Pearl

The Basics
Canon: Steven Universe
Character Name: Pearl
Character Journal: terrifyingrenegade
Player Name: Possum
Best contact method: PM or Plurk at awkwardpossum


Character Details

Canon Point: Pre-Series, during the rebellion against Homeworld after the Battle for the Ziggurat and before Pink Diamond is shattered.

Species: Gems are an imperialistic race of magic, sapient space rocks. They project physical forms of hard light, and as a result do not require air, food, water, or sleep like a human would. There’s a canon informational video that explains it all.

Timeline of Important Events in Canon History:

Pearl is first created as a servant at some unspecified point in time back on the Gem Homeworld, 5,000+ years ago.

She meets Rose Quartz, a soldier under the service of Pink Diamond, who becomes an incredibly important and influential figure in her life.

She learns about the human concept of “knighthood” while visiting at a gem battle arena on Earth. This experience really resonates her, and she adopts ‘serving a person and a cause’ as her mantra.

Rebellion breaks out, and a small faction of gems decide to stand against their homeworld, both to prevent the populated planet Earth from becoming a gem colony (a process that would eradicate all life on the planet), and to fight for their right to live freely. Pearl decides to betray her Homeworld by remaining loyal to Rose, and accompanying her through the rebellion.

With the rebellion under way, Pearl and Rose attack the court of Blue Diamond, and meet Garnet/Ruby/Sapphire. At this stage, the two of them have gained something of a reputation, as the leader of the rebellion, and her “terrifying renegade Pearl.”

The rebellion grows, and more battles between gems are fought on Earth. Pearl witnesses many of her friends and comrades shattered, and she spends every battle deliberately throwing herself into harm’s way in order to protect Rose. At some point during this mess, a close friend of Pearl’s named Bismuth disappears under mysterious circumstances, and is presumed captured. It is a few days after this occurrence that Pearl finds herself in Osaaru.

Personality:
Though Pearl that will be entering the world of Osaaru from a canon point that far precedes the modern day events of the series, ample flashbacks and references in the narrative provide context for how she was back then versus now. Earnest, idealistic, stubborn, painfully perfectionist and graceful in demeanor, Pearl is a well-meaning gem with a kind heart, and a lot of personality flaws that she is still struggling to overcome. She has not yet experienced the devastating loss of Rose’s death, but the threat of such a thing remains a very real possibility in the heat of the rebellion.

A younger Pearl may be short the 5000+ years of living on a post-war Earth that have shaped modern Pearl into the woman we see in the main show, but some things just don’t change. First and foremost, Pearl is a detail oriented perfectionist, and painfully precise in all aspects of life. This is a staple of her personality that has always held true, and it’s no coincidence that other characters will often categorize Pearl as the neat freak of the group. Modern day Pearl is shown to be fastidious, borderline obsessive in her need to clean and organize and plan ahead. By comparison, the younger version of herself is a bit less extreme on that front, but only out of necessity; in the heat of war, she doesn’t have much time to dwell on minutia the way she does later on in her life. However, it’s certain that once she arrives in Osaaru and starts to settle into life outside the setting of the battlefield, those behaviors will start to make themselves known once more. When it comes to maintaining a certain environment, Pearl believes that everything has its place, and things just work. better when you’re implementing a sense of organization and structure. She has a penchant for symmetry, and gets pretty fussed when things are messy or out of place. This doesn’t just apply to matters of cleanliness, either. Pearl is a gem who values the idea of always having a plan, a list, a schedule… whatever is relevant to the situation, and she values the idea of sticking to that structure. It causes friction with people who prefer to play things by ear and go with the flow (ex: Amethyst), and this bias of hers only really takes a back seat when she’s in the presence of someone with more authority who’s calling the shots.

Pearl is incredibly loyal. We know from the events of “Sworn to the Sword” that she sees herself as a knight, a concept that she learned of while on Earth and immediately attached herself to with gusto. She does not see herself this way in the abstract sense that she is heroic or chivalrous (though she is arguably both of these things), but rather as a knight in the most literal definition of the term: a warrior, “dedicated to a person and a cause”. Rose Quartz is her liege, and the rebellion is her cause. Modern day Pearl doesn’t have as much of an opportunity to show just how seriously she takes this self-prescribed role, but when this does come up, the dedication and seriousness of her demeanor are enough to tell us that back in the day, it was absolutely everything to her. She fixates upon it, it’s her reason for living, her motivation for fighting and the source of her bravery. Garnet describes how during the war, Pearl took pride in risking life and limb for her liege, often putting herself in harm’s way, even against Rose’s wishes.

