Innocent Monsters (Fantasy, Neo-Noir, OOC)

[Theyra]

WYNNE, Z.K

+++Name: Zanuin Kynwyl Wynne
+++Age (18 at youngest): 23
+++Species: Changeling(Half-Elf)
+++Sex/Gender: Male
+++Sexual Orientation: Straight
+++Appearance: 5'9, 150lbs
+++Identifying Marks: Short pointed ears, four fingers on each hand and a small scar on his right hand

+++Psychological Analysis: Zanuin on the surface seems to be a quiet, hardworking and calm individual. On the inside, Zanuin can be an outgoing person around friends and can be carefree at times. Due to being bully as a kid for being a changeling or half-elf, he tends to keep his distance from normal humans and tries to fit in so no one can recognize him as a half-elf. Having long hair to cover his pointed ears and wearing enchanted gloves that give the illusion that he has working five fingers. Besides that Zanuin cares for his family and those close to him. Being very loyal to them and can hold grudges for those that have wronged him and it is not easy to anger him. Along with following a personal code that he rarely deviates from and when he does, he always regrets it.

+++Weaknesses: Steel is partly toxic to him, running water and slow to trust humans
+++Likes/Dislikes: Likes - Nature, Birds, His family, Cold weather and Movies, Dislikes - The heat, Bullies, Racist Humans and Snakes
+++Interests: History, Falconry, Magic, Alchemy and Astronomy
+++Fears: Contact with steel, losing someone close to him, becoming what he hates the most

+++Nationality: British(Welsh)
+++Ethnicity: Welsh
+++Languages Spoken: Welsh, English, Elvish, Icelandic, Spanish and mangled Latin for magic coding.
+++Religion: Undecided
+++Birthplace: Llangefni, Wales, UK
+++Permanent Residence: New Leiden, Portocielo
+++Criminal History: N/A
+++Skills: Agile, skilled stick-fighter, accurate with a pistol, good memory and basic first aid

+++Equipment: Beretta Px4 Storm pistol with three magazines, an enchanted collapsible wooden staff that boosts his magic and makes the staff as durable as steel, a pair of enchanted gloves that are as durable as steel, nonflammable and give the illusion that Zanuin has five working fingers. falconry gauntlet, a book about astronomy, a pack of cards, and a journal.
+++Magical Abilities: Talented alchemist, skilled with earth magic, evocation, average at summoning and kinetomancy, knows some ectomancy and verisimilomancy

+++Bio: Zanuin was born in Llangefni, Isle of Anglesey, Wales, and was the first of four children. Born to a human wizard and an Icelandic elf. Zanuin's family is an old wizard clan that dates back to just before the Romans came to the British Isles. Who were nearly wiped out when the Romans invaded the Isle in order to crush the power of the wizards in the region. His clan barely survived and, after seeing countless magical lore get destroyed during the invasion. They pledged that they would preserve as much magical lore that they could find. Their library had grown over the centuries with magical lore. It has garnered a small reputation for themselves for doing this through the Wynnes tend to be a small and isolationist clan.

Zanuin’s early life was marked by his normal human classmates, bullying him for being a hybrid. Often calling him knife ears and other derogatory elf names. He made very few friends at that school and often kept to himself. He did well in school regardless and developed an interest in history. In his free time, Zanuin likes to relax at the estate's gardens, reading and hanging out with his siblings. His parents trained him in the art of stick-fighting so he can use his staff both as a melee weapon and as a foci. Plus, incorporating his greater agility into his fighting style. Zanuin also adopted a Red kite after saving it when its mother was killed by a predator. He named her Lyn and has become a close companion of his.

After graduating from college, Zanuin was still unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. He was staying at the family estate till he got that figured out. In the dead of night, while he and his younger sister were coming inside from stargazing on the roof. The two were passing the library, when Zanuin noticed out of the corner of his eye, movement in the library. He stopped to wonder what the movement could be, and he and his sister went inside the library to check it out. As they were examining the library, his sister noticed that a book was missing and as she went to investigate. She saw dirt on the floor near the bookshelf. Knowing how strict the clan keeps the library clean and how the dirt looked fresh on the floor. She was about to alarm Zanuin when a figure wearing a mask appeared from seemly nothing with daggers drawn. A brief fight ensued, and the intruder managed to escape from the estate.

Zanuin would have given chase but, the intruder had badly wounded his sister, and he could not leave her in that state. Two days after the incident and with his sister recovering, Zanuin and his family realized several things about the intruder. The intruder had somehow located the estate, got by their security and stole one rare magical book. It had to be a mage that knew illusion spells and what Zanuin could discern from the thief's appearance. It was possibly a woman, and the only clue to who this thief was could be. Was what looked like an emblem or a crest on one of the daggers that Zanuin got a glimpse of during the fight. His clan decided on tracking down the thief themselves with the elder members of the clan leading the hunt.

Zanuin wanted to help and find the one who hurt his sister. The elders and his father felt they could find the thief by themselves, and it was better for Zanuin to stay by his sister's side while she recovers. Zanuin was angry about being not being apart of the hunt and choose to find the thief on his own. His investigation so far has led him to Portocielo, where he is investigating a possible lead. To sustain himself while he stays on Portocielo, he found a job opening for Black Dog Investigations. He thought that perhaps he could do three things, help people while getting paid to, maybe help his investigation skills and find more leads on the thief. He applied, got accepted, and now was heading towards the Black Dog Investigations building to start his new job.

+++RP Example: Andromeda Burning

ROWLING-IS-A-HACK (DO NOT REMOVE)

[Monfrox]

WILKINSON, H.J.

+++Name: Holly Josephine Wilkinson, United States Marshal
+++Age (18 at youngest): 29
+++Species: Mundane Human
+++Sex/Gender: F/F
+++Sexual Orientation: Noneyabusiness
+++Appearance: 5' 10", 149lb.
+++Identifying Marks: Scar from gunshot on abdomen, scars from shrapnel wounds on back, shoulder, and leg.

+++Psychological Analysis: Holly displays a strong sense of duty and conscience. It’s noted that she seems to keep the latter in check around her fellow investigators for personal reasons when on the job. This could probably be attributed to trying to keep a low profile and having to keep up appearances. It is also noted that Wilkinson has a hidden sense of gallows humor that has slipped out a few times, mainly when questioned about her military service.

Holly, despite the aforementioned stipulations, has shown to be a hard worker and very professional in the year she has been with the Black Dog. She seems to be somewhat laid-back as well, despite the hellish city constantly at war with itself around her.
+++Weaknesses: Mundane human weaknesses.
+++Likes/Dislikes: No
+++Interests: Cooking
+++Fears: Nyctophobia and Monophobia, usually at the same time

+++Nationality: American Citizen
+++Ethnicity: Caucasian
+++Languages Spoken: English
+++Religion: Evangelical Lutheran
+++Birthplace: Bloody Brook, Massachusetts, United States
+++Permanent Residence: Gibsontown, NC. Currently set up in a house in a local neighborhood near the Laagveldt. Has consistently voiced her displeasure about her location and requested a new post transfer numerous times. Unfortunate circumstances keep her there, mainly due to her requesting a post "away from the big city".
+++Criminal History: Nothing yet
+++Skills: Small arms marksmanship, interrogation, squad tactics.

+++Equipment: Satellite phone, basic jungle survival kit, Eagle Industries MAR-CIRAS LE plate carrier, and an M4A1 are all stashed in her home. Carries a Colt Anaconda, has a HK USP Tactical as a backup.
+++Magical Abilities: Nada

+++Bio: Holly Willinson grew up in her hometown of Bloody Brook, MA, out away from the big city. Her parents were generally accepting of whatever she wanted to do, as long as she got good grades in school. She was a good kid who kept to her work and skimmed through under the radar. Neither an honor student, nor a flunkie. Holly was fine earning A’s and B’s instead of trying for all straight A’s.

Holly’s interests leaned her towards a career in the Air Force after talking to a recruiter that visited her highschool once. Her parents were rather shocked and harsh words ended up being exchanged. Holly left her home and went straight to the recruitment center. Less than a few months later she was wearing digi-tiger stripe and sitting in a checkpoint booth on the border between Saudi-Arabia and Iraq. Her first combat deployment was rather uneventful, save for the time a man drove up to her checkpoint when she was chatting with the QRF guys in the Humvee and opened up with an AKM at her. She was lucky that her body armor stopped the other round.

Her next combat deployment was Bargam Airfield in Afghanistan and she ended up with a few pieces of metal in her from an errant mortar round. After a few other rotations to Kuwait, Germany, and South Korea, she went into the reserves and stayed stateside before she moved to North Carolina. Her prior military service allowed her to land a job with the US Marshals and has been in for the past three years. Was part of the Special Operations Group for a year and a half before she took a chance for a deep undercover assignment in Portocielo to keep an eye out for escaped fugitives of justice, of which the island seemed to attract like flies. Her employment with Black Dog overlaps very nicely with information gathering for the Marshals, but she has never let anyone know of her true profession.

+++RP Example: Yes

ROWLING-IS-A-HACK (DO NOT REMOVE)

[The Knockout Gun Gals]

(Smartten-Da, LSD)

+++Name: Leslie Smartten-Da
+++Age (18 at youngest): 45
+++Species: White Court Vampire
+++Sex/Gender: Female
+++Sexual Orientation: Bisexual
+++Appearance: 178 cm, 59 kg
+++Identifying Marks: N/A

+++Psychological Analysis: (personality)
+++Weaknesses:

Mundane White Court weaknesses (inherited silver and emotion that is opposed to hers, which is a distinct lack of lust).

