Power-Over is a curious thing. Many of us feel as though we have it - power over our thoughts, power over our actions, power over our fates, some of us even believe we have power over others - but this is frequently a falsehood. In reality, Power-Over is not a commonly held thing, not nearly as much as we all think. Indeed, the very conception many of us have of 'power-over' is, itself, wrong; more than just experiencing a hidden failure to possess power-over, we don't even truly understand what it is.
No. What most of us really have is power-to, and it is a remarkably different thing. You have the power to get up and go to work. You have the power to go crack open a nice cold bottle of beer. You even have the power to turn away from what you're presently reading entirely, if you so choose - after all, that's a thing you have the power to do, it is within your power-to.
But you probably don't have much power-over.
That is reserved for a different class of person entirely. Someone rather unlike you.
You are a student, at one university or another within the fine, dark, rainy city of London. You've worked very hard to get where you are, and no doubt you're very intelligent and capable. You have a tremendous amount of power-to - the power to become upwardly socially mobile, the power to graduate with honours and move on to lucrative employment if your degree permits it, the power to create for yourself some kind of future in this dangerous and volatile world.
But, like most people, you have almost no power-over at all.
Unfortunately - or, potentially, fortunately - for you, there is someone in your life who has a tremendous amount of power-over.
This is an RP about a group of University students from varying walks of life, with various subject specialties, who are forced by circumstance and by person into a loosely knit group of professional thieves, in order to facilitate what might very well be one of the greatest heists ever pulled. The PCs will make up the students who are forced into helping, and the few major NPCs who are doing the forcing - or working for the people who are - will be played exclusively by myself, or possibly a Co-GM figure, if they have the time, skill, and are trustworthy.
The PCs are, as the title suggests, going to have very little power-over in comparison to the people they're trying to steal from, the people they're trying to steal for, and the NPCs who are tagging along for the ride. This is not to say that your characters will have no valuable input affecting the story, nor is it to say that your choices don't matter - on the contrary, your character will very much be held accountable for them, often in ways that are not necessarily avoidable, or good - it is instead the introduce the theme of outside control. The PCs are just students, some of them may not even be above 21 years of age, and certainly none of them will be above 26 - with possible exception for some medical students, or similarly long degree students. As a result, they have no experience of the world they've been thrust into, and they have no real influence within it; there will be times when they are trapped into making choices, without any sort of third option, and there will be times when things simply happen to them, either as a result of previous choices, or just because their adversaries (or employers) have decided to make things happen to them. In that sense, this is going to be very realistic.
There does, however, remain the chance that the PCs will either be able to escape the job entirely, or that they will be able to complete it and be thusly rewarded - and the potential rewards, excluding the glamour of the job itself, are very much worth it.
For anyone who's interested, this is based quite heavily on the interactive film, Late Shift, which has a very similar premise; with the only major difference is that there's only one member of that team of thieves who was coerced, and the others were very much willing and eager to participate, whether they were students (which, judging from their ages, is possible) or career criminals (which is also likely). The RP is likely to have a similar initial premise, but in the spirit of keeping true to the theme of power-over and choices, the latter plot and ultimate endgame are very much up in the air, and dependent on the PCs' actions.
As this is a fairly unique RP with fairly unique settings, circumstances, and pretexts, I feel it necessary to go through some rules before we get to anything else.
Standard forum rules, of course, apply. This includes ones that are more common sense than anything else - for example, the word of the GM, and the Co-GMs (if any) is absolutely final, although you can expect your point of view to be taken into account.
Although this is technically part of the above, what must be emphasised is that there will be no powergaming whatsoever by player characters. This is an RP that is actively playing with the power dynamics between the coerced and the coercers, and your characters are - until the plot changes dramatically - playing the coerced. Additionally, they're realistic, real world, believable university students, who were chosen for their particular skill sets more than any martial ability. No power gaming, and no badass chararacters, if you please.
I may, at some points, pass you a 'note' in the form of a PM. You're probably familiar with this concept, particularly if you've ever played DnD or other similar tabletop games. This is a way for me to communicate story to you in a way that other players cannot perceive - it includes information that your character alone would be able to understand, or perceive in their environment. For example, when confronted with a dead body, only the medical student in a group consisting of other types of student would be able to properly make a guess at what the time and cause of death was. In that case, I would write a note to the player controlling them, and they would then decide what to do with that information, as someone would in real life.
