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OOC INFORMATION
Name: Bear
Contact: PMs, Plurk naturalcyber or gmail: realisticfakefish [at] gmail
Other Characters: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Gale
Age: AI is henceforth an age (more seriously: physically and mentally adult, but chronologically about 5 or so due to being a combat AI)
Canon: Digital Devil Saga
Canon Point: Game 2: first trip to EGG, just post Abbadon fight.
Character Information: Here's Gale on the SMT wiki

Personality:
First and foremost, Gale is the analyst and tactician of the Embryon Tribe. He's a chessmaster, and he's always trying to think a dozen moves ahead, and plan and backup plan for every possible variable and outcome. He's incredibly intelligent, which goes without saying, makes him exceptionally good at his role. At the beginning of the first game, his role is his everything. There's very little of Gale that isn't directly related to planning and guiding the Embryon through what they need to do to achieve Nirvana. This starts changing for Gale, and eventually he fully awakens as his own person, but this change is slow, and comes in fits and starts, and he's the last to finally become himself.

Regarding his role, before emotions awaken to the tribe, he is able to work cohesively with them effortlessly, and after emotions awaken he's one of the first to notice changes, and to actively resist them himself. He initially sees these emotional changes as unpredictable and a detriment, so when emotions and memories push, he pushes back hard to avoid feeling them. He does this until nearly the end of the first game, at least partly because he doesn't know, and isn't prepared for what will happen after.

Which brings up another facet of Gale. Unpredictable/unexpected changes and variables are his enemy. Gale is so consumed in his role as strategist, which involves knowing all the obstacles and predicting what is likely to change during a battle in order to bring his tribemates through everything both as intact as possible and victorious, that he can't deal with things changing beyond his control. His initial creativity and flexibility is more because of incredibly thorough planning, looking at every possible outcome, likely or even extremely unlikely, than from an ability to adapt to new things on the fly. Control is important for him, and changes out of his control and ability to predict (like betrayal or awakened emotions) bother him so much that he fights back and stalls his own awakening consciously. Over time Gale does learn to be more comfortable with change and new things, and after awakening also learns to accept and adapt, but he'll always be most comfortable if he can predict and plan courses of action for an environment, new or not, versus having to adapt to changing while not knowing where he is or what's going on.

Because of his role and his resistance to emotions, Gale can also be an ass to other people, not always intentionally, especially in game one. He's so focused on the logical, intellectual side, that he misses completely the idea of someone mourning, and that mourning can be good and necessary versus a waste of time better spent planning for the next engagement. Also, Gale is one of the last to realize that others can become comrades to them. Gale is very group oriented. The Embryon are his ingroup, and he has incredible bias towards them, to the point of in the first game dismissing others outside the group. He does not understand how Argilla could have formed a group bond with Jinana because he doesn't yet realize those bonds potentially exist outside the Embryon. Actually at that point, he's not even consciously aware of the bonds at all on an emotional level. Even once he awakens emotions, he isn't always the best in tune with them, and is often the one most easily confused by what he's feeling. This changes, especially in the second game, but the base he's growing upward from is important to understand the changes.

That said, once his emotions develop, Gale does change a lot. Previously, his focus on logic, and lack of comprehension of group bonds, has him suggesting a betrayal. However, he doesn't see this as a "true" betrayal at the time, and more like an elaborate trap, using a proposed alliance as bait for it. After all, logically, they must defeat the tribe that they'd fight with in order to reach Nirvana, so a true alliance would be impossible. This act emphasises two things about Gale. One, that he's creative. The whole Junkyard system is set up so that tribes would never think of allying with each other, yet Gale is able to come up with it and suggest it, and then take it a step further. The suggested betrayal is underhanded, but the tactics behind it are sound. Two smaller forces, unable to win a fight on their own joining up gives them the combined strength to win, and lays the foundation for the "allies" not to expect the attack when it comes, thus taking out two enemy groups that the Embryon would not be able to with only their own manpower, even with the skills of their leadership and core members.

Two, it actually demonstrates his loyalty, and in a weird way the sense of honor that he'll eventually develop. Serph instantly shoots down the proposed betrayal and Gale accepts it without arguing. He might not understand the connections of an honest alliance, but once it becomes reality he supports it, to the point of being completely unprepared for Bat's betrayal. In Gale's world you just don't betray your tribe, never, ever, ever. That Bat might have betrayed the Embryon, Gale could have predicted and prepared for, but because the Embryon and Bat's own tribe were both approaching things as a true alliance, he was not prepared, because betraying them betrayed Bat's tribe too. This is a display of sensibilities that later become the core of Gale's awakened personality, and one of his comrades betraying him is his berserk button, which sends him into the closest he comes to a rage and recklessly attacking the traitor without thinking first.