+++Likes/Dislikes:
+++Interests:
+++Fears:

+++Nationality: South African
+++Ethnicity: Afrikaners
+++Languages Spoken: Afrikaans, English, and Dutch to an extent
+++Religion: Agnostic
+++Birthplace: Alberton, Gauteng, South Africa
+++Permanent Residence: Meer Boulevard
+++Criminal History: (If any)
+++Skills:

Firearms expertise
Fluency in three languages
Driving

+++Equipment: Beside herself, she wields a Vektor SP1. She keeps Winchester Model 1200 in the trunk of her car, 2015 Suzuki Baleno. She has cell phone, the non-smartphone kind, and wallet.
+++Magical Abilities:
Specialized in both Psychomancy and verisimilomancy, and a rather basic form of ectomancy as she cannot calling the dead or conversing and interacting with those who have died before she was born.


+++Bio:

Born in South Africa during the Apartheid era, Leslie was the only vampire child from the White Court vampires, both Afrikaners. She wasn't you can could imagine as a vampire at first, since she hardly ever dabbled herself in the vampire culture even if she was yet to be affected by the Hunger when she was young. Although Apartheid was almost ended during her childhood until she was 15, it didn't stopped some within White Court's South Africa diaspora to keep preached on the idea, and she was affected more from it, from the same diaspora she lived, and less on the White Court, something her parents worried and didn't approved of, at the same time. They decided to sent her away to United States of America. The revelation of supernatural creatures took away the former HQ of White Court from Cairo to Beverly Hills, but her parents recognized that the American diaspora would be more devoted to the culture and rules of White Court vampires.

She was 16 when she arrived in United States. Under the guidance of White Court's in Beverly Hills, she later opened herself and slightly freed herself from the ideology that she learned back in South Africa. She learned glamour magic and found a talent in Psychomancy, as well.

It was too late.

While she indeed became more flexible as she grew up, the fact that she already exposed to the ideals of apartheid era-South Africa was an entrenched one. Her first Hunger and lust emotion was directed to a woman several years older than her with whom she knows she lusted on her. She neutralized her through mind manipulation so that she didn't tried to defend herself, thus allowing an easier dip into her life. She moved to Atlanta shortly after her first Hunger, and found herself a liking with the local Afrikaners society with links to criminal activities. They're quite open to non-humans, though they would not put them in important positions. She was relegated to courier position, driver of sort. For the next 20 years she found herself in and out of prison.

However, she began to be known within certain circles of Dutch people who put a liking to her talents. It is not everyday you find a sympathetic Dutch descent vampire with a criminal talent, after all. It was a specific list of specifications for some, as well. She left the Afrikaners group and went into the Dutch one, but this time she got herself a better position (negotiator, psychomancy worked to an extent), she trained herself to use firearms well, and the usual criminal acts. Her presence among the White Court was known but not much as you expected, in spite of her criminal activities, as she avoid on putting herself as someone that needs to be targeted by the White Court.

However, she was forced to leave mainland USA when the same Afrikaners group that she used to be part of launched a gang war with the Dutch one. As it turned out, she didn't quite leave their group but instead put herself as a turncoat agent for the Dutch, weakening their grip and simultaneously strengthening her Dutch allies. Also, both sides began to deployed their full arsenal and the chaos that was about to ensue would be bad for her life, so she left for Portocielo, in which she heard of the similar Dutch criminal group and the presence of White Court. At least if she failed to be friend with the former, she could be with the latter.

Unfortunately to her dismay, the Dutch group, Bewaker Voorzijde, is one of the very few organization left that excluded non-humans entirely beside certain types of werewolves. The local criminal group associated with White Court is Comanda Paraiso, a Brazilian one. Though she was not quite as ideologically driven as she used to be years ago, she wouldn't take chance with Paraiso. Left without a proper place of work, she decided to throw herself into a variety of part-time jobs. In time, she acquired a talisman that will be activated when she was attacked by magic, but not from human weaponry.

That is, until Black Dog was available. Perhaps wanting to turn a new leaf over or to use her experience with criminal groups for a change, she applied herself for a job in Black Dog.

+++RP Example: Yes

ROWLING-IS-A-HACK (DO NOT REMOVE)

[The Knockout Gun Gals]

Do vampires in this RP immortals, or immortality of vampires only exist within certain circles (just Black Court or just White Court, etc) ?

[Reverend Norv]

My app is now complete.

[Rupudska]

Are all vampires in this RP immortal, or does the immortality of vampires only exist within certain circles (just Black Court or just White Court, etc)?

All vampires are varying degrees of semi-immortal, with Black Court vamps being the most semi-immortal and White Court vamps being the least; however, all of them will only die if they are killed.shirou.jpg

[Saint Nicholas and the Hussars]

Are all vampires in this RP immortal, or does the immortality of vampires only exist within certain circles (just Black Court or just White Court, etc)?

All vampires are varying degrees of semi-immortal, with Black Court vamps being the most semi-immortal and White Court vamps being the least; however, all of them will only die if they are killed.shirou.jpg

When they die they stop living and that can only be achieved when they are killed and have died and have ceased living and are go in post mortem and go into necrosis and have died and their body is dead and they have been killed through homicide and have died

[Rupudska]

*snip*

ACCEPTED.

*snip*

The app itself is fine, but your grammar and sentences are clunky, and there are several changes between past and present tense. Fix that and you're good.

*snip*

DENIED. Bio is self-contradictory, for one thing, and there's a zero percent chance Black Dog would ever hire a necromancer - unless you mean conversing with ghosts, which would be ectomancy, not necromancy.

*snip*

ACCEPTED, naturally.

When they die they stop living and that can only be achieved when they are killed and have died and have ceased living and are go in post mortem and go into necrosis and have died and their body is dead and they have been killed through homicide and have died

Hmm, yes, those are definitely all words.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Bravo-Perales, F.A.

+++Name: “I’m Father Bravo-Perales. First name: Fidel Alejandro.”
+++Age: “Born on the 14th of April 1985. That makes me 35”
+++Species: “A son of Adam”
+++Sex/Gender: “I am, in fact, male”
+++Sexual Orientation:”I am sworn to celibacy. I hope you understand if I don’t answer the question”
+++Appearance: “I’m 1.75 meters tall. I weight… well, let’s just say between 70 and 80 kg, alright?”
+++Identifying Marks: “I have some tattoos on my back, my chest, my arms… But they aren’t visible under regular clothing, so I will not describe them in detail”

+++Psychological Analysis: “I had talk with my… ehm… Oficial de libertad condicional. Don’t know how to translate it to English. My psychiatrist and me agreed that I am a kindly, protective man. Perhaps a bit overly protective, but also very selective in who I think is worth protecting. That’s what she said, at least. All are sinners in the eyes of God, after all, and it takes effort to be worthy of paradise. We disagree on a few things. I have no problem asserting myself to others if I think a line is being crossed. She says I am prone to bouts of unreasonable anger, and that I raise my voice too often.

I told her I am a patient man who would, like Jesus, turn the other cheek when struck. She told me I only grant that privilege to people I find worthy. I told her that was not true, but I am beginning to doubt that a bit. Because yeah, I have turned the other cheek. I have also burnt down a barn a local monster rights… I mean, fae rights, advocate. Excuse the slur, it’s a work in progress. At least she and I agreed I am a religious man at heart, with a healthy fear of God. Yet, we disagreed on our interpretation of scripture. She said I take my religion and turn it into a weapon. I disagree. I do as God commands through His word.

I used to be a right asshole, I know. I am still an asshole in some regards. Many regards. Getting familiar with my own biases was like opening a pit, and with every meter I descend I find new things that I knew to be true that are obvious lies. And it is easy, you know? It’s easy withdrawing to the safe space of my own distressed, violent ideology. But there is no turning back. I know what I thought to be true was not true. But I don’t know what is true, then. I don’t know who knows the truth. And I don’t even know if there is a truth to begin with. And if there isn’t one truth… What becomes of me? A man taught in one simple truth?”
+++Weaknesses: “I don’t tolerate bullshit. I think everyone says that about themselves. My psychiatrist said… she told me, it’s a fake flaw. It’s actually a good trait which I like about myself, and I expect other people to dislike me because of it. Truth is, disliking bullshit is not the problem. It’s rather what you decide is bullshit. And I am pretty easy on the trigger when it comes to that. You have a duty to yourself, your country, and God, to do the right thing. And if you don’t, then that’s bullshit, and I don’t see why I should even begin to tolerate you. My psych calls it intolerance. And I’m starting to think she’s right. I ask too much of others, and by extension, myself. That’s the real weakness there.”
+++Likes/Dislikes: “I love God, Jesus and the Saints. I love the way a blue river flows through a green valley. I love the songs of the human voice. I am in love with humanity, and all things on God’s green earth, which provides. I dislike demons, of course, and all those who would associate with them. Vampires and their vices, werewolves, harrowing creations from the depths of Hell. And I dislike racist fuck-ups who put all their identity into hating something, who thing they are so tough, and then shatter at the first signs of battle. I think… I think I dislike myself, too”
+++Interests: “I love to go horseback riding. I love myself some theology, too, and lately I’ve been getting into enlightenment philosophy. I used to hate it without ever reading it, so now I’m reading it. I hate it all the same, but now with reason.”
+++Fears: “Maybe the road I’m following leads to where I was at the beginning. Maybe it leads absolutely nowhere. Maybe there is no God, or he is not loving. I think I fear that possibility the most. Because if God cannot forgive me, then the world will have to, and I don’t know if it can”

+++Nationality: “I’m a proud subject of the crown of Spain”
+++Ethnicity: “Caucasian, but we’re all human in the end”
+++Languages Spoken: “I speak Castilian, Catalan, French, and English. French and English are passable”
+++Religion: “I am a true Christian. Of the Catholic variety, of course”
+++Birthplace: “Abenójar, Spain”
+++Permanent Residence: “New Leiden, Portocielo”
+++Criminal History: Probational sentence for hate crimes, vandalism and insurrectionism between 2002 and 2009
+++Skills: Horseback riding, charismatic speaking, in-depth knowledge of societal structures of various fae, bolt-action rifle shooting

+++Equipment: Bible, Mauser 98K rifle
+++Magical Abilities: None

+++Bio: “Most times, when asked about my youth, I would tell the same story. Broken family, grew up in poverty, did not have enough to come by, parents with alcohol problems… Most people instantly believe it, and it takes the edge off the rest of my life’s story. Truth is, it’s bullshit. I didn’t grow up in a poor family. My parents were high middle class land owners. They didn’t even have to work much, they just owned the land, and money kept rolling in. They were loving people… still are, by the way. I don’t want to imply they are dead. They still live in Abenójar, to the best of my knowledge. I have written them a couple of times, but they haven’t been replying. I wouldn’t reply to me either, if we were being fair.