For reasons related to what kind of people your employers were looking for, PCs are unlikely to have very serious mental illnesses, low intelligence, or a background that is particularly likely to see them making any sort of successful escape or resistance - for example, if they had undergone military training. This is because the employers are looking for people who are stable and intelligent enough to get the job done, but who are more easily manipulated, intimidated, and forced into doing things against their will. This is not to say that a depressive does not belong here, or someone with schizophrenia, or other disorders - so long as they are manageable in a way that will permit the job's success. It also doesn't mean your character has to be a pushover, just not a badass, as aforementioned.
I will not tolerate edginess for edginess' sake. Nor am I likely to receive well any sort of author-insert, or self-avatar, though I'll admit that it can occasionally be done tastefully, and that it is not grounds for immediate denial.
Not so much a rule as a reminder - this RP is very likely to be dark. I was hesitant to apply the 18+ tag, because I'm not entirely sure how deep we'll go, but we will hardly be dealing with good people. There is no honour among these thieves, if you get my meaning. We may encounter drugs, human trafficking, brutal murder, extortion, and the like. This is going to be a realistic depiction of crime, and while I will not go out of my way to give anyone panic attacks, because I'm not that much of a prick... well, it may not be for the extremely faint of heart. It's about power, and those who hold power can be horrible, horrible people. We will not shy away from this.
Superb. With that out of the way, I'll put the character sheet template up.
(an image here, please - no anime ideally, but illustrations and real people are equally welcome)
[color=]name[/color]
[color=]"Quip"[/color]
[color=]Name:[/color] [color=]Age: Probably between 18 and 24, due to the nature of university courses. Feel free to PM me for any exceptions.[/color] [color=]Race:[/color] [color=]Gender:[/color]
[color=]University and Degree: For example, Medicine at Queen Mary University of London/Barts and The London. Please use real universities.[/color]
[color=]Appearance: A brief description, making particular note of any ways in which your character's appearance deviates from the image above, or anything that isn't in the image itself.[/color]
[color=]Personality: A paragraph or so detailing the core elements of their psyche, any mental health conditions - which are acceptable as long as they do not hamper the mission, or are so far undiagnosed - and what drives them and motivates them. You may choose to make a note of how they are being coerced into this line of work, if it is relevant to their personality - for example, someone who experiences severe anxiety or otherwise is easily intimidated, should make note that intimidation may play into their coercion.[/color]
[color=]Biography: A couple of paragraphs, or a body of text with substance, regarding your character's personal history. Unless it's very relevant you don't need to include childhood, because childhood can be quite tedious as I'm sure we all know - but it would be good to go into detail about your character's life leading up to their entrance to university, and their life since they started it. The method of coercion used against your character should definitely come into pla here - for example, if they are some kind of addict, then their drug might be withheld by the dealer associated with the Employer; if they are in dire straits for cash, or owe people money, then not only could this job be their only way out, the Employer may have even engineered their debt in the first place; if they are running from someone, or afraid of something, the Employer may be their only hope for protection, even if the Employer is just another facet of whatever it is they're running from. That kind of thing. Don't be afraid to get dark, and deep. Hit us with the feels, or disgust us entirely. [/color]
[color=]Skills:[/color] Probably relevant to their degree. You may have more than just 2, but be balanced.
[color=][/color]
[color=][/color]
[color=]Weaknesses:[/color] Probably relevant to their reasons for being here in the first place. You may have as many as you like. Humans are naturally fragile in many ways, and though an incapable character would neither survive this nor have been chosen in the first place, a character with serious weaknesses could play out interestingly, tragically, or empoweringly. Note that this includes substance addiction, any sort of racist intolerance etc, and some types of personality disorder or psychological issue.
[color=][/color]
[color=][/color]
[color=]Other: Anything else - especially if your character has a preexisting relationship with another PC.[/color]
Please, use any colour you like in the colour tags - but make it easily readable. I'll write up character sheets for my major NPCs and The Employer tomorrow, I think.
Oh, and one more thing.
Romance, relationships, and the like? They are going to be very much encouraged. The PCs are young, and in incredible danger. These two things naturally lend themselves to passion, and particularly between vulnerable people (as many PCs are likely to be) love is a very important comfort. It will also lead to naturally occurring subplots developing, and it will add a bit more of a thrill to the RP, in my honest opinion. Do talk it out with each other first, though, if you are up for that subplot - and then inform me too. I'll see if I can make it more interesting for you with my otherworldly GM powers.
Thanks for reading this, guys. I hope to hear from you all soon.
