Personality: As a child, Jade felt very little that could be described as human emotion. He was brilliant -- astonishingly brilliant -- but, as child prodigies so often are, also very much south of normal, and while adults fawned on him for his intelligence and his good behavior, Jade's own sister thought him a monster. Imagine that: your baby sister, hardly old enough to speak in full sentences, still going everywhere with a doll under one arm, frightened of you. Even when you invent an entire branch of science just to repair a broken doll for her, it only increases her fear.

Jade is grown up by the time the game starts, and an ongoing question as it continues to reveal his past is how much he's really changed from that emotionally-stunted brilliant little boy. As an adult, he certainly smiles more, laughs, shares jokes with other party members (often about the age gap between them, what an old man he is and how much his back hurts or how soon he will begin to decompose), and is generally pleasant unless seriously provoked -- but even his closest friends remark on occasion that it's hard to tell when Jade is really pleased with something, and when he's only wearing an utterly perfect and convincing mask of good cheer. He goes out of his way to reassure and cheer up other characters at times, but his sister, when the party meets her, still feels the need to warn you that he may have only learned how to behave like a human being.

And while Jade denies her further accusation that, deep down, he still wants to bring Nebilim back to life, he doesn't pretend her concern isn't well-founded, and will later confess, albeit only to his oldest friend, that he still feels strangely detached at times. As a child, one of the things he was most troubled by not understanding was what it meant for someone to die -- what it meant to mourn -- and even having his fdie right in front of him did not help. But that he is obviously worried about this, concerned by his perceived lack of human feeling, is reason enough for his friend to reassure him that he must be human enough after all.

Abilities: Jade is what we call gifted; the very definition of genius.

As a Fonist, he has command of the first Six Fonons -- Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, and Darkness. His natural ability with these elements is further amplified by Fonic Sight, a procedure he developed and performed on himself at age eight to open the fon slots in his eyes and increase his power. (And it worked, although it also decreased his control over Fonic Artes and forced him to create special eye glasses which help to temper his raw power. Jade casually remarks to the party that without them he might lose control and accidentally kill everyone. ♥) Additionally, Jade makes use of the contamination effect to store the "fonons" of his spear in his right forearm: when he "draws" his weapon, it therefore seems to materialize out of nowhere.

It's worth noting that both Fonic Sight and the contamination effect could have had dire consequences for Jade. Fonic Sight routinely either kills or blinds people, and the contamination effect usually damages the mind, causing brain damage or even insanity. Only Jade's immense skill makes the things he does to himself less than completely suicidal.

Then, as a military officer, Jade is of course an exceptional fighter, and while he often makes use of his Fonic Artes on the battlefield, he's certainly no slouch when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. As implied above, the spear is his preferred weapon.

And finally, Jade is brilliant as a scientist. He was a child prodigy, speeding through school, and never slowed down as an adult. He is probably in possession of multiple doctorates and has invented entire branches of science. Although he repeatedly states that such-and-such area is not his area of expertise, Jade has never followed this by being anything less than ridiculously competent. Do I really need to say more?

In fact, Jade's only real deficits are his inability to use the Seventh Fonon (he can't heal people, or do any of the other things Tear does over the course of the game), and his complete failure to be an actual human being. If you want someone to solve a math problem that covers four blackboards, Jade is your man; if you want someone to give you a hug, or even evince a particularly convincing smile, you should probably look elsewhere.

Multifandom Test: Bella Swan, Twilight series

Upon meeting Bella, Jade would be immediately overcome by the powerful urge to dissect her. Admittedly he feels this urge relatively often, being the charming human being he is, but Bella is a special case. As a human, her clumsiness would make him want to study her center of balance, because clearly something in her didn't develop right if she's still adorably awkward at seventeen, but it's really her vampiric nature that he'd be fascinated by -- and less because she is a vampire, which his world doesn't have, than because of the way she breaks all of her species' own rules. Renesmee's accelerated growth alone would be reason to strap Bella down to a table somewhere -- conveniently rendered unconscious, perhaps by Tear's singing -- and make careful incisions all over her body to collect tissue samples.

(That her skin would be too hard to permit this is irrelevant. He would find a way, probably using fonons.)

...Oh, and it really doesn't matter what Bella's personality is like. She wouldn't be talking during any of this anyway. 

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Appearance: Jade is tall, 6'1", and skinny -- his last physical put him at slightly underweight, probably because he neglects food in favor of other responsibilities. He has light brown hair down past his shoulders, and wears glasses that are less about correcting his more-than-perfect vision than they are about regulating his Fonic Sight. Without the glasses, he is canonically quite good-looking, and Luke comments, upon seeing a picture of Jade from twenty years ago, that the man barely looks any different. Bathing in children's blood will do that for you. Or is Jade kidding about that? It's so hard to be sure. ♥