World On Fire: Shadow Ops [OPEN] (OOC/Fantasy WW2)

[Fascist Republic Of Bermuda]

I am interested beyond a doubt. Whether I want to make a Jewish Polish commando or an old Soviet Commissar is the question.

[WolFina]

Speaking of which, werewolves have three main forms: their human one, the wolf-man form, and the wolf form. The last one turns the werewolf into an oversized but otherwise normally looking wolf.

I'm not the only one who thought The Wolf Among Us when I read this, right?

[Reverend Norv]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the longest bio I've ever written. This is still one of my most autobiographical characters, though less so than I originally thought; the concept took on a life of its own, an internal logic. Agri, please do read the bio, since I expanded on some stuff about the Minuteman Project that you may want either to correct or to make canon.

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Matthew Beecher

Gender: Male

Age: 28

D.O.B.: March 15, 1914

Physical Description:

Well, I don’t look normal, I suppose. At least not anymore. I’m six feet four inches tall, which is on the upper end even for a Minuteman. I weigh close to three hundred pounds, though most people would probably assume that I’m about two-twenty. It’s part of the treatment: muscle mass and bone density increase so dramatically that your weight rises disproportionate to your body proportions. Veins, tendons, and cords of muscle stand out under your skin, clearly visible in outline. You move differently, because your body wants to go way too fast all the time. So you walk on the balls of your feet, almost silently, with a disturbing grace and a leashed energy like a tiger on the prowl. After the procedure, I’d catch a glimpse of myself in mirrors out of the corner of my eye, and some mammalian instinct at the back of my mind would make me jump half out of my skin, thinking of bears and wolves and predators come to eat me alive.

Otherwise, I’d like to think that I look pretty good, all things considered. My arms and legs are like tree trunks, my chest is as thick as a log, and my shoulders barely fit through most doors – but I’m still pretty trim around the middle, long-limbed, lean-shanked like Master Yui was when I knew him back in Mong Yawng. And the procedure left me my hands, at least sort of: narrow in the palms, long-fingered, a little delicate. Artist’s hands, my mother always said. Hands for making beauty.

As for my face, I’m white, though I tan pretty easily and spend enough time outdoors that I’m now more of a pale copper. My hair is light brown, the color of sand, and I keep it cut short and neatly parted at the side. I’m clean-shaven. False modesty aside, I’m good-looking. The procedure boosts your testosterone; it scours the fat from your face. For me, that was a good thing: it emphasized a strong jaw, a straight Roman nose, a broad and open forehead. My eyes are large and very bright blue; when she was a toddler, Grace always pointed to them and then to the sky. And lately, I’ve noticed very fine lines at the corners of my eyes, creases like crows’ feet. I think they’re laugh lines; they make me think of my father. I’m pretty sure I like them.

Species: Human (Minuteman)

Nationality: United States of America

Ethnicity: Mostly Scottish on my father’s side, mostly Welsh on my mother’s.

Religion: Congregationalist

Bio:

You have to understand my parents.

My father is named Daniel Beecher. He is the grandson of Henry Ward Beecher. If you come from New England, you probably learned that name in school: he was one of the most important ministers in America, and a key leader in the abolitionist movement. His sister wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His father was a Congregationalist minister, and his son was a Congregationalist minister, and his grandson is a Congregationalist minister, and also my father.

My father has one great misfortune and one great blessing. His great misfortune is that he has lived most of his life in a time of relative tranquility, devoid of great causes calling for fiery sermons and passionate action. His great blessing is that he married my mother, Miriam, a woman who would follow him anywhere. In the absence of any actual slaves to free, my father decided to free people from the bondage of ignorance and sin instead. He packed his bags and moved to Burma to work as an evangelist, settling ultimately at the place where Burma, Laos, Thailand, and China come together. I was born there, deep in the jungle, near a tiny Shan town you’ve never heard of called Mong Yawng.

I don’t think I realized, at the time, how strange an upbringing it was. Languages always came easy to me. I learned Shan and Cantonese alongside English. I was raised on rice and cold pork salad and grilled fish pulled out of the muddy river. My mother never tried to shelter me. She let me run naked with the village children, and chase the chickens about, and jump headlong from the mangrove trees in the swamp.

But my parents did not neglect my education. I grew up with the Scriptures, yes, but also with Milton and Shakespeare. I read Moliere in French, and Luther in German, and Augustine and Calvin in Latin. I learned biology from a battered copy of Darwin, and physics from a leather-bound Principia of Newton, and history from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall – though the last fifty pages fell out when I dropped the book out of a tree, and I never dared to tell my father.

My mother taught me to play the piano; on Sundays, I played to accompany the hymns, and I watched my father preach. Afterwards, I practiced rhetoric as I walked through the jungle in search of breadfruit. And sometimes, I watched people come to my father when they were sick or grieving or angry or confused, and I watched him talk with them quietly, and put his hands on them gently, and make it all just a little bit more bearable. I thought my father was the finest man in the world.

We went back to America about once a year, usually to New England, to drum up financial support for the mission. It was very strange at first, but slowly I got used to it: to the freezing weather, to the people with their shirts buttoned up to their chins, to the bizarre need to wear shoes all the time, even indoors. There were books everywhere; I can’t tell you how much I loved that. There was radio, which was amazing, like magic. And though the people were different, I came slowly to understand that they were my people, and that they accepted me and embraced me as one of their own. I had power in this country that I could never have in the jungle, privilege that I had never earned. And so I had responsibilities toward America, in the same way that I had responsibilities toward my family.

The jungle was dangerous. I didn’t realize that at first; its dangers were just a natural fact of the world, and I always laughed when my cousins in Massachusetts tried to warn me about disease or violence. But in the end, the jungle taught me a lesson of its own. When I was nine years old, my mother fell ill. That was nothing unusual; all three of us, my mother and my father and I, we fell ill constantly. But my mother didn’t get better. She got worse. Nothing my father did made any difference. We called in the local healers. We called in the British doctor from Taunggyi. My mother fell into a fever, and never woke up.

I didn’t see her die. I fell ill myself five days before it happened. It was malaria, and the quinine wouldn’t work for some reason. I remember heat, and sweat soaking my bed, and insects crawling on me because I was too weak to move. They laid me beside my mother. A few days before she died, I fell asleep and did not wake for a long time. My father says he stayed with me and prayed over me for days without ceasing. I don’t know whether that’s true. All I remember is the dream.

In the dream, everything is dark. I am high up, because I can feel the wind buffeting me like it does at the top of a tall tree. I can sense people near, but they are behind me, and I feel alone. I am exhausted, burning with fever. My arms are like lead, and mercury flows in my veins. I want to lie down.

In front of me, from out of the dark, comes a voice: “Matthew.” It is my father’s voice, and it is not my father’s voice.

“I am tired,” I say.

“Matthew.”

“I am sick.”

“Matthew.”

I lift my eyes. There is a pinprick of light in the distance, like the first of the stars of the morning.

“Here I am,” I say. “Send me.”

I woke after five days. I was within hours of death when the fever broke. No one knew why I was saved. My father thought it was his prayers. I…I have my own ideas.

A man arrived in the village while I was recovering. He was an old man, lean, with muscles like cords of rope under his skin. He was Chinese, and he called himself Master Yui. He had left his home because of the fighting between the Kuomintang and the warlords. When I first met him, I could barely walk. He asked my father if he could help me grow stronger. My father asked if Master Yui was a doctor. The old man said: “Something like that.”

Master Yui taught me about my body. When I could do nothing more than sit, he forced me to sit mindfully, feeling every muscle tense and relax, feeling the exact angle of my joints, feeling the vertebrae in my spine settle. When I could walk, he made me walk in strange new ways: on the balls of my feet, on the tips of my heels, on my toes. He made me run with my knees touching my chest with every step, or my heels touching my thighs. He worked me until I fell to the ground, and then he would gruffly mutter his disappointment, and some wounded but defiant pride in my young soul would drag my limp body back to its feet.

Eventually, Master Yui taught me other things, too. He made me slam my hands and feet and forearms and shins and knees and elbows into teak trees, over and over again, until I felt no pain. He taught me about balance and joints and mechanics, where the body bends and where it doesn’t, where a great blow will have no effect and where a light push will topple the mightiest of men. He taught me how to see in the dark, how to force my pupils wide and distinguish between infinitesimally small gradations of black and white. He taught me how to raise my foot to the level of my head, and keep it there for minute after agonizing minute. And he taught me confidence, without ever quite meaning to do so. He gave me back my faith in myself as a physical being with a place in the physical world.

By the time I was sixteen, I was strong, big and broad, larger than my father. I was starting to chafe a little under Master Yui and under my father. I had a few romances with pretty village girls with whom I’d grown up; my father found out about one, and was furious, ranting about fornication. I wanted to be a minister, to speak quietly and lay my hands gently upon people and make their lives a little better. But I didn’t want to read Augustine for the umpteenth time, or slam my nerveless shins into another teak tree for another two hours on end. My father had actually remarried, to a local woman, and they had a daughter named Grace. I liked Grace a lot, but I was less fond of her mother, and I took to spending a lot of time out of the house and away from the church. I think my father was worried about me.

In 1930, as the endless fighting in southern China entered a desperate phase, some of the warlords started to raid across the border into the Shan Hills. We heard rumors of fighting. My father didn’t take it seriously. Master Yui began teaching me how to crush organs and close off blood vessels.

One Sunday morning, as my father preached and I played the church piano, two dozen ragged men carrying Mausers and machetes came into the village. We heard shooting, and then the door burst open and they swarmed into the church. There was gunfire everywhere. My father cried out: “For the love of God!” and then one of the men hit him in the head with his rifle. I stood up from the piano bench. A soldier swung his rifle at me. I felt myself duck beneath the blow, and then, without thinking, I saw the way the soldier’s feet and hips and shoulders were aligned, and I pushed him gently in the center of the chest, and he fell over, and his head struck the corner of the piano, and he was dead.

At first, none of the other soldiers noticed. They were too busy collecting valuables and women. But then one of them saw me, standing agape over a dead body, and he opened his mouth and raised his rifle.

Then Master Yui moved. He ran toward the soldier, faster than anything I’d ever seen, faster than a striking python, and hit him in the chest, and the soldier flew across the church like a ragdoll and hit a pillar and broke, just broke, with a sound like a chicken’s neck being wrung. And then Master Yui was gone, racing around the room, and the soldiers began to shout, and they went flying, smashing through stained glass windows, crashing into walls, howling in terror. One ran by me. I tripped him, and he looked up at me, and I kicked him in the liver like I had been taught, as hard as I could. His eyes went wide and he died too.