But I had every opportunity in life. Good education, a college fund, good friends, and never any money issues. I was the first in my village to get a playstation. We had horses I learnt how to ride. We were practically nobility there. And quite impressively, everything had been built up after 1977, since my parents had been very open anti-Francoists. A stance they have never been able to adequately explain, to my taste. They always made vague hints towards ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, but in my young political mind, it just seemed like democracy was a popularity contest. And everyone was very quick to distance themselves from Franco, which could only mean that he had a point they didn’t want us to find out. My high school class mates agreed with me, but probably because they wanted to play on my playstation rather than any true political conviction.

I was too young to truly understand the meaning of the reveal. For me, it was quite logical that the creatures of fantasy existed somewhere. However, I also saw the problems of integrating them into society. After the rush of the first Reveals had passed, the media started picking up on all the horror stories that were springing up, especially on werewolves and vampires. My psychiatrist told me that my hatred for them was unreasonable. Only a minority ever committed crimes, at least among werewolves. Still, every werewolf murder was one too many, and I blamed the democratic government for their failings. My parents tried to explain to me that listening to the monsters… the fae, excuse me, was the best way to integrate them. To me, that sounded like inviting murderers to the dinner table. However, the discovery that Angels were real led to a religious awakening in me.

When I was seventeen, I saw a rally on TV. Falange Española de las JONS, or just Falange, had organised a protest against the inclusion of ‘demonic monsters’ into society. It was insane, they claimed, to allow murderers in, but in their minds a typical ploy of a democratic government to pretend there was peace. As soon as the news ended I wrote them a letter, about five pages of pseudo-philosophical and religious writing. They must have thought me insane. But that did not matter much. They sent me letters back, including posters, stickers and even a booklet, along with a list of events in their neighbourhood. It was hard getting involved in those first years, and my friends were not so keen on the playstation that they wanted to join what they parents called neo-Francoist hate groups. It wasn’t a hate group to me, though. We were not hateful. We loved our country and our parents, and wanted to protect them from the enemy at all cost. In letters, we called each other ‘brother knight’, which was very cringy if you look back on it.

In 2003, I went to Madrid to study theology. In my mind, that would make me something like a battle priest, which was really cool. Not that I learnt much during classes. I was very peculiar in my hearing, only hearing the exact phrases and interpretations I wanted to hear. This, especially as it concerned the ancient theologians, where I made a hybrid theology of my own with all the most hateful shit I could find. My teachers disapproved, and I barely passed my tests, but by God were my peers interested. They saw theology through my lens, and thought Christianity was on their side in the end. I was happy to be so well-received, so I kept feeding them lectures on Christian theology, and they ate it up as if it were candy.

In 2005, a family of four was murdered in Asturias. Two parents, their son and their daughter. The scene was brutal, and not many pictures were published. However, a few leaked ones found they way online, and our group was outraged. By now, all these people from Falange were my personal friends. We had a bond, we had shared goals. We often spoke about how ready we were to die for our country, for the human ideal, and for God. So, in one drunken stupor, we promised revenge against the demons. Demons, here, meaning all fae, because in our eyes were was no difference between actual demons and werewolves. We got horses and guns, and we rode around the country in search of fae criminal scum. We acted very much like cowboys, very much like knights templar. When the riding became boring, we started spray-painting slogans, and when that sounded boring too, we started vandalising the homes of prominent pro-fae activists. Every time there was a reported fae incident, we took out our grievances. Beat up a few of their own, not really caring if they were even of the same group. I think we fucked up a few people from rival gangs, even. We did not care much. We saw them as one big group, and our punishments were levied against them.

It didn’t take long for us to get outlawed because of that. Which, to be fair, only increased the thrill of the ride. Now, we rode in the dark, sleeping beneath the stars or in abandoned sheds. We were like the knights from stories, running from the law and fighting for justice. The more we were hunted, the more we knew we were right. Every evening we drank copious amounts of alcohol, and every night we swore we would die before letting the foul demons take over our country. This was a fight for God, and if we died in battle, God would let us into heaven for sure.

We were drunk when it happened, although that might not be an excuse. It was 20011. We found a shed hiding a family of centaur. A wounded mother and het foals. We never wanted to hurt them, not really. We just wanted to scare them a bit, I think. Or the others wanted. Maybe we did want them to get hurt, but not actively. We all wanted them to have an accident, but none of us wanted to actually do something. So one of us poured the gasoline on the barn door, someone else made a fuse, and another one of us started dancing around with a torch like a madman. Of course the barn caught fire. Thatch roof, dry summer. There was nothing we could do. Or there was, but there was nothing we wanted to do. We watched for a few minutes, but when the screaming started we ran off. Beat up the farmer for good measure, so hard that he later died of his wounds. None of us actually killed anyone, but it was all of us who did it.

After that little incident, we became a priority. It took the Guardia Civil about five days to track us down. We had fled into the Pyrenees, thinking we could outrun them where we knew the train. But we were Madrid boys, and these Guardia Civil were locals, so before long they caught us where we slept. We fortified an abandoned farmhouse, posturing for the sake of the army and our brothers in arms. We would die, after all, before falling into government hands. It took fifteen minutes of shelling from two light cannon to make us surrender. We threw down our weapons, threw up our hands and gave up in a flash. There were no casualties. We were not even treated like prisoners of war. They put us in the back of police cars and drove us to the station. Didn’t even put us in solitary, just put us with the common criminals.

We were never charged. The public prosecutor cut a deal with each of us. We would go on a special probationary course, learn the value of a democratic, multicultural society, and then we would be free again. We took it, of course, thinking they could never change our mind. We would dance their little dance, and we would be free in no time at all. I didn’t believe a democratic system could be that stupid. Which, of course, it turned out not to be. We were sent to a camp out in the woods. We even got to share a room. They did not divide us from one another. The first day, I thought that would allow us to make a run for it together. The first night, we got drunk again, and we yelled out that we would die before becoming democrats. But we looked at one another, and we didn’t see knights. We saw boys who had surrendered after a few warning shots from a civil militia. We went to bed at 11. I think that night broke us more than anything ever could.

The whole course took three years to complete. By 2014, we got out. We promised we would meet again, that we would stay in touch. But we never did. I never saw any of them again. My parents wouldn’t take me in, of course. They had gotten the letters, and would not have a fascist murdered under their roof. I can’t blame them, really. I was the thing that I had wanted to protect them from: a cold-blooded murderer. So, I went off on my own. Travelled a bit, through Spain and France. However, it would not take long for my new neighbours and employees to google my name. And in the summer, when I wore short sleeves, you could see my tattoos still. So I tended to move around a lot. Europe was to close, it seemed. So I travelled to Jerusalem, seeking salvation. But they wouldn’t give me a visa, on account of the hate crimes. So I took a boat. Spent some time out at sea, until I arrived at Portocielo. The Doorway to Heaven. To me, that was like a sign of divinity. This was where I had to be. So, I took off, rented a small apartment, and looked for a job. Here, too, a sign from God appeared: a job in an investigations unit, helping the whole community. Absolution. So I joined them. And that’s my story. I might have skipped over a few bits, but that is okay. If I trust you enough, you will find out sooner rather than later”


ROWLING-IS-A-HACK (DO NOT REMOVE)

[Theyra]

*snip*

The app itself is fine, but your grammar and sentences are clunky, and there are several changes between past and present tense. Fix that and you're good.

Edited, I hope it is better.

[Ceystile]

*snip*

ACCEPTED.

*snip*

The app itself is fine, but your grammar and sentences are clunky, and there are several changes between past and present tense. Fix that and you're good.

*snip*

DENIED. Bio is self-contradictory, for one thing, and there's a zero percent chance Black Dog would ever hire a necromancer - unless you mean conversing with ghosts, which would be ectomancy, not necromancy.

*snip*

ACCEPTED, naturally.

When they die they stop living and that can only be achieved when they are killed and have died and have ceased living and are go in post mortem and go into necrosis and have died and their body is dead and they have been killed through homicide and have died

Hmm, yes, those are definitely all words.

Alright...is there anything in particular besides the necromancy (I did mean ectomancy, that was my bad) that you would like me to fix? I don’t understand what I contradicted in particular...

[Lunas Legion]

Right since I can finally actually log in to NS now thanks random Youtuber, I'll have an app up later once I've finished figuring out a concept.

[Wolfenium]

Are all vampires in this RP immortal, or does the immortality of vampires only exist within certain circles (just Black Court or just White Court, etc)?

All vampires are varying degrees of semi-immortal, with Black Court vamps being the most semi-immortal and White Court vamps being the least; however, all of them will only die if they are killed.shirou.jpg

Shirou is the Plato of our time.