Well, if anybody needs ideas for how university courses might fit into thieving, I've got some good ideas;
Dancer; for a cat-burglar type - good amount of flexibility, able to step lightly and move swiftly, so on and so forth. Acting; bluffing your ways through situations, pretending to be someone you're not. Artist; most art courses are all about copying the style of some artist - so why not use that as 'inspiration' for a forged piece of artwork? Chemistry; creating chemical compounds - chloroform, acids, and the like. Engineer/Metalworker/Mechanics; building tech/equipment that we might need - and a blow torch. Computer Programmer; Also known as a hacker or a cracker. I've done my research, given a character I'm playing in another RP. Sportsman; Well, athleticism will probably figure in somehow. Architect; Building plans can help you find weak points in the security.
That's all I have at the mo. It's 2am for me and I TOLD myself I needed to be asleep three hours ago.
Name: Vincent Alberto Carini Age: 21 Race: Caucasian - Sicilian Gender: Male
University and Degree: Finance and Business, London South Bank University.
Appearance: Vincent is a well-tanned man of a slim stature. His face is thinner than that of the photo but only just. He stands at 5 feet and 9 inches. Vincent keeps his black hair short and combed and his face shaved. His brown eyes have a shrewd look to them, someone intent on surviving and thriving. He usually dresses presentably, even when relaxing. You'll rarely see him in something like a graphic T-shirt or jeans. While in shape, Vincent is no athlete. Despite the dangers that threaten him, he has other people to protect him so he sees no need to maintain his body the way a warrior would.
Personality: Vincent is by no means, a weak person. On the contrary, his family and lifestyle required him to be strong mentally. He's willing to make the tough calls and decisions that others would crumble under the stress of it all. Vincent isn't afraid of anything. Except his family that is, and that's exactly how his...'employers' managed to get him. Vincent is a manipulative and merciless person by nature, which would make him a fantastic businessman. His chief philosophy above all else is survival of the fittest, if anyone or anything proves a liability to him, he will make sure to snuff it out. He's a person that, despite his misfortunes in his life, is used to being in control. So you can imagine his rage when someone comes along and tells him what to do and he listens with no will of his own.
He's ambitious. He wants that power and make no mistake, he will do whatever he can to get it.
Biography:
Vincent Alberto Carini was born on June 1st, 1996 in New York City to a dying family. A family of mobsters that is. He was the first born and heir to the Carini power base. He was raised in preparation for such a position, the family's last hope of regaining power in New England. But this grooming, like a King's tutor grooms his son for the throne, made Vincent resent his family and the whole business. Nevertheless, he did what his family asked and as he grew, he began to take on their philosophies. He was never particularly fond of his family and he became enemies with his siblings and cousins as they got older because of the position Vincent would inherit by birth. It was as if Vincent's entire family was a den of vipers and he was the unlucky rat.
Vincent was always good at math and excelled at it in school, along with extracurricular activities such as debate and classes like Speech. He was simply gifted with a silver tongue and he knew how to use it. Despite being a skinny, nerdy kid who was good at math, he didn't have a moral inhibitor. It was taught to Vincent very young that this world would chew him up and swallow him if he didn't know how to defend himself. So the first time a bully stepped up to him, Vincent took his fork and slammed it into the bully's thigh and swiftly grabbed his food tray and swung it into the side of his would be tormentor's skull. Vincent was skinny, but he wasn't a pushover. When confronted about this by his teachers, Vincent convincingly wove a tale of harassment and abuse and desperate defense of his life. The bully was expelled and Vincent was simply suspended for a day. That's how it was and how it had always been. No one messed with Vincent Carini in school and when they did, no one would forget it.
But as Vincent neared the end of high school, he became paranoid. His father was old and sickly, and the Carini family had a reputation for offing each other for positions of power. His fears became reality when he was jumped on his graduation night and beaten senseless with a warning on a note card tucked into his pocket. Vincent knew he was no one's favorite, not even his mother's, sad as that is. He knew that it was too dangerous for him to stay. So he sent in an application to a school in London, where the Carini family's influence didn't reach. He was accepted into the London South Bank University. Fall of 2014, Vincent left New York and headed for London without even saying goodbye. He knew that even if his father died, Vincent would still be alive and no one could take head of the family so long as he survived. So out of country was the safest bet.
