![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
judgmentbolts) wrote2025-12-06 01:22 pm
info.
About 6', dark hair and green eyes. He's got broad shoulders and a narrow waist, though he's started to soften up around the middle. (He's 44 he's not maintaining abs are you kidding—) Cid is well-built and has more than his share of faint sword scars; it's easy to identify him as a fighter.
He's almost never wearing short sleeves, but if his left arm is visible you'll be able to see the damage from the curse. Guess who's slowly turning to stone — it's this guy.
Usually wearing leather pants and a dark linen shirt with long sleeves and a deep plunging v-neck. He'll often wear a leather jacket overtop when it cools down in the evening, or sometimes a scarf to keep the sand off. His arms are almost never uncovered regardless of the weather. If there's any part of his clothing that needs to be fussed into behaving, you can assume that he hasn't bothered.
Despite coming from 20+ years of military background, it might be hard to tell just by looking at him that Cid was ever a military man. He has a confident swaggering gait and is prone to gesturing with his hands when he talks. He tends to come across relatively friendly and easygoing, if sometimes overbearing. It's clear he knows his way around a sword whenever he has one in-hand, and isn't particularly troubled when he doesn't. If your character is keen on these sorts of details, they might notice that he occasionally favours his left hand/arm, and will sometimes rub his wrist or rest it against whatever weapon or item he has strapped to his hip.
He's voiced by Ralph Ineson so Cid has a deep rumbling voice and an obvious (fantasy) Yorkshire accent.
Bitter tobacco and clove smoke from his cigarillos tends to drown out everything else and cling to everything he's wearing even when he's not smoking. Otherwise, it's just leather and nothing particularly unusual. He keeps relatively clean, but isn't otherwise fussed. The exception would be if he's just used his powers or if your character has a particularly keen sense of smell, there may some lingering scents like ozone or blood.
Cid commanded Waloed's naval fleet for nearly two decades; as Lord Commander, he answered only to the king. He's rarely interested in talking about this time in his life, but suffice to say that he he's an excellent fighter, strategist, and sailor.
While investigating the origins of the blight that ravaged Valisthea, Cid drafted plans for a ship's engine that would be fast enough to ferry the people to safety should the land no longer be habitable. After learning that the blight was the price of using magic, he set about inventing non-magical alternatives to necessary devices in the hope of showing people other ways to live and giving them a way to survive in a world without magic. These devices were also a necessity for day-to-day life in the blighted zone where his Hideaway was located. While Cid is a gifted engineer in his own right, he tends to prefer working on things that are useful and necessary with a focus on easing the burdens of those most in need.
Principled and pragmatic, Cid believes that everyone deserves the chance to live and die on their own terms -- but he's well aware of the fact that this is easier dreamed than done. For the last few years, he's been the de facto leader of a group of formerly enslaved Bearers and those who sympathize with their plight, working to free those they can and provide them with the means to live together, hidden away from the Empire.
Rather than trying to do all of this himself, Cid was able to bring together his allies to help build the Hideaway -- a purser to handle the coin, a merchant to acquire supplies, a cook, a blacksmith, etc... Cid has a good head for logistics, but he's best at managing people and earning their trust.
While Cid would much rather come to a peaceful resolution whenever possible, he's highly mistrustful of governments, and willing to take extreme measures as a very last resort. After he discovered that the Mothercrystals were the cause of the blight, he set about preparing to destroy them, an act that would (and later does) have profound repercussions, plunging the world into a nearly apocalyptic event. In his own words, he had already spent the better part of twenty years trying to convince people of the dangers of magic and the possible alternatives. He felt that there had to be a world left to save for there to be any kind of future for Bearers.
Cid is able to wield lightning-aspected magic by drawing in ambient aether from the world around him and turning it into electrical attacks that stun or kill enemies. The most powerful of these attacks is his Judgment Bolt, which allows him to call a bolt of lighting down from the heavens, usually to devastating effect.
Cid's status as a Dominant means he can fully or partly transform himself into the god Ramuh. This is called a "semi-prime" or "prime" respectively, and allows them to draw on vastly greater power by either partially or fully transforming.
When semi-primed, Cid's hair turns white and his eye, as well as the veins on his face, begin to glow blue. He's wreathed in lighting that seems to spill out of his body. In this form, has enough power to take out large monsters and gains superhuman speed, strength, and durability.
When fully primed, he transforms into Ramuh, a giant... old man... with a staff that allows him to temporarily manipulate the clouds above and draw levin from them as well. Ramuh can also fly and teleport, or at least move fast enough that he appears to do so.
However, since Cid gave Ramuh to Clive in his final moments, he doesn't have easy access to his more advanced powers anymore. He can still semi-prime or prime if he pushes for it, as other Dominants are shown to do this after Clive takes their Eikon, but it would be far more difficult and physically taxing for him, and runs a risk of him losing control of Ramuh if he were to fully prime.