[OOC] Homicide Investigations (A Mystery Detective RP)

[Jinxer]

Interest Check for brief details.

New Bath, Canada.

Situated along the South-Eastern shores of Lake Huron, New Bath is a burgeoning city benefiting from its proximity to Canada's border with the US and also to other major cities of its nation. While not the largest in terms of population it is certainly one of the most affluent with no fewer than three universities, multiple specialised education institutes and a public library the envy of its rival cities. It even boasts its own art gallery showcasing art pieces on loan from other prestigious centres.

Reachable by air and land with a sizeable port, only usable for accessing Lake Huron, there is no shortage of those passing through and its position has attracted the city's fair share of criminals. Rising inequality allowed the lawless to prey on the poorer elements making drug dealing rife and completely uncontrollable for the police. Their over-stretched resources are mostly deployed to keep the youth gangs from inflicting too much damage and keeping the lawless elements to their city districts where possible.

Against this backdrop begins the story of a team of homicide detectives. Coming from all walks of life, some consultants rather than members of the police force, they struggle to bring justice to those suffered an untimely demise.

-------------------------------

The premise of this RP is above; contributors will play as members of the homicide team in question. There will be no more than five players at any given time, including the GM. This will be a Casual-Advanced RP - I don't expect long posts consistently as a lot of the RP will rely on communication between characters. However I am looking for a decent quality of writing.

Not only will each player have a character in the homicide team but each case will be planned, organised and directed by a different player. Thus each case will be fresh, reducing as much repetition as possible and involving all contributors in a much more positive way.

How this will work:

-Each case would have one mastermind. Whether than be the GM or the players (or players creating a case together) and would be directed by the creator of this case. No one else but them would know the clues, evidence or witnesses that would lead to the identification of suspects, including the actual perpetrator.

-Once the contributor had created the case this would be PMed to the GM (myself) so that, in the event of unexpected absence, the RP could continue with the GM taking on the role of directing the RP.

-The creator would PM at relevant points the relevant players what the next scene should be like (for example, who would find what at a crime scene, what information would be retrieved from a suspect and how that suspected should be written) in a piecemeal way so that the mystery would slowly be unravelled.

-There will be room for character development. Creators can come up with plots that put their character at the centre (people from their past coming up, budding romances between characters etc.).

Other rules:

-If any contributor becomes absent for a long period of time (a week) with no forewarning or explanation then their character will be 'moved to another case/department' and the spot opened up to a new member. This style of RP lends itself to a potential turnover of characters should real life obligations interfere with participation. It also means contributors taking a leave of absence are able to return at a later date.

-There will be contentious and difficult topics, I imagine, that will come up in these cases. I ask that no deliberately or excessively violent (whether physical or sexual) material is produced and only alluded to if absolutely necessary. There is a case for such material adding to realism. I do not agree and therefore it will have no place in this RP.

-We're aiming for as much realism as possible. This does not necessarily mean gritty. I'm looking for real characters, real NPCs and real plot lines. This is the real world in a fictional city; normal rules apply with some creative license allowed.

-My word is absolute law in this RP and I reserve the right to add to these rules where necessary.

Character Sheet:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Sexual orientation:
Role (Detective or some form of consultant?)
Appearance: (Photos are acceptable, as are word descriptions. I would prefer not to have anime/drawn portraits but I will make exceptions where appropriate. This can also include their height and weight if not a full description.)
Skills/specialisations: (Language specialist, tech skills, former vice worker etc.?)

Biography:

Please post your CS in the OOC for review. I will be choosing the CS I deem the best and also those which will create a decent, varied and interesting team. For reference, my character will be a female detective who is the informal head of the team.

I will be adding more detail where applicable to this post - it's late but I wanted to let those who showed interest initially a chance to start working on their CS'. If there are any areas you would like some clarification or have some input then please let me know.

[Ariamis]

Name: Damien Williams
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Sexual orientation: Straight
Role: Detective
Appearance: Damien has light-brown hair that he keeps short, green eyes, and is pretty average in build and height. He tends to wear a brown jacket and pants with a white undershirt while on the case.
Skills/Specializations: Has an eye for detail, able to pick out clues that others may miss. In addition, he can recognize common chemicals and substances by smell and taste.