[Khasinkonia]

-snip-

Please see completed application

[Riysa]

Knight, D.B

+++Name: "My legal name is Dustin Bernard Knight. Call me Dusty, though."
+++Age (18 at youngest): "I was born on April 1st, 1984 - so I'm 36. Funny timing, isn't it? Just like much of my adult life, I guess."
+++Species: "I'm just a pure, old-fashioned, mundane human being."
+++Sex/Gender: "Last I checked, I was still a guy."
+++Sexual Orientation: "I was married to a woman. Do I need to say more?"
+++Appearance: "Didn't you already take my picture? I'm 5 foot 11 inches, and my last checkup put me at 180 pounds."
+++Identifying Marks: "Nada. Never been much for tats."

+++Psychological Analysis: "I'd say I'm a decent guy, though that's probably a damn lie. I like to say it as it is - if I don't like something, I say it, if something is bothering me, I go after it, y'know? I think I'm pretty easy to talk to, too."
+++Weaknesses: "Ahh...yeah. I like the drink a little too much. That's why I escaped here, to get away from that past - ironic, right?"
+++Likes/Dislikes:
+++Interests:
+++Fears: "Man...I just want to live a decent life. I don't want to die alone, in some shady alley after having too many drinks."

+++Nationality: "From the great US of A."
+++Ethnicity:
+++Languages Spoken: "Aside from English, I can speak some Spanish that I picked up back when I was in college."
+++Religion: "My family was a typical American Christian family, where we sometimes went to church on Sunday and that was about it. As for me? I dunno, I guess I believe there's a God. I never really thought about it."
+++Birthplace: "I was born in Frederick, Maryland."
+++Permanent Residence: "Right here, in Black Dog's own building."
+++Criminal History: "Hah."
+++Skills: "I'm a damned good detective and I've seen almost every paracrime under the sun, and came out alive. I know some of the TPs and Leidenites by name."

+++Equipment: "I like to travel light, but I've got my electronics trash - y'know, camera, cellphone, laptop for work - and the detective's standby of paper and pen. I keep a taser, an ASP, and a Browning Hi-Power on me; its old, but its always had my back. Over in the corner there, I've got an Auto-5 shotgun, helps keep any junkies from breaking in and gives me some extra ooph in the field. Oh, that AK over there? I did a favor for a captain in the TP, and he gave me that in return - don't ask too many questions. I also wear a concealed protective vest if things look like they're getting hairy."
+++Magical Abilities: "Nah, just a regular, plain Homo sapiens."

+++Bio:

"I was born in Frederick...Mom's a seamstress, Dad worked at city hall and was a Civil War reenactor on the weekend; Mom used to help him make his costumes. I was the eldest, Tammy came a few years after I did...My childhood? Nothing worth talking about, honestly - we weren't rich, but we had enough. Read a lot of detective fiction; y'know, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, $10 whodunnits, the works, and of course watching similar stuff on TV. I think what first got me interested in being a detective or P-Eye was - get this! - watching reruns of Inspector Gadget as a kid! Haha...sometimes I miss those days."

"Anyways, my grades were decent, so with Dad's help I went to Howard CC for college - forensics degree. Got a job at a cafe in Columbia to pay. And...yeah, that's where I met Christina. My second semester there, I was taking a psych course as an elective, and she was in it. Just like a movie, the very next day, she started working at the cafe - who wouldda guessed? I was young, dumb, and in love; it took some time, and I had to say some stupid things, but we eventually started going out. Eventually I graduated with a decent GPA, even got to study for a summer in Spain, got my degree, and joined the State Police. Life was good then, I guess."

"At first, I was really excited. Yeah, I knew it isn't cheery, that life isn't for the faint hearted, but I thought it'd be alright. For a while, it was - being a detective of the paranormal was never boring. And I was very good at it, too! But, man...you think regular human crimes are bad? The depravity and sheer evil of what I've seen is on a whole other level, like a damned glimpse into hell itself. Near where I lived, there's a tavern called Paddy's...so soon enough, I started getting acquainted with Mister Whiskey Glass every night there. Took the edge off, steadied my nerves a bit. Always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for work the next day. Oh yeah, around this time, Tammy ran away from home to be with some controlling bastard twice her age that she met on an online forum, we were all convinced he was a vampire pretending to be a human. I don't even know if she is still alive or not."

"The cases piled up and the nights at Paddy's got longer. Christina and I started fighting more; I yelled at her for wasting too much money on shoes and jewelry, she threw a fit over how I was spending more time with a bottle than with her. It got pretty nasty...but looking back, it was mainly my fault. To save our relationship, we decided to get married. Yeah, yeah, it was a stupid decision - Christina I think wanted to have that happy American nuclear family life that she never got. As for me? Wellll...I guess I just wanted to wake up to a warm body next to me. Things got better for about 3 weeks - our honeymoon - then they went back to being bad."

"On the day of our anniversary, I got home and found a letter on the counter. Basically, the I'm done, don't come looking for me sort of deal. So I respond in the way I know best - I hopped into the car, downed bottle after bottle at Paddy's, then drove like a madman around the city for a few drunken hours. I showed up the next day in a pretty sorry state, and the whole department knew about my adventure by the end of the day. And, had the Captain not offered me to voluntarily resign with my record intact, Internal Affairs would've probably heard about it by the next day. See, I've always had this rule - a man should never drink alone, otherwise he is in a serious state of drunkeness. So when I got home that night, I sat myself in front of my mirror and let the alcohol flow. I needed an out, just, I needed to redo my life."

"Why Portociello? Well, its as far away from the continent as I can get, its still an American territory, and I know some Spanish. Plus, I could make a living from being a paranormal investigator - its the only damned thing I've ever been good at. Black Dog was happy to take me on, they gave me a room upstairs. Aside from working for them, I also keep an eye out to make sure no whacked-out junkie tries to break in at night, or worse, someone with a grudge. I've been here for a few years now, and I'd say I know a decent number of folks in New Leiden. Maybe one day, I'll find what I'm looking for, or maybe not. But it's not the worst way to live."

+++RP Example: No u

ROWLING-IS-A-HACK (DO NOT REMOVE)

[SangMar]

(Raharuhi, M.)

+++Name: Marty “Grinning Kangaroo” Raharuhi.

+++Age: 42.

+++Species: Human.

+++Sex/Gender: Male.
+++Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual.

+++Appearance: 6’1” and around 190 pounds: used to be much more muscular back in the day, but has now slimmed down to avoid unnecessary damage to his joints now that he’s older. He’s also unmistakably foreign - with pale, sun-averse skin and hazel eyes. For his own benefit, he maintains a high state of physical fitness, as befitting someone of his previous career paths. Marty also likes to wear shirts with airbrushed designs, and is rarely seen wearing any leg-wear other than chinos.

+++Identifying Marks: A sleeve, located on his left arm: which is drawn and coloured in the Japanese “irezumi” style. Several scars and marks on his face, hands and legs from repeated small injuries gained during his martial artist days.

+++Psychological Analysis:

Marty the “Grinning Kangaroo” Raharuhi and Marty the person couldn’t be more stark: one is a showman, a product of a job which thrives on big characters, big threats and the skill to back it all up. The other is a relatively quiet, self-assured man in his forties - who abhors the concept of violence for the sake of violence. As a person with his life experience, Marty knows that few of the drunken have-a-go heroes who frequent the same bars that he does actually have the ability to carry out even the smallest of potential threats. This secure state of mind has resulted in one thing: an incredible ability to remain calm and collected in the face of any threat - whether it’s a heated word at the bar, or something all the more serious entirely.

That is one of the most surprising things about him: according to fans of his anyway. The Marty they watched in bars, clubs or at home was a no-nonsense, trash-talking bully, who was only too happy to back up his exaggerated threats with expertly-timed violence.

With this in mind, it’s wise to point out that the real Marty isn’t incapable of subjecting anyone to a beating within an inch of their lives: it just means that to earn one of those, he has to see that person as a genuine threat - and if you’ve got the arms of a noodle and a penchant for dressing like one of the Village People, for example, he will not take you too seriously. Either that, or you wind up in a coma when you inevitably claim to be armed.

This self-assured nature that’s so central to his personality manifests in other ways too: Marty is exceedingly quiet, even around friends and family, to the point of being almost invisible. Instead, he prefers that everything he says carries meaning to it; and isn’t just a babble of inconsequential nonsense. Accordingly he’d much rather offer one carefully thought out suggestion to his colleagues than a barrage of ill-advised and unsubstantiated statements. Only should it be vital to his job, or should he and his colleagues find themselves in peril will he speak up more - if anything to signal to them that yes, they’re in danger and they need to recognise it. Otherwise, he takes a backseat: preferring to act more as someone who listens rather than someone who leads.

Cautious and respectful almost to a fault, Marty makes no judgements based upon whether a person is human or magical origin - treating everyone with the same quiet professionalism, friend or foe, saint or sinner alike. After all, he knows little about the magical world, and must rely on others to navigate its intricacies.

+++Weaknesses:

Having been relatively famous in both the sports and niche films circles once, the greatest disadvantage that Marty has relates to it. An assignment could easily be thrown into disarray if a tourist or over-eager local decides that they need to get Marty’s autograph or enthuse with him about his former jobs. In the opposite direction, a local who feels that they have a reputation to build or a girl to impress could call out Marty for a fight: wasting valuable time or potentially causing issues down the line. Particularly if they’re persistent.

Another deficiency of Marty’s is his inexperience with those of magical origin: as his previous jobs never required him to interact with non-humans in significant quantities. As a consequence, everything on the island is a learning experience, and he’ll need to rely upon his colleagues accordingly.

Finally, Marty is diagnosed as being somewhere on the autistic spectrum: while this has blessed him with a high degree of intelligence, it also means that he tends to look at things in a rather mechanic manner. He may wind up focusing too much on the little things in an assignment rather than seeing the big picture.

