@Bazmund You're going to have to explain how this guy gets into hunting. From what I picked up, this guy is Jason Bourne. Why would he join a small Hunter cell in Baltimore ?
Why would he be partaking in OPs if he's under heavy heat from Govt Orgs?
I don't mind him being a soldier but I feel alot is put on him being some rogue illusive soldier of interest.
@Benzaiten I like the story, but if you were under the vestage of Helena. Most likely you were made a ghoul, and blood bonded. I can explain what that is when I get home and if you have questions but if you were with her for years you would basically be one of her lackeys - in a sense.
Your desire seems to edge more towards atonement, you were played - unless if Eli doesn't see it as that and is still stuck with some infatuation with Helena (a side effect of being blood bonded)
How do you end up in the Baltimore cell with your brother?
@Prosaic What supernatural incident did you witness ? I seemed a bit vague in your story. Could you be more specificz for example Eli was a victim of a vampire.
How do you end up in a cell with your sister, do you keep contact after you left home ?
@Duoya I'm not sure if Frank would even be let into the cell, if he has a history of burning through cells - fighting one on one with Werewolfs or Vampires he'd most certainly be rejected.
i) A head first, open and combative tactic against the undead, and otherwise is extremely risky. I understand why he might want to do that, but either he'd be seen by the Orgs as someone who is more than human, which is bad. Or he'd be dead by his first fight, reasonably - someone with a high level of true faith could pull off a one on one, on a good day against a lower generation of vampire.
ii) His quick, or rather short lived careers in these cells would show up as a red flag for our NPC handler. I understand why he'd do that per his personal vendetta, but I don't think it would work out as currently written out.
@Prosaic What supernatural incident did you witness ? I seemed a bit vague in your story. Could you be more specificz for example Eli was a victim of a vampire.
How do you end up in a cell with your sister, do you keep contact after you left home ?
Hi, I specifically left it unlisted as I was leaning more on the route of research leading him to knowledge but if he needs to have witnessed something. I'll add in that he saw something in regards to the murders that happened.
As for the bit about his sister, Benzaiten and I can discuss this but it can be assumed they came back into contact in recent years.
Some very good points, I can add an addendum for his Days Gone after he drops off the radar. I've been feeling him out a bit more since writing him and there are some changes I want to make anyway - in particular, I think his attacks weren't communicated right; he's not meant to be an action hero, and the new unit working on his case file are intended to be working through cold cases. He's willing to work on Ops because he enjoys it, and he feels it's the only thing he can succeed in - and the heat on him isn't so hot, there's no active manhunt any more and he works under a false identity.
I also think I'm going to reduce the influence his connections to his previous job. They're meant to be a pretty generic shadowy organisation who organise deaths for profit, and their reach is also meant to be fairly global, which means I don't want Jack to be too closely attached to them still so he's desperate enough to stay in Baltimore. He won't have any membership of the organisation any more, and he'll have cut all formal ties with them - his Arsenal will almost always come from something else, or more rarely there might be an incidental contact from his old job he has a favour from. This also means that another reason he has to go on ops and be in this cell is that he has lost his old lifestyle and job, along with its benefits, so this is also partially a way to keep living while staying in touch with the new world he's learned exists.
As for how he got involved with the supernatural and became a hunter to begin with, I'll cover it in more detail when I expand his Days Gone a bit, but it boils down to him having been issued a contract for someone who turned out to be involved in the supernatural themselves, who then survived his attempt as a result. He survived their reprisal by running and hiding, and then went on to do what he'd mostly always done by seeking out people who knew how to hunt the supernatural, so that he could do so himself.
I'm happy to make changes, ofc, but does this address your concerns so far?
Edit: I think I'm also gonna have him slip off government radar way earlier so that this is a real cold case. Their files will drop off very shortly after his pattern changes and he becomes more professional, to represent his shift towards a much more covert way of living, and I'll reduce the damage he did to them as well so there's a bit less heat on him.