Biography: Damien has been on the job for a while, and has thus seen cases he'd rather not talk about. He's a chain smoker, having started since his military service, and while he constantly thinks about quitting he never does. He's recently been shifted to New Bath under new leadership, which does mind him a bit in that he doesn't get to see his family as often, but knows that it's part of the job.

[Obscene Symphony]

Hey @Ariamis I'm pretty sure by 'sexual preference' it means orientation. Gay/straight/bi etc. I don't know why it's relevant but hey, whatever.

[Jinxer]

This is correct. I phrased it terribly last night in my sleepy state.

[Ariamis]

Changed it.

[Jinxer]

I'll be adding my CS shortly. I've also updated the suggested CS to make the part regarding sexual orientation less ambiguous.

Name: Rhiannon Jones
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Sexual orientation: Pansexual
Role: Detective (transfer from Britain, former Detective Chief Inspector in Somerset, South England). Informal lead of the homicide team.

Appearance:

Image

Tends to wear black running trainers with plain jeans and a loose grey shirt while at work, a black blazer making the outfit more of a professional look with a cream overcoat during colder weather.
5' 9" tall. Wears high heels in interrogation and witness interviews for height advantage.

Skills/Specializations:
-A decent hand to hand combat fighter, Rhiannon was a police officer in a country where even the use of tasers is rare and suspects were subdued by more base means. Her skill with guns is rudimentary and still lacks any real skill with her new firearm.
-While not fullproof, she has a knack for spotting micro-expressions and this can give her an edge in interrogation.

Biography: Rhiannon comes from a working class Welsh family. Money was not an issue, her father the owner of a small but successful building firm while her mother was an administrator for the town council. That was not to say that her family were affluent either.

In any case, her self-made parents expected a great deal of their only daughter and she pushed herself to meet those high expectations. It wasn't long before she was receiving accolades from her school and work experience placement for the neighbourhood watch.

This brief taste had her applying for the local police force immediately upon finishing her school education. When she reached the age of twenty Rhiannon received an offer of relocating to London as Detective Sergeant of the Serious Crime Unit.

Four more years passed before she was raised to Detective Chief Inspector, albeit junior to another of the same rank, as one of the youngest women ever to reach the rank. Her partner, the senior DSI, was Timothy Skinner. He was a veteran of nearly sixty years of age and had taken her under his tutelage even as a DS.

A year and half since the start of their partnership the two had been tasked with investigating a possible serial killer whose MO involved hanging their victims in their own homes. They caught the perpetrator but only after Skinner had been found by his wife, hung in their kitchen two weeks into the investigation, just as they were closing in on the man.

Rhiannon took Skinner's death hard and was unable to deal with it appropriately, emigrating to Canada where her Aunt had long offered to provide sanctuary if she needed out for a while. The UK police recommended her fully to the local police force and her Visa was fast tracked along with her citizenship papers so that she could begin work in the newly formed homicide unit.

[Snaketicus]

Name: Rick Joachim
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Sexual orientation: Bi-Sexual
Role: Detective
Appearance: Rick is a man who looks older than his age. With greying black hair, crows feet, and dark circles under his eyes you can see his personality before you even need to speak to him.

He is slightly above average height, standing at 5'9 inches with long limbs and a lithe figure. His physique is that of a person who cares somewhat for his body.

Rick's clothing style is like someone decided to throw a police officer and a fifties business man into a blender. His usual outfit includes a white dress shirt, suspenders, an old beaten up black cotton coat, and pinstripe gray and black pants.

Skills/specialisations: Rick is a smooth operator in social situations, easily defusing or lighting up any dilemma. Following this, he is a master of manipulation and interrogation, able to get the information at any cost.

His physical skills in a fight may lack behind some others but he is, however, very fast with very good reflexes. A title that would fit him in a combat situation is "Fragile speedster."

Biography: Rick was born in an affluent area of the city. He had normal, if well off, parents. He had normal friends. He had a normal school.

For most intents and purposes, Rick had a normal life.

Rick never had problems with girls. Rick never had trouble keeping himself as the center of attention. He graduated top of his class and always performed well in sports and social situations.

However.

Rick was forceful in his relationships. Rick became jealous when anyone but him would be paid attention to for any amount of time. He threatened others to force them to do his work for him and treated people well only when he felt it would give him a social advantage.

And so after graduating he looked for the next easy step up in life. Anything to bring him up a peg with minimal effort. And so he found himself on the doors of a career college specializing in corrections work.