When it was over, all the soldiers were comatose or dead. Master Yui turned to me, and I saw some bleak sorrow in his eyes, a kind of grim acceptance. He walked out of the church. I never saw him again.

I bandaged my father’s head, and we left the village leading a mule loaded with our worldly possessions. I held little Grace’s hand. We all went back to an America trapped in the worst days of the early Depression. My father sent me to a little private school in upstate New York, because he never quite recovered from that blow to the head; he couldn’t consistently form coherent sentences, let alone teach me rhetoric himself. I didn’t much like it at the school, but I did my best and worked hard and learned to live with the cold. I felt very alone.

In 1931 I went to Harvard, like six generations of Beechers before me; an uncle made sure I was admitted. At first, I liked Harvard even less than I had liked my private school: it was in the city, and I hated the city. But I slowly changed my mind. Some of the students – not all, but some – were really, really smart. So were most of the professors. I had long conversations, discussions, arguments about ideas. It was intoxicating. I listened to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio, and thought about liberty and justice and the promise of democracy. I read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address over and over again. Raised on the far side of the Earth, I came late to being an American, and I had the privilege of falling in love as an adult with the country of my parents' birth.

But I also read other things in the newspapers, saw other things on the newsreels. The swastika over Germany. The clouds of mustard gas wafting through the Ethiopian highlands. Japanese troops murdering their way across Manchuria. Nobody wanted to talk about it. People I liked and respected told me to let the rest of the world go to hell by itself; we had problems enough at home. But I thought of the people in the village in Burma, and the soldiers in the church, and the newsreels never seemed an ocean away, not for me. If America meant liberty and justice and the promise of democracy, then it couldn’t possibly have borders or selfish interests, not really. It couldn’t end at the ocean – or, as I came slowly to realize, at the Mason-Dixon Line, either.

My stepmother took my father and Grace to California, where my father stared out at the sea, and sipped slack-jawed at gin and tonics, and grew old before his time. I set about applying to seminaries. But the day before I mailed off my applications, a man in uniform came walking through Harvard Yard. At first, my hackles rose; the only uniforms I had ever seen had been the rags worn by the men who took my father and my home from me. But this man was talking in riddles, explaining about an opportunity for promising young men of good character to join the Army and serve their country in an enterprise of great peril and tremendous importance.

That night, I dreamed the dream from my fever-sleep once again. I am sick. I am exhausted. I stand high upon a precipice in the dark. And a single light gleams in the distance, and I say: “Send me.”

So the next day I found the man in the uniform in Harvard Yard, and signed up for the Minuteman Project.

Most of the test subjects for the Project were already in the military; a few had even fought in the Great War. But some were like me: recruited because we seemed like likely candidates, morally and mentally and physically, to survive the process. They sent me to basic training, which was easy enough for me; Master Yui had put me through much worse, and my body still showed the effect of that upbringing. The atmosphere was hard on me at first: the coarseness, the casual brutality, the comfort with killing. But I did well. They didn’t even bother with the IQ test, because of my Harvard background. And after I broke the sternum of their chief hand-to-hand combat instructor, they graduated me early from Basic. But they did talk to me for hours and hours about my feelings about America, about my loyalties and ideals. Some of the interviewers clearly didn’t like what they heard. But others looked at me in the way that I had seen sick men in the village look at my father. At the time, I did not understand why. I'm still not sure I do.

Finally, the scientists told me what all the tests had been for. I was to become a weapon for them: a guardian of democracy. They told me that a war was coming, a war that would set the world ablaze and decide the fate of mankind for a thousand years. They told me that I could protect people, not just in America but the whole planet over. They told me that I would suffer beyond imagining; that I would likely die; that even if I survived, my life would change forever. They told me that they couldn’t force me to go any farther. They asked me for my consent.

I said yes. Of course.

The procedure itself is nothing. That’s the funny thing. They dose you up, cut you open, sew little bits of flesh into your glands. The flesh carries the foreign DNA. The scars are less that an inch long. I had worse cuts falling out of trees as a child. It’s what comes next that almost kills you. The implants spread inside you, warping you. They rebuild you from the inside out, killing cells they find and replacing them with new, improved ones. You can feel it happening: tentacles of cancer unfurling down your arms and legs, eating away at your guts, a fever heat expanding within your skin. As your body changes, the scientists pump hormones into you at unnatural levels. They’re mutually reinforcing processes: the gene therapy let your body tolerate the hormones, while the hormones accelerate and direct the gene therapy.

By the end of the first week, I was running a fever of a hundred and five degrees and they were feeding me ten gallons of water per day through an IV drip. I couldn’t eat. I was hallucinating. It felt like my eyes were melting and running down my cheeks. My hair fell out. My fingernails fell off. My skin started to flake off, to crack and bleed. The man in the bed beside me developed a tumor that swelled up inside his throat and then burst in a welter of gore and killed him. I could hear my skeleton creak and groan; it kept me awake at night. At the end of the second week, I stopped breathing. They rammed a tube down my throat and attached it to a bellows. I lost consciousness. I did not dream.

I woke up a month later. I was six inches taller, and more than a hundred pounds heavier. My bones were as hard as iron. My arms were the size of saplings. My ribs had fused together into a solid breastplate protecting my heart and lungs. I also could not walk, or even talk. For a few terrifying days, I was trapped immobile inside a body not my own.

The Minuteman scientists had planned for this, of course. They put me on physical therapy right away. There was electroshock: mildly painful, but it reestablished nervous connections and let me talk again, for which I thanked God as I had never thanked Him for anything else in my life. I had been a low tenor before the procedure; now I was a bass.

I spent the next year at the facility in the New Mexico desert, learning to do everything anew. It was harder than anyone expected. Learning to walk was easy; learning to walk at a normal human speed was hard. Learning to write was easy. Learning to write with a normal-sized pen, and without accidentally snapping the pen in your fingers, was hard. It soon became apparent to those of us who had survived the procedure that the world was not built for people like us. But it was exhilarating all the same. There were moments I will never forget. The first time I ran fast enough to keep up with an automobile. The first time I punched through sheet metal with my bare hands. The first time I lifted a motorcycle over my head like a weight training bar. It was an amazing feeling.

But even as I grew stronger, I came to realize that something was wrong. The scientists weren’t letting us leave the research compound. They were always in meetings with Washington types in suits. They weren’t giving us any military training, which didn’t make any sense. And they wouldn’t show us the news – which meant, I figured, that there wasn’t a war. And if there wasn’t a war, then the Minutemen were a liability.

It came as no surprise when the project was shut down. I was still furious, though. I was an almost freakishly huge man whom any cursory medical examination would reveal as an abandoned science project. I had a family; admittedly, my father was fading fast, but Grace was growing up equally fast, and she needed me to guide her. And now, I was told, I was going to be resettled in Montana to live out my life in seclusion, because I had become an embarrassment to the country for which I had endured a living hell.

But there was nothing I could do. In the end, I got the suits to give me permission to correspond with Grace. I was given a cabin in the wilds of Montana, and I spent my days alone. I reread Augustine, and Calvin, and Milton, and Gibbon, and all the rest. I shivered in the winter cold. I hunted elk for my meat, and became a very good shot. I hiked up mountains carrying two-hundred-pound boulders on my back, with which to build gigantic cairns and chapels. I prayed a great deal, on the windswept peaks of the Rockies, seeking the strength to make my peace with what had happened. I wrote religiously to Grace, and devoured the letters that she sent me in return. I taught myself to draw, and made pen-and-ink sketches of the mountains and the forest, and of a different forest that now existed only in my memory, full of palm trees and small brown children in a world that seemed almost to have passed from reality.

I listened to the radio, too. I heard the world close its eyes as Nanking fell, and an entire city was raped and murdered. I heard the world close its eyes as Hitler took Austria, and then the Sudetenland. I heard the country that I loved close its eyes as a vast shadow covered the globe, as some dark mystery from the shadowed vaults of time lurched forth to devour everything that was good in the world. I listened to the radio, and I heard the war for which I had been created break out, and rage on, and be lost.

And I prayed. They say that the Minuteman Project gave us unbreakable will. I don’t know. I will say this: my will has never broken, but that doesn’t mean that I have never wrestled with doubt. Alone in my cabin, I prayed for the strength to go on believing in liberty, and justice, and the promise of democracy. I prayed for the courage not to lose my faith in my country. I prayed for the ability to hope that all was not yet lost.

I don’t know if my prayers were answered. But I think that maybe, when God gives you the faith you need to say your prayers, He is answering those prayers before you even have the chance to utter them.

And then came the attack on Pearl Harbor. And I know that this is horrible, but when I heard that news, I thanked God. I cannot forgive myself for that, and yet I still cannot bring myself to wish that the Japs hadn’t bombed us. Because it forced us to do what we should have done four years ago, when I watched the Washington suits shut down the Minuteman Project: it forced us to save the world. On December 10, 1941, a man in a suit came to my cabin door and told me that my country needed me again. I told him that my country had always needed me; the only thing that had changed was that now my government needed me too.

And so here I am. Fighting the good fight, a long way from Mong Yawng where I was born, and an even longer way from Harvard or Montana. But here, with this team – I’m home. Not because of the killing, which is never more than a necessary evil. Not because of the people who make up this unit, the mind-boggling creatures from a world that I never thought existed. But because we are here at last to stand between everything that is good in this world and a power that seeks only to purge and mutilate and enslave. And there is nowhere – nowhere – I would rather be.

Psychological Profile:

They tell me I’m a good man. Some people worship the Minutemen, so I take that with a grain of salt. But let me put it this way: I’m a good soldier, but I don’t like the killing, and in my experience that’s a pretty rare combination. I’m decisive under pressure. When I make up my mind to do something, I follow through. My word is good when it is given. I never turn my back on a friend. I rarely swear, rarely drink, and rarely smoke. I know what I believe, and I stand behind it. I love my country, but I do not love only my country, and I love America best when it acts as a light to the world rather than as a guardian of its own interests. I try to see the best in people. I believe in God, right down in the core of my being. I like to preach, and I find that many people like to listen, which is a rare blessing for which I am very grateful. I have suffered, but I still have laugh lines around my eyes. They say my will is unbreakable. All I know is that every time life has beaten me down, I have found something beautiful and sacred that has given me the strength to stand back up again. Willpower is not about inner walls; it’s about inner prayers.

