of them succeeded, and as the ‘clock’ continued to tick down, Verso began to lose hope in them as well. In Monolith year 49 Verso was informed by the real-world Clea that the real-world Alicia had been reborn into the canvas in the form of Maelle, and she asked that he watch over her while she grew up. He agreed, and would return to Lumière several times over the course of the next sixteen years, though he never made himself known to Maelle or anyone close to her in that time. Despite his feelings about his own existence and the canvas itself, Verso was undeniably painted with a deep love of his family and could not simply leave Maelle to stumble through her life without keeping an eye on her.
In Monolith year 33, following Expedition 33’s near-total annihilation at the hands of Renoir, Verso takes the then-sixteen year old Maelle to safety and leaves a message for others to follow her to the Manor. He tracks the small group for some time after, clearing their route and watching out for them, stepping in to save them from Renoir after Gustave’s death and finally stepping out of the shadows to join them. At this time, he did not tell them the truth about who he was, his relationship to Renoir and the Paintress, or who Maelle truly was. Later, Maelle would ask him if he was able to save Gustave at this time and chose not to - the truth is that yes, he could have, but he was afraid that if Maelle found out about the canvas and Gustave was there, she would refuse to help send her mother home. Gustave was in the position of guardian that Verso needed to take in order to earn her trust, and simply put, Gustave needed to be out of the way.
Over time spent travelling with the group he takes the place of Gustave as Maelle’s protector and guardian, bonding with her as well as Lune and Sciel. On his suggestion they add another member to their team - an intelligent and unusual gestral called Monoco who knew the ‘real’ Verso as well as the Painted one - and together they move through Old Lumière. There, their plans are thwarted by Renoir once again, and they have to move on to a more dangerous route to achieve the same aims - a means by which they can pierce the barrier around the Monolith and reach the Paintress. Against all odds they succeed in this, reaching the Paintress after battling their way through the various levels of the monolith, finding Aline in a severely degraded mental state, and following their victory against her they return to Lumière.
Verso, in possession of an unopened, undelivered letter from the painted Alicia to Maelle explaining who she is and the nature of the canvas, as well as the full knowledge of what will happen with the Paintress destroyed, sits on the docks of Lumière while the entire population of the town is gommaged. Verso, however, is left intact. Following the gommage of her ‘painted’ self, Maelle returns to the canvas with her real-world memories intact and saves a then-conflicted Verso from being gommaged by the real Renoir, who had been freed when Aline was expelled from the canvas. The two of them escape and Maelle is able to re-create Lune and Sciel, allowing a plan to be formed before they return to Lumière once again.
Following the final confrontation against Renoir Dessendre, with the older man finally defeated and control of the canvas turned over to Maelle, Verso is left deeply shaken and with the realisation that Maelle - despite her promises to her father - is never going to leave the canvas just as Aline never intended to. In a last desperate effort he breaks through to a section of the canvas where the last portion of the real Verso’s soul is trapped and still painting, and asks if he will stop (if he wants to stop). Maelle, insistent that she will have no life outside the canvas, while Verso believes that a life inside it is no life at all for her, tries to stop him and the two of them fight.
Verso is defeated, and in desperation he begs Maelle to let him go. That he does not ‘want this life’. He gommages there, not knowing what Maelle will choose but also knowing that his future will be up to her, as she has full control of the canvas now.
He is someone who, even long before his current canon point, no longer believes that his existence has any meaning outside of causing suffering to others. He is the focal point of the Paintress’ grief, a shadow of a much-beloved son, but at the same time somebody who can never fully replace him. He was unable to save Expedition Zero, both from Clea and then later from himself, and has spent years watching expedition after expedition throw themselves at the Paintress with little more to show for it than mounting piles of dead. Verso is tired, he wants all of this to end, and he could not even say how much of himself is the real him and how much of it is simply how he was Painted.
His mindset and how he reacts to events is deeply seated in grief and suicidal ideation. Verso is capable of immense acts of bravery, of altruism and of love, but by the stage that he meets Expedition 33 much of this has been taken over by a simple desire to be able to expel Aline from the canvas and end his own life. He's tired of watching his family tear itself apart because of him, tired of watching people die, tired of watching the gradual but inevitable degradation of the world around him and knowing that its continued existence is only causing harm to the Dessendre family.
Verso does not consider himself a real person - he knows that he was created and why - and over the decades he has spent ‘alive’ this has come to define his worldview, right up to the very end when he is unable to internalise that Maelle sees him as real even if he does not. He is emotionally ‘tapped out’ and wants everything to end, and despite knowing this, Maelle still does not want to give him the peace he asks for.
Path to Redemption:
What does your character need to change about themselves, and what sorts of milestones do you envision them needing to reach before they're ready for graduation?
A main goal of Verso’s development would not be reigniting a desire to live. Verso does not need to be convinced to live. While this may be a side-effect of what progress he is able to make on the Barge, it is not something about him that needs to be fixed as a priority and would go against his character if used as a main focal point. What Verso needs is to value life again, to value himself, and to see the beauty and worth in existence. Whether that includes his own would ultimately be up to him.