Vincent had arranged his own bank account a year prior to leaving with everything he need. His father's accountants handled the financial affairs but they were a pack of fools and it was easy to divert what he needed from the family fund undetected. He disappeared into London, going to school, making friends (surprisingly, some he didn't use for his own gains) and generally living the life of a college student. It was good and although Vincent maintained a healthy paranoia, he was content. Until 'they' found him.
He doesn't know who they are or where they're from, but they know of his family and his fears. They threatened to tell the family that Vincent was in London AND that he had been stealing money from them. While Vincent didn't consider it stealing since he was the firstborn of his dying father, head of the Carini family, he doubted his snake of a mother would see it like that. If they wouldn't kill him in his sleep, he would be stripped of all he owned and thrown in prison on their orders. They may be a dying family, but they still have powerful friends. So, it was almost impossible to refuse on those terms and he became their...'employee.'
Skills:
- Silver Tongue: Vincent just has a way with people and more often than not convince them to side with him. Whether that me through persuasion, bribery, or intimidation.
- Number Cruncher: Vincent is incredibly good with numbers, particularly finance. Anything short of rocket science and you can count on him to get to the bottom of it.
- Firearm Experience: Although it has been a while since he's fired a weapon, ever since he moved to London in fact, Vincent knows his way around handguns and shotguns at least.
Weaknesses:
- Disloyal: If it doesn't benefit him, Vincent won't stick with someone. Even his own family.
- Dishonest: Vincent has no issues with lying to get what he needs.
- Paranoid: Vincent is simply a paranoid person and that can grate the nerves of other people. Or put their lives in danger.
- Ruthless: Vincent does not shy away about making brutal decisions, as long as the outcome of those decisions serve his needs, he can handle the cost.
- Physically Average: Vincent is no Hercules, that's for sure and anything besides running he'll be outmatched in, guaranteed.
“Great artists steal. Lesser artists borrow.” ― Igor Stravinsky
Name: Elise Marie Lefevre Age: 21 Race: Caucasian Gender: Female
University and Degree: Cello Performance, Royal Academy of Music, London
Appearance:
Elise is a slight, tidy woman with pointed features. She appears almost exactly as in the picture—including the tattoos—with the exception of the jewelry around her hands. The cellist’s hands are always kept free of jewelry and nail polish. They are kept pristine: perfectly clean and manicured. Elise has a slight twitch when speaking, a tendency for her right shoulder to tense and relax repetitively.
Personality:
In person, Elise is intense and blunt. She has poor social skills and rather than try to untangle the niceties of polite conversation, she simply says what she thinks when she thinks it unless it is of an obviously hurtful nature. Elise has little or no sense of humor, not because she doesn't understand it, but because she derives little pleasure from it. The cellist has a great admiration for honesty and an active disdain for anything not expressly real, for anything that hides its true nature. This is especially true of people who pretend to feel something they don’t, such as happiness or love, but Elise is capable of great empathy when shown real feeling. Elise can show immense dedication and focus on a goal. She is guilty of over-analyzing and has an anxious or turbulent personality type—she takes worry to the extreme.
Biography:
On the most important night of Elise Lefevre’s life, the sky was clear. Very few stars twinkled in downtown London, and there was no sign of rain, not even a wisp of fog. For a longtime Londoner like Elise, this seemed like a blessing from whatever gods may be on the night of her first major solo performance.
Every year, the Royal Academy of Music holds a number of concerto competitions for their students, often with the winners being granted a chance to play as the soloist with the school orchestra. This year, however, the prize for winning the concerto competition was a chance to perform as the concerto soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the old and beautiful Royal Albert Hall. Almost unbelievably, Elise had been chosen.
It seemed to the young woman, as she prepared for the performance with a number of careful and exacting hand stretches, that her entire life had been leading up to this moment of glory. Everything from her wealthy but cold and strict parents to the years of practicing hours a day, to finally finding herself in the music. Elise felt as if she had just begun to come into her own, as if she had just found her own voice. This was the first big moment in a journey that had started when she was seven.
As Elise stepped onto the stage before the famous orchestra, the applause of the audience started a thunderous roar that her body took up in earnest. Blood roared in her ears and her heart started up a tattoo that drowned out the oboist as he called out an order to tune, a perfect A 440. Elise’s trembling fingers slipped on the tuning pegs of her instrument, but they were dear old friends and the cello seemed almost to find the pitch of its own accord.
Somehow, when the conductor turned to her, Elise’s face managed a near confident smile, her chin dipped in accord. Her fingers found the starting positions they had already found a thousand thousand times before, and with a strong downstroke of her right arm, Elise pulled the resounding first notes of Elgar’s Cello Concerto from her instrument and flung them into the wide room around her. The orchestra responded almost lovingly, and the tremors in Elise’s fingers stilled into strong confidence.