Her relationship with Rose is incredibly important, but the very nature of it also says a lot about the kind of person Pearl is. As a gem-type back on Homeworld, Pearls are collectively not really seen as people. According to Peridot, they’re treated as accessories: “Made-to-order servants” designed to stand around and look pretty while carrying out the occasional menial task. Who this Pearl was made for, and what the nature of her creation was, is unknown at this point in time. However, whether she was created for Rose from the start, or if she was originally made to serve someone else and wound up defecting, what matters is that she holds Rose in an extremely esteemed light for treating her as much more than just a piece of property, going so far as to claim that “Rose made (her) feel like (she) was everything”. As a younger gem, Pearl will be entering the game lacking the 5000+ years of experience that help to make her such a brilliant tactician and cunning warrior, which means she’ll be lacking even more confidence than is usual, particularly in the absence of Rose Quartz. Pearl has always been an intelligent and quick-witted individual, but she has also always suffered from an intense inferiority complex as a result of the marginalization that she experienced back on Homeworld. She does not trust her own incredible skills or abilities, so she compensates for this in two ways: First, with displays of fabricated confidence and bravado, usually manifesting as a tendency to lecture and brag in order to cover up her own lack of a sense of self-worth. She’s constantly fishing for approval from her teammates and friends in order to feel secure, and this façade can be easily broken if someone expresses even the slightest bit of disapproval. The second coping mechanism involves picking a leader to attach herself to, by putting her absolute faith and trust in them. This is a problem that follows her as far as 5000 years into the future, which is confirmed when she confides in Garnet that she still “needs someone to tell (her) what to do”, claiming that she’s “useless on her own”. In other words, she is very co-dependent. Pearl is not confident enough to act on her own without the context of upholding the ideals and wishes of someone that she cares about. Pretty much the only time that she ever acts for herself when it’s out of selfish desire and jealousy, and when that happens, it shows off a very ugly side of her.

Indeed, a younger Pearl is incredibly catty, prone to jealousy and willing to act in a manipulative or bossy way in order to maintain the fragile psychological safety net she has created for herself. We see this before Steven is born, when Greg Universe first enters the picture. Frightened by how much Rose seems to have taken a liking to the human, she’s positively nasty to Greg, and often makes a big show of how close she is to Rose in front of him, fishing for Rose’s attention and approval in order to draw her focus back away from him. And when she can’t be directly nasty, she resorts to being manipulative. We see this even during present day, when she begins to fabricate dangerous situations in order to trick Garnet into fusing with her.

Despite these shortcomings, Pearl is not a bad person. She acknowledges when she hurts someone and is usually big enough to apologize, and she will try her hardest to make things up to friends she has wronged. She wants to protect humanity, out of her love for Rose, and has risked her own safety in order to defend Earth from her own kind. Pearl is bright, a great strategist, and although she has a tendency to get flustered when things don’t go according to plan, she has a naturally logical mindset that makes her a great problem solver. Pearl is a hard worker, a loyal friend, and a strong individual who will be learning to overcome her problems through raising and caring for her dragon.


Abilities, Magic and Supernatural Skills/Afflictions:
There’s a lot of these and I’m sorry.
-Hammer Space: Pearl can store numerous items in her gem, and summon them back out at will. Usually this involves stashing a lot of swords away so she’s never truly unarmed.
-Weapon Summoning: Gems are capable of summoning unique, magical weapons from their gems. Pearl’s weapon is a special spear that can project blasts of energy from the tip. She can also conjure two spears at once and dual wield them with great proficiency.
-Light projection: Gem can light up like a flashlight to illuminate dark spaces.
- Hologram projection: Pearl can produce both holographic images and hard light duplicates of herself from her gem. Primarily she uses this as a visual aid while lecturing, but the hard light duplicates can wield weapons and attack on their own. She can also make purely visual doubles of herself for the purposes of distracting and confusing an enemy.
-Sword proficiency: Pearl has a mastery of many different varieties of swords and their accompanying techniques, although primarily she is shown using a straight bladed sabre. She is extremely proficient at one-on-one dueling.
-Mechanical Engineering: She has natural knack for figuring out mechanical devices and reverse engineering and modifying tech. Being from an earlier canon point, she lacks the hands-on knowledge of a lot of modern Earth tech, but the intuition for sussing things out is still there.
-Gem-Tech interfacing: This is pretty irrelevant to the game setting, but Pearl can naturally just “plug in” to Gem operating systems, with the ability to read, display, and control data contained within.
-Water-Walking: With concentration, Pearl can run/skip across the surface of still bodies of water.
-EXTREME JUMPING: Like the other Crystal Gems, Pearl is occasionally shown to be able to leap absurdly high into the air, and cover great distances in a single bound.
-Psammokinesis (sand control): Pearl has some minimal control over sand, as demonstrated in “Giant Woman” when she created some kinetic miniature sand figurines for a demonstration on fusion.
-Nephelokinesis (mist/cloud control): She also demonstrates some minimal control over mist/clouds/fog, as shown in “Sworn to the Sword”, when she summoned up a dense mist to shroud the practice field in the battle stadium, and then banished it again at will.
-Regeneration/Shapeshifting: Since her true form is her gem, and everything else is just a projection of hard light, Pearl can both change her form, and also take immense amounts of damage without truly dying. When damaged enough, as long as her gem is not harmed, she will “poof” and retreat back to her gem, forming a new body and re-emerging after a period of about 2 weeks. Shapeshifting is limitless and can involve taking the form of an animal or object, or it may simply involve stretching/altering the size and shape of a single limb. However, Pearl is shown to have something of a reluctance towards shapeshifting, and she does not really use this ability.

