Vern

Vern is a Beastmaster from Pirayl. He is one of the central playable characters of Driving Shadows: Antimatter Introspection and the main character of Driving Shadows: Vern.

Gameplay
Vern summons monsters in battle, changing his stats and skillset depending on which monster is currently active. A specific monster to summon at the start of each battle can be decided using the Autosummon feature at a save point, and monsters can also be switched mid-battle, though this takes a turn.

Vern's wide variety of monsters gives him the greatest variety of any character, but the fact that he can only access one skillset at a time makes him less easy to use than the rest of the cast, who can access all their skills at once. Vern is extremely customizable, and there are a variety of useful setups that can be made by combining monsters' stat bonuses or skillsets with equipment bonuses. Vern's weapons have a variety of elements and added effects.

Monsters

 * Air Dragon - Birth monster
 * Stone Golem - Obtained at Yarla Mines. Transferred into a Beastgem by Arthor and later stolen by Maelach.
 * Lava Troll - Obtained at the Caves of Zaura.
 * Derperus - Obtained at Arain Pathway after it emerged from the Gate at the Caves of Zaura.
 * Armoured Dragon - Obtained during the resistance's battle with Sable at Athaera. Later stolen by Maelach.
 * Dragon Turtle - Obtained at the Dragon Mountain. Later stolen by Maelach.
 * Winged Demon - Obtained at Lyrimor. Later stolen by Maelach.
 * Behemoth - Obtained at the Land Temple.
 * Leviathan - Obtained at the Sea Temple.
 * Ziz - Obtained at the Sky Tower.

Optional monsters
These are monsters that can be obtained, but are not necessary to progress the plot. It is therefore ambiguous whether Vern's possession of these monsters is canon.
 * Skeleton Warrior - Obtained from the Caves of Zaura.
 * Fairy - Obtained from Athaera.
 * Golden Slime - Obtained from a house in Celesti City.

Storyline
Vern was tricked by Maelach into rescuing Kato from Arain Castle, and bringing him and Trianna to Athaera, where Maelach ambushed them. After Elice rescued him, Vern continued to accompany the group in order to get revenge on Maelach.

Driving Shadows: Vern reveals that Vern also wishes to defeat Maelach so that he can force him to free the souls of the Stone Golem and Winged Demon that he has trapped in Beastgems.

Chapter 2 Notes
These notes are taken from the Chapter 2 release.

Personality
Vern is a character I would have liked to expand on more, but the fact that he's so unwilling to reveal information about himself made it hard to do that.Being a Beastmaster from birth, Vern has a strong affinity to monsters. He feels closer to them than he ever has to humans, and regards their brutal 'survival of the fittest' lifestyle as much more honest than the political manipulation and complex social customs of humanity.

As a result, he does not develop lasting relationships with humans or care for them at all. They can all die as far as he is concerned. Were someone to wound a monster for no good reason, however, Vern would be quick to anger.

Vern accepts monsters' struggle for survival and their attacking other animals (and humans) for food. What he cannot accept is humans attacking their own kind simply because of differing beliefs and ideologies.

To Vern's mind, self-defense is the only justifiable reason to attack another, regardless of whether they are human or monster.

Vern justifies the deaths of the men he kills on his jobs by the logic that he is, in his own way, only doing it to survive - the money he gains from these jobs is the way that he continues to live, and so he is simply surviving at others' expense, as monsters do.

It is likely, however, due to his tendency to accept jobs against the Arain Empire, that he has some kind of grudge against Ryneth himself. He would never admit this, instead giving the previous explanation, if he gave any at all.

Obviously, Vern is completely inept at social interaction and will attempt to quickly end any conversation that is started with him that does not directly relate to the details of his job. He makes no effort to be polite or respect the feelings of others.

People - like Maelach - who hire him and then proceed to trick him, are in Vern's eyes an example of humanity's corruption and dishonesty, and Vern has no problem ridding the world of such people.

Due to his distrust of humans, when people ask Vern for details of his life or of his art of beastmastery, he automatically assumes that they are trying to find weaknesses that they can exploit, and reacts in a hostile manner.

As for his actual backstory, I'm leaving that open - people can expand on it if they want and if not, then they don't have to. It is likely that his view of humanity as manipulative and dishonest comes from personal experience, and this experience may perhaps be related to the aforementioned grudge he seems to have against Ryneth. How he became a mercenary is another mystery.

Regarding the actual act of beastmastery, I believe I've detailed that clearly enough during Trianna's explanation of it.

Mechanics
Well, as you can see, his fighting style is extremely flexible, so feel free to let your imagination run wild when designing new monsters for him!

To add a new monster, all you have to do is replace the appropriate 'Monster #' skill with the monster's name, replace the first three placeholder skills in Vern's skill list with the monster's three skills, create a shield in the appropriate slot with the stat bonuses that you want it to have, and then create an entry in the monster log using the same formatting as the existing five do.

Since the monster can grant any kind of bonus that a shield can, there is potential for more flexible monster bonuses than the ones I have introduced. You can make monsters resist elements or status effects, for example.

To add the monster to Vern's skillset ingame, all you have to do is turn the appropriate 'Have monster #' switch on and call the common event Vern reboot (12).

The code only supports a maximum of 15 monsters. Hopefully this will be sufficient, but if it gets to 15 and the game still isn't over (which is possible if we do go into a second round), I will be happy to update the existing monster groups to accomodate more.

For equipment, Vern uses whips for weapons, doesn't use any kind of shield (since that slot is used for monster bonuses), and uses light armour that usually has 'Gear' in the name. I haven't given him a helmet so far, but I suppose he could use hats or headbands or something.

Equipment
Vern uses almost exclusively whips as weapons, with the Beast Blade being the only exception. His offhand is taken up by his currently active monster, while his armour is mostly limited to gear, which allows him to resist a variety of different attributes.

The variety of different whips and monsters available makes Vern one of the most versatile characters and so there is a great deal of flexibility in his setup.

Development
Vern was introduced in Chapter 2 as the third playable character, playing a significant part in this chapter's storyline and mostly serving to introduce the Beastmaster gameplay gimmick. He has continued to be part of the playable cast in the following chapters, though his role in the storyline is generally quite small.

Rodpop found Vern's skillset awkward to use due to the necessity of spending the first turn summoning a monster, and suggested the Autosummon concept to solve this. After some discussion on the specifics of the system, SC10 agreed with this idea and Autosummon was implemented in Chapter 3.

Between the release of Chapter 3 Remix and Chapter 4, SC10 released the sidegame Driving Shadows: Vern, which expanded on Vern's backstory and how he obtained his initial monsters, as well as his motivation for wanting to fight Maelach. An updated version was released during the Intermission that revamped the gameplay system and improved the writing in some parts of the game. In particular, Vern's conversation with Lucia was almost entirely rewritten.

Vern's backstory and character arc received a significant rehaul with the decision to create a full remake of Driving Shadows: Vern due to SC10's dissatisfaction with the current state of the project. As the project remains unfinished, most of the new information is not available to the public, but a script file containing the entire story does exist in the DSAI team's dropbox and should be considered tentatively canon for the purposes of writing the character in future.