[OOC] Closed - Failure to Thrive

[Naril]

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[Blue Demon]

- Third-person, past-tense, and no colors, please.

@Naril

Does that go for CSs too? Because I like to pretty them up.

WIP

This is very much a WIP. Currently it is in the OUTLINE stage. This is where I draft the core of my character. This isn't anywhere close to the final product.

Who is he? ______ once had a family. Then he didn't.

Name: ______ ______

Gender: Male

Age: 30

Appearance: Handsome. Blue Eyes. Scruff. Short hair. White. Tattoo on left upper arm, partially removed. ______'s right leg below the knee is completely artificial (used to be good quality/second type of neural network implanted).

Optional Photo, Currently reference

Personality: ______'s been describe as "More Muscle than Brain". Likes to talk a lot.

Skills and Abilities: Very athletic, think free running/parkour. Technologically limited. Good people skills/ people reading.

Background: No education, except what he can scrimp. Drifter. Goes from job to job to job. Has some older equipment that used to be good quality.

[Naril]

I'm okay with colours in the character sheet, as long as you're using something high-contrast and to artistic effect - dark green on dark grey makes my old-lady eyes hurt. :3

[Blue Demon]

Then is the color I choose okay?

[Naril]

That will work fine. :3

[Naril]

I have to admit I'm hoping for more than one character application. :3 But we'll see, I suppose.

[Blue Demon]

I may or may not have the kiss of death...

D:

[Naril]

Oh, I'm sure someone else will feel like joining. :3 Maybe I'll polish off and re-post my "Guide to Cyberpunk" I wrote all those years ago.

[bakugou]

Cyberpunk isn't typically my forte - especially because it's not really my area of expertise - but I'll bite, because your writing drew me in. Give me a bit to scrape together a character sheet. (It should be up before the end of Monday, hopefully. Busy weekend ahead.)

I don't have art commissioned of my character, nor do I possess any sort of artistic talent whatsoever, but I did find a particularly fitting image. Would it be all right if I used that, as long as some sort of written description accompanies it?

[Naril]

I really prefer written description - unless the image is more or less exactly what you have in mind. If any sentence referring to the picture you found has "additionally..." Or "except for...," then I would rather a description. :3

Also, yay for more interest!

[bakugou]

@Naril

Oh, no, I'm not the kind of person to pull shit like, "she looks exactly like Jennifer Lawrence save for this all-encompassing list of fifty exceptions". I tend to tack an image on after I've worked out the appearance in my mind, to help me visualize what I'm writing as I'm writing it. It's not even a picture of a real person, if that helps.

[Naril]

Mm. At this point I may have to just say "I'll take a look and let you know," I think. Still, if you were planning on writing a description anyway, I hardly expect I'd be tremendously mean.

[bakugou]

Well, worst-case scenario is I have to omit the picture entirely, so it's not that big of a deal.

[Lukas Kelly]

Conor Rourke is a freelance gun-for-hire working for various criminals, who also works as the "Drone Killer": a mercenary known for violent snatch-and grabs.

Name: Conor "Drone-Killer" Rourke. H,. He generally just goes by "Rourke".

Gender: Male

Age: Most people guess early 30's

Appearance: Conor is tall at 6'1". He's got the super-lean, wiry build that a malnourished fighter might have. He's got dirty blonde hair that's cut long on the top and closely buzzed on the sides, with scruff to match it. He has green eyes and a surprising lack of scars considering his chosen profession, but his nose is slightly crooked and he has a few faint lines around his eye socket from punches/elbows he's taken. His hands are rough with scarring all across his knuckles.

Personality: Conor's a very stoic individual, who prefers to takes a perverse pride in suffering silently. He's taken a beating from life, but he's eager for more. Although a personable and agreeable individual when conversation can be pulled out of him, he's very soft-spoken and doesn't speak much at all. He prefers to listen and think. Despite his quiet attitude and lack of overtly aggressive behavior, few have made the mistake of confusing him for weak. His eyes belie a quiet intensity and a zest for high-speed activity, On operations, "ruthless" wouldn't be the right description, but "ruthless efficiency" would be. He attacks his problems in systematic fashions, breaking down the objectives from the broad goal into immediate tasks and sets to them with vigor. He's an engineer in a warrior's body.

Skills and Abilities: Conor, first and foremost, is an expert in violent solutions to problems. He's a great hand-to-hand fighter, owing to several years in underground fighting. He's notoriously quick for his height and prefers to rely on speed. Conor is also great with small arms such as pistols and the like. He's an absolute ace with a submachine gun, choosing the AS-32 "Gurkha" submachine gun as his weapon of choice (High caliber, compact, controllable recoil). Despite his weaponry skills, his mastery of the submachine gun has led to Conor being very uncomfortable using assault rifles, finding them unwieldy. To the surprise of many, he's not that great of a shot with rifles of any kind. Conor really isn't great with any advanced technology outside of the equipment he uses regularly on operations.

What earned Conor the title "drone killer" is that he makes up for all of the advantages his well-armed cybernetic opponents have on him with instinct and quick trigger finger. He can read the area of engagement like a child's book, and uses this to his advantage win match-ups where he's outmanned and outgunned. He knows where to be and can do what he needs to when he's in position.