Dragon & Magical Element
Elemental Alignment:

Wind - Pearl already is shown to have something of an affinity for the weather, with her ability to control mist. In general her movements are very light and airy, and she’s often associated with locations in the show that are elevated, or even floating.
Light - This seems like a given, considering that gems as a whole are associated with light. Their bodies and very essence are pure light, and they interact with the world by manipulating it and giving it solid form.
Water - There’s a lot of imagery associated with Pearl that has to do with the tranquility and flow of water. Her room in the temple back home is also comprised up of numerous reflecting pools that she uses for meditation purposes. Like water, she can also have a dangerous and tempestuous side that is worthy of respect.

Dragon:
Adult size: Closest to “standard” on the size chart
Body type: Bipedal, vaguely reminiscent of a Struthiomimus
Number of Legs: 2
Number of Arms: 2
Number of Wings: 2
General appearance: Long neck and even longer tail on a stocky body. It primarily stands on two long skinny legs, but it is capable of limited quadrupedal movement thanks to its gangly forearms. Large feathered wings for flight. Covered in fuzz/protofeathers, covering is particularly long/thick around the ankles/calves and collarbone. The index fingers on each forearm are equipped with a sickle claw for climbing/fighting. Diet is omnivorous, primarily feeding on fish and insects and supplemented with plants. Egg is round, and a pearly iridescent white with a smooth surface.


Personality traits inherited from Character Bond:

Inferiority complex/Lack of confidence

Neatness/Distaste for messiness

Graceful movements

Easily flustered/psyched out


30 Day Opt-In

In the 30 days that your character has been in the city, how have they spent their time?
A lot of it has been spent moping and coming to terms with possible imminent destruction of her world, and the lack of familiar faces around Osaaru. Pearl doesn’t deal with loss well and the news will have hit her hard. Only occasionally will she really be concerned about what’s supposed to be coming out of this egg she’s been called to....

Has the dragon hatched yet? Did their egg hatch immediately or was there time between locating their egg in the Heart of Nuren and the dragon's hatchday? How much have they grown?
Her dragon has not hatched at the time of game start.

How have your character's interactions with the Remnants AND the Touched within the city been?
I’m compounding this into one question/answer pair because the reaction has basically been about the same. She’s surprised by the abilities and appearances (respectively) of both populations, particularly with the Remnant’s affinity for magic; the idea of what looks ostensibly like a human having supernatural abilities of any sort is pretty foreign to her. Beyond that she’s been kind of unfortunately shirty with the populous on and off thanks to her less than ideal mental state, and any attempts at reassurance regarding the destruction of her world and her resurrection by the will of Benra will be met with mild to moderate hostility.

Has your character been living in the mountain cavern homes of Upper Nuren or within the housing areas of Lower Nuren?
Upper Nuren, where it’s (hopefully) a bit more secluded.


Writing Samples
First Sample:

(Here’s a bit of prose set in a hypothetical future a few months into the game.)

--

Sometimes, it all gets to be a bit much.
The last several months have been full of all manner of trials and triumphs, new experiences both good and bad… and for the most part, Pearl’s extraordinary work ethic helps to keep her mind off of her troubles. That’s why it’s the quiet moments, like this one, that turn out to be the hardest.

She’s been up here for a while now, perched up in one of the stone recesses of Upper Nuren, staring dully over the city below. Pearl isn’t even up to anything particularly exciting, she’s just watching… Sitting. Thinking about home. Not home as in a specific place, but home to the tune of being wherever people who care about you are. She misses that. Misses Rose, and all of her other comrades, her fellow Crystal Gems…

Sometimes the very real possibility that she might fail to save them manages to sneak up on her, crushing her gut with frantic anxiety She can feel the turbulent waves lapping at the corners of her mind now, threatening to drag her back out into an ocean of fear and uncertainty. Her fingers tighten against the stone, her pale knuckles turning even whiter as she flounders internally in an attempt to save herself from another breakdown…

A touch at her side. For a minute, unbidden, Pearl imagine’s it’s Rose. If she could just have Rose here, that would be more than enough.

But of course, it couldn’t be her. Instead, when she opens her eyes, she meets the face of her timid baby dragon, concern written across the creature’s feathery little face. Pearl realizes immediately she should have expected this; she couldn’t possibly have come up here to sulk without her dragon knowing, without her instantly feeling when she was becoming upset and overwhelmed with stress.

"Go away," the gem says stubbornly, turning back towards the vista in front of them and trying her hardest to ignore her partner. Immediately she regrets this, when she feels the pang of confusion and dismay that pierces the little creature’s heart at her scion’s rejection. Pearl tries to turn her own guilt into irritation: Serves you right for following me up here when I explicitly told you not to. Even despite the rejection though, the dragon doesn’t budge. It trills softly, giving Pearl another desperate, hopeful nudge.

This time, after a pause, Pearl scoops the little creature into her lap and shudders, hugging her dragon as the tears begin to flow.

Second Sample:
Heeere