They also tell me that I have a tendency to be suspicious of authority, that I have an almost pathological tendency to stick up for underdogs, and that I am perilously overconfident in my own judgment and capabilities. All of which just goes to show, as far as I can tell, that not even being born and raised in the jungles of Burma is enough to make a Beecher anything less than a true-blue American.

Why Do You Fight?:

I fight because I hate bullies, and because I believe that bullies are more dangerous than anyone realizes. I fight because everything that is holy about human beings can be desecrated, because everything that is free in the human spirit can be enslaved, because everything that is good upon the face of this Earth can be perverted and destroyed. I fight because a decent world is not the default state of the universe, and it can only be sustained by commitment and by sacrifice.

I fight because there can be no neutrality in this moment. I fight because not to fight would be to stand at Hitler’s side and watch darkness extinguish everything I love. I fight because if I don’t fight, then I will never be able to sleep again at night for the rest of my life, and I will leap from a cliff in Montana before the year is out. I fight because if, by fighting, I make the world a better place for a single human being, then my entire existence upon this Earth – and all that I have seen and done and endured – is justified. That is why I fight.

Defining Quote: “Here I am. Send me.”

RP Sample: Et tu, Agri?

[Lunas Legion]

Can I ask whether Chtonic Knowledge is usable or not for a mage?

[Rupudska]

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Catherine Hawkins
Gender: Female
Age: 19
D.O.B.: July 22, 1922 (Claimed, she does not actually know)
Physical Description and/or Picture: Link.
Species: Werewolf
Nationality: Australian
Ethnicity: 50% Aboriginal Australian, 50% Irish
Religion (if any): Presbyterian
Bio: Catherine's earliest childhood is lost to the sands of time. What she does know is that her mother was a Wangai Aboriginal from an area in the northern edge of the Nullarbor region, whom an Irish man fell in love with. Neither their identities nor the name they gave her are known, as they are both dead. They died when she was two due to 'unknown circumstances'. Catherine herself was soon snatched up by the government and shipped off to Moore River Native Settlement.

It was here that she became a girl. There were two things that separated Catherine from her peers among the Aboriginal and fellow half-caste children at Moore River, one more grim than the other. Firstly, she did not try to escape. She had been 'rescued' at far too young an age to remember anything about her parents, so why would she bother? Especially with her education painting the Aboriginals as little more than mindless savages. Nor was she terribly interested in the 'freedom' of the Outback. On the few occasions when she was let out, she considered it nice, but too hostile a place to even consider staying. Secondly, unlike many of her age group (and despite the conditions) she was a perfectly healthy child.

She grew. As her mind developed, she began to question things. Authority, for instance, and the portrayal of the physically darker half of her lineage in school, compared to what her fellow classmates told her. Eventually, at the age of sixteen, she began to plan an escape, setting her date for doing so on Australia Day, when most of the Moore River staff would probably be distracted with the holiday. Surprisingly, it worked, and she managed to make it as far as Perth, where her trail apparently ran cold. But there she faced a bigger problem. She had never planned to actually escape, and thus had no idea, let alone plans, as to what to do once she did. After several weeks of trying (and failing) at various jobs, she decided to head back.

It was on the way back, around fifty miles out of Perth, where she was accosted by an extremely drunk werewolf. It was he who gave her the scar across her nose, and it was he who transformed her into a werewolf.
Psychological Profile: Fairly intelligent, especially for someone of her checkered schooling. This is partially evident in how she doesn't like to do things gung-ho: She likes, no, needs, a plan. While she is far from above using unorthodox (or even somewhat improper/immoral) means to get what she wants, she is entirely incapable of doing any real harm. She wouldn't consciously hurt a fly, not without very good reason to.
Why do you fight?: For the sake of having a purpose.
Defining Quote:
RP Sample: bitch I might be

Bio's about halfway done.

[Agritum]

Can I ask whether Chtonic Knowledge is usable or not for a mage?

Nope.

[Malshan]

Well, of COURSE I'll join. It's been far too long since I've dipped my fangs into something. And lo and behold, I'm going to play a werewolf Berserker. ^_^

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Markus Lenion
Gender: Male
Age: 89
D.O.B.: October 31st, whatever-fits-age-89

Feral: 5' at the shoulder, 300 pounds

Werewolf: Stands at 7'10", weighs in at 468 pounds.

Human form (second image from the left): 6'7", 320 pounds

Species: Werewolf
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Norse (mostly). Some Irish.
Religion (if any): Worships Máni, and believes himself to be a descendant of Hati Hróðvitnisson.

Markus was born on October 31st, 1852 to a pair of werewolves of Norse and Irish decent in a small cabin in the far reaches of what would become the Colorado Rocky Mountain range about 24 years later. Due to having been conceived while his parents were in wolf form, Markus possessed features that were often more lupine than human beyond the extent of the norm. Their pack was small, comprised of an Alpha pair and two other families and, as werewolf packs tend to be, were tightly knit. So Markus grew up on the borders of the human and lycanthrope worlds. Often as he grew, he and his father would head down into the valleys surrounding the mountains to visit the human towns for supplies and the occasional sugary treat. Of course, as often as they did that, so too did they go hunting together. Markus learned the manner of the forests and rocky ranges of his home well before he could rightly call himself a grown man.

Markus grew and learned much like any wolf pup would. He played in the meadows with the other puppies under the watchful eye of their pack, went on hunts with the senior members, and shared in the feasts that followed. He took an affinity to the hunt like any other hot-blooded wolf, and was soon hunting on his own.

In 1889, during the influenza outbreak, Markus lost his mother to the disease. This showed the wolf that his idyllic little world couldn't last forever and that he would eventually have to leave the safety of the den and the security of the pack structure he was a part of.

The opportunity came late in the year 1892 when Markus was hunting elk in the highest reaches of the mountain range. As he stalked his prey, a lone animal separated from its herd, he sensed an intruder, though he estimated that it was a long way off. Once he had the chance, Markus took the elk down, snapping its neck with his powerful jaws.

As he stood over the corpse, he heard a twig snap behind him. He spun around and planted one paw on the elk, snarling at the intruder. He took in the sight of a lone human, rugged and stocky in stature, pointing what seemed to be a long rifle at him. The man's face was contorted in horror, gaping at the shear size of the beast before him. Markus took a step toward the man, emitting a low pitched growl to warn him away. The man didn't take the hint, instead raising his rifle and firing at Markus. It was then that Markus lost control for the first time.

When Markus regained his senses, he found the shredded remains of the man strewn around him, his rifle clutched between Markus's teeth. He was bleeding from several bullet wounds, but they had merely grazed him due to his thick lupine skin.

He left the pack after that incident, too horrified at having partook of human flesh to face them. Tasting human flesh had changed him, had shown him the allure of the bestial nature that lurked inside of him. The feeling of losing control, of allowing his instincts to run wild, had been terrifying and utterly intoxicating to him. As much as he felt the moral wrongness to consume the flesh of another intelligent being, he began to desire and prefer it over the meat of another other creature.

In 1917, when the United States joined the Allied forces in World War I, Markus went with them, listed under a false name and a false past. While fighting in the trenches on the battlefields of France, Markus finally had another opportunity to slake his lust for conflict and war, taking his fill from the German soldiers he encountered as the Allied troops took ground. He made sure to do so in private, away from prying eyes that would tip the balance of the Masquerade.

Markus returned from the war in 1921 when the US officially ended its involvement, but he did not return home to the mountainous den. Instead, he retired to the Appalachian mountain range, setting up a small cabin and hunting and living in seclusion. Occasionally he partook of human flesh, but would often stay away from it for fear of retaliation by those aware of the existence of werewolves and the other supernatural races.

Markus lived peacefully, alone, until the winter of 1940 when he was approached by a group of men appearing to be soldiers. He had not kept up with the news, and was slightly surprised by the news of a new World War. And this time, the soldiers appeared to know what and who he was. There had apparently been a paper trail connecting him to his WWI identity which had allowed the government to track him down.

For recruitment, no less. Markus agreed wholeheartedly. After all, it meant he would have a chance to legitimately hunt humans again.

Psychological Profile: Markus is a hunter of men. He's quiet, methodical, and diligent, born of years of hunting humans and hiding the remains of his kills and covering his tracks. Markus has never been formally educated in a human school and thus lacks knowledge about complex mechanical tools and advanced social nuances.
Why do you fight?: Food (mostly). For fun.
Defining Quote: *looking at the dead-strewn battlefield* "Such a waste."
RP Sample: Do I have to?

[Lunas Legion]

Can I ask whether Chtonic Knowledge is usable or not for a mage?

Nope.

Damnit. However, it's there for a reason, so I presume it'll appear somewhere throughout the RP, no?

[Altito Asmoro]

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Nikolas Kharchenko
Gender: Male
Age: 21
D.O.B.: February 14th, 1920
Physical Description and/or Picture:

Species : Human/Esper
Nationality: Ukrainian/Soviet
Ethnicity: Ukrainian
Religion (if any): Orthodox Catholic
Powers/Magical Specializations (Only if Mage, Witch or Esper): Pyrokinesis. excelling in one scientific fields, gymnastics and basic marksmanship.
Bio:

Born on 1920 as the son of a fanatic Orthodox priest and a teacher influenced him with some of the aspects needed to shaped him. He was grew up and taught about Orthodox and learned to be a priest in a very prosecution period, as many Orthodox priests were killed, jailed, or jailed then killed by the Soviets. On 1929, his Esper power was discovered when during one of Soviet's attempt to arrested his family and him during congregation, it activated his power and it killed several Soviet soldiers before he was captured.

After his arrest, he entered the "re-education" process by NKVD and the scientists, attempted to reshaped him into a patriot who fight for his country, but it is tough as he became more radical and fanatical with his religion, and hide it under his mask of personality while pretending to be loyal. On 1941, 12 years after his "re-education" and during the German Invasion, he showed off his Esper power, even though he is still a young man, able to held off German's occult attacks at Battle of Bialystok-Minsk for awhile alongside the Soviets even though the battle was lost and he was one of few who able to escaped. As the Shadow Ops was created, USSR elected him to be part of Shadow Ops, one of the reasons is because even though he is one of the above-average Esper, his often reckless-attacks and his fanatical following on Orthodox cast him a worse side on the side of the Party and the NKVD, and there are more Espers that is more skilled and willing than him.