The cellist left the plane of mortals, transported by some combination of bright lights and the hush of breath from five thousand people hanging on her every gesture. For the next half hour, Elise sang a song of loving and longing, but her ecstasy did not end with the last ringing note, with the standing of the audience. It seemed as though nothing could bring her back to earth, not the crush of congratulators (whose handshakes Elise avoided by keeping her hands wrapped tightly around her instrument) and not the chill night sky, made clear on this night just for her.
Then, Elise stepped into a taxi. So caught up her dream-like trance, she did not stop to notice that the vehicle already held another passenger or that the driver did not respond when she named her apartment’s address, some miles off. She did not even mind so much when her fellow passenger congratulated her on the tremendous success of her debut, so wrapped was she in glory.
The dream did not crash around her ears until the man laid a gentle hand on her left wrist, where it was resting on the back of er cello case. He turned it over, palm up, and proceeded to explain just how easily Elise’s first moment of success could be her last. He ever so gingerly laid a long, sharp knife across the cellist’s fingers, in the delicate creases of her knuckles: first the tip, then the middle, and then at the top of her palm. No mark was left in the wake of this demonstration, but in Elise’s mind, blood welled up from her fingers and dripped down her arm and filled up the car. She was drowning in thick, hot, salty rust.
That night Elise washed her hands seven times—dampen, soap up, rinse, dry, apply sanitizer—then went through a full regimen of stretches nine times, tucked her hands tightly in their braces, curled up in the small space between her bed and the wall, and sobbed. She did not emerge from her tidy London flat for another two days, and when she did it was to follow the instructions of her new “employer.”
Skills:
Finger Dexterity and Coordination: A decade and a half of dedication to technical perfection on her instrument have lent Elise extraordinary hand-eye coordination and dexterity.
High Intelligence and Good Problem Solving Skills: Science has proven, on more than one occasion, that those who practice and perform music on a regular basis experience an increase in mental capacity. Elise is highly intelligent and has excellent critical thinking skills.
Excellent Memory: Elise truly has her cello teachers for this one. Despite years of grumbling about being made to memorize this or that cello concerto, there's no doubt she's become very good at memorizing large amounts of information in the smallest amount of time possible.
Weaknesses:
Out of Shape: Elise is 22 years old and she has never once stepped foot in a gym. She hasn't run a mile since she was 12 when it was a mandatory part of her school’s curriculum. The only type of stretches she's done in the last decade have been for the tendons in her hands. Needless to say, Elise won't be running marathons or pressing her body weight anytime soon.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: No, this doesn't mean Elise gets a bit uncomfortable when she sees a slightly crooked picture frame. Elise has one life-consuming obsession composed around a fear of harm or contamination of her hands. Her compulsions include the meticulous cleaning and care of her hands and nails multiple times a day, a need to sleep in and sometimes leave the house in wrist braces to prevent carpal tunnel or dystonia, and a need to complete a tedious routine of careful hand and wrist stretches multiple times a day.
"Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in your left.”- Frank Underwood
Name:
Hayley Toroskos
Age:
20
Race:
Caucasian
Gender:
Female
University and Degree:
BA (Hons) Fine Art, University of the Arts London
Appearance:
Hayley Toroskos is a heavily overweight young woman, with a huge frame, and protruding belly. She dresses in stylish, fashionable clothes, and has long red hair that flows over her broad shoulders. Her skin is fair to the point of being milk-coloured, and she has big, dark green eyes.
Personality:
Emotionally damaged from a young age, Hayley’s crippling vice is food, and she has always found solace in comfort eating; something which has become an obsession in recent years. Hayley has a dominative personality, and enjoys being in control; but has often found that she must grow accustomed to being far more submissive than she’d like. Having been picked on her entire life, the young woman has something of an introverted personality, but has started to increasingly come out of her shell, in recent years. Hayley can be loud and engaging when in situations that she’s comfortable with, or a complete shut in when surrounded by those she detests.
Hayley delights in gossip and secrets, and is at home manipulating people and situations for her own enjoyment. She feels most powerful when she knows what makes other people tick, and loves being in an environment where she feels that she knows more about those around her than they do about her. Both an actor and a writer of decent talent, Hayley excels at spinning stories, and one of her greatest strengths is her ability to weave words to get herself out of sticky situations.