I've posted in IC, don't feel rushed to post (the one person who's approved) lol. The real fun will start next week so enjoy the weekend.
Going to credit @Prisk for these cute post-IC ideas.
Summary, Perks, Lore is to be used by the players, summarize the post, list any perks used and if so in some detail and any lore or introduced lore about your character or minor things feel free to drop in.
Quest steps will be used be my, to show you a path your player characters can take.
again selfless thank you to @prisk for being awesome.
D R V I R G I L H E I N E R โ 37 โ MALE โ 5โ10 โบ
P R O F I L E
Virgil was a well respected and influential doctor. Some might say he was a leader or even a pioneer in his field, that is until he learnt there was more to life (or unlife) hidden in the shadows. An overconfident man, he can be a little egotistical and slightly arrogant at times. He holds himself in high esteem and always presents him self as proper, calm and in control. He is kind to most, as a pleasantry, but it takes a bit to truly win him over.
D A Y S - G O N E
Virgil was never a nobody, or so he would have everyone believe. But in truth, his deepest secret and darkest unresolved trauma is that he was badly bullied. By his big brother, by the kids at boarding school and by his own father. He was a scrawny runt, prone to crying and cursed with a terrible stutter. This awful combination of genetics and circumstances caused him to be an observer through life. He spoke little and listened lots. He eventually found companionship in the pets and animals of his home farm and quickly grew more familiar with them then other people.
Despite his social anxieties and lack of human affection Virgil was a smart child who excelled through school and earned himself a scholarship. He had a drive and purpose. He would prove he could become something, a someone.
The question โwhyโ always haunted his head, it sat behind every action, every event, every tear. It was the driving force of his curiosity and it was no surprise when he finally majored in behavioural and neuroscience, later on neuroanatomy too. One interest branching on to the next. Knowledge an insatiable thirst.
He overcame his stutter. Spent many years doing field work and research. Published papers, talked on television taught at universities and even began assisting with criminal investigations as an advisor. After all people were animals, sure a bit more complicated but still, just another animal. That is, until they werenโt.
No one else saw it, or understood it. Glancing over the interpretable information and seeing what they wanted to see. The quick and easy answer. The one that made them feel safe. The one that gave them the biggest pat on the back. The one that closed things off. The one, for all other known reasons was logical and made sense. But not Virgil. He saw there was something more, something big, something new. Opportunity.
Virgil could not let it go, he grasp this loose string and followed it blindly. Soon it grew longer. Still, no one else saw it. And it consumed him. This UNANSWERABLE question, people slowly stopped listening to him. It took up all his time and people slowly stopped funding him. And when he started to piece it together, people started actively ignoring and avoiding him. Then as he FOUND his answers, people started calling him crazy.
But not everyone... He found a small group that would listen to him, they even invited him along with them. โTo make a difference.โ They said. โTo do the right thing.โ The right thing, as he knew it to be, was always debatable, dependent on ones own view point and perspective. Nonetheless Virgil saw opportunity here, opportunity to regain all he had lost and more.
M E M O R I E S
Your character's dispositions on other NPCs and players, a memory could also be a moment shared between one or more people.
Basically character relations to PC and NPCs, you dont need to go deep on this.
@Dark Light You need to finish you edges/perks and explain how he ran into the supernatural and joined @ Baltimore.
Where did he grow up? Virgil is pretty young for an accomplished doctor, 30 is the earliest but if he's this well known and accomplished doctor he should be most likely, early 40s.
If your character is socially awkard/anti-social it may be hard for you to interact with characters, considering the RP itself is rather a social context. From what I read, is he still like that?
I believe I'll be retracting my submission, just due to time and mental health. The two rps I'm in already in here are about all I can handle, I think, but I look forward to watching this continue.
If Benzaiten is still with y'all, they're welcome to keep Silas in as a backstory element.