+++Likes/Dislikes:

Marty has a penchant for thriller novels and modern action films. The ability to escape his life for an hour or two is something that he holds dear. It’s also interesting for him to see how the latter of those has progressed since his day - and whether they’re getting any better.

On the flip side, Marty is a teetotaler and has a strong aversion to alcohol of all kinds: with a particular hatred for lager and all other forms of barley-based beverage - he much prefers to unwind with some fresh orange juice or a strong black coffee.

+++Interests:

In his younger days, Marty was an avid practitioner of martial arts like Muay Thai, savate and once he got to Japan, catch wrestling. These days however, he takes things much more slowly - training lightly once or twice a week so that he doesn’t lose any muscle memory. He’s always open to a friendly spar with anyone he likes though. Outside of that however, Marty enjoys trying European cheeses, watching rugby (and the All Blacks, naturally), hiking and the occasional joint.


+++Fears:

Marty is an outlier - at first glance, it could safely be assumed that given his background, he would deny that he fears anything. Yet, he does not. Instead, Marty will freely admit any and all fears to those he considers friends or family - that is, assuming they ask. Mainly, he fears being rejected by his colleagues - it was a fear he had going into his previous job, and the job before that: the point is, it’s not a new thing. Instead, it’s something that Marty lives with - a consequence of his position at the top of the pedestal in one of his previous careers, even now - nearly two decades removed from it. His position made him come to be viewed as unapproachable, a pinnacle to be overcome or admired from afar. Not someone that a person should make friends with. It’s also a contributing factor (alongside his self-assuredness) to why he’s so quiet - he doesn’t want to say something stupid or wrong that could make his friends, family or colleagues irritated with him.



+++Nationality: New Zealander.
+++Ethnicity: Mixed. (Maori//White-British)
+++Languages Spoken: English (native) and Maori (native). Also has a smattering of ability with the Japanese, Samoan and Cantonese languages. Studied Ancient Greek in school, is very rusty but worth asking about if ever stuck in a pinch.

+++Religion: Raised agnostic, Marty’s religious views have evolved along the course of his travels - from Japan’s Shinto and Buddhist shrines, to pious Italian Catholicism, and finally to the Jews of Stamford Hill and Golders Green: Marty has seen it all. That said, he wavers strongly on religious matters overall; refusing to believe that a “God” exists when there’s so much suffering in the world, yet also feeling that since the Reveal, one must do - especially given the existence of so many other supernatural beings.

+++Birthplace: South Auckland, New Zealand.

+++Permanent Residence: Eindhoven, New Leiden, Portocielo.
+++Criminal History: N/A.

+++Skills:

As someone with such a varied career path, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Marty possesses an equally diverse set of skills. Being a former SFO (Specialist Firearms Officer) has forced Marty to attain a high level of competency in specific firearms: namely the Glock 17 pistol, MP5 submachine gun and the G36C rifle. This is in addition to all the other skills that a police officer in those roles would typically learn - advanced driving and tactics, urban combat, methods of building entry etc. That said, while the SFOs of Marty’s time were of a high calibre they were not nearly as equipped or trained as the modern CTSFOs that patrol London’s landmarks today and that accordingly, Marty should not be considered anywhere close to an equal of some of Black Dog’s investigators in this regard.

It should also be remembered that at one point, Marty was a professional martial artist - competing numerous times in Japanese MMA during the late 90s and early 2000s. This training has imbued him with excellent striking, and to a lesser extent grappling: and although Marty isn’t training with the regularity or ferocity of how he used to, it’s a skill that hasn’t really gone away - while Marty would struggle to last a round against the top middleweights of the modern day, most humans won’t pose much of a problem to him.

Lastly, is Marty’s most unusual skill - action choreography: because, for a brief period at the height of his career and after it, Marty was an actor in Hong Kong’s cinema - being directed by some of the city-state’s most famous directors in some of the region’s biggest films of the period. His high degree of skill with martial arts allowed him to be taught the basics of how to choreograph fights - how to throw convincing punches, how to react to pain, and generally how to make things look good - or gritty, depending on the audience. This could come in handy, should a well-timed “fight” between two investigators ever be needed as a potential distraction from whatever needs to be done. Besides from that, who knows? Some of the island’s inhabitants might happily give up information down the line in return for an autograph and Marty reprising a few of his old roles.




+++Equipment: Marty likes to travel light - carrying a Glock 17, his wallet, phone, water bottle, a few pairs of disposable gloves and his car keys. He keeps other equipment in the back of his car should he need it - I.E, a covert protective vest, bandages, a torch, laptop etc.


+++Magical Abilities: N/A.

+++Bio:

Born in New Zealand, in the summer of 1977, Marty was raised in South Auckland - a relatively deprived area of the eponymous city, located on New Zealand’s North Island. He fit in well with the local demographic - being of mixed white and Maori descent: his mother being Maori and his father being white. Despite the relative deprivation in the area, Marty’s parents would enrol him in various martial arts clubs starting from the age of 11 - which in their opinion, was because they wanted to stop him spiralling into criminality like other local kids. Marty on the other hand, would tell you that it’s because he’d watched Enter the Dragon one too many times. By 19, the training was paying off - with Marty having won numerous local competitions in Muay Thai, and the national competition in savate.

By that point, it was 1996 and companies like Shooto and Pancrase were growing rapidly in popularity - both in Japan and elsewhere. As such, Marty knew that if he wanted to actually make money out of being able to kick and punch people in the face, he’d have to go there: and so, in March 1997, he did. Having saved up enough money to train with Yoshiaki Fujiwara - one of the founders of Pancrase, and a leading catch wrestler, Marty would be put through his paces for over a year alongside other students: learning how to bend and twist his fellow martial artists’ joints into all manner of painful and damaging positions along the way. In early 1998, Marty would be signed by Pride FC - a fledgling new MMA company that until it’s 2007 buyout, would come to be recognised as one of the world’s best. After that, Marty would begin a slow rise to middleweight success.

His early fights were boring slug matches, with none ending by knockout or submission and all ending by decision. Thankfully, his performances in these contests were good enough to ensure his 100% record remained intact throughout. Then, with a roar and a cheer, Marty lost his “boring” moniker - his fourth fight being ended by stoppage in the 1st round, a vicious soccer kick to the back of his downed opponent’s head leaving them unable to continue, and Marty finding himself much more popular accordingly. It would be shortly after this that the Japanese sporting press would start referring to him as the “Smiling Kangaroo” - due to the expression he wore on his face during his fights, the way he fought and the Japanese media’s seeming inability to tell New Zealand and Australia apart.

Luckily for the Japanese press though, Marty ran with the nickname - soon incorporating elements of Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali into his persona: he’d threaten and square up during the press conferences, then he’d deliver on it in the ring. It wouldn’t be long until he started to win by other means also - picking up two wins by submission (By heel hook and gogoplata respectively) in 1999. Eventually, he started to be considered as a contender for Pride’s middleweight belt, which he would win, three fights and three victories later. Now, as one of Pride’s champions - and one of the most recognisable faces of the company, he would finally get to meet those running the show behind the scenes.

And what a way to meet them.

Driven to the event in a chauffeured limousine alongside the champions of the other weight classes, Marty and co would be treated like royalty for several hours - until they were all sufficiently drunk enough that the bosses could reveal themselves without too much of a stir. Perhaps unsurprisingly for Japan, it turned out that Pride’s bosses were the yakuza: well, worse - yakuza who were also vampires. As such, when those same supernatural beings asked Marty and the other champions to fight in a underground open-weight tournament - in return for a hefty check and getting to leave the building with their humanity intact, they hurriedly agreed. Marty doesn’t even remember signing the contract, instead all he remembers is the throbbing headache from the morning after: having awoken in his Tokyo apartment with little idea of how he got there.

Another chauffeured ride - this time in a speedboat followed, to the abandoned coal-mine of Hashima - which in its day had been a densely populated town: where workers lived on-location with their families in buildings composed entirely out of concrete. More to the point, everything on the island was made out of concrete. As such, the lack of people and creepy vibe made Hashima the perfect location for the tournament; same rules as usual, just no ring. Marty didn’t win the tournament - he lost in the semi final and then finished fourth overall: but it wasn’t so bad, since it was unofficial, and as such, didn’t tar his record.

By 2000, and the dawn of the new millennium, Marty possessed a record of 12 wins, and no losses - so for anyone who wanted the middleweight belt, he was the man to beat. Yet, Marty was starting to wonder why anyone would want the belt. Or any of them for that matter: his position at the top of the card was lonely, made worse by the fact that many of the Japanese fans had started to think his ring persona was actually who he really was. Only a few people wanted his autograph now - the rest either being too scared to ask, or avoiding him completely. Within a couple of months, this had sucked much of the enjoyment out of the sport for Marty and thus, after four more fights, he vacated the title and walked from the sport in 2002. He finished up with an official record of 16-0 - with 9 defences, (16-2 if the events on Hashima are included) turning down several lucrative offers to return to the sport in the years following.

Marty would hold on for a little longer in another career - one which he gained through his association with Pride FC, and which ran concurrently with it: acting. It had started off with minor roles, a cameo here or there, a small-time crook, a jilted lover - until he’d eventually satisfied directors that he could pull off larger, more dimensional roles. Eventually, for a few brief years, Marty became a staple of Hong Kong’s cinema industry; often playing villainous foreigners or secondary protagonists: typically those who take a bullet for the main character or those who put in a bullet in someone else to stop the main character getting one themselves. One of his most famous films - High Speed in Kowloon had him play a European homicide detective in the Hong Kong Police Force, who having partnered up with the main character helped to find and eliminate a triad gang which had been holding the police commissioner hostage. Eventually though, with the downturn in Hong Kong’s cinema, Marty’s roles dried up and he had to find work elsewhere.