Biography:
Hayley’s family were a clan of Polish/British outsiders who were scrutinised and ridiculed by the savage local community in the small village she grew up in; having grown used to being an outcast almost since birth. Hayley spent her earlier childhood in near-povertous conditions, as her father was unskilled and without qualifications, having fled to England to escape his family's criminal past.
Unable to live with the poor quality of life his family were suffering through, and the constant harassment from the rest of the village, Hayley’s father eventually returned to his criminal routes, and things soon began to pick up for the family.
Falling in with a particularly unsavoury local crew, Hayley’s father found a job as a driver for a group of local coke dealers, and began selling cocaine to the people who had once put his family through hell. Things slowly began to look up for the family, but by this time the damage and already been dealt to young Hayley, who had suffered through children chasing her home with cricket bats, throwing bricks through her windows, and constant harassment from pretty much the entire local community. She had become cold and depressed, getting increasingly cynical with each passing day, and using comfort eating as a crux to help her through the tough times.
Now with a decent wage finally coming in, Hayley’s family eventually moved to a nicer part of the country, where Hayley could be privately educated and live safely. The young girl was still mocked for her size, but nothing that these upper-middle-class children could throw at her held a candle to what she was used to, so she found it easy to ignore them. Whilst Hayley was ridiculed and rejected for being fat, she’d started to develope a fiery confidence and grim determination, which soon attracted other such social castoffs to her. For the first time in her life Hayley experienced what it was like to have lots of friends, and more importantly to be in control, a feeling which she would grow to thrive off of.
Beyond that point, Hayley’s childhood was fairly uneventful, and little of note occurred. Her father eventually cut ties with the criminal world completely; using the money he’d built up over the years to open a restaurant, and transform himself into a legitimate businessman. Hayley found her niche in the creative arts, and recently enrolled at the University of Arts, in London. It was then that the Employer made contact with her; using her father’s criminal past, something which she was almost entirely unaware of, as a means to blackmail her into work. The Employer took noticed of Hayley’s acting capabilities, and hopes to use her persuasive skills to aid in the heist.
Skills:
Sweet Talker- Hayley is a damn fine actress, and pretty bloody charismatic, too. She always knows the right thing to say, and when to say it.
Thick Skinned- A lifetime of abuse has made Hayley fairly resilient to verbal abuse, which she’s now pretty good at just shrugging off and getting on with her life.
Weaknesses:
Obese- Hayley is very overweight, and suffers for this in all the ways that one would expect. She’s unfit, and generally has pretty poor health.
Quick to judge- if someone makes a bad first impression, it's very hard for Hayley to change her opinion of them. She’s tremendously stubborn, which often makes her her own worst enemy.
Other:
Nothing at the time of writing, but I’m very much open to establishing previous relationships with other PCs, if that takes anyone’s fancy.
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." - Thomas Jefferson
Name: Richard Frederick Tyler Dohammond Age: 20 Race: Caucasian Gender: Male
University and Degree:
BSc Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Appearance:
At 6'1 and a definite 175 pounds, one word could be used to describe Richard: intimidating. He's tall but has the muscle to go along with it, and a more astute observer could tell the callouses on his hands are vestiges of his life on the streets. He's actually sort of attractive, with moderately sharp cheekbones, a dirty blonde well-groomed tuft of hair, and piercing blue eyes, but Richard tends to gloss over this fact. He barely ever smiles, his deadset frown displaying most of his intentions to the world.
Personality:
Richard is a child of oppression, the offspring of the indifference of society. For the majority of his life, he has had to struggle and fight tooth and nail to get where he is today, and he looks down on people who don't understand nor care about that. He puts his academic achievement as a premium of his life, seeing it as the only way to achieve his dream: to revolutionize society. He's loud, outspoken and cynical, and hates with a passion people who don't let him be those three things. His primary goal at the end is to gain power - the leverage and control over his own life that was so lacking in his former years. He doesn't want to be a victim of fate and chance - he wants to chart his own path without any other inhibitions except himself. He desperately wants to empower himself, and the Employer is doing exactly the opposite of that.
Biography:
Richard Dohammond spent the first seventeen years of his life in a dingy, run-down stretch of slums and boarding-houses in Islington, London. When he was two years old, his father died in the line of duty as a policeman, leaving his mother the sole provider for her single son. Richard barely got to see his mother in between her hectic shifts as a part-time waitress, babysitter and retail worker at a phone repair shop. The only thing he had as a resource was his mind. He excelled in primary school academics, despite not even having enough money to buy his own schoolbag, and in secondary school joined the debate club and once even nearly won a national essay competition. He became a valuable member of his rugby team, just enough for his physique to intimidate the worst of his childhood bullies.