Psychological Profile: While he is perfectly capable to use his power, he is able to use his powers sometimes not properly and often made casualties on their side. On the other hand, due to his reluctance to accept the ideals of Marxist he was cast aside even though he is one of the more suited to be on the front rather than part of commando ops. He's fanatic and a radical on his religion and often shows his disgust to those who are part of USSR like him but shows no respect on Orthodox religion. At best, he's an anti-hero, often using brutal and reckless attacks to achieve victory on his side but perfectly able to not use his improper methods to save people. At worst, he's the one who disregard honors to achieve victory as well. But at his heart, he's willing to protect his comrades back in Soviet and willing to use necessary methods to finishes it.
Why do you fight?: To train him to use his power more effective, and to fight to protect his comrades back in Soviet.
Defining Quote: "What I do is not always the best, but what I do is always the most efficient."
RP Sample: Three Dividing Ideologies

[Agritum]

Nope.

Damnit. However, it's there for a reason, so I presume it'll appear somewhere throughout the RP, no?

Indeed it will.

There's always necromancy if you're into creepy thaumaturgy.

[Agritum]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the longest bio I've ever written. This is still one of my most autobiographical characters, though less so than I originally thought; the concept took on a life of its own, an internal logic. Agri, please do read the bio, since I expanded on some stuff about the Minuteman Project that you may want either to correct or to make canon.

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Matthew Beecher

Gender: Male

Age: 28

D.O.B.: March 15, 1914

Physical Description:

Well, I don’t look normal, I suppose. At least not anymore. I’m six feet four inches tall, which is on the upper end even for a Minuteman. I weigh close to three hundred pounds, though most people would probably assume that I’m about two-twenty. It’s part of the treatment: muscle mass and bone density increase so dramatically that your weight rises disproportionate to your body proportions. Veins, tendons, and cords of muscle stand out under your skin, clearly visible in outline. You move differently, because your body wants to go way too fast all the time. So you walk on the balls of your feet, almost silently, with a disturbing grace and a leashed energy like a tiger on the prowl. After the procedure, I’d catch a glimpse of myself in mirrors out of the corner of my eye, and some mammalian instinct at the back of my mind would make me jump half out of my skin, thinking of bears and wolves and predators come to eat me alive.

Otherwise, I’d like to think that I look pretty good, all things considered. My arms and legs are like tree trunks, my chest is as thick as a log, and my shoulders barely fit through most doors – but I’m still pretty trim around the middle, long-limbed, lean-shanked like Master Yui was when I knew him back in Mong Yawng. And the procedure left me my hands, at least sort of: narrow in the palms, long-fingered, a little delicate. Artist’s hands, my mother always said. Hands for making beauty.

As for my face, I’m white, though I tan pretty easily and spend enough time outdoors that I’m now more of a pale copper. My hair is light brown, the color of sand, and I keep it cut short and neatly parted at the side. I’m clean-shaven. False modesty aside, I’m good-looking. The procedure boosts your testosterone; it scours the fat from your face. For me, that was a good thing: it emphasized a strong jaw, a straight Roman nose, a broad and open forehead. My eyes are large and very bright blue; when she was a toddler, Grace always pointed to them and then to the sky. And lately, I’ve noticed very fine lines at the corners of my eyes, creases like crows’ feet. I think they’re laugh lines; they make me think of my father. I’m pretty sure I like them.

Species: Human (Minuteman)

Nationality: United States of America

Ethnicity: Mostly Scottish on my father’s side, mostly Welsh on my mother’s.

Religion: Congregationalist

Bio:

You have to understand my parents.

My father is named Daniel Beecher. He is the grandson of Henry Ward Beecher. If you come from New England, you probably learned that name in school: he was one of the most important ministers in America, and a key leader in the abolitionist movement. His sister wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His father was a Congregationalist minister, and his son was a Congregationalist minister, and his grandson is a Congregationalist minister, and also my father.

My father has one great misfortune and one great blessing. His great misfortune is that he has lived most of his life in a time of relative tranquility, devoid of great causes calling for fiery sermons and passionate action. His great blessing is that he married my mother, Miriam, a woman who would follow him anywhere. In the absence of any actual slaves to free, my father decided to free people from the bondage of ignorance and sin instead. He packed his bags and moved to Burma to work as an evangelist, settling ultimately at the place where Burma, Laos, Thailand, and China come together. I was born there, deep in the jungle, near a tiny Shan town you’ve never heard of called Mong Yawng.

I don’t think I realized, at the time, how strange an upbringing it was. Languages always came easy to me. I learned Shan and Cantonese alongside English. I was raised on rice and cold pork salad and grilled fish pulled out of the muddy river. My mother never tried to shelter me. She let me run naked with the village children, and chase the chickens about, and jump headlong from the mangrove trees in the swamp. But my parents did not neglect my education. I grew up with the Scriptures, yes, but also with Milton and Shakespeare. I read Moliere in French, and Luther in German, and Augustine and Calvin in Latin. I learned biology from a battered copy of Darwin, and physics from a leather-bound Principia of Newton, and history from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall – though the last fifty pages fell out when I dropped the book out of a tree, and I never dared to tell my father. My mother taught me to play the piano; on Sundays, I played to accompany the hymns, and I watched my father preach. Afterwards, I practiced rhetoric as I walked through the jungle in search of breadfruit. And sometimes, I watched people come to my father when they were sick or grieving or angry or confused, and I watched him talk with them quietly, and put his hands on them gently, and make it all just a little bit more bearable. I thought my father was the finest man in the world.

We went back to America about once a year, usually to New England, to drum up financial support for the mission. It was very strange at first, but slowly I got used to it: to the freezing weather, to the people with their shirts buttoned up to their chins, to the bizarre need to wear shoes all the time, even indoors. There were books everywhere; I can’t tell you how much I loved that. There was radio, which was amazing, like magic. And though the people were different, I came slowly to understand that they were my people, and that they accepted me and embraced me as one of their own. I had power in this country that I could never have in the jungle, privilege that I had never earned. And so I had responsibilities toward America, in the same way that I had responsibilities toward my family.

The jungle was dangerous. I didn’t realize that at first; its dangers were just a natural fact of the world, and I always laughed when my cousins in Massachusetts tried to warn me about disease or violence. But in the end, the jungle taught me a lesson of its own. When I was nine years old, my mother fell ill. That was nothing unusual; all three of us, my mother and my father and I, we fell ill constantly. But my mother didn’t get better. She got worse. Nothing my father did made any difference. We called in the local healers. We called in the British doctor from Taunggyi. My mother fell into a fever, and never woke up.

I didn’t see her die. I fell ill myself five days before it happened. It was malaria, and the quinine wouldn’t work for some reason. I remember heat, and sweat soaking my bed, and insects crawling on me because I was too weak to move. They laid me beside my mother. A few days before she died, I fell asleep and did not wake for a long time. My father says he stayed with me and prayed over me for days without ceasing. I don’t know whether that’s true. All I remember is the dream.

In the dream, everything is dark. I am high up, because I can feel the wind buffeting me like it does at the top of a tall tree. I can sense people near, but they are behind me, and I feel alone. I am exhausted, burning with fever. My arms are like lead, and mercury flows in my veins. I want to lie down.

In front of me, from out of the dark, comes a voice: “Matthew.” It is my father’s voice, and it is not my father’s voice.

“I am tired,” I say.

“Matthew.”

“I am sick.”

“Matthew.”

I lift my eyes. There is a pinprick of light in the distance, like the first of the stars of the morning.

“Here I am,” I say. “Send me.”

I woke after five days. I was within hours of death when the fever broke. No one knew why I was saved. My father thought it was his prayers. I…I have my own ideas.

A man arrived in the village while I was recovering. He was an old man, lean, with muscles like cords of rope under his skin. He was Chinese, and he called himself Master Yui. He had left his home because of the fighting between the Kuomintang and the warlords. When I first met him, I could barely walk. He asked my father if he could help me grow stronger. My father asked if Master Yui was a doctor. The old man said: “Something like that.”

Master Yui taught me about my body. When I could do nothing more than sit, he forced me to sit mindfully, feeling every muscle tense and relax, feeling the exact angle of my joints, feeling the vertebrae in my spine settle. When I could walk, he made me walk in strange new ways: on the balls of my feet, on the tips of my heels, on my toes. He made me run with my knees touching my chest with every step, or my heels touching my thighs. He worked me until I fell to the ground, and then he would gruffly mutter his disappointment, and some wounded but defiant pride in my young soul would drag my limp body back to its feet.

Eventually, Master Yui taught me other things, too. He made me slam my hands and feet and forearms and shins and knees and elbows into teak trees, over and over again, until I felt no pain. He taught me about balance and joints and mechanics, where the body bends and where it doesn’t, where a great blow will have no effect and where a light push will topple the mightiest of men. He taught me how to see in the dark, how to force my pupils wide and distinguish between infinitesimally small gradations of black and white. He taught me how to raise my foot to the level of my head, and keep it there for minute after agonizing minute. And he taught me confidence, without ever quite meaning to do so. He gave me back my faith in myself as a physical being with a place in the physical world.

By the time I was sixteen, I was strong, big and broad, larger than my father. I was starting to chafe a little under Master Yui and under my father. I had a few romances with pretty village girls with whom I’d grown up; my father found out about one, and was furious, ranting about fornication. I wanted to be a minister, to speak quietly and lay my hands gently upon people and make their lives a little better. But I didn’t want to read Augustine for the umpteenth time, or slam my nerveless shins into another teak tree for another two hours on end. My father had actually remarried, to a local woman, and they had a daughter named Grace. I liked Grace a lot, but I was less fond of her mother, and I took to spending a lot of time out of the house and away from the church. I think my father was worried about me.

In 1930, as the endless fighting in southern China entered a desperate phase, some of the warlords started to raid across the border into the Shan Hills. We heard rumors of fighting. My father didn’t take it seriously. Master Yui began teaching me how to crush organs and close off blood vessels.

One Sunday morning, as my father preached and I played the church piano, two dozen ragged men carrying Mausers and machetes came into the village. We heard shooting, and then the door burst open and they swarmed into the church. There was gunfire everywhere. My father cried out: “For the love of God!” and then one of the men hit him in the head with his rifle. I stood up from the piano bench. A soldier swung his rifle at me. I felt myself duck beneath the blow, and then, without thinking, I saw the way the soldier’s feet and hips and shoulders were aligned, and I pushed him gently in the center of the chest, and he fell over, and his head struck the corner of the piano, and he was dead.

At first, none of the other soldiers noticed. They were too busy collecting valuables and women. But then one of them saw me, standing agape over a dead body, and he opened his mouth and raised his rifle.

