Player Name: Ren Kline
Appearance: When transported into the world of Rift Warriors, in addition to gaining the powers and wardrobe of Aster, Ren's physiology changed as well to match Aster's, resulting in gaining many aspects of his appearance.
Nationalities: Japanese & U.S. American
Age: 21
Personality: Ren is the quiet type. He's antisocial and suffers from chronic clinical depression. He has a tendency to overanalyze, and is a meticulous perfectionist. He has a proclivity towards sesquipedalian diction, and gets disappointed when he is forced to dumb it down. He spends a lot of time online, watching shows, reading novels, and playing games as both a form of escapism and, depending on the type of content, an attempt to
feel something. Competition is one of the few things that can consistently get his heart racing, as well as one of the few forms of social interactions he enjoys and actively seeks out. He likes playing with all kinds of players, and will often switch to characters he has less experience with as a handicap to level the playing field. Unfortunately, he's done this often enough to improvise good combos for every character and now plays all of them at a fairly competent level.
Backstory: Ren's mother is Japanese and his father is American. They married, lived in the U.S. for a while, had Ren, moved to Japan for a while, had a fight, with Ren and his father moving back to the U.S. for a while, made up, moved back to Japan for a while, and eventually split up for good, with Ren bouncing back and forth since. He's always been an only child, though over time he came to grow more distant from his parents as they each, at least in his perception, prioritized their own problems over him. Ren is bilingual and has gone to school in both America and Japan. He hasn't made many friends at either place, and the few friendships he has made generally don't survive him moving away every year. He can't decide where he wants to live, and can't figure out how to make enough money to move out in the first place. His parents both work their own jobs, both keep unsubtly hinting that they want him to live near them, and both keep making promises they can't fulfill. For the last couple of years, he's been unemployed, withdrawn, and hasn't spoken much with either of his parents.
Enter Rift Warriors. It's a long-running franchise, and he's played the games since he was a kid. However, it wasn't until recent years, especially in Rift Warriors VII through IX did he really get into the series on a competitive level. He won his local tournaments often enough that he gained the confidence to try participating in bigger tournaments, and he was certainly no stranger to travel. By Rift Warriors VIII, he was a well-recognized player, and he managed to win his first nationals towards the tail end of VIII's competitive popularity. When Rift Warriors IX came around, he shot up the rankings, and is now regarded by many as the best Rift Warriors player around.
Rift Warriors Character: Aster Wilde
Debut: Rift Warriors V, though he's been a part of the lore since Rift Warriors II, mentioned in passing as the half-brother of another character who's been in since the first Rift Warriors.
Playstyle: Contrary to appearances, Aster is a sticky rushdown character with a strong neutral game. Although most of his attacks utilize his guns, and he doesn't have any ammo system to hold him back, his bullets don't actually go full screen, fizzling out at about half screen unless he spends meter. Nonetheless, the bullets still cover a huge area, travel fast, can lead into combos or blockstrings, and are very hard to whiff punish since they have little startup and end lag. It doesn't really matter where you are on the screen, you need to be prepared for him to flash step in and shoot you. His movement is quite excellent, allowing him to convert bullet hits into combos, which generally require his shorter ranged melee attacks for good damage. Several of these melee attacks are just gun shots that don't actually fire any bullets, merely creating a small blast effect out of the muzzle. His backwards action dive, where he leaps backwards while shooting above him, is generally considered one of the best anti-airs in the game, since it has a huge disjoint and can lead into a full combo with some meter. His flash-jump lets him do the opposite, appearing in the air (turned around, perfect for crossing up opponents) and firing off a series of bullets whose kickback somehow keeps him airborne, allowing him to drift forward to follow up for a combo or backwards to avoid retaliation. Finally, he also has demon magic, which solely manifests in game in one of his supers to summon flaming chains around opponents that "drag them off to hell" (for apparently only a second before they fall from the sky somehow) and in his taunts to establish demon contracts, which are more fun little gimmicks than a viable tactic. Essentially, by pressing various button combinations during his taunt, he can offer his opponent a magic contract, tossing it at them. It's unblockable, but does no damage, and prompts them to accept or deny the contract. Besides punishing mashers, he can also spend
more meter than its worth to force them to accept the contract. Once accepted, a gameplay restriction is placed on
both players, such as "no jumping" or "no supers". Naturally, he has ways of cheating all of the contracts, such as flash-jumps not counting as jumps, or being able to spend meter outside of supers on things like long range bullets. All but the newest of players know to decline his contracts, but then again most Aster players don't even bother using them because of that.
In terms of weaknesses, his biggest one is that he doesn't have a lot of defensive options besides his backwards dive, which itself is punishable if predicted. He has no meterless reversal, and he's rather meter-hungry, having to choose between dumping it into combo damage, using it for zoning, or using it to cover for mistakes.
Aster's Backstory: Aster is a half-demon hitman and bounty hunter living in a near-future pseudo-apocalypse brought on by climate catastrophe coupled with the aftermath of world war 3. His demon father was summoned by an unknown (dead) group of humans, and went on to manipulate certain characters and NPCs into conflict. Only about 1/4th of the original human population remains in his time.
Aster makes a living hunting down persons of interest and the many war criminals that fell through the cracks. His primary, if not only goal, seems to be to make a lot of money. He's superhuman, possessing great strength, (how much is never shown) capable of moving faster than the eye can see, (
flash step trope) and has inherited the ability to use "demon magic" from his father. (which is vaguely defined besides the use of demon contracts) He is canonically an edgy, over the top, devil-may-cry-esque badass.
Aster's Powers: Aster was given the ability to control minds, though it's been shown to be short of absolute control in the lore, working best when its target is unaware, and has little impact on gameplay, besides forcing people to accept demon contracts. In the tutorial of Rift Warriors VI, he teaches his half brother, who had lost his memory, how to play the game with it, and calls his own ability "usually useless" in a fight.
Noctis,
Carlyle,
Fetzen,
Lewascan2,
LuckyBlackCat,
Crimson Flame,
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