Turned out to be more changes than I expected. I still wouldn't call this a total rewrite, but it came close.
โ J A C K R O S E โ โ 40 โ MALE โ 6"3 โบ
Left: 'Yakiv Rozarin' age 18: photo taken from French Foreign Legion Service Records. Right: Forensic Reconstruction of Subject's predicted current Likeness developed from Verified Positive ID Footage.
P R O F I L E
FBI Cold Case Initiative: Task Force 3a Briefing Notes - Transnational Crime, Counterterrorism Section
Subject is a 6โ3, 40 year old caucasian male of likely Northern European descent and uncertain origin, who is known to most regularly go by the alias โJack Roseโ. Heโs wanted by a whole host of sovereign states worldwide, including France, Britain, most of North Africa, and us - mostly on terrorism charges, but thereโs a lot of low profile violence around his case too. Iโve attached sections taken from Interpol material, and a psych profile kindly donated by MI-5, who Iโm told have had a cold case on this guy for more than a decade now. Take some of the below with a pinch of salt, itโs more than ten years out of date.
EXCERPT 1 - Taken from Interpol I-24/7 Shared Database, dated January 2012, section labelled 'Physical Appearance'. Jack Rose, 30 years old, North European ethnic background with uncertain locality, with approximately 6"2 in height. Subject is of broad build with a boxy, long-legged stature, sometimes described as the 'swimmer's build'. No confirmed sightings exist of Rose with visible tattoos or other distinguishing marks and scarring. His hair is dark brown, most often worn cut very short, almost to buzzcut length - most recent sightings (2011) suggest that he has grown a beard. His eyes are blue, but he has been known to use coloured contact lenses.
EXCERPT 2 - Redacted Person of Interest file originally from MI5's records, section labelled 'Psychological Profile: Known abnormalities, habits, and motivations.' No date attached. Subject is known to have a significantly disordered personality, and suffers from notable disinhibitions regarding violence against others, as well as anxiety and paranoia. He is nonetheless a highly disciplined and objective oriented individual, who likely uses a meticulous nature and attention to detail as coping mechanisms - evidenced by recovered materials from <REDACTED>, see <REDACTED>. It seems likely, given what is known of his personal history and his psychopathology, that the Subject has a stressful lifestyle with limited outlets for relief - something that on at least one occasion has contributed to positive identification in retrospect, by way of reckless behaviour (see <Records Withheld>, CCTV footage showing a bar fight instigated by the subject in Morocco, 2005).
He typically avoids spending long periods of time in crowded environments, rarely eats or drinks in public, and generally prefers to find quiet places to pursue recreation or relaxation if he does so at all. Data recovered from an improperly disposed of harddrive suggests he has a varied taste in music, with interests spanning several genres from British pop music to Iranian folk songs.
Eyewitness accounts from individuals known to have had contact with Rose - eg, shopkeepers or event staff who interacted with him in verified CCTV footage - typically recall very little in detail about him whatsoever. He is typically described as being quite friendly, but a little awkward, and 1/3 of these accounts mention that he has an 'intense' quality about his speech and mannerisms, which some statements given to police describe as being unnerving but not intimidating or threatening.
Something to note is that sightings of Mr. Rose became increasingly sparse after 2011. Itโs honestly unknown whether or not heโs still out there, at least as far as the wider Agency is concerned. I must also make this clear - his apparent 'anxiety' is no grounds to underestimate this man; Rose has been concretely identified as a participant in the destruction and killings of numerous agency interests across North Africa in the years after his Algeria bombings, and I spoke with a friend across the pond and he told me that Rose was apparently implicated, along with several others, in the suspected killing of a British agent located in Kenya in 2009.
It explains a bit about why theyโre so happy to let us have their cold case files. This was almost fifteen years ago, when he was in his physical prime and fresh out of serving the French - but Rose doesnโt strike me as someone who gets less dangerous. -E
D A Y S - G O N E
I'm not even going to try with the excerpts for this one - you'll get a fuller picture in your personal briefings.