Then Master Yui moved. He ran toward the soldier, faster than anything I’d ever seen, faster than a striking python, and hit him in the chest, and the soldier flew across the church like a ragdoll and hit a pillar and broke, just broke, with a sound like a chicken’s neck being wrung. And then Master Yui was gone, racing around the room, and the soldiers began to shout, and they went flying, smashing through stained glass windows, crashing into walls, howling in terror. One ran by me. I tripped him, and he looked up at me, and I kicked him in the liver like I had been taught, as hard as I could. His eyes went wide and he died too.

When it was over, all the soldiers were comatose or dead. Master Yui turned to me, and I saw some bleak sorrow in his eyes, a kind of grim acceptance. He walked out of the church. I never saw him again.

I bandaged my father’s head, and we left the village leading a mule loaded with our worldly possessions. I held little Grace’s hand. We all went back to an America trapped in the worst days of the early Depression. My father sent me to a little private school in upstate New York, because he never quite recovered from that blow to the head; he couldn’t consistently form coherent sentences, let alone teach me rhetoric himself. I didn’t much like it at the school, but I did my best and worked hard and learned to live with the cold. I felt very alone.

In 1931 I went to Harvard, like six generations of Beechers before me; an uncle made sure I was admitted. At first, I liked Harvard even less than I had liked my private school: it was in the city, and I hated the city. But I slowly changed my mind. Some of the students – not all, but some – were really, really smart. So were most of the professors. I had long conversations, discussions, arguments about ideas. It was intoxicating. I listened to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio, and thought about liberty and justice and the promise of democracy. I read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address over and over again. Raised on the far side of the Earth, I came late to being an American, and I had the privilege of falling in love as an adult with the country of my parents' birth.

But I also read other things in the newspapers, saw other things on the newsreels. The swastika over Germany. The clouds of mustard gas wafting through the Ethiopian highlands. Japanese troops murdering their way across Manchuria. Nobody wanted to talk about it. People I liked and respected told me to let the rest of the world go to hell by itself; we had problems enough at home. But I thought of the people in the village in Burma, and the soldiers in the church, and the newsreels never seemed an ocean away, not for me. If America meant liberty and justice and the promise of democracy, then it couldn’t possibly have borders or selfish interests, not really. It couldn’t end at the ocean – or, as I came slowly to realize, at the Mason-Dixon Line, either.

My stepmother took my father and Grace to California, where my father stared out at the sea, and sipped slack-jawed at gin and tonics, and grew old before his time. I set about applying to seminaries. But the day before I mailed off my applications, a man in uniform came walking through Harvard Yard. At first, my hackles rose; the only uniforms I had ever seen had been the rags worn by the men who took my father and my home from me. But this man was talking in riddles, explaining about an opportunity for promising young men of good character to join the Army and serve their country in an enterprise of great peril and tremendous importance.

That night, I dreamed the dream from my fever-sleep once again. I am sick. I am exhausted. I stand high upon a precipice in the dark. And a single light gleams in the distance, and I say: “Send me.”

So the next day I found the man in the uniform in Harvard Yard, and signed up for the Minuteman Project.

Most of the test subjects for the Project were already in the military; a few had even fought in the Great War. But some were like me: recruited because we seemed like likely candidates, morally and mentally and physically, to survive the process. They sent me to basic training, which was easy enough for me; Master Yui had put me through much worse, and my body still showed the effect of that upbringing. The atmosphere was hard on me at first: the coarseness, the casual brutality, the comfort with killing. But I did well. They didn’t even bother with the IQ test, because of my Harvard background. And after I broke the sternum of their chief hand-to-hand combat instructor, they graduated me early from Basic. But they did talk to me for hours and hours about my feelings about America, about my loyalties and ideals. Some of the interviewers clearly didn’t like what they heard. But others looked at me in the way that I had seen sick men in the village look at my father. At the time, I did not understand why. I'm still not sure I do.

Finally, the scientists told me what all the tests had been for. I was to become a weapon for them: a guardian of democracy. They told me that a war was coming, a war that would set the world ablaze and decide the fate of mankind for a thousand years. They told me that I could protect people, not just in America but the whole planet over. They told me that I would suffer beyond imagining; that I would likely die; that even if I survived, my life would change forever. They told me that they couldn’t force me to go any farther. They asked me for my consent.

I said yes. Of course.

The procedure itself is nothing. That’s the funny thing. They dose you up, cut you open, sew little bits of flesh into your glands. The flesh carries the foreign DNA. The scars are less that an inch long. I had worse cuts falling out of trees as a child. It’s what comes next that almost kills you. The implants spread inside you, warping you. They rebuild you from the inside out, killing cells they find and replacing them with new, improved ones. You can feel it happening: tentacles of cancer unfurling down your arms and legs, eating away at your guts, a fever heat expanding within your skin. As your body changes, the scientists pump hormones into you at unnatural levels. They’re mutually reinforcing processes: the gene therapy let your body tolerate the hormones, while the hormones accelerate and direct the gene therapy.

By the end of the first week, I was running a fever of a hundred and five degrees and they were feeding me ten gallons of water per day through an IV drip. I couldn’t eat. I was hallucinating. It felt like my eyes were melting and running down my cheeks. My hair fell out. My fingernails fell off. My skin started to flake off, to crack and bleed. The man in the bed beside me developed a tumor that swelled up inside his throat and then burst in a welter of gore and killed him. I could hear my skeleton creak and groan; it kept me awake at night. At the end of the second week, I stopped breathing. They rammed a tube down my throat and attached it to a bellows. I lost consciousness. I did not dream.

I woke up a month later. I was six inches taller, and more than a hundred pounds heavier. My bones were as hard as iron. My arms were the size of saplings. My ribs had fused together into a solid breastplate protecting my heart and lungs. I also could not walk, or even talk. For a few terrifying days, I was trapped immobile inside a body not my own.

The Minuteman scientists had planned for this, of course. They put me on physical therapy right away. There was electroshock: mildly painful, but it reestablished nervous connections and let me talk again, for which I thanked God as I had never thanked Him for anything else in my life. I had been a low tenor before the procedure; now I was a bass.

I spent the next year at the facility in the New Mexico desert, learning to do everything anew. It was harder than anyone expected. Learning to walk was easy; learning to walk at a normal human speed was hard. Learning to write was easy. Learning to write with a normal-sized pen, and without accidentally snapping the pen in your fingers, was hard. It soon became apparent to those of us who had survived the procedure that the world was not built for people like us. But it was exhilarating all the same. There were moments I will never forget. The first time I ran fast enough to keep up with an automobile. The first time I punched through sheet metal with my bare hands. The first time I lifted a motorcycle over my head like a weight training bar. It was an amazing feeling.

But even as I grew stronger, I came to realize that something was wrong. The scientists weren’t letting us leave the research compound. They were always in meetings with Washington types in suits. They weren’t giving us any military training, which didn’t make any sense. And they wouldn’t show us the news – which meant, I figured, that there wasn’t a war. And if there wasn’t a war, then the Minutemen were a liability.

It came as no surprise when the project was shut down. I was still furious, though. I was an almost freakishly huge man whom any cursory medical examination would reveal as an abandoned science project. I had a family; admittedly, my father was fading fast, but Grace was growing up equally fast, and she needed me to guide her. And now, I was told, I was going to be resettled in Montana to live out my life in seclusion, because I had become an embarrassment to the country for which I had endured a living hell.

But there was nothing I could do. In the end, I got the suits to give me permission to correspond with Grace. I was given a cabin in the wilds of Montana, and I spent my days alone. I reread Augustine, and Calvin, and Milton, and Gibbon, and all the rest. I shivered in the winter cold. I hunted elk for my meat, and became a very good shot. I hiked up mountains carrying two-hundred-pound boulders on my back, with which to build gigantic cairns and chapels. I prayed a great deal, on the windswept peaks of the Rockies, seeking the strength to make my peace with what had happened. I wrote religiously to Grace, and devoured the letters that she sent me in return. I taught myself to draw, and made pen-and-ink sketches of the mountains and the forest, and of a different forest that now existed only in my memory, full of palm trees and small brown children in a world that seemed almost to have passed from reality.

I listened to the radio, too. I heard the world close its eyes as Nanking fell, and an entire city was raped and murdered. I heard the world close its eyes as Hitler took Austria, and then the Sudetenland. I heard the country that I loved close its eyes as a vast shadow covered the globe, as some dark mystery from the shadowed vaults of time lurched forth to devour everything that was good in the world. I listened to the radio, and I heard the war for which I had been created break out, and rage on, and be lost.

And I prayed. They say that the Minuteman Project gave us unbreakable will. I don’t know. I will say this: my will has never broken, but that doesn’t mean that I have never wrestled with doubt. Alone in my cabin, I prayed for the strength to go on believing in liberty, and justice, and the promise of democracy. I prayed for the courage not to lose my faith in my country. I prayed for the ability to hope that all was not yet lost.

I don’t know if my prayers were answered. But I think that maybe, when God gives you the faith you need to say your prayers, He is answering those prayers before you even have the chance to utter them.

And then came the attack on Pearl Harbor. And I know that this is horrible, but when I heard that news, I thanked God. I cannot forgive myself for that, and yet I still cannot bring myself to wish that the Japs hadn’t bombed us. Because it forced us to do what we should have done four years ago, when I watched the Washington suits shut down the Minuteman Project: it forced us to save the world. On December 10, 1941, a man in a suit came to my cabin door and told me that my country needed me again. I told him that my country had always needed me; the only thing that had changed was that now my government needed me too.

And so here I am. Fighting the good fight, a long way from Mong Yawng where I was born, and an even longer way from Harvard or Montana. But here, with this team – I’m home. Not because of the killing, which is never more than a necessary evil. Not because of the people who make up this unit, the mind-boggling creatures from a world that I never thought existed. But because we are here at last to stand between everything that is good in this world and a power that seeks only to purge and mutilate and enslave. And there is nowhere – nowhere – I would rather be.

Psychological Profile:

They tell me I’m a good man. Some people worship the Minutemen, so I take that with a grain of salt. But let me put it this way: I’m a good soldier, but I don’t like the killing, and in my experience that’s a pretty rare combination. I’m decisive under pressure. When I make up my mind to do something, I follow through. My word is good when it is given. I never turn my back on a friend. I rarely swear, rarely drink, and rarely smoke. I know what I believe, and I stand behind it. I love my country, but I do not love only my country, and I love America best when it acts as a light to the world rather than as a guardian of its own interests. I try to see the best in people. I believe in God, right down in the core of my being. I like to preach, and I find that many people like to listen, which is a rare blessing for which I am very grateful. I have suffered, but I still have laugh lines around my eyes. They say my will is unbreakable. All I know is that every time life has beaten me down, I have found something beautiful and sacred that has given me the strength to stand back up again. Willpower is not about inner walls; it’s about inner prayers.