Rick quickly rose the ranks in the police. Going from Officer to Detective in only a few years from when he joined the force. He kept his corruption on the down low in this job but still accepted the occasional bribe to turn his head the opposite direction.

Currently Rick is happy with his position of authority but is looking for any possible reason to advance his career further. Rick has a girlfriend whom he shares an apartment with.

[Giant]

Name: Enrique Romero
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Sexual preference: Heterosexual.
Role: Detective.
Appearance:

Hider

At 5'8, Enrique doesn't seem very threatening; most of the time he has a very calm expression, almost inviting to the public. He usually wears either his uniform or an old, stained brown suit with a red tie. A few gray hairs can be seen among the black hair on his head, showing the burden that the years of work have taken upon him.

Skills/specialisations:

-Given his years of training on the force, he has honed his aim with handguns to be effective; albeit not perfect. Given his age, he has prefered to stay away from physical combat for the time being, although he can keep up with most action the situation requires.
-His greatest strength is his field experience. A long time patrolman, Enrique knows the streets of New Bath and the people around them well enough to get information through mere conversation. Albeit stern, he has great skill for conversation, in general.

Biography:

Enrique was born in raised in a low-income house, in what could be considered a bad part of New Bath. Although both of his immigrant parents tried their best at shielding him from the realities of crime and violence around the area, they couldn't protect him from the dangers that had found themselves entrenched in the school system.

As he advanced with average scores, the small hoodlums that were forming in the school invited Enrique to their group at the tender age of 12, not uncommon for the area. Given that both his parents were absent from home, he spent time with the small clique, consuming alchohol and comitting petty crime.

The group grew up and so did the seriousness of their crimes; after a night of drinking, all of them went out to find a victim. The poor man was mugged and beaten to the ground as Enrique stood on the sidelines. The police drove by and caught the teenagers red-handed; Enrique was charged with assault and underage drinking. He was cleared from the first charge. The rest of the group was not, and they went to a juvenile detention center.

The situation at home worsened and after graduating school Enrique was kicked out of his house with a bag of pot in his hand, without his usual group to rely on. Everyone was crying that night. Enrique got a couple hundred dollars after selling the only good in his hands; he rented a room and vowed to change. It wasn't until he dropped the needle of heroin a couple years later, in that same room, that he made that vow effective in his mind.

After cleaning up and, with time, reconciling with his family, he saw the change on the group of friends he once had; most of them had reformed and started having families, except for a few that had remained and risen through the ranks of criminal gangs. He chose the path of the law and enrolled in police academy at 24 years old.

As time passed, he settled down with someone he met at a mutual friend's party; Maria. Enrique found the quiet woman's company comforting and she understood the past he had. Eventually, they had a child, Jorge. To this day, they live together in a small house in a relatively safe part of New Bath. Throughout this period of his life, Enrique worked as a patrolman.

The first couple of years working as a low-ranking officer of the law, the newly titled officer returned to the neighborhood he grew up in, attempting to help the youths of the streets to avoid going down the path he had traveled through. He soon saw the difficulty of this task as the enviroment of the area was toxic for their childhooods; more than once he was threatened to remove himself from these streets by a young man with a knife.

As he dug further and further on who was recruiting child soldiers for the criminal gang, a reality that he had long ignored now looked at him in the eyes. The situation he faced on his younger years had been handled by powerful adults who used the malleable minds of the young to profit off crime.

The night he informed his superior officer of the situation, the man simply looked at him with contempt and walked away; he already knew of the situation. The whole department did, and a few were involved in the drug business with the criminal leaders. Corruption was entrenched in the police force.

Enrique kept quiet, and through the years attended to calls of abuse, violence, drug possession and distribution in the same houses he had seen through his youth, as a recursive cycle he couldn't stop. Powerless, he attempted to shield his family from the realities of life. His son had grown up to a rebellious teenager, distancing himself from his parents in an usual manner although keeping away from the virulent poison that had been rounding his father's life.

Years later, over the course of a month, a string of drug-related murders had been plaguing the city. With no arrests of the people directly ordering the violence. A couple of them had been committed within meters of officers of the law, who outright ignored the pleas of help shouted by the victim. Enrique faced the thin blue line as the chief threw away the stack of papers collected by him, in order to denounce the omission of duty. Pressure was building on in order to relegate him into a different division and gain his silence. At the recommendation of his family, he managed to bargain a position into the homicide division, as a low rank detective with lesser pay and benefits than he formerly had.