Rose is known to have enlisted with the French Foreign Legion in 1999, using the name Yakiv Rozarin and a convincingly faked matching Romanian ID card, speaking good French and with few references from his home country. It seems the French assumed he was an illegal immigrant, probably from Romania itself or a neighbouring country, but chose to follow the Legionโs tradition of recruiting rather than deporting him. It mattered little that his original ID was fake either way, because the Legionโs tradition of anonymity involved giving him a new ID under a name. Probably because it was a concise way to give him a name that sounded something like his real one, they dubbed him โJacques Roseโ. Of the many crimes Jack Rose has since been accused of, being imaginative was never among them.
He is known from his service records to have graduated basic training with distinction, and he was earmarked for specialist training during his first tour of duty in Kosovo, where he was reportedly among the first NATO elements to enter Kosovo itself. After the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 he was returned to France in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan, and the Legion evidently took this opportunity to upskill him. We know he was trained in the use of explosives and combat demolitions, that he earned marksmanโs qualifications but was never deployed in this capacity, and there are rumours he later engaged in parachute and special tactics training through the Legion as well. None of this is confirmed in his records, but key example skills that he would have acquired here go on to be displayed in his later activities.
Rose excelled in his career as a professional soldier, finding difficulty only in his interactions with less radical peers, or more rarely with civilians who vocally disagreed with his attitudes towards violence. In 2004 Rose was credited with having written a single anonymous threatening letter to Else Scholz, a German journalist reporting on allegations of Foreign Legion war crimes committed during Enduring Freedom. The letter accuses Ms. Scholz of being a โcowardly withered-dicked hippie fuckโ for her reporting on allegations of war crimes made against the Legion, and goes on to make threatening insinuations about how journalists reporting on such matters should be treated.
Rose served two further tours in Afghanistan before leaving his unit behind, possibly working covertly for the French in Algeria for a period - as his records list him as being currently serving but without deployment or training - and eventually disappearing in the line of duty. Interestingly, his records mark him as KIA rather than missing; the French claim to have ruled out tampering and appear to have classified this as a legitimate mistake. He was with them for almost exactly four years before his faked death, and having now had the chance to cross examine a number of different agenciesโ records, it can be fairly conclusively said that Rose did disappear while on operations in Algeria, and that - while his intentions remain a mystery - he was at least present during a verified road traffic collision in Marrakesh, 2004, which itself led to several gas explosions and a large fire. Whether by cruel design or by brutal opportunism, he was misidentified as being among the remains of victims from the fire.
He has been retrospectively identified in Libya in 2005, which may be where he was recruited and prepared for the attacks in Algeria in 2006. He has been linked more tenuously to various other bombings, robberies, and acts of terrorism across the Old World in the time since. It is currently the opinion of the intelligence community that Rose was disillusioned by whatever work he was doing for France before his disappearance and that this led him towards Marxism, radicalisation, and his eventual career as a terrorist; I have different opinions.
Roseโs role in the 2006 attacks may have been overstated by intelligence gathered; indeed, the idea of a Western veteran defecting directly to any sort of terrorist movement was quite sensational at the time, and may have led our immediate predecessors to assume he was responsible for more than he really was. Regardless, 2006 was the start of a career, for Rose, that saw him active as a bombmaker and field agent for a variety of marxist radical orgs across Europe and Asia, all for at least another five years; but then, in 2011, things change abruptly, and all the trails we had been following get totally thrown. His former political allegiances, his pretenses at real ideology, all along with any of the camaraderie he shared with whatever rag tag band of communists he was shacking up with at the time, were thrown out the window to allow for this disappearing act. The trail has been cold since, and we have no idea why.
- E
In 2011 Jack Rose abandoned his principles entirely. It wasnโt so much that heโd never had any - not so much that heโd been lying the whole time - but more that when the opportunity to move on arose, he simply couldnโt refuse it. They promised him resources, new skills, travel, and work - work that involved exactly what he was best at; problems that could fight back.