They also tell me that I have a tendency to be suspicious of authority, that I have an almost pathological tendency to stick up for underdogs, and that I am perilously overconfident in my own judgment and capabilities. All of which just goes to show, as far as I can tell, that not even being born and raised in the jungles of Burma is enough to make a Beecher anything less than a true-blue American.

Why Do You Fight?:

I fight because I hate bullies, and because I believe that bullies are more dangerous than anyone realizes. I fight because everything that is holy about human beings can be desecrated, because everything that is free in the human spirit can be enslaved, because everything that is good upon the face of this Earth can be perverted and destroyed. I fight because a decent world is not the default state of the universe, and it can only be sustained by commitment and by sacrifice.

I fight because there can be no neutrality in this moment. I fight because not to fight would be to stand at Hitler’s side and watch darkness extinguish everything I love. I fight because if I don’t fight, then I will never be able to sleep again at night for the rest of my life, and I will leap from a cliff in Montana before the year is out. I fight because if, by fighting, I make the world a better place for a single human being, then my entire existence upon this Earth – and all that I have seen and done and endured – is justified. That is why I fight.

Defining Quote: “Here I am. Send me.”

RP Sample: Et tu, Agri?

I'm not even American, and you made me cry.

Accepted.

Finally finished my first Character app. Agri, if you have anything you want to talk about in regards to my chars, we can take it to Rizon when we have time.

---

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Terrence ‘Terry’ Brooks
Gender: Male
Age: 102
D.O.B.: 1st April 1839 (Yeah, I know that day is April fools~)
Physical Description and/or Picture: Linky
Species (if Human, specify if Mundane, Mage, Witch, Minuteman or Esper): Vampire
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Mixed Anglo-Saxon and Irish descent
Religion (if any): Raised Protestant but now Non-denominational Christian overall.
Powers/Magical Specializations (Only if Mage, Witch or Esper): Vampire powers (Maybe).
Bio: Born in New York to the Middle-class family, his father is a successful shopkeeper and his mother is an ordinary housewife who loves to dote on him. Terrence is your average nice guy who dreams of great adventures as a hero and would love to go exploring the world one day. But these are the days before he was bitten and became a vampire. According to him, his ‘normal’ days are over when he unwillingly became a vampire and the beginning of his ‘new’ life. Adding his words, it all started when he joined the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Young Terrance first got bitten when he fought with Confederate Vampiric auxiliaries during the heat of the battles. And later on, he expectably becomes a ‘bloodsucker’ to his despair. Terrance was finally discharged after the war as an aimless, miserable wanderer, angered at his different turns of his life. Until in 1878, he met the love of his life, Colette Gerard, a New Orleans woman with the big heart of gold. Meeting her has made a great impact on him for the rest of his life. Despite his vampiric status, the coupled eventually become happily-married and live ever after.

Sadly, nothing lasts forever; Colette grew old and died. And Terry didn’t because of his long-lived status as a vampire to his grief. The fact cannot escape him that he outgrew his beloved wife. Before he despairs any further, he finally remembered their days together as a couple and his late wife’s wishes for him to be happy, he moved on…at bitter pace. Eventually he got over it. Terrance then went on to travel around the world as an adventurer and mercenary for hire, fulfilling his old dream since he was a young human. Until he returns back to United States in 1910, settling in New York City.

However, World War 1 came. Terrance joined the American Army and fought in Europe, witnessing the horrors of war unlike anything he’s seen in his past. When the Great War ends, he returns home, feeling slightly jaded and guilt of witnessing his comrades dying in the war. At the same time, strengthening his resolves to help the innocents when he became a vigilante against gangsters in his hometown during the Great Depression years, even it hurts his well-being. Terry mellowed out somewhat into an easy-going guy today.

Looking past his jovial personality, he’s a hardened veteran of many battles from the early days of Civil War to the bloody trenches of World War 1 and as well his days as a travelling mercenary. His past military records shows Terrance as a promising soldier who serves with honours as patriot, putting aside his occasional recklessness. Now the time of World War 2, he returns back to the military, joining as a volunteer once again. However, the Vampire New Yorker is ordered by American High Command to be transferred at Shadow Command in Great Britain. His skills and experience as an ‘old’ soldier may have come in handy for the Commando team.

Psychological Profile: Outwardly, Terry is a very laid-back goofball and likes to tease people. When on the mission, he’s serious, diligent and level-headed individual based on his life experiences as a soldier and adventurer. But this doesn’t stop him from cracking out jokes on the way, inappropriate or not. However, deep down, he’s a man with guilt complex, haunted by his dark past.
Why do you fight?: "To fight for my country, maybe. Actually I want to help people by fightin’ bad guys. As far as my miserable life goes and all my sins committed, I want to do something good - a big, meaningful one at least one last time I do before I die. Then I have no regrets~."
Defining Quote: “Life is beautiful. It’s just that not everyone sees it, nor appreciates the worth of it. What bad things happen today is because we screwed up or we make mistakes happen or perhaps...inevitable. The most important right now is it’s up to us to fix it or how we cope.”
RP Sample: You read mine~.

Accepted.

[Malshan]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the longest bio I've ever written. This is still one of my most autobiographical characters, though less so than I originally thought; the concept took on a life of its own, an internal logic. Agri, please do read the bio, since I expanded on some stuff about the Minuteman Project that you may want either to correct or to make canon.

That...was beautiful, Norv. Holy hell.

[Cylarn]

Hoping there will be a bonus level in which we must pursue Hitler into the future, where he has infiltrated a 1980s American high school.

Also, Norv, that background.

[Altito Asmoro]

Norv, it's a beautiful bio.

What kind of powers Esper can have?

[Nationstatelandsville]

I have to say this, Italian -- you have taken what sounds like a dumb idea and done fantastically with it. (Though that may just be my delight at the thought of HP Lovecraft, covered in his own waste, hiding in the woods from an army of pissed-off wizards.)

You're still an ass, though.

[WolFina]

You're still an ass, though.

Pot, meet kettle. He's black.

[Lunas Legion]

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Robert Karlmann
Gender: Male
Age: 28
D.O.B.: 6th September, 1914
Physical Description and/or Picture: That cigarette is a deadly weapon to me.
Species: Human Mage
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: German-American
Religion: Athiest
Powers/Magical Specializations: Hermetic Alchemy
Bio: Robert was born in St Louis to a family of brewers, which, conveniently enough, served as a decent cover for alchemy, seeing as the two were remarkably similar, mixing things to create something new, but simply on different sides of the Masquerade. 

Prohibition left them jobless and buisnessless; although his father found a job as a clerk, his mother couldn't and instead began to teach him the fundamentals of alchemy and Hermetic magic until he struck out on his own to research as he wished, both of which he plunged into with great enthusiasm. In a particularly dusty old tome he found claims of a 'Philosopher's Stone' that could transmute base metals into gold. Fascinated by the prospect of such a item, Robert became obsessed with it and never really gave up his research into creating it, instead merely attempting different avenues.

Needless to say, his dogged determination to find the mythical item only increased as the Depression struck. He knew of the probable economic crisis that would happen if he found it and overused it; his father's economic know-how hadn't been completely drowned out by alchemy and the involved techniques and Latin, but he didn't really care. It was the finding that mattered to him, as with it, he could save his country from the mess the markets had dumped it into.

His failure with conventional alchemy and several years of wasted research left him depressed, and led to him branching out into other fields. A brief visit to Czechoslovakia was ended by it's annexation and his time in France and the UK afterwards produced little of note. The only significant thing during the buildup to the war was the disappearance of HP Lovecraft, which brought his strange magical theories to Robert's attention. Although unable to do any actual analysis of his theories beyond the little he could dig up through his fictional works, the small element he could find fascinated him. 

He travelled back to America just before the opening of WW2, tired of European politics and wishing to get back to the simplicity of Democrats good, Republicans bad. His attempts to dig up more of Lovecraft's notes and theories were defeated at every turn, as if someone had deliberately destroyed or hidden them, and although he watched the demise of the Masquerade in Europe with trepidation, he doubted it would ever happen here.

Then Pearl Harbour happened. The image of the untouchable America beyond it's shining seas was shattered. His home was vulnerable, and he'd damn well fight for it. Not particularly keen on risking his hide on the battlefield, he joined the OSS who briefly put his alchemical abilities to use in the Philippines before being re-assigned to the Shadow Ops.

Psychological Profile: Robert is extremely focused on his 'Philosopher's Stone'; although he may have changed his means, the end goal remains the same. Likewise, his winningness to engage in what many would call dangerous magical and alchemical practices means he has ended up with a well-deserved reputation for excessive cockiness, bravado and recklessness, at least under circumstances he's used to. However, his loyalty to his country may be the sole thing that trumps his goal of the 'Philosopher's Stone', even if he sometimes regrets following patriotism over pragmatism.
Why do you fight?: War's a damn good incentive to get creative with alchemy, and to give the Japs and Jerries a good hiding.
Defining Quote: 'People've always been scared of progress. Normally they just need a good kick up the japside to see things properly.'
RP Sample: Here

[Agritum]

Norv, it's a beautiful bio.

What kind of powers Esper can have?

I wrote them in their Paragraph.

[Agritum]

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Robert Karlmann
Gender: Male
Age: 28
D.O.B.: 6th September, 1914
Physical Description and/or Picture: That cigarette is a deadly weapon to me.
Species: Human Mage
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: German-American
Religion: Athiest
Powers/Magical Specializations: Hermetic Alchemy
Bio: Robert was born in St Louis to a family of brewers, which, conveniently enough, served as a decent cover for alchemy, seeing as the two were remarkably similar, mixing things to create something new, but simply on different sides of the Masquerade. 

Prohibition left them jobless and buisnessless; although his father found a job as a clerk, his mother couldn't and instead began to teach him the fundamentals of alchemy and Hermetic magic until he struck out on his own to research as he wished, both of which he plunged into with great enthusiasm. In a particularly dusty old tome he found claims of a 'Philosopher's Stone' that could transmute base metals into gold. Fascinated by the prospect of such a item, Matt became obsessed with it and never really gave up his research into creating it, instead merely attempting different avenues.

