followyourstar | expiationlogs application (updated 1/2/2025)

Player: Hayley
Contact:

shadetoshade
Age: 33
Current Characters: n/a

Character Name: Dante
Character Canon: Limbus Company
Canon Point: Post-Canto VII
Age: Unknown -- Adult

Crime: Aimlessness

Background: List of all story and Intervallo chapters
Wiki page for Dante

I don't fully agree with some of the things in Dante's article:

Many of the jokes about their head in tense situations are not light-hearted but self-deprecating. The Sinners are shown to be upset upon hearing these jokes. While I agree that it's an attempt by Dante to diffuse the situation/lighten the mood, the jokes are made after Dante is injured or after someone has called for Dante's death due to their head.

I'm not a fan of the Golden Bough Resonance and Telepathy descriptions in the Abilities section. While I'll get into the Golden Bough stuff in the abilities section of the app, the "telepathy" section is, in my opinion incorrect in many places. Rather than any telepathy being involved, I believe that those connected to Dante via the contract are able to understand them thanks to the Golden Bough in Dante's head due to what the Golden Bough is heavily hinted at to be (which would take Lobotomy Corporation's wiki to explain). I haven't seen any evidence of Dante being able to narrow communication down to a single person. The only person outside of the Sinners that we know for a fact can understand Dante right now is someone who has a few things about him that reference the Golden Bough's origins--and even that may be more reference/coincidence than relevance.

I would also take the "Winding Down" thing with a grain of salt as it was part of an April Fool's event. It may not be UNtrue, especially since ProjMoon laughs in the face of gameplay and story separation whenever they can, but the last time Dante was able to look into a Mirror World without using their tablet, they were fully awake, in the presence of at least one or two other Golden Boughs, and had a couple of other mitigating factors going on at the time.

Personality:

The first impression one gets of Dante is that they are a person who is in way over their head in almost everything they do. They're not very assertive (their suggestions frequently being dismissed by the people around them), nervous, somewhat bumbling, and prone to overthinking.

They have a low opinion of themselves, believing that the clock that serves as their head is the most important thing about them, to the point that even when injured they'll joke about everything being fine because the clock is okay. Dante also frequently places blame on themselves, particularly their skills as a manager, when things go sideways, and while they do their best to improve upon their perceived flaws, sometimes they can go a little too far with it (for example: a teammate lashes out at everyone due to getting in her own head and stewing over an upcoming event that will touch on her trauma--as a result, Dante's first attempt to make up for letting her stew like that is to take the guy next up on the chopping block for Trauma Day and another Sinner and jump into an unknown place to get something that will make him feel better... which gets 2/3 of them kidnapped and nearly killed. Dante is aware of how little combat, technical, and tactical experience they have (or have forgotten, if they had any at all) compared to the people around them, and they are desperate to do whatever they can to help, whether that comes from emotional support, bringing the Sinners back from death, or by harnessing their clock to slow down time and give the people they're with time to catch up to a fleeing foe.

For all their apparent and perceived flaws, Dante shows several positive tendencies as well. They are incredibly adaptive, flexible, and resilient, even from the prologue of the game. After nearly being killed, and watching a bunch of people around them end up killed or maimed--all within the first few minutes of losing their memories--they're pressured into a management job with Limbus Company and proceed to handle it pretty decently. The first mission is a failure and the Sinners frequently butt heads to start off with, but the fact that Dante not only kept their head up, roll with it, and even improve as time went on is notable. Even dealing with the manmade and not-so-manmade horrors of the city becomes routine to them fairly quickly.

They've even been shown to have gained more of a spine than they had in their first chapter, revealing the occasional comment filled with sarcastic, dry wit that they would have kept to themselves to avoid rocking the boat in Canto I.

Despite their memory loss and awkward nature, Dante is very much not naive. The City is not an easy place to live in (to put it lightly), and they were forced to pick up on that that very quickly. They are aware that the company is using them and the Sinners to get what they want, even if they don't currently see any other way forward than to go along with it, and they are very careful with their trust and what information they choose to divulge. For example, even though they trust the Sinners, they don't let anyone know that the memory wipe K Corp performed at the end of Canto IV didn't work on them, knowing it would only serve to make things harder for everyone in a city that will kill for its patents.

Abilities:

TURN BACK THE CLOCK (Only applicable to the 12 Sinners of Limbus Company)
Through means of some sort of contract not even they know all the details of, Dante has bound the Sinners to their time, making it possible for Dante to bring them back to life by rewinding their deaths. When doing so, Dante feels every ounce of pain the Sinner went through--for each and every Sinner they bring back to life (example: if all 12 Sinners die by being drowned by a large fish monster, Dante gets to feel what it's like to drown 12 times). There appear to be limits to this ability, but the game's narrative is vague about them. The general consensus seems to be that if it results in a fate worse than death, then it probably can't be reversed.