Background:

8:00PM.
Conor was almost done for the day. He was sitting in a well-worn chair inside of his studio apartment. All around him were enough illegal materials to get him locked up for a long time. Tons of arms and ammunition, mostly low-tech stuff. Wannabe cowboys got "disappeared" all the time after successful jobs when they couldn't resist the temptation of bringing home a corporate guard's high-tech weapon as a trophy, only to lead his friends right back to where he lives. There was also a small smattering of drugs, drives with valuable intelligence, and black-market augmentations. Most of them weren't his. He got paid to keep a lot of it there because Rourke's apartment was one of the safest places to store something in Cooper's Block.
Back in his chair, Conor was absentmindedly dragging his thumb across the sharpish ridges of an IPA's bottle cap. With his other, he methodically hit the refresh key on his keyboard. If he didn't get an email within the next minute, he'd be free for the night and free to open that beer. Ding. "Shit," he muttered. The gun-for-hire opened the email to see what contract he'd be getting tonight.

Drone Killer:
Ling's Noodles on the corner of Brock St. and Mill. 9PM. We want to discuss putting you on retainer.
-Courier for the Andrapaevs

How the Andrapaevs got his regular email was a mystery, but it didn't matter to Conor. An excited smile peeled across his face. The Andrapaevs wanted to put the Drone Killer on retainer, which meant a regular pay at a much, much higher rate than Conor earned doing protection work. Dzokhar Andrapaev was a savvy man, so he knew what a retainer contract would cost him, and he could afford it too. He'd seen Conor's work too, masked and taking a shipment of who-knows-what from the Russians with relative ease. Honestly, they had their idiots working on moving that shipment, but Andrapaev didn't know that and it made the Drone Killer look like a great investment.

This might be it, he thought, the broke kid from the ghetto might just be able to make it. From underground fighting in his teens to put food in his mouth that addict parents couldn't, to the misadventure that was four years in the military, to making a living and a name on the streets, Conor just pressed on with sheer survival instinct. Being on retainer for lucrative work could change that, changing the frame from indefinite survival to an escape plan. This beer will have to wait. He slid the IPA back a few inches and got ready for the meeting.

[Naril]

@Lukas Kelly -

I have some very mixed feelings.

- In the first place, you're missing something - there's something important buried in the nonsense I put in the character sheet. :3

- If most people guess early-thirties, how old is he really? Is there a discrepancy? If there is, why?

- I feel like "Drone Killer" isn't something someone would have as a nickname or alias, at least outside of electronic communication. To begin with, since he doesn't actually hunt autonomous vehicles (Flying or otherwise, which certainly do exist within the City), the term is inaccurate at best. Those with artificial replacements or enhancements aren't called "drones," as they ostensibly still have their free will and many are under no (official) obligation regarding their behaviour. I would have be more than willing to accept a piece of explanation as to why Rourke referred to them that way, though. Finally, try saying that out loud. "Drone Killer" is awkward and doesn't roll off the tongue - hard to say quickly, no panache. Also, I'm not really thrilled with a character who defines himself so completely by murder that he has that fact as his own moniker. If you stick with this, there has to be some context.

- Stoic mercenaries driven purely by who's paying them at the moment are difficult to tell stories with, and the cast is going to have enough problems without having the "is this guy going to turn on us" sword-of-Damocles hanging over their head. Your character needs to believe in something other than having a sack of cash being waved at them. I get the feeling that there's more to Rourke than being as self-centered as a gyroscope, which is great! Still, I would like that expanded on.

- The idea of "high tech, low life" is central to cyberpunk. Rourke lives in technologically-advanced society and apparently interacts with people who are going to be making use of a lot of high technology to keep in touch, pursue their business, and make deals. He can't be unaware that the Corporations can watch what he does and who he talks to on the 'net, and he should know enough about the world he lives in to understand why he needs an encrypted link back to the Russians. I don't expect him to know how to exploit race conditions and overflows, but Rourke can't be entirely ignorant of everything that isn't his phone.

- I don't get a good feeling of what Rourke thinks of his world. Is he resentful of his lack of objective privacy? Does he want to change things? Does he want them to stay the same? Does he not care? Can something happen to make him care?

- Why is his apartment the safest place to store something? Does his reputation keep people from breaking in? Does he have a security system? He isn't home all the time and from the sounds of things, might be absent for days on end.

There's plenty of room in here for an interesting character that I might like a lot, but right now I'd really like to hear some more about Rourke. I did tell you I might have a lot of questions. :3 I'm probably going to have even more, later.

[BurningDaisies]

I will admit, this is one of the few RP's I've stumbled across with such an engaging prelude. The believable technobabble interwoven into the fictional interview... It's good stuff. I like it. I like it a lot.

Incidentally, I'll prolly start working on a character sheet appropriate to your standards later this evening. I have an idea for a transgender criminal fixer with a Robin Hood complex. We'll see how it turns out~

[Naril]

@BurningDaisies

Thanks! I've put quite a bit of work into something I think is pretty interesting. I'm glad you think so too. :3 I'm sure I'll be happy to look over a character sheet!

[Kimiyosis]

Intriguing~poi!
Working on CS

[Naril]

Yay! :3

One thing I'd like to make clear - this is a hyper-connected world. You think Twitter and Facebook are pervasive in society now? Things like that are more common than television in this world. Technology is everywhere, and high-speed wireless data networks not only exist, but are "too cheap to meter" - a beggar is just as likely to have something like a smartphone as they are to have a pair of shoes. You can not care about what the corporations, the government, or the other figures of power are doing, but it's profoundly unlikely that your characters are actually unaware of the world around them (Unless you give me a very good reason for why this is).

Carry on! :3

[Naril]

Good morning, everyone! What a beautiful day. I'll be floating in and out today, my apartment's deck needs summer-decorating attention, which means I have to go out and actually get some decorations. :3