Needless to say, his dogged determination to find the mythical item only increased as the Depression struck. He knew of the probable economic crisis that would happen if he found it and overused it; his father's economic know-how hadn't been completely drowned out by alchemy and the involved techniques and Latin, but he didn't really care. It was the finding that mattered to him, as with it, he could save his country from the mess the markets had dumped it into.

His failure with conventional alchemy and several years of wasted research left him depressed, and led to him branching out into other fields. A brief visit to Czechoslovakia was ended by it's annexation and his time in France and the UK afterwards produced little of note. The only significant thing during the buildup to the war was the disappearance of HP Lovecraft, which brought his strange magical theories to Robert's attention. Although unable to do any actual analysis of his theories beyond the little he could dig up through his fictional works, the small element he could find fascinated him. 

He travelled back to America just before the opening of WW2, tired of European politics and wishing to get back to the simplicity of Democrats good, Republicans bad. His attempts to dig up more of Lovecraft's notes and theories were defeated at every turn, as if someone had deliberately destroyed or hidden them, and although he watched the demise of the Masquerade in Europe with trepidation, he doubted it would ever happen here.

Then Pearl Harbour happened. The image of the untouchable America beyond it's shining seas was shattered. His home was vulnerable, and he'd damn well fight for it. Not particularly keen on risking his hide on the battlefield, he joined the OSS who briefly put his alchemical abilities to use in the Philippines before being re-assigned to the Shadow Ops.

Psychological Profile: Robert is extremely focused on his 'Philosopher's Stone'; although he may have changed his means, the end goal remains the same. Likewise, his winningness to engage in what many would call dangerous magical and alchemical practices means he has ended up with a well-deserved reputation for excessive cockiness, bravado and recklessness. However, his loyalty to his country may be the sole thing that trumps his goal of the 'Philosopher's Stone'.
Why do you fight?: War's a damn good incentive to get creative with alchemy, and to give the Japs and Jerries a good hiding.
Defining Quote: 'People've always been scared of progress. Normally they just need a good kick up the japside to see things properly.'
RP Sample: Here

Accepted.

That said, dwelving into Lovecraftian knowledge probably isn't going to go very well.

[Agritum]

Hoping there will be a bonus level in which we must pursue Hitler into the future, where he has infiltrated a 1980s American high school.

Also, Norv, that background.

First we must trace Einstein's projects for a functioning time machine.

[Lunas Legion]

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Robert Karlmann
Gender: Male
Age: 28
D.O.B.: 6th September, 1914
Physical Description and/or Picture: That cigarette is a deadly weapon to me.
Species: Human Mage
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: German-American
Religion: Athiest
Powers/Magical Specializations: Hermetic Alchemy
Bio: Robert was born in St Louis to a family of brewers, which, conveniently enough, served as a decent cover for alchemy, seeing as the two were remarkably similar, mixing things to create something new, but simply on different sides of the Masquerade. 

Prohibition left them jobless and buisnessless; although his father found a job as a clerk, his mother couldn't and instead began to teach him the fundamentals of alchemy and Hermetic magic until he struck out on his own to research as he wished, both of which he plunged into with great enthusiasm. In a particularly dusty old tome he found claims of a 'Philosopher's Stone' that could transmute base metals into gold. Fascinated by the prospect of such a item, Matt became obsessed with it and never really gave up his research into creating it, instead merely attempting different avenues.

Needless to say, his dogged determination to find the mythical item only increased as the Depression struck. He knew of the probable economic crisis that would happen if he found it and overused it; his father's economic know-how hadn't been completely drowned out by alchemy and the involved techniques and Latin, but he didn't really care. It was the finding that mattered to him, as with it, he could save his country from the mess the markets had dumped it into.

His failure with conventional alchemy and several years of wasted research left him depressed, and led to him branching out into other fields. A brief visit to Czechoslovakia was ended by it's annexation and his time in France and the UK afterwards produced little of note. The only significant thing during the buildup to the war was the disappearance of HP Lovecraft, which brought his strange magical theories to Robert's attention. Although unable to do any actual analysis of his theories beyond the little he could dig up through his fictional works, the small element he could find fascinated him. 

He travelled back to America just before the opening of WW2, tired of European politics and wishing to get back to the simplicity of Democrats good, Republicans bad. His attempts to dig up more of Lovecraft's notes and theories were defeated at every turn, as if someone had deliberately destroyed or hidden them, and although he watched the demise of the Masquerade in Europe with trepidation, he doubted it would ever happen here.

Then Pearl Harbour happened. The image of the untouchable America beyond it's shining seas was shattered. His home was vulnerable, and he'd damn well fight for it. Not particularly keen on risking his hide on the battlefield, he joined the OSS who briefly put his alchemical abilities to use in the Philippines before being re-assigned to the Shadow Ops.

Psychological Profile: Robert is extremely focused on his 'Philosopher's Stone'; although he may have changed his means, the end goal remains the same. Likewise, his winningness to engage in what many would call dangerous magical and alchemical practices means he has ended up with a well-deserved reputation for excessive cockiness, bravado and recklessness. However, his loyalty to his country may be the sole thing that trumps his goal of the 'Philosopher's Stone'.
Why do you fight?: War's a damn good incentive to get creative with alchemy, and to give the Japs and Jerries a good hiding.
Defining Quote: 'People've always been scared of progress. Normally they just need a good kick up the japside to see things properly.'
RP Sample: Here

Accepted.

That said, dwelving into Lovecraftian knowledge probably isn't going to go very well.

He's fully aware of that, but progress doesn't come without sacrifice.

[Imperial Ouroboros]

I'm fairly certain this is the first esper app, so, to all those that get the reference, the pic of my guy is pretty appropriate, isn't it?

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Alexander Maksimov Georgiy

Gender: Male

Age: 22

D.O.B.: 1919, November 19

Physical Description and/or Picture: Link

Species (if Human, specify if Mundane, Mage, Witch, Minuteman or Esper): Esper

Nationality: Russian

Ethnicity: Slavic

Religion (if any): None

Powers/Magical Specializations (Only if Mage, Witch or Esper): Photokinesis, AKA photon manipulation. Also an excellent marksman.

Bio: Grew up to a poor family in Soviet Ukraine in the aftermath of the Great War. The sixth and last of his siblings, both his parents were executed as royalist to the old Tsarist regime. His three brothers later died fighting to avenge his parents, and his only sister abandoned him soon after. He currently has no ties to any immediate or extended family members. Living on the streets, he got by stealing, and in a certain case, after stealing from a high member of the communist party, he landed in a NKVD jail cell. He was later discovered by the NKVD to have significant potential as an esper, and was trained at a Russian Esper Academy, and ended up at the top of his class. However , he was almost constantly in.... "re-education" for his refusal to endorse Stalin's authoritative communist regime, however with the improved will-power gained by unlocking one's esper power, ad his improved pain tolerance from earlier "meetings" with the NKVD before his esper talent was found he managed to resist the majority of torture. Normally he would be executed, but because of the need of espers due to Russia's lack of the occult, he was instead sent to the Shadow Ops, as his lack of patriotism wouldn't be tolerated in the Red Army

Psychological Profile: A realist, and extremely cynical. However he will not hesitate to put the need of the people above himself, and is not afraid to go against the orders of his superiors, or against protocol, if he believes said order will put civilians in unnecessary danger. People often disagree with him on what these "needs of the people" are, however.

Why do you fight?: Self-determination, on a government and individual level. Government level meaning people's right to choose there own government, whether it be Fascist, Communist, or Democratic, regardless of his personal preference. Individual level meaning people's right to choose their own destiny, no matter how misguided, or straight up idiotic he thinks that destiny is.

Defining Quote: "As people, human or otherwise, our ultimate right is the right to self-determination. The right to decide our own fate. I will always fight for people to walk down whichever path they want, regardless of how misguided or stupid I think that path is. And if someone interferes with someone's ability to choose a path, if they threaten or coerce them to take a certain one, or they set up road blocks, then I will tear down those obstacles. And if need be, I will kill those that set those obstacles in the first place. THAT is my brand of justice."

RP Sample: As previously stated on this thread, I do not have much forum-style RP experience. However, I have done other types of RP, none of which I can link to.

I feel the need to expand on his power, photokinesis, a bit. All things we see are reflected photons, so photokinesis can control what people see, and also light. In simplest terms photokinesis is the esper equivalent of illusionary magic.

[Malshan]

Well, of COURSE I'll join. It's been far too long since I've dipped my fangs into something. And lo and behold, I'm going to play a werewolf Berserker. ^_^

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Markus Lenion
Gender: Male
Age: 89
D.O.B.: October 31st, whatever-fits-age-89

Feral: 5' at the shoulder, 300 pounds
(Image)
Werewolf: Stands at 7'10", weighs in at 468 pounds.
(Image)
Human form (second image from the left): 6'7", 320 pounds
(Image)

Species: Werewolf
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Norse (mostly). Some Irish.
Religion (if any): Worships Máni, and believes himself to be a descendant of Hati Hróðvitnisson.

Markus was born on October 31st, 1852 to a pair of werewolves of Norse and Irish decent in a small cabin in the far reaches of what would become the Colorado Rocky Mountain range about 24 years later. Due to having been conceived while his parents were in wolf form, Markus possessed features that were often more lupine than human beyond the extent of the norm. Their pack was small, comprised of an Alpha pair and two other families and, as werewolf packs tend to be, were tightly knit. So Markus grew up on the borders of the human and lycanthrope worlds. Often as he grew, he and his father would head down into the valleys surrounding the mountains to visit the human towns for supplies and the occasional sugary treat. Of course, as often as they did that, so too did they go hunting together. Markus learned the manner of the forests and rocky ranges of his home well before he could rightly call himself a grown man.

Markus grew and learned much like any wolf pup would. He played in the meadows with the other puppies under the watchful eye of their pack, went on hunts with the senior members, and shared in the feasts that followed. He took an affinity to the hunt like any other hot-blooded wolf, and was soon hunting on his own.

In 1889, during the influenza outbreak, Markus lost his mother to the disease. This showed the wolf that his idyllic little world couldn't last forever and that he would eventually have to leave the safety of the den and the security of the pack structure he was a part of.

The opportunity came late in the year 1892 when Markus was hunting elk in the highest reaches of the mountain range. As he stalked his prey, a lone animal separated from its herd, he sensed an intruder, though he estimated that it was a long way off. Once he had the chance, Markus took the elk down, snapping its neck with his powerful jaws.