Gale's honor doesn't come out of nowhere. Even before he awakens, there's a fledgling sense of honor struggling to form. Loyalty and honor are deeply intertwined, and loyalty comes first for Gale, before it grows. In addition to the above examples, to look at things completely logically, the Embryon had almost no chance of fighting and winning against so many larger Tribes, so why didn't Gale defect and work for someone else? He was showing the ability to form concepts that went counter to what had always been done in the Junkyard and the "laws" binding them to their tribes already were coming apart even so early in the games, so there really was nothing external holding him there. Following the law already was becoming a choice, and Gale chose to do so. Because his loyalty had already "sprouted" from the first seeds inside him, and was growing towards honor.

Still, that honor isn't goodness all on its own. Gale is heavily an "ends justifies the means" guy before his emotions awaken and it doesn't go away entirely afterward. Betrayal, even of someone not a true ally, quickly becomes abhorrent, but Gale remains very, very ingroup focused for a long time, and the ability to look outside his group and even to begin to consider others as important as the Embryon lags behind. It would take a lot more from his current canon point to do it than from an earlier one, but Gale would still potentially sacrifice others for his tribe, if the need was great enough. He'd exhaust all his other options first, true, but he'd still do it. On the flip side, if it was required for him to sacrifice limb or life for the Embryon? He'd do it in a heartbeat, and during the second game treasures sacrifices made for the remaining group and uses them to motivate himself to continue even when it all looks hopeless. One of his biggest motivations is to become "worthy" of the sacrifices made for him and the Embryon, and he strives toward that ideal

But for Gale, the goodness does start coming, first in a trickle, and then more surely. Honesty gets woven into Gale's honor code, to the point that when he's passing on a message involving being honorable to someone, he changes the wording to honest, and then immediately afterward worries about having not quite intentionally lied. Honesty, in this case, especially being true to oneself, one's emotions, and showing that truth to others, is something Gale begins to value as he comes into his own. He's never going to be the most emotive person, but he more readily gives comfort, and even begins to show compassion for others, and even the whole world as the second game progresses. In Gale's case, this is what he's inherited from his previous self, that thread of compassion that allowed David to exhort his lover not to hate humanity which had caused his death on his very own deathbed. Gale may never be able to express such compassion so purely, but a thread of it is there.

As things progress, Gale of course is willing to defend and protect his comrades, both the Embryon and new friends and allies, with everything he has, and exhibits great trust in them, and though it's hard for him to show it, he does care deeply. The precipitating event for him consciously realizing deep abiding bonds is when he develops a connection to someone (Lupa, leader of the Wolves) outside the Embryon, even before his emotions awaken. Suddenly, he finds that he not only respects and is intrigued by this other tribe leader but Gale wants to defend Lupa fiercely, and is willing to go up against the 'natural order' he's known all his "life" for Lupa's sake in a way that might even potentially risk his own ability to get to Nirvana. Gale would prefer to be with his comrades, of which he counts Lupa now as one of them, than be in Nirvana with even one missing and left behind. This marks a huge turning point for Gale, and when he's later forced to fight and kill Lupa to save the rest and preserve what little dignity Lupa had left, he finally fully awakens and curses Angel for doing this to them. Gale later expresses regret and grief, and mentions wanting the war to end because of this.

Perhaps because of this awakening dishonorable actions will send him into an indignant anger, though Gale's anger tends to burn cold and calculating instead of like a wildfire. Though these and other small changes are not as frequent as emotional signs from the others, Gale does feel, and in cases just as strongly as, if not more so than, other members of the Tribe. Usually, though, he has a good handle on showing his emotions because he's got an iron will and mostly good self-control. Understanding his emotions is another thing entirely, but eventually he'll figure it out.

He also develops a very dry and subtle sense of humor and teasing once his emotions awaken, and when he feels it's safe he's willing to relax a little bit and joke or tease.

5-10 Key Character Traits:
-loyal
-honorable
-honest
-intelligent
-analytical/logical to the point of having difficulty dealing with emotional bonds
-protective
-emotionally constipated
-brave
-group oriented to a fault
-quietly compassionate

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