But what Richard lacked was power.
It infuriated him that he was born like this. It infuriated him that he was where he was for absolutely no reason. It infuriated him that the only way to get out of his situation was to work his arse off to get a lot of questions correct on a paper made by people who would never know what he had to go through. Richard was angry at the world - angry at the system that was so callous and uncaring. It was so that he became known among his peers as the activist, the revolutionary, the person that always had something to say - but to Richard, he was just responding to a circumstance that had affected him since birth.
It all reached the breaking point, however, when one day in June a sixteen-year-old Richard was rushing home to tell his mother that he had won first runner-up in the national essay competition about the importance of education. To his surprise, however, he was met with the sight of a police officer questioning his teary-eyed mother outside their dirty apartment building.
Richard's mother had been sexually harrassed by her boss in the phone repair shop. All the offender would probably get, however, would be a half a year of prison. When questioned, the police officer calmly replied that his punishment would only be up to the fullest extent of the law.
Then, a distraught Richard exclaimed, that was a pretty shitty law.
So the young Richard resolved that he would suffer the system's injustice no longer. He would be part of the system - he would go to law school, become an attorney, definitely, then perhaps run for a government position. So Richard quickly signed up for a scholarship with the London School of Economics and Political Science. But, as things would have it, the system would fail Richard once again. He received a letter telling him that he didn't quite meet the standards for his scholarship to save him a great deal of money. But at the same time, a letter from an unknown benefactor also arrived in the mail, telling him he was aware of his predicament and he would be prepared to shoulder the costs -
on certain conditions.
Skills:
- Connecting the Dots: Politics is the study of a machine, a machine that needs to be understood by linking facts and figuring out how things really work. Richard has high general deduction skills. - Aspiring Lawyer: Due to the nature of his degree and professional aspirations, Richard can work his way around the legal system - but he is by no means a seasoned attorney. - Child of the Streets: Richard has had to of course deal with the occasional chav, street thug, or school bully with fists and sometimes sheer intimidation. He's quite the scrappy little street fighter. - Eloquence of Speech: Richard has talented writing skills and can handle himself in a decently intellectual discussion - he can masquerade as someone of higher stature, if needed.
Weaknesses:
Richard's primary weakness is his constant feeling of his abandonment by the system. He feels vulnerable, naked, and weak, if he is powerless to do what should be done to make the world a better place. If someone can take away his ability to change the world, he takes away what Richard holds dearest to his heart. He is constantly impulsive, easily offended, and quick to anger, and his triggers aren't that hard to find.
Also, Richard isn't that skilled with numbers, being an average maths student and preferring to take refuge in the liberal arts. This is part of the reason why his scholarship application did not quite meet the academic requirements. Complex equations meant to be figured out in the span of seconds aren't quite Richard's cup of tea.
@BingTheWing Accepted. We'll say that the Employer let him get two years into the course though, so that his age matches the usual university career having been accepted at 18. That means he'll have enough of the legal skill set etc to play his part, if that's alright?
I'm sorry it's taking so long to finish the three primary NPCs' sheets, guys. I'm actually in the direct middle of my exam period right now, and I'm doing this for stress relief if you can believe that.
”No machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.” Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Laneya Kinney
Age: 19 Race: Caucasian - Finnish Gender: Female
University and Degree:
MEng Computer Engineering, London South Bank University
Appearance:
Laneya has grown into one of those intimidating women, the sort with a dead-eyed stare from an otherwise beautiful face and body. She’s tall and shapely, clocking in at 5’6 and a dense 140 pounds of muscle and well-placed fat. Her blue eyes are piercing and cold, not helped by her very pale skin and golden-blonde hair.
Personality:
Laneya is about as interesting to converse with as she looks from a glance: that is, she’s not. Boring, factual conversations, she can handle, and chit chat she can do in the driest, most terse manner possible, but that’s only because she can have the right answer to those. Questions about feelings require deep meditation to determine her current state, which then makes any answer she might give on the spot unfactual. When it comes to dealing with people in a personal way, she fails spectacularly, much preferring to beat a hasty retreat if the person wants to talk about something that doesn’t have a clear answer. She’ll return with an answer in a few hours, perhaps, but that generally kills the mood.
