This has taken long enough that I'm convinced it's dead, so I'm out. I was really looking forward to playing, put quite a bit of time and effort into my character, and I really, really don't appreciate the disregard you have for everyone's investment here. If you're too busy to run games then that's genuinely fine mate, but you need to manage expectations around that, and ideally not commit to running anything if you can't.
To hitchhike was a dangerous practice, to do so this late at night and so far from civilization a riskier prospect still - but the drivers who'd been picking him up on and off on his long walk out to Boring had found themselves lucky enough to be harmless themselves, or wise enough not to push it if they weren't; now, Rose was on the approach to the farmhouse proper.
Initially his plan had been to arrive a few hours early and stake the place out, see if he couldn't get eyes on whoever it was he'd been more or less instructed to meet out here before they could get eyes on him - but on reflection it seemed a tad hostile, especially considering that he'd at least met somebody in person this time around. In fairness, even when he hadn't, these sorts of meetings had a way of working out for him - sure, there had been mishaps in the past, but more often than not he'd walked away with a new job. For once, there was no need for excess caution.
He still watched for an hour. When he saw others arrive - a woman and a man, each carrying themselves with a similar kind of nondescript weight, as if it were a secret rather than something physical they were wearing. Rose had felt and seen the same weight in himself at times - when he caught snatches of his own face, reflected in windows as he passed them by, or when he thought back to that night, and that indestructible woman; some posh bitch who didn't see staff as people, who took them to bed for sustenance rather than company, whose skin bore strong against not only blade and bullet but bomb as well.
Normally that weight meant nothing. Everybody had secrets. Everybody would feel them on some days more than others - everyone knew what it was like to have that guilt-fear burning a hole in their stomach, the idea that they'd done something or found something out that could get them into serious trouble.
Normally it was normal - and normal meant nothing.
Not tonight. Coincidence is a mask worn by conspiracy, and this conspiracy involved him.
His plan had been to watch from concealment in a surrounding field, then move around the house to gain access from the rear, and either join the meeting in progress or avoid an ambush before it happened. But this felt right.
Right enough.
Rose worked his way from cover in the field back to the main road, and started to walk up the path towards the house - and his suspected-colleagues - much more openly. He held up a hand in greeting and beamed a grin at them.
"I was beginning to think I was on my own out here, you know."
β J A C K R O S E β β 40 β MALE β 6"3 βΊ
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 6β3, 40 year old caucasian male of likely Northern European descent and uncertain origin, who is known to most regularly go by the alias βJack Roseβ. Heβs wanted by a whole host of sovereign states worldwide, including France, Britain, most of North Africa, and us - mostly on terrorism charges, but thereβs a lot of low profile violence around his case too. Iβve attached sections taken from Interpol material, and a psych profile kindly donated by MI-5, who Iβm 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, itβs 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. Itβs honestly unknown whether or not heβs 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 theyβre 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 doesnβt 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 Legionβs tradition of recruiting rather than deporting him. It mattered little that his original ID was fake either way, because the Legionβs 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 βJacques Roseβ. 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 marksmanβs 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 βcowardly withered-dicked hippie fuckβ 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 agenciesβ 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.
Roseβs 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 wasnβt so much that heβd never had any - not so much that heβd been lying the whole time - but more that when the opportunity to move on arose, he simply couldnβt 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 hadnβt 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 hadnβt 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 publiclyβ¦
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.
@Smike Yeah, I know lol. I figured that as long as I gave him a different perk and a different modus operandi, it would probably still expand our collective range of options for dealing with things - and after all, when it comes to collecting information and getting into hard to reach places, is there really such a thing as too much?
@DeadDrop Ayo I meant to reply this morning but it obviously didn't go through. Should I make up a perk for now, seeing as he's not got any edges with perks? Or do you not need the edge to get the perk?
I chose it because you told me to pick a perk, and I don't have any edges with perks. I'll have another look and see what I can do to rethink his Edges, but I have to say it was really really confusing for a moment there, because you told me to pick one, and then told me I can't have one. I'll tag you again when I've either redone my edges and perks, or chosen to simply go without a perk.
Are there gonna be perks for all the edges at some point, or is it a case of use it or lose it?
Edit: Swapped arsenal for global access. He's still good with weapons and doubtlessly has at least a personal carry piece, but I figure that's not quite what arsenal means, so it's an alright swap.
@DeadDrop Ayo I meant to reply this morning but it obviously didn't go through. Should I make up a perk for now, seeing as he's not got any edges with perks? Or do you not need the edge to get the perk?
I apologise if this has all been said somewhere before by the way, it's not that I've not read your stuff, it's that I'm sort of dyslexic and often miss things in text.
Edit: Just in case it's the right idea, I went ahead and gave him All Access Pass, to fit with his infiltrator/soldier vibes and skillset. I've written it in such a way as to make it clear that he's limited in that department without help from others, because he was quite dependent on his handlers for info and prep work rather than doing things purely solo.
Turned out to be more changes than I expected. I still wouldn't call this a total rewrite, but it came close.
β J A C K R O S E β β 40 β MALE β 6"3 βΊ
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 6β3, 40 year old caucasian male of likely Northern European descent and uncertain origin, who is known to most regularly go by the alias βJack Roseβ. Heβs wanted by a whole host of sovereign states worldwide, including France, Britain, most of North Africa, and us - mostly on terrorism charges, but thereβs a lot of low profile violence around his case too. Iβve attached sections taken from Interpol material, and a psych profile kindly donated by MI-5, who Iβm 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, itβs 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. Itβs honestly unknown whether or not heβs 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 theyβre 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 doesnβt 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 Legionβs tradition of recruiting rather than deporting him. It mattered little that his original ID was fake either way, because the Legionβs 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 βJacques Roseβ. 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 marksmanβs 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 βcowardly withered-dicked hippie fuckβ 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 agenciesβ 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.
Roseβs 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 wasnβt so much that heβd never had any - not so much that heβd been lying the whole time - but more that when the opportunity to move on arose, he simply couldnβt 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 hadnβt 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 hadnβt 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 publiclyβ¦
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.
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.
Medical student living in Scotland, a lover of beer and steak mostly - but also writing, and politics. Because why not make myself [i]even more[/i] divisive.
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Medical student living in Scotland, a lover of beer and steak mostly - but also writing, and politics. Because why not make myself <span class="bb-i">even more</span> divisive. </div>
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