As he stood over the corpse, he heard a twig snap behind him. He spun around and planted one paw on the elk, snarling at the intruder. He took in the sight of a lone human, rugged and stocky in stature, pointing what seemed to be a long rifle at him. The man's face was contorted in horror, gaping at the shear size of the beast before him. Markus took a step toward the man, emitting a low pitched growl to warn him away. The man didn't take the hint, instead raising his rifle and firing at Markus. It was then that Markus lost control for the first time.

When Markus regained his senses, he found the shredded remains of the man strewn around him, his rifle clutched between Markus's teeth. He was bleeding from several bullet wounds, but they had merely grazed him due to his thick lupine skin.

He left the pack after that incident, too horrified at having partook of human flesh to face them. Tasting human flesh had changed him, had shown him the allure of the bestial nature that lurked inside of him. The feeling of losing control, of allowing his instincts to run wild, had been terrifying and utterly intoxicating to him. As much as he felt the moral wrongness to consume the flesh of another intelligent being, he began to desire and prefer it over the meat of another other creature.

In 1917, when the United States joined the Allied forces in World War I, Markus went with them, listed under a false name and a false past. While fighting in the trenches on the battlefields of France, Markus finally had another opportunity to slake his lust for conflict and war, taking his fill from the German soldiers he encountered as the Allied troops took ground. He made sure to do so in private, away from prying eyes that would tip the balance of the Masquerade.

Markus returned from the war in 1921 when the US officially ended its involvement, but he did not return home to the mountainous den. Instead, he retired to the Appalachian mountain range, setting up a small cabin and hunting and living in seclusion. Occasionally he partook of human flesh, but would often stay away from it for fear of retaliation by those aware of the existence of werewolves and the other supernatural races.

Markus lived peacefully, alone, until the winter of 1940 when he was approached by a group of men appearing to be soldiers. He had not kept up with the news, and was slightly surprised by the news of a new World War. And this time, the soldiers appeared to know what and who he was. There had apparently been a paper trail connecting him to his WWI identity which had allowed the government to track him down.

For recruitment, no less. Markus agreed wholeheartedly. After all, it meant he would have a chance to legitimately hunt humans again.

Psychological Profile: Markus is a hunter of men. He's quiet, methodical, and diligent, born of years of hunting humans and hiding the remains of his kills and covering his tracks. Markus has never been formally educated in a human school and thus lacks knowledge about complex mechanical tools and advanced social nuances.
Why do you fight?: Food (mostly). For fun.
Defining Quote: *looking at the dead-strewn battlefield* "Such a waste."
RP Sample: Do I have to?

Here's your yearly dose of crazy wolfman, Agri.

[Nature-Spirits]

Holy shit, Agri. You've outdone yourself.

I shall read the OP when I get the chance, and then I shall make an app. I have some more free time since school ended, so I'll be able to hang around with more regularity than I have recently.

[Agritum]

I'm fairly certain this is the first esper app, so, to all those that get the reference, the pic of my guy is pretty appropriate, isn't it?

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Alexander Maksimov Georgiy

Gender: Male

Age: 22

D.O.B.: 1919, November 19

Physical Description and/or Picture: Link

Species (if Human, specify if Mundane, Mage, Witch, Minuteman or Esper): Esper

Nationality: Russian

Ethnicity: Slavic

Religion (if any): None

Powers/Magical Specializations (Only if Mage, Witch or Esper): Photokinesis, AKA photon manipulation. Also an excellent marksman.

Bio: Grew up to a poor family in Soviet Ukraine in the aftermath of the Great War. The sixth and last of his siblings, both his parents were executed as royalist to the old Tsarist regime. His three brothers later died fighting to avenge his parents, and his only sister abandoned him soon after. He currently has no ties to any immediate or extended family members. Living on the streets, he got by stealing, and in a certain case, after stealing from a high member of the communist party, he landed in a NKVD jail cell. He was later discovered by the NKVD to have significant potential as an esper, and was trained at a Russian Esper Academy, and ended up at the top of his class. However , he was almost constantly in.... "re-education" for his refusal to endorse Stalin's authoritative communist regime, however with the improved will-power gained by unlocking one's esper power, ad his improved pain tolerance from earlier "meetings" with the NKVD before his esper talent was found he managed to resist the majority of torture. Normally he would be executed, but because of the need of espers due to Russia's lack of the occult, he was instead sent to the Shadow Ops, as his lack of patriotism wouldn't be tolerated in the Red Army

Psychological Profile: A realist, and extremely cynical. However he will not hesitate to put the need of the people above himself, and is not afraid to go against the orders of his superiors, or against protocol, if he believes said order will put civilians in unnecessary danger. People often disagree with him on what these "needs of the people" are, however.

Why do you fight?: Self-determination, on a government and individual level. Government level meaning people's right to choose there own government, whether it be Fascist, Communist, or Democratic, regardless of his personal preference. Individual level meaning people's right to choose their own destiny, no matter how misguided, or straight up idiotic he thinks that destiny is.

Defining Quote: "As people, human or otherwise, our ultimate right is the right to self-determination. The right to decide our own fate. I will always fight for people to walk down whichever path they want, regardless of how misguided or stupid I think that path is. And if someone interferes with someone's ability to choose a path, if they threaten or coerce them to take a certain one, or they set up road blocks, then I will tear down those obstacles. And if need be, I will kill those that set those obstacles in the first place. THAT is my brand of justice."

RP Sample: As previously stated on this thread, I do not have much forum-style RP experience. However, I have done other types of RP, none of which I can link to.

I feel the need to expand on his power, photokinesis, a bit. All things we see are reflected photons, so photokinesis can control what people see, and also light. In simplest terms photokinesis is the esper equivalent of illusionary magic.

Good enough. Accepted. Mind, I expect you to do your best RP-wise. Don't disappoint.

Well, of COURSE I'll join. It's been far too long since I've dipped my fangs into something. And lo and behold, I'm going to play a werewolf Berserker. ^_^

Player Character App (Shadow Ops Operative)

Name: Markus Lenion
Gender: Male
Age: 89
D.O.B.: October 31st, whatever-fits-age-89

Feral: 5' at the shoulder, 300 pounds
(Image)
Werewolf: Stands at 7'10", weighs in at 468 pounds.
(Image)
Human form (second image from the left): 6'7", 230 pounds
(Image)

Species: Werewolf
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Norse (mostly). Some Irish.
Religion (if any): Worships Máni, and believes himself to be a descendant of Hati Hróðvitnisson.

Markus was born on October 31st, 1852 to a pair of werewolves of Norse and Irish decent in a small cabin in the far reaches of what would become the Colorado Rocky Mountain range about 24 years later. Due to having been conceived while his parents were in wolf form, Markus possessed features that were often more lupine than human beyond the extent of the norm. Their pack was small, comprised of an Alpha pair and two other families and, as werewolf packs tend to be, were tightly knit. So Markus grew up on the borders of the human and lycanthrope worlds. Often as he grew, he and his father would head down into the valleys surrounding the mountains to visit the human towns for supplies and the occasional sugary treat. Of course, as often as they did that, so too did they go hunting together. Markus learned the manner of the forests and rocky ranges of his home well before he could rightly call himself a grown man.

Markus grew and learned much like any wolf pup would. He played in the meadows with the other puppies under the watchful eye of their pack, went on hunts with the senior members, and shared in the feasts that followed. He took an affinity to the hunt like any other hot-blooded wolf, and was soon hunting on his own.

In 1889, during the influenza outbreak, Markus lost his mother to the disease. This showed the wolf that his idyllic little world couldn't last forever and that he would eventually have to leave the safety of the den and the security of the pack structure he was a part of.

The opportunity came late in the year 1892 when Markus was hunting elk in the highest reaches of the mountain range. As he stalked his prey, a lone animal separated from its herd, he sensed an intruder, though he estimated that it was a long way off. Once he had the chance, Markus took the elk down, snapping its neck with his powerful jaws.

As he stood over the corpse, he heard a twig snap behind him. He spun around and planted one paw on the elk, snarling at the intruder. He took in the sight of a lone human, rugged and stocky in stature, pointing what seemed to be a long rifle at him. The man's face was contorted in horror, gaping at the shear size of the beast before him. Markus took a step toward the man, emitting a low pitched growl to warn him away. The man didn't take the hint, instead raising his rifle and firing at Markus. It was then that Markus lost control for the first time.

When Markus regained his senses, he found the shredded remains of the man strewn around him, his rifle clutched between Markus's teeth. He was bleeding from several bullet wounds, but they had merely grazed him due to his thick lupine skin.

He left the pack after that incident, too horrified at having partook of human flesh to face them. Tasting human flesh had changed him, had shown him the allure of the bestial nature that lurked inside of him. The feeling of losing control, of allowing his instincts to run wild, had been terrifying and utterly intoxicating to him. As much as he felt the moral wrongness to consume the flesh of another intelligent being, he began to desire and prefer it over the meat of another other creature.

In 1917, when the United States joined the Allied forces in World War I, Markus went with them, listed under a false name and a false past. While fighting in the trenches on the battlefields of France, Markus finally had another opportunity to slake his lust for conflict and war, taking his fill from the German soldiers he encountered as the Allied troops took ground. He made sure to do so in private, away from prying eyes that would tip the balance of the Masquerade.

Markus returned from the war in 1921 when the US officially ended its involvement, but he did not return home to the mountainous den. Instead, he retired to the Appalachian mountain range, setting up a small cabin and hunting and living in seclusion. Occasionally he partook of human flesh, but would often stay away from it for fear of retaliation by those aware of the existence of werewolves and the other supernatural races.

Markus lived peacefully, alone, until the winter of 1940 when he was approached by a group of men appearing to be soldiers. He had not kept up with the news, and was slightly surprised by the news of a new World War. And this time, the soldiers appeared to know what and who he was. There had apparently been a paper trail connecting him to his WWI identity which had allowed the government to track him down.

For recruitment, no less. Markus agreed wholeheartedly. After all, it meant he would have a chance to legitimately hunt humans again.

Psychological Profile: Markus is a hunter of men. He's quiet, methodical, and diligent, born of years of hunting humans and hiding the remains of his kills and covering his tracks. Markus has never been formally educated in a human school and thus lacks knowledge about complex mechanical tools and advanced social nuances.
Why do you fight?: Food (mostly). For fun.
Defining Quote: *looking at the dead-strewn battlefield* "Such a waste."
RP Sample: Do I have to?

Here's your yearly dose of crazy wolfman, Agri.

I love how he's old as crap while still being reasonably so even by human standards.

Accepted.