The deeper problem in Laneya’s behavior is an incredible need to be right. It’s the reason she can’t communicate with others very well, the reason she works so seriously at schoolwork, side projects, and even her only real “hobbies,” video games and fitness blogging. It’s the reason she’s a terrible blunt instrument that rubs others the wrong way with her poor social graces and ends up with no friends. It’s the reason for the crippling loneliness that she sometimes tries to escape through virtual relationships and online popularity, but has never managed to defeat.
Laneya also walks an uneasy tightrope between depressive self-loathing and entitled self-pride. Being beautiful and smart, but also ostracized and continuously let-down by her only support groups will do that to one.
Biography:
Laneya did not naturally come by such an odd method of interaction. For her, a life-long expectation of excellence from her parents and researchers, and the seeming futility of her own feelings and desires, created such a robotic personality. From her earliest vivid memories, she can recall the quizzing she would receive, far beyond what one might reasonably expect from a three year old, multiple times every day. They would give her math questions, tell her to add giant numbers, tell her to take them to the Nth power without writing down anything but the answer. They would step her through computer programs, tell her to guess what it would do at every if statement. They would read her books, tell her to recite them back word for word. And she would. The plan succeeded, mostly.
Laneya ended up skipping three grades, hailed as a prodigy by the outside world, and failing expectations back home. Three grades wasn’t good enough; being held back from testing straight into the next grade by consistently under-average performance in the arts and humanities over and over was a disgrace. Her parents and the doctors would groan, wondering how they had failed to make such a failure. And Laneya would apply herself more to appease them, and eventually escape to college early.
There, she found a little more freedom. The coursework was more difficult, but she could mostly avoid classes she knew she would do poorly. More importantly, she was away from her parents, and finally growing up into her own person. She found herself well-suited to competitive video games, which she funded through side work and tutoring older students. She found herself growing up, into the curves that the doctors had assured her parents would come. And she found that with these skills and gifts, she could gather people who would say nice things to her. People who would say that she was beautiful, or that she had done a good job, or that she was amazing.
Things were going well. But one employer, for whom she was doing freelance work more and more often, asked her to do something that finally tripped her morality. Her response that she would no longer be accepting their contracts received a frightening response of its own: not only had she already gone beyond the limits of the law in her work for them, with which evidence they would gladly throw her under the bus if she didn’t cooperate, but they also knew her family’s secret. Her secret. And all of the people who would make her life null and void, in more than just the physical sense, if they found out.
With hands tied, Laneya goes along with those who have Power Over her… for now.
Skills:
Computer Mind:
Laneya was designed with certain things in mind, chief among them being academic excellence. She has a photographic memory, capable of remembering minute details if she decides to capture a moment; she crunches numbers faster than most can punch them into a calculator; she can process large amounts of data through logical algorithms with astonishing speed; she has extremely sharp reflexes.
Peak Figure:
Second among Laneya’s design goals was physical beauty and capability. She would not seem out of place in the ritziest of balls, and she has the training and muscle to deal with less classy individuals who might take a pass at her.
Hacker Prodigy:
Laneya has the coding and hardware knowledge to execute most networked and physical cyber-security workarounds. Her ability to build a computer for a specific task is adequate for almost any job, given access to components and fabrication facilities.
Weaknesses:
Personality:
Pretty much everything in Laneya’s personality makes her hard to get along with, or simply nonfunctional in a social atmosphere.
Creative as a Rock:
Laneya got by in classes that required “creativity” by brute-forcing her problems, trying many options until arriving at a working answer. She completely lacks an “instinct” toward what answers may or may not work. She still applies this method to daily tasks, causing her to work on many potential solutions that end up resulting in failure, or taking a very long time to stumble upon answers that are “outside of the box.” She often never arrives at answers that seem illogical, however right they may be.
Extreme Focus:
Most people can handle multiple tasks at a time: Laneya requires full attention even for small things, often unable to process non-imperative attempts to interrupt whatever she’s working on, and only catching up to things after she finishes her current activity.
Slow Recall:
Though Laneya has an expansive memory, access to any single memory can require a lot longer than is convenient. Most people will remember something instantly, or after a few seconds of focus, but Laneya has to focus to play through her stored memory in near-realtime in order to access even the more detailed layers that most people can recall.
Zero Friends:
The network of people who care about Laneya beyond what she can do for them is close to non-existent. She would never confide anything real to anyone whom she currently knows.
Other: Laneya is one of the first “designer babies,” leaving her in a legal and moral grey area that is currently being used against her.