This led him to the UK, where he took full advantage of his Commonwealth status and joined the Metropolitan Police - the larger of London’s police forces in 2004. Following a two year probation period, and a year as a regular beat cop, Marty would apply for and be accepted as an AFO (Authorised Firearms Officer) in 2007. This would be followed, in 2011 with Marty being accepted for further training as an SFO - tasked with handling the most severe of incidents in the capital, whatever they might be. It’s perhaps owing to this inexperience that Marty was passed over for CTSFO (Counter-Terrorist Specialist Firearms Officer) training in the lead up to the 2012 Olympics. Nevertheless, Marty continued doing his job as an SFO for three more years. In 2014, and now 36, the Metropolitan Police announced the abolishing of the SFO designation and stated that all current SFOs would be trained up to CTSFO standards: faced with the new longer and tougher training, the aches and pains of growing older and his increasing desire to settle down somewhere, Marty requested a transfer to a regular response unit and following a year there, he resigned from the police in 2015 - spending the next few years either travelling or in New Zealand and just living life the way he wanted to. In 2019, Marty would respond to a job offer by Black Dog Investigations, moving to Portocielo upon his acceptance.



+++RP Example: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=483564&p=36992161&sid=f9a4fed385fddc11ab9a4e14b3560be8#wrap

ROWLING-IS-A-HACK (DO NOT REMOVE)

[Khasinkonia]

Anakkrakatau, R.A.P.

+++Name:
“I’m Roxannie Avril Paramarimadu Anakkrakatau. Call me Roxie. I was born Sintaraja Wayan Maarschalkerweerd, but nobody but my family calls me Sindi or any other part of that name. Legally speaking, she’s not a person, and anyone related to me by blood that I’m aware of is at least an ocean away. So don’t call me that. Because I won’t listen. At the Yellow Rose, I took the name Krakatoa. There’s meaning behind it, I assure you, but beyond the old usage, it’s a decent name—decent enough to help replace my surname.”
+++Age: 26
+++Species: Human
+++Sex/Gender: Cis Female
+++Sexual Orientation: “Yes. The answer is yes. More accurately, I don’t really care whether you’re a guy, girl, or something else entirely, as long as it’s a nice experience and you’re a nice person overall. I’ll be the first to admit though, that in some cases, enough money thrown my way can waive the two prerequisites. No STDs though. I can’t really afford meds, and privately synthesising such things might actually be just expensive if you count effort and time as a cost.”
+++Appearance: She stands at 163cm(5’4”) and weighs 60kg(132lbs). She’s not particularly muscular, but also not particularly strong. As an indoorsy sort, she’s rather pale compared to her natural complexion, but tans extraordinarily easily. Although she does have a style, it’s an odd one. Along one wall of her apartment are shelves of neatly and compactly folded clothes that she’s thrifted over the course of her adult life. Almost every article she owns is thrifted, and she often buys for intrigue as much as fit, which makes for a very diverse wardrobe. Even if she has no personal issue with it, for her to wear the same outfit twice is a rare sight, for to see her at a laundromat is quite the uncommon spectacle.
+++Identifying Marks: “I need reading glasses, so I have these stupid looking 1980’s-style aviator frames that I wear. I look like such a boomer but those were the only affordable ones with my prescription at the drugstore when I needed to buy, and I’ve gotta get my money’s worth before I get a new pair. As far as tattoos go, I have a couple. I have a little cerulean one of a heart shape with little arteries coming from more or less the right places on the left side of my chest. If I wear any remotely low-cut shirt, it should be visible. I have an outline of butterfly wings and little antennae around my belly-button. And then there are the two reasons I prefer high-waisted pants. I have a low tramp stamp with a green crescent and star design, but sitting so that the crescent is on its back and the star is directly over it. I should probably get that one removed. It achieved its purpose—to make my mother lose her damn mind, but in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have gotten something permanent. Oh, and speaking of permanent, there’s the womb design I have in my lower torso. It’s like an inmon tattoo or something. I got it because it was a weird prerequisite for sticking with the sugar daddy who gave me a year’s tuition for getting it. Almost a shame the arrangement didn’t last; I probably could have avoided more debt if I only played my cards right.”

+++Psychological Analysis: Roxie is an interesting person, one of quite a few dichotomous traits. She’s fairly intelligent, with capacity for reason, but at the same time impulsive and dramatic in a way that sometimes overrides her sense. Usually, she’s friendly, fairly sociable, and comes off as very relaxed in social situations. However, this happy-go-lucky jokeful base does little to reveal less overt parts of her personality. When pursuing something important and/or of great interest to her, Roxie is a hard worker with tunnel vision for results. If she truly wants something, wants to know something, or wants to do something, she will spare nothing to try and achieve it. However, even in these situations, she is not inclined to fuss about details as long as things work out, save for when the concern of the details involve effects on other people, in which case she often will overthink. Further concealed beneath these facets is how her negative emotions function. Although she openly expresses minor aspects of such emotions, like huffs of frustration, small tears at sad movies, and so on, her major feelings of such disposition behave rather like fault lines. She won’t budge; instead, tension will build up until, at some point, she snaps back into place and releases all the pent up thoughts at once.
+++Weaknesses: Aside from her personality quirks, Roxie possesses a deep seated, almost primordial distrust of the words “We need to talk,” and many variations of it. Even today, she can experience a volatile physical response reminiscent of a panic attack, even if she knows logically that there is no issue. Although context is key, the contexts which are the worst for her are likewise the most important ones that she might remain calm with. For example, she will almost invariably fail a lie detector test to a catastrophic degree. She could theoretically have some sort of mild anxiety disorder, although there has been no confirmation of this. Physically, she possesses an assortment of weaknesses. She absolutely needs reading glasses. Her digestive health is rather poor, so her stomach and intestines are inclined to be fickle, even with the aid of pills. Elsewhere in her abdomen, her menstrual cycle is particularly unkind to her. Outside of organs, she is generally a poor runner thanks to her fairly low stamina and propensity for exercise-induced rhinitis. Further, especially in the heat, she can be subject to orthostatic hypotension, and has rather fickle insomnia.
+++Likes/Dislikes: “Other than my primary interests, I do like shopping. It’s fun to dig through thrift stores and department stores looking for bargains. If I had the energy, I’d go bargain hunting every day.
+++Interests: “Chemistry, alchemy, I find both really fascinating. I feel like they’re mirrors of one another. I’m glad I had someone willing to teach me both, because I don’t think I would’ve developed a knack for either if I didn’t have a good teacher explain the principles behind it all to me. I also enjoy sweets, both cooking them and baking them. It’s fun to experiment with pastries and candies when I can. You’d be amazed what you can do with just a toaster oven and a tabletop burner at your disposal. Pies galore! If it weren’t for my first love, I think I’d be a baker. Outside of that, I will admit that I’m an avid wikipedia browser. Especially in high school, I often found myself emerging dazed from the other end of a rabbit hole.”

+++Fears: “It’s difficult to name a concrete fear of mine. I have a lot of things that keep me up at night, but they all generally loop back to this hangup I have over reliance on other people. If it’s a mutual agreement, that’s fine. But the feeling of indebtedness fills me with dread. I need to be independent. I just get so upset over the notion that I can get stressed out even by little gifts. What do I owe you? What do you want from me? I have such a hard time believing anybody just wants to help.”

+++Nationality: Surinamese(By Jus Soli), American(Via the Child Citizenship of 2000, applied with emancipation), Indonesian(Default renounced at 21st birthday for retaining American and Surinamese citizenship), Dutch(Default renounced April 1, 2013)
+++Ethnicity: “I’m Javanese, Dutch, and probably a few other things too, but hell if I know them.”
+++Languages Spoken: “I speak Javanese, Malay, the Indonesian Dialect, Dutch, and English well. I can converse in Portuguese, but I can assure you it will sound horrible. If you think European Portuguese sounds awful, I can guarantee you Roxy Portuguese sounds infinitely worse. My chemistry...and alchemy teacher taught me some Kalinago words and a few phrases, but best I can do is how most Americans speak Spanish. Hi, how are you, and so on. I used to know a bit of Quranic Arabic, but I haven’t used it in so long that I couldn’t make heads or tails of it today.”
+++Religion: “I was baptised in the PKN, to my recollection, although I’ve set foot in a church on Sunday maybe a handful of times at most. And I think a solid chunk of those times, it was because I got dragged to Catholic mass for having the poor judgement to sleep over at a friend’s house on a Saturday night. My mother and a few of her relatives, more and more, are listening to Zakir Naik instead of more reasonable Imams, so while she was fine with my father baptising me as a precautionary measure back in the day, now she curses him for it. Last time I saw my grandparents, it wasn’t this bad. But as it did get nasty, I suppose I have no real religion. Maybe a vague sense that maybe there’s something beyond even the supernatural and the Otherworld. I don’t really know.”
+++Birthplace: “I was born in Paramaribo, but I’ve lived in New Leiden most of my life.”
+++Permanent Residence: “I live near the border between Eindhoven and Downtown. It’s a single bedroom apartment with no real kitchen, but I’ve made it cozy.”
+++Criminal History: “Working at the Yellow Rose got me through college. In my teenage years I had to get bailed out once for swiping some shit I can’t remember. I was successful the other few...dozen times. Look, it wasn’t like I was going to be getting any money. I don’t know the exact parameters for guilt by association, but I have been to a few meth labs in my day. Though I’ve made other dubious substances, nothing like meth or other drugs. I have grown my own marijuana from time to time, but that one’s not staying on record.”
+++Skills: Roxie is quite good at identifying substances, and is quite good at viewing problems from multiple angles to such an extent that she may come up with multiple explanations and flesh them each out while conducting an audible debate with herself over the merits of each. She has cunning, and can often find a way to wriggle out of sticky situations with the right set of words and/or actions, although such things sometimes may be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. One can never be certain. Of course, her most laudable skillset is with chemistry, a subject which she has both a knack and a passion for.