With the situation worsening in his family life and in his career, Enrique still holds some hope for justice coming for the corrupt and the wicked who use the innocent.

[Gurren1]

I'll get one up tomorrow.

[Jinxer]

Some good CSes so far. I'm glad to see real characters with believable back stories here.

I'll be doing a mix of first come first served and the quality of CS but more likely the former to get the ball rolling faster.

[Snaketicus]

Hey really sorry, I'm dropping out of the thread.

[Jinxer]

Hey really sorry, I'm dropping out of the thread.

@Snaketicus

Sorry to see you go, mate. If you change your mind let me know and I'll try to squeeze you in.

[pteroform]

This is my second ever post here, the first one was an Introduction thread I made specifically so my first impression here wasn't bad forum etiquette, and I am all about this RP idea. I've basically already written up the majority of a CS, but there were a couple things I wanted to check before I commit to this character too much.

Okay, so the dude I am writing is a former vice cop, and the way I imagined it his only remarkable skill / specialty is the informal network of contacts, informants, and people who owe him a favour he built up in his years there. I like the idea, but I can definitely see why giving my character established relationships with a bunch of hypothetical NPCs would be a no-no.

[Giant]

Okay, so the dude I am writing is a former vice cop, and the way I imagined it his only remarkable skill / specialty is the informal network of contacts, informants, and people who owe him a favour he built up in his years there. I like the idea, but I can definitely see why giving my character established relationships with a bunch of hypothetical NPCs would be a no-no.

@pteroform

I was actually going to ask the same thing (see: my CS). I have information, experience and a reputation of trustworthiness. I assumed I'd contact the GM to see if my character knew information or if he didn't; if he knew people, or places, or if he didn't. So, yeah, I kind of have a similar question.

Also, welcome to the Guild!

[Jinxer]

@pteroform@Giant

In actual fact, I'm very much supportive of your characters having these contacts. They're wonderful details and are realistic if they're native to the city, for example. There's simply no way a cop would have zero acquaintances or informants after several years in the city. Of course, it may often be that these contacts won't turn up any information in a case as they might not be relevant but it just adds to the flavour.

When you come to writing your own cases I will be supportive of you using contacts to produce evidence or direction and, if you wished it, I would also accept others making use of character contacts for plot points. All these details will help embellish the cases we invent and will make a far more enjoyable experience for everyone.

It will also go a long way to demonstrating any differences between those who have been in the city for a while and those who are new (such as Rhiannon) and might make for some interesting character development. I want this to be a RP where we-re all co-writers/co-GMs. I'm simply organising it, each one of us will be responsible for planning individual cases for the group to play through and I'd love to have as much involvement and creativity as possible from all of you.

Oh, and welcome to the Guild!

[Mistress Dizzy]

Hey! I can't join this one as I wanted to, unfortunately. If there is space later, I hope I can come back. But my life is in flux and I haven't even started on the app.

[Jinxer]

@Mistress Dizzy

I fully understand. If you find you'd like to join later just PM me and we'll look at whether we can fit you in.

[pteroform]

I guess consider this a work in progress?
And thanks for making me feel so welcome! I'm sure I'm going to have a grand old time here, although I'm big on catharsis so my characters might not...

Name: Isembard "Izzy" Keith

Age: 43

Gender: Male

Sexual orientation: Heterosexual

Role: Detective

Appearance: Standing at about 5'7, his posture always slightly hunched, his frame sharp and gaunt, Izzy isn't a particularly commanding figure in a room. His hair; an unruly and greying reddish-brown mess, is combed desperately into something resembling a side-parting, while his moustache; much more obviously red, was trimmed and maintained with more care. His deep brown eyes peer out from behind half-frame glasses, and oftentimes there will be a hand-rolled cigarette clutched between his lips.
Izzy has a very uncomplicated dress sense: he always wears either a dark grey or black suit, a white or grey shirt, and a black tie. Despite wearing a suit, though, he always seems to look disheveled: like his commute to work involves falling down a flight of stairs in a gale.