Even though he hadnโt known the so-called comrades he left behind so well, he felt a pang of guilt when he snuck out - just that one pang, and no more. The training would prove stimulating - far from the acrobatics and gunplay of an action film, or indeed his time in the legion, he was mostly made to develop his practical skills; breaking and entering, observation techniques, an abbreviated SERE course, and - perhaps most challengingly - a total re-training of his abilities at passing unnoticed. Where before he had been relying on his rurality, frequent movement, and extremely selective actions to avoid detection and capture, he was now being taught to adapt to the circumstances of modern life in the First World - how to live without attracting attention, how to move without arousing suspicion, and how to act without facing capture.
As long as his new employers would provide him with resources.
They trained him to their standards and sent him back out into the world with orders to stay in one place for no longer than three months. They would be in touch with work - sometimes for him alone, sometimes as part of a larger team - and would help with the clean up, as long as he hadnโt blown it.
He worked with them for almost ten years before he did.
His last job was where everything went wrong, and 'eye-opening' would be an understatement for just what happened; the target was a rich girl, the opportunity was her holiday - specifically, her name was Lily Barnes, and she was on a skiing holiday on a private mountain in upstate New York, operating out of an posh new chalet her father had rented for her birthday, with half a dozen close friends and about six dozen highly trained private security and personal staff. They were all quite thoroughly vetted - even the new, temporary hires - but his employers could spoof the results of his background check, and nobody notices a waiter when they're waiting.
The plan was fairly simple; the target and her mates usually went out skiing during the day, got fed and got drunk, high, and stoned in the evening, and they'd also set aside about a week in their holiday to travel over to a nearby resort and party with other people.
Waiter or not, poison was right out as a method - their food and their drinks were taken at the door by security staff most of the time, and when they weren't the delivery was still under watchful eyes of chefs, other staff, and yet more security the whole time from kitchen to plate to mouth. Firearms were also not going to be helpful - mostly because he didn't have any, but even more mostly because there were as many as 70 other men here who did. A more personal kill was also out of the question - the mark was never alone; she took her friends with her to ski, to dine, to drink, to watch movies, even to bed, which was a duty they were apparently rotating through and not getting even a wink of sleep from, always returning pale, hungover, and bleary eyed come morning. Once, Rose even caught one of them as he fainted on his way to breakfast, and the target just laughed and left him behind.
It was then that Rose made up his mind. He wasn't ultimately sure what tipped him towards the idea, but as he watched the sleek, almost businesslikely-cruel, black-dressed form of his target walk away, he had a brilliant idea.
Bomb.
A spare pressure cooker from the kitchen stores, a preparation made from fertiliser and oil taken from the chalet's greenhouse and central heating fuel tanks, respectively, plus two tins of nails and some broken glass to act as shrapnel. The electronics came partially from his own phone, and partially from TVs and other appliances in the disused rooms of the chalet.
He waited until the target and her party were away on their week in the nearest resort, and that's when he built it, and planted it in the one place he was absolutely sure she'd be at the time he needed her there.
The master bed.
On the night they returned to the chalet, the target took one companion to bed - the same young man who'd fainted on his way to breakfast - and retired early. Rose had prepared his exit in advance - he would leave some basics and a change of clothes in a bag placed inside the staff toilet cistern not-quite-closest to his own quarters, and he would collect them and change before heading out to the chalet gardens to collect the remainder of his vital equipment, secreted into some flowerbeds and a shed at the far end of the quad. Then he would make his way over the fence and down the mountain, recovering a set of skis and warmer clothing left for him by the company on his way.
Then he would trigger the bomb.