+++Equipment: “I have a canvas tote bag full of things I keep around hand from day to day. Normal stuff, of course, like a keychain with a little swiss army knife on it, but I suppose more important here would be my box of on-the-go chemistry equipment: pipettes, both glass and polypropylene ones, two erlenmeyer flasks, a bunch of glass test tubes of assorted sizes with matching rubber stoppers, and then a small graduated cylinder. It’s more or less enough for high school chemistry, but it’s good to have on the go sometimes. At home, I have a nice mixture of bootleg equipment and actual proper stuff, which I use both for chemistry and alchemy, although usually the former. I have a little lab in place of a bedroom. Otherwise, in my bag, I keep a handgun for personal defence, a Kel-Tec P32 .32 ACP to be specific, a taser, and two little canisters. The one with a yellow label covering the canister has Mace. The other, the one with the red label on its canister is for emergencies and has something more potent. Dichlorodiethyl sulfide. Mustard gas. You can never be too safe. I keep an extra canister in my 2007 Mini Cooper.”
+++Magical Abilities: Roxie, especially for a human who did not grow up learning to use magic, is a veritable whiz with alchemy.

+++Bio: “I know my mother and father, or rather, knew them, don’t get me wrong, but I must admit that I don’t really know much about how they lived before I was born. I know they got married, and that my mother was from Jakarta and that my father was from Hilversum. I know they had their honeymoon in Paramaribo, and so empirically I know that either there’s a lie about when their marriage took place, or they could somehow afford to go twice. But beyond these basic things, there’s a lot I didn’t ever know. Don’t get me wrong, when I was little I asked these questions, but nobody gave me a straight answer. Every version of the story of how they met, how I was born—all of these important details must have a thousand different versions. Whatever the real fact of the matter is, I suppose it wasn’t something they wanted me to know. My mother, as I’ve gathered, especially didn’t want the truth out there.

While I talk about my youth, you’ll have to bear with me. I’m gonna keep saying “I don’t know.” I’ve run those years over in my mind as much as anyone could, but hell if it makes sense. It doesn’t make sense, no matter how many times I revisit every scene. I don’t know if it ever will. I’m trying to analyse a play where the first act is missing and there are enough unexplained plot holes that one wonders if J.K. Rowling was a ghostwriter for the script. So yeah, I was born in Paramaribo. After my mother recovered from childbirth, we came here, to New Leiden, Portocielo. I think my parents lived here before that too, but I don’t really know. I was a baby, after all, and they’ve never been ones to weave a straight story.

Now, growing up, I have a bit more of a clear idea of some things. I know what happened, but I couldn’t tell you why things happened. Even in my earliest memories, I think it was pretty clear that my parents weren’t really meant for one another. They were never physically violent or anything, but yelling behind closed doors is still fighting in my book. And I assure you, there were plenty of nights that had it—enough that I could probably fall asleep during a riot. Not that such a thing would be a good idea.

I spent a lot of time with my mother when I was growing up. She didn’t trust public schools, and she didn’t trust private schools any more than she did public ones. As far as she was concerned, neither nun nor atheist would teach her daughter. I think having a kid must’ve kickstarted her conservatism or something, because by the time I was maybe eight or nine, there was no way that woman would’ve married my dad. Speaking of Dad, I ought to describe him before we move into the stickier parts of my life. So, while my mom’s this prim, proper, uptight woman with a firm religious streak, my dad is probably best described as the crossroads between a dandy and a beatnik. My whole life, the man’s loved fashion. Maybe he’s bi or something. I haven’t spoken to him in years; maybe he’s dating a man over at that fashion company of his?

While I’m describing family, I ought to note that I have two full-blood younger brothers. We’re not gonna open the can of worms of the blended family. So, there’s Buddy, proper name Budianto George, and Kris, proper name Krisno Baderik. I have two and a half years on Buddy, and six on Kris. With that out of the way, let’s talk about life-changing events. Y’know, every kid in every coming of age movie has the sob story about divorce. Well here’s mine. As you can probably guess, my parents’ fighting didn’t improve. After a number of years of bullshit, my father got what I understood to be a great new job at a prominent Belgian employment agency. As a result, he wanted to move out. Mom didn’t like that idea one bit. Not a single, solitary bit. I think it’s pretty clear what comes next. Big fight, words flying. Insults in Javanese, Dutch, Indonesian, English. Maybe even a bit of Arabic. I heard it all through the bathroom door. I didn’t understand all of it, but it sounded nasty. And I suppose it was, because it felt like a week later that my brothers and I got to go to summer camp while Mom and Dad sorted out the terms of divorce. I think Mom thoroughly won the battle, as once my dad packed his bags, I never saw him again. Buddy managed to scrounge up his phone number a few years ago, but I just put it in my phone and never called it. Hell, I barely even call Buddy.

You know, even in spite of the arguing at home, I had a pretty normal pre-divorce childhood. I had friends, I went swimming a few times, I had birthday parties, and so on and so forth. But of course, I was homeschooled until the sixth grade. My dad managed to, as I understand from what Buddy’s told me he learned from our dad, leverage what weight he did have in court to get us into a proper school. Don’t get me wrong, my mother did a decent job teaching us at first, as she did have a bachelor’s degree in early childcare, but that’s obviously insufficient once you start getting into the double digits. So yeah, I started middle school scared and alone. I used to be quite the introvert, you see. I know that’s harder to imagine now, but that’s the way it was.

Middle school was an interesting time. It was when sweet little Sindi really started withering away. My mother has always had issues with depression, as far as I’m aware, but for her, the spiral around the divorce and the divorce itself really hit her harder than it did me or my brothers. Month after month, she’d spend more time in her bedroom whenever she wasn’t working. She didn’t work particularly long hours either, but whenever I peeked in, she’d just be lying down on her back, sometimes listening to the radio, but usually just lying there. That’s about the time when I started learning how to cook. Somebody had to do it. Even if it was just a frozen pizza or some grilled cheese for my brothers. It was still food.

So I did chores at home, and did homework in class. I’m very fortunate to have been able to keep up. I know lots of kids slowly lose their grip on school and then get stuck. I guess I must be lucky, because I don’t think I’m a harder worker than they are. Who knows? All I’m sure of is that stuff just kept going downhill. Thank goodness for my teachers, because otherwise I would’ve never kept up. They tried to keep my schoolwork to a minimum so I could keep it all together. By seventh grade, I’d gotten to the point where I was doing essentially everything around the house. That is, until Buddy started to do a few things to handle Kris so that I could finish all the housework quicker.

What did I do with free time? Lord knows I didn’t sleep. No, I joined the Science Olympiad team. Sort of. As we live in a US territory, we don’t exactly get to compete, but my 7th grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Limero, had founded a team anyway as an extracurricular. It was tricky getting it to count for anything, but he had managed to communicate with the administrators of the event to have us at the very least authorised to note it for college applications. It was low stakes, given that we weren’t competing with anybody but ourselves, but it was a lot of fun learning. It was almost like an auxiliary science class, in a way. There wasn’t much school funding to spare, so the science department had rallied and managed to petition a fundraiser to buy us our materials.

It was right at the end of my 8th grade year, as I recall, that my mother started to get the idea that she wasn’t educating me and my brothers religiously. So she started trying to get us to pray and trying to make us learn passages. I never really cared, nor did my siblings. After all, if Allah really was Al-Rahman, then why were we stuck teetering on poverty, overworked, and underloved? When Buddy actually said this—something that I at that point figured was the sensible thing not to do—she went ballistic. I suppose in context of one’s eternal soul it’s a bit more reasonable. However you wanna frame it though, she doubled down every time this sort of thing happened.

When I was younger, she was much less concerned about modesty and whatnot, but as I entered high school, she suddenly got very concerned. Some Muslim mothers want their daughters in headscarves, which would have been more reasonable interpretation of modesty, though I still wouldn’t have wanted it, but when my mother sat me down to talk about clothing, she, in my opinion, way overshot. It wasn’t like I was one of those 8th graders taking bikini pictures. I just wore skinny jeans and t-shirts, like most of the science kids. But instead of fussing at me to slap a hijab on the t-shirt and get some mom jeans or something, my mother wanted me in both a kerudung and loose dresses. Or, she said “if you really need to wear trousers, try the baggy hippy ones. They look like a skirt but don’t blow up in the wind.”

I don’t really know what got into her, but, when we visited her family the next year for Idul Fitri, when I stumbled off of the aeroplane starving, I got an idea. My grandfather, apparently, is, or has become, something of a Salafi. Yeah, I didn’t really enjoy that trip. Grandfather didn’t like hearing about my pursuits in the Science Olympiad. He asked me what I liked doing for fun, and I went on about it. That evening, after dinner, my grandmother asked me over and started trying to explain to me how to get married and settle down. Never again, let me tell you. I think she could tell the message wasn’t landing, because when we went back to Portocielo, I got another talk. So, in addition to modest clothing, she wanted me to drop out of the Science Olympiad and instead use my free time to...well...I actually zoned out after that. She snapped her fingers in my face at one point, and told me “Don’t go joining other clubs either. I don’t want those Catholic boys giving you any ideas.”