To make things interesting and allow for any Sinners who apply to the game to have fun with the death mechanics, I'm going to add the limitation that Dante can only turn back the clock for them if they do so within 15 minutes of the Sinner's death. Enough time for accidents to happen/Dante to be prevented from getting enough time to initiate/a search and rescue mission to be delayed.

DURANTE
An ability of Dante's that has the potential to give Dante access to several abilities based on their willpower and resonance with the Golden Bough. It seems likely these abilities will be based on the Sephirot of Lobotomy Corporation, but it can't be said for certain at this time as only one such ability has been unlocked.

Pigritia: Once per day, Dante can create a temporal field capable of halving the speed of everyone within save for Dante and those bound to Dante's time. While we don't have an exact idea as to the limitations of the ability outside of gameplay (and taxes), I'm going to say it only applies in an area about as big as a two-story house (to give room for multiple people in battle) and can only last for a maximum of 15 minutes (enough time for a longer fight/encounter). The area of effect is centered on Dante.

Superbia: In-canon, allows for the use of E.G.O. without using any sin resources. For RP purposes, I've chosen to interpret this as the ability to enhance the power of an attack or clash via the enhancement of that person's emotions in that moment. In other words, this is a free limit break granter. Interpreting its once-a-day activation as it being heavily taxing on Dante. -- Can only be used on the 12 Sinners of Limbus Company. Able to be used on anyone thanks to AC rewards as of 1/4/2025

THE GOLDEN BOUGH
Golden Boughs, as their name implies, are small, golden saplings capable of resonating with people and one another in order to bring forth incredible, otherworldly feats. Dante has one in their head and has very little idea how it works or the limits of its power. What can be gathered about the Golden Bough in Dante's head so far is that it

Allows Dante to resonate with the Sinners, granting them the ability to see into their mental state. Dante does not have full control over this ability.

Enables Dante to make use of their time manipulation abilities

Lets Dante communicate with Distortions that have lost the ability to speak

Lets Dante and anyone near them delve into the Fathoms of Ego of a person -- a dungeon focused around defining traumatic events/moments in an individual's life. Typically, the person whose Fathoms they are comes along with, whether human or distortion, and they come face to face with these memories as well. The actions that person takes in response to these memories (and any change they do or do not undergo) are entirely up to them.

Lets Dante sense Abnormalities, Peccatula, Distortions, and E.G.O. -- All four of these are complicated subjects, but to put it simply:
- Abnormalities are creatures formed or created from emotions, experiences, traumas, fears, rumors, etc. floating around in the river of the collective unconscious (and a good majority of them were artificially created by Lobotomy Corporation)
- Distortions are what happens when people with a dream and drive fall into despair and instead become determined to act their despair upon others
- Peccatula are monsters that are created when someone fails to become a Distortion and their entire sense of self collapses
- and E.G.O. can either be extracted from Abnormalities or manifested from people who have come to accept themselves as they are after being pushed to their limits. Those who use E.G.O. that does not belong to them (like the sort extracted from Abnormalities) risk losing themselves to the Abnormality that served as its source if used for too long, becoming a derivative of that Abnormality or a sub-entity of that Abnormality in a process known as E.G.O. Corrosion.

In RP, the top two will manifest as normal. For the bottom two, they will continue as normal if anyone from Project Moon's universe appears. However, I think the Golden Bough's presence would help them to interact with or sense creatures or beings formed from the collective unconscious, made from emotions, etc. For example, if in a room with a mage and a persona user who are both using magic, Dante would be able to pinpoint the persona user. If a Terminus Beast from Final Fantasy XIV were to show up out of the blue, Dante might get the same feeling from it that they get from the Peccatula (and Dynamis use in general might ping even ping their radar). That kind of thing.

Anything to do with the Fathoms of Ego will be up to other players' discretion/request.

A FUCKING BOMB
Dante's head comes with a self-destruct sequence, meant to be used only when there are no other options available and to keep others from obtaining the Golden Bough within their head. It's unknown just how powerful this bomb is, but it's also highly unlikely Dante will end up using it.

Inventory: Dante will be bringing with them two things: the company credit card and the tablet issued to them by Limbus Company.

Dante's tablet is primarily used for three things: a diary, a way to manage E.G.O. and a way to manage IDs. Which is to say, Project Moon has torn the walls of gameplay and story segregation down and made the gacha canon. While the game's a bit vague on how E.G.O. is assigned, the IDs are basically your units in battle--AU versions of the Sinners with different abilities--assigned in-universe via cards that are collected when the bus's engine spits them out and slotted into the tablet.

Dante will not be arriving with any EGO or any Identity Cards in tow. Any E.G.O. will have to be obtained through rewards and can probably be used by anyone who gets their hands on it, for good or evil.

Since IDs are more character-specific, I figure I'll leave those to be earned by anyone apping in the Sinners.

Samples:
TDM top-level
With Octavian on the TDM (becomes in-person a little under halfway in)

Questions: Please let me know if I need to nerf anything or need to go into any more detail/give clarification!