When the time finally came, the device worked like a charm, and as the windows on the master bedroom were blown out by the explosion, he watched from his hiding place on the mountain through binoculars. The bomb alone wasn't enough to set off an avalanche - a popular myth, in Rose's view - so he made ready with his skis. Nothing could have survived being in that room - much less on the bed.
Which is why his blood froze when he heard the target screaming - not in pain but in rage - from all the way across the mountain.
Unbeknownst to him, he had interrupted a Ventrue's rest, and blown up a member of her herd in the process. She wasn't exactly unscratched herself - but unlike he had assumed, she was never in bed at all, and the main blast essentially missed her completely.
In blind panic, he reached again for the binoculars, and he saw her pacing naked through the growing plumes of smoke, recoiling from the snaking coils of new flame as they reached out for her.
She looked around in a frenzy, searching for a way out - and somehow, she locked eyes on him directly.
If her survival wasn't enough, and if her very clear, very threatening eye contact wasn't enough, the genuinely soaring 30-foot leap she made to the next roof over absolutely was. Rose heard sirens go off at the chalet, saw her leap again - this time starting in his direction - and he knew it was over.
Contract scrubbed. Cover blown. Agent burned.
Time to go.
He made it halfway down the mountain before getting caught in a minor avalanche and breaking his wrist in the fall. For whatever reason - perhaps satisfied with the grave she felt she was leaving him in - Barnes broke off her pursuit there. It took three days to find the nearest settlement and a house he could at least stay warm in, and without the supplies left for him by the company he'd never have made it - but he did. He went straight to Albany to recover supplies from some old dead drops the agency didn't need to know about - but he couldn't visit the ones they did. He had failed in his mission and he'd done so in the worst way - no matter how, he'd gotten made by his target.
He was on his own, now, and he knew what would happen if the company found him. They had a way of being brilliantly humane with their own, but Rose was not just some dog to be put down, and now he had questions that needed answers.
He made his way down further, through Albany, detouring through NYC to look for old contacts who weren't there any more, and then finally through Philly and on to Baltimore.
When he found his first body with a half-healed bite wound, drained of blood and discarded carelessly by a desperate predator in the shape of a human being, he finally managed to put two and two together. The reason his target survived, the reason she took her little harem to bed on a rotating basis, why they were always so pale come morning, why that one had fainted, why the target herself never ate publiclyโฆ
A Vampire.
A creature he couldn't kill.
To him that almost felt bigger.
It was a miracle he'd survived the first time, even considering just how much he'd survived to get there - but he'd never met something or someone he couldn't find a way to get to, in the past, and whether he made another shot at this target or not, he still wanted to know if he could.
For a while he tried on his own - but when an invitation came, he jumped at it.
M E M O R I E S 'Sophia' - Head of the team who sourced, prepared, and fed intelligence to Rose while he was on operation for 'The Company'. Their relationship was often strained on account of their strongly differing professional approaches, but they were also an effective team, and an equally strong mutual respect existed between them throughout much of Rose's career. Especially towards the end of his career with the company, Rose and 'Sophia' were growing quite fond of eachother as colleagues, and she became one of the few individuals about whose wellbeing Rose ever expressed concern publicly. While she cooperated fully with the Company in their interviews with her after the disaster of his last job, she is likely to at least 'overlook' evidence that Rose is still alive, if she believes she will not be found out for it.
No others.
C R E E D Martial - though with touches of an Inquisitive approach.
D R I V E Curiosity.
E D G E S & P E R K S Edges: Global Access Once among the few in the French Foreign Legion with no true personal history, and once a high class killer and infiltrator working to contract, Rose is more than capable of evading detection from more than one source; physical, digital, analogue, he's only very rarely ever left a trace he was there, and he was taught to erase that evidence too. It's mostly down to some old tools of the trade he never bothered to return, but he's no stranger to IT himself either.
Perk: All-Access Pass
Ordnance Explosive material, components, and precursor chemicals. Rose is also adept not only with military and civilian demolitions explosives and weapon systems, but with the improvised variety too.