He also needs to find a sense of self that is apart from the ‘real’ Verso, the man he was created to mirror and someone he feels inextricably linked to. Maelle tells him that he is not Verso - that despite having his face and memories, he is ‘himself’ and not just some copy of her brother, but this is not fully explored and Verso seems uncomfortable with the idea.
Being able to be at peace with his existence and move through the guilt of what he sees as his part in the suffering that the Dessendres and the inhabitants of the canvas have gone through because of him (either directly or indirectly) will be a much bigger part of the process than actually having him want to live. If he can find a sense of purpose and hope again, he’s more likely to come around to the idea that continuing to try is worth it on his own.
How will they react to being on the Barge?
Furious and despairing, at first, but likely to quickly shift to deep resignation. He will see the Admiral as no better than the Paintress, keeping him there against his will (and with no point, in his mind, as he does not want a ‘second chance’ at life), and will initially resist engaging with others and the Barge on the whole in any meaningful way.
He isn’t real, none of it matters, and being on the Barge as someone labelled as needing ‘redemption’ would be somehow more insulting than anything Maelle could have done to him in her selfish desire to prolong his life. Since he doesn't fear (and at this point actively desires) death he's likely to be, while not actively killing himself, incredibly reckless with his own life in dangerous situations such as ports, floods, and other issues that may arise on the Barge. The death toll will not be off-putting to him and since he'll come back anyway, dying won't matter either.
Eventually coming around to realising that the people on the Barge are actually ‘real’ and not Painted creations like himself may be the first step in piquing his curiosity, depending on the way it’s presented to him.
How will they react to being wardened?
Simply put, he won’t want to be. As far as he’s concerned he is a grown man and does not require a babysitter or someone to try to ‘correct’ his worldview, as well-intentioned as it might be by any who genuinely want to help. All wardens will be seen as complicit in whatever it is the Admiral is doing and it will take some work for him to put any trust in any of them beyond a shallow acknowledgement that at least some of them think they are doing the right thing.
And, well, he has plenty of his own experience with that.
Verso is likely to be a very difficult inmate for most wardens if he is paired with them, either temporarily or otherwise. While he will not be actively aggressive or violent towards them, he will also not look to ‘work’ with them in any deliberate way. Nobody understands his life better than he does and 'outside perspectives' are both unnecessary and unwanted. However, Verso has been alone (or mostly alone) for a long time, and simply interacting with others on a basic level is more than he's really been able to do in years. That alone would have an effect, but it's going to be slow-going to get him anywhere.
He is highly likely to simply lie to get people off his back if they push him too hard, if he doesn’t just walk away and leave them where they stand. Persistence without being intrusive is going to be key.
What sorts of wardening styles would they be likely to respond best to, and conversely, what wardening styles would likely be ineffective or unhelpful?
He is around a hundred years old and treating him like a child or like someone whose desire for death is short-sighted or foolish will be the first way to ensure that he shuts someone out. Anybody trying to work with Verso from the angle of a warden will need to be very patient and be able to deal with his clear levels of bitterness and anger at being on the Barge as well as having his life prolonged in a way he absolutely doesn't want. He will not be subtle about it and won’t pull any punches verbally when it comes to that topic of discussion.
Verso would need to be approached as a peer, not as someone who needs to be fixed, and while his suicidal ideation may feel like the biggest red flag that needs to be addressed it is really the last thing that needs to be focused on. Find out what interests him, be patient and slow in getting to know about him and his background (he would take a very dim view of a permanent warden reading his file without permission), and you’ll have a much better shot at him ‘working’ with you even if he isn’t doing it intentionally.
He does not need a parental figure - he’s had one of those and it didn’t turn out well. He needs a friend who will try to work with him, not a faux-authority figure or some kind of overseer/teacher-type to act like they know better than him or treat him like a psych case.
What methods can a warden use to get through to them, and what are some ideas for things that might trigger or motivate them to change?
Any warden - indeed anyone - who is hoping to ‘get through’ to Verso is going to have to find their peace with the fact that he wants to die. Attempts to push at this deliberately or change his mind will only result in them being shut out of much meaningful development in a relationship with him, at least in the short to mid term.
Verso has a deep love of music and has never really been able to follow it as he would have liked, as he was pressed into Painting by family and societal expectations. He was Painted with this preference as well, and a warden able to discover this may be able to use it to their advantage to get him to engage. He is also passionate about his family - even if it is also the source of a great deal of grief. As he says - ‘families are complicated’.
He also likes trains, if anyone can work that into anything, and has a very whimsical sense of imagination even as an adult. He also enjoys verbally sparring with others.
Being able to work him around to talking about himself and being open to listening to just why he views things as he does without judging him for it would be a much better route than simply trying to get him to change his mind about what he wants. Verso is not an unreasonable person, he is simply tired and does not want to continue existing if existing means causing pain to his family. However, offering him a warden deal to get what he wants or to change things to make living a more bearable option isn't going to work as some kind of shortcut.
He is going to be a very difficult person to try to warden, but not impossible. It will simply be a matter of finding the right things to focus on for him, not for what the warden thinks is right.
History: wiki link
Sample Network Entry: TDM 1 (first tags), TDM 2 - let me know if more is needed!
Sample RP: TDM link (take 2 of a thread after getting more settled with the voice and deciding to be less Dramatic)
Special Notes: n/a