Skills/specialisations: Izzy's biggest asset is the network of informants and contacts he built up in his years working vice: a fistful of small-time career criminals, low level drug dealers and sex workers who for a variety of reasons owe him allegiance or favours.
He isn't a marskman by anyone's standards, but he is a perfectly adequate shot with his sidearm, and he keeps a 12-guage shotgun locked in the trunk of his car. Just in case.

Biography:

Izzy was born the only child of aspirational middle-class parents, whose marriage quickly collapsed under the weight of a new child. He grew to resent his mother, for everything from his archaic name (she dreamed of him becoming an architect) to driving away his father, who Izzy idolized. His father had been a police officer; and on the weekends and holidays Izzy spent with him they would sit around his sparse apartment, religiously watching old procedural cop shows. His dad would appear, to Izzy, to be a psychic or a genius, preempting every plot twist and pointing out inaccuracies in the stories or techniques. So, when teachers would ask the little children what they wanted to be when they grew up, obviously Izzy knew exactly: he was going to be a detective.

Reality didn't immediately live up to his childhood aspirations, and after dropping out of college, Izzy middled along through the police academy, succeeding more by sheer force of will than any particular skill or talent. He graduated unremarkably: his mother not attending out of anger that he had snubbed "A real education" in favour of law enforcement, tears of pride welling in his father's eyes, and went on to patrol the streets of New Bath.
Izzy's beat found him flung straight from the 'burbs into the heart of the inner city, but he adjusted pretty quickly. Still never excelling, he built a reasonable reputation for himself in the department as a reliable, principled officer, and was eventually offered his dream promotion. The opportunity to be a detective in the vice squad.

That was, unfortunately, the beginning of the end for Izzy. He quickly found himself struggling not to burn out in the face of some of the ugliest parts of society. His youthful idealism was swiftly crushed under the weight of battered sex workers and territorial dealers. He hit breaking point when, on a short term undercover assignment in a neighbouring jurisdiction, his father died suddenly and he was unable to visit him in the last days of his life, or even attend the funeral. Izzy didn't react well, using his undercover persona's criminal access to develop a drug problem, and staking out a new reputation for himself as "high-functioning cocaine addict". Over the next decade he slowly spiraled out of control, growing ever more depressed and misanthropic. Izzy had never married, barely pursued romantic or social relationships, and after his parents had died he had no family to speak of; so he felt largely guiltless as his habits grew ever more self-destructive.

Within about the space of a month everything suddenly came to a head. First, Izzy was placed under official investigation over small amounts of drugs and money going missing from evidence lockers. Then, during a stakeout, he pulled his gun on a high-school student; just a kid who happened to be walking home down the wrong street. The kid protested his innocence a little too aggressively, and Izzy pistol-whipped him, breaking his nose. He was suspended over the assault, miraculously without criminal charges, and although everyone in the investigation was certain it was Izzy who had been stealing evidence, they couldn't prove anything and had to drop the case.

Returning after his suspension, he found himself persona non grata in his department. They couldn't fire him, though, since no charges had been brought over anything he had done, and none of the other units or departments were particularly willing to take him as a transfer. Instead, through some bureaucratic wrangling, and thanks largely to his reputation not having quite reached the newly arrived head, they had him transferred to the homicide team. Downplaying his spotted record, his superiors wrote glowing references highlighting how Izzy's experience would be a great asset to the new team, and how he was such a dedicated, hard-working officer etc etc. Privately though, they all thought that as soon as his new boss found out about him he'd be relegated to a desk job. They decided that pushing paper for someone half his age, making twice his salary, would be a suitable purgatory in which he could reflect on his sins.

Isembard isn't an unpleasant man, though. While he is no longer anything but cynical about individual people, he still fervently believes in the justice system and the law as a force for good. He has a tendency to be rather blunt, to the extent that his old colleagues tried to stop him from interviewing victims or their families, because he was the opposite of a comforting presence. Deep down somewhere he is still capable of great empathy, but years and years of seeing terrible, unjust things have built a very big wall around anything resembling vulnerability. All he really does outside of work is drink, take cocaine (although he is now trying to kick that habit), and sit alone in his sparse apartment, watching old cop shows and listing all the plot holes to himself.

[Jinxer]

A good CS, I like the depth. I think we have a good cast so far.

Everyone who has posted their CS can post it in the character tab, you're all accepted.

[Giant]

Man, I should've fleshed out my character a bit after he joined the police department. I mean, it's half of his life that I didn't describe.

May I?