In hindsight, I really could have taken the whole thing with more grace. I could have politely objected, and explained my reasoning, but instead, I got snippy. And so she doubled down, as she always did. Then I doubled down. We got into a cycle of escalation. She told me she’d pull me out of school. I told her I’d burn the house down. I started misbehaving more. I’d come home later and later. I started doing my own thing in freshman year. That summer, I went “missing” for a week. I was actually staying at a friend’s house pretending I was allowed. Mom eventually found out. Come to think of it, she’d never spanked me as a child. But she did that night. Even though I was nearly her height. It was a strange set of circumstances.

Enter sophomore year. I did a lot of things I’m not proud of, but one thing I am proud of was how it ended. My mother barged into my room...well...the room I shared with my two brothers...and explained to us that we’d be moving over the summer. Where to? Jakarta. Her parents had helped her find a new man, whom she intended to marry upon our arrival. We got to meet him on FaceTime, and talked for a while in Javanese. It seemed like it would be alright until my mother explained that she was going to send us to pesantren. The way she explained it, I didn’t like what I heard. Not at all.

I didn’t know what to do. I had six months until I was supposed to leave the only home I’d known, the only friends I had, and go attend a school I could only assume had been handpicked by my grandfather to intellectually lobotomise me as far as anything outside of theology went. And theology? Please spare me. I googled to try and reassure myself, but I was never told where I was going. Sure there were good pesantren, but not all of them were properly academic.

I went to the only person I could. Mr. Limero. Mr. Iwoi Limero. He and I spoke with the social worker at the school, Mrs. Addison, and we tried to formulate a plan to get me out of there. Eventually, we made a court case for emancipation. We were tied up through the summer, but we eventually emerged. It was a pyrrhic victory for me, though, as we only won because my mother stopped fighting it. She left with my brothers. I never saw them again, but Buddy and I shared emails before we were separated. Email was the only way I was able to communicate with my brothers for years.

Once I was emancipated, the question of where I would live of course arose. Mr. Limero offered to give me a place to stay through high school, and I took him up on it. He was like a grandfather to me. A real one. And, as his sort of honorary grandchild, I was privy to learn things that no other student of his did. He wasn’t just a chemistry teacher. He was skilled in alchemy as well. Every day after school, we would spend an hour practicing. I learned everything I know about alchemy from that man. Even when I graduated and he could no longer financially support me, I still went over on Saturdays for years to study with him.

After graduation, I did an online enrollment at the University of Florida for a bachelor’s in chemistry, and then went on to get my master’s as well. I chose this option because, frankly, I wasn’t in any financial position to leave the place I grew up, so I made the best of it. I picked up a shift at a local coffee shop until I found that working as a night lady got me more money and more time to study. Four years ago, Mr. Limero passed away from complications after surviving a heart attack. He gave me his car in his will so I wouldn’t have to walk everywhere. Bless him. He’s the only person I’ll say it for. Bless him.

When I graduated with my master’s, I worked for Ms. Clara for another year while I searched for a job. I did find one with Black Dog Investigations. Forensic science, even a specialty one, is always useful for such businesses, I suppose. I’d rather be a Black Dog in street clothes than a blackshirt in blue, anyway, so I figure it’s better than ending up working for the cops. Probably not any safer though. Clara was sad to see me go, but it was about time anyway. I’d had a few scares before I found my job with Black Dog Investigations, and frankly, I’m glad I didn’t have to push my luck any further. Claire made a good impression on me, and even though I’m not quite new anymore, I still haven’t had a chance to have her over for dinner. I don’t know that that’s quite her thing, but I bet it’d be a sight to see.”

+++RP Example: Here’s an older one. I like to pick one at random to try and keep a reasonable overview of my norm, flexible as it may be.

ROWLING-IS-A-HACK

[Rupudska]

*snip*

ACCEPTED, naturally.

*snip*

ACCEPTED, but I really would like to see improved grammar, since I know you're a decent RPer.

*snip*

The app is definitely of the quality I like to see for applications from people who aren't me. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to DENY it anyway - a fairly well-known former actor/wrestler simply isn't the sort of person I can picture working for a relatively small private investigation firm in the asscrack of the Caribbean. That being said, he'd make an excellent NPC.

*snip*

One caveat I have is that alchemy in this setting is based on alchemy in Dresden Files, which is like potioneering in the Potterverse - preparing the potion itself may not require magic, but it does require magic to jumpstart the reaction and turn it into a potion and not a mess. Other than that, looks fine to me. ACCEPTED.

[Khasinkonia]

-snip-

I suppose I ought to have been a bit more clear in my application in that respect. What I meant to imply is that she's sort of this world's equivalent to a muggleborn, to use the Potterverse metaphor, but upon rereading my application I see where that may have been misleading. I'll edit that to avoid any possible future issues.

[SangMar]

*snip*

ACCEPTED, naturally.

*snip*

ACCEPTED, but I really would like to see improved grammar, since I know you're a decent RPer.

*snip*

The app is definitely of the quality I like to see for applications from people who aren't me. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to DENY it anyway - a fairly well-known former actor/wrestler simply isn't the sort of person I can picture working for a relatively small private investigation firm in the asscrack of the Caribbean. That being said, he'd make an excellent NPC.

*snip*

One caveat I have is that alchemy in this setting is based on alchemy in Dresden Files, which is like potioneering in the Potterverse - preparing the potion itself may not require magic, but it does require magic to jumpstart the reaction and turn it into a potion and not a mess. Other than that, looks fine to me. ACCEPTED.

No problem at all, feel free to make him into an NPC if you wish.

I’ll work on another app, hopefully one a little less fanciful.

[Theyra]

So is my app good to go or do I need to make more changes?

[SangMar]

(Paulus, A.O)

+++Name: Orlando Austin Paulus

+++Age (18 at youngest): 40

+++Species: Human

+++Sex/Gender: Cisgender Male
+++Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual

+++Appearance: 5’11” and weighing 182 pounds, Orlando is incredibly fit for someone approaching middle-age, this quality hasn’t receded since it was first instilled into him during his days In phase 1 training. When out and about in Portocielo or just in warmer climates generally, Orlando likes to dress simply: a t-shirt with a dark, longer-sleeved rash-shirt beneath, three-quarter pants and trainers.

+++Identifying Marks: A large and circular surgically-induced indentation on his right forearm, approximately 0.5cm in width and about the same in height.

+++Psychological Analysis: Blunt, confident and perhaps quite arrogant too, Orlando is perhaps best described as a loud personality: it stems from his days in the military - serving as a member of (in his opinion) the best trained army in the world. If you want to get a reaction out of him, simply tell him that the British Army are a bunch of snivelling pussies when compared to the United States Marine Corps or if you feel brave, the French. Despite these faults however, Orlando will be a friend for life should he take a liking to you: ready to follow you to the ends of the Earth and always being in your corner.

Bubbling with only slightly-tamed aggression, Orlando is certainly a sledgehammer rather than a precision missile. However, it should be said that he isn’t just these things: he can switch on a hidden caring side when a situation truly calls for it, having had to learn from experience not to treat every situation like a nail ready to be hammered down - accordingly if he feels a situation is out of his remit, he’ll step back and let cooler, more informed heads step in. That said, should he not feel that way, he’ll need a firm hand to be reined in - and to remind him to keep his ego in check.

All of this however hides a wounded mentality - a waking nightmare that was inflicted upon Orlando during the initial stages of the Iraq War. It haunts Orlando that it all could’ve been so much more different - if only procedures had been followed correctly, then he wouldn’t have to suffer like this. The only saving grace for Orlando is that he went to the doctor, and found out what was wrong with him - PTSD, which was most likely exacerbated by his subsequent deployments to Afghanistan and again, Iraq. Therefore, he was able to get treatment - counselling, medication and the like. Which, as Orlando would tell you, might not have stopped the nightmares, the intense emotions, or the fear that grips him whenever he hears a car backfiring, but it has reduced those times considerably.

+++Weaknesses:

The same hot shit level of confidence that can motivate anyone within earshot of Orlando can also prove quite detrimental too. Potential leads may take this confidence instead for arrogance or cockiness - which could rapidly cause a situation to go downhill. Information might be lost as those same leads decide that instead of helping the investigators with their assignment, they’d much rather fight them instead or worse, feed them false intelligence that could have Black Dog going in circles, wasting valuable time that could otherwise be spent covering ground.

Secondly, despite treatment, PTSD is still a part of Orlando’s life: he may struggle to keep his emotions balanced - swinging between cold-hearted indifference, jolly laughter and seething rage with little warning. Naturally, Orlando likes to self-medicate, often smoking cannabis in order to hopefully reduce his symptoms further.

+++Likes/Dislikes:

Orlando is a relatively plain individual, who likes nothing more than to sit down with a cold beer in front of the television. Naturally, like many British men, he has innate love of football and will watch that whenever it’s on. He also enjoys the occasional takeaway - a mixed chicken and doner kebab with peppers serving as his go to fast food on a night out.

On the other hand, he has a strong dislike for art galleries and places of worship - art in isolation is fine regarding the former, but expect a negative reaction if Orlando has to spend any length a time dragging his feet through an art gallery as part of an assignment or the like.
+++Interests:

Orlando’s chief interest is fitness - as a former PTI in the British Army, it was his job to keep soldiers and officers alike in fighting shape. With this being such a key part of his life for so long, it’s only natural that he would keep it up once he’d left the armed forces: often, he can be found running long distances on Portocielo’s coast, or working out at a boxing gym. Just anything to keep him in good cardiovascular shape. He also likes to box - having picked up the sport while the army, competing in numerous inter-regimental competitions.

Other minor interests of his include photography, mountain-climbing and skiing - with Orlando possessing significant competency in the latter. It’s just a shame that Portocielo is in the Caribbean - Orlando would use skis as his main mode of transportation if that weren’t the case.

+++Fears:

+++Nationality: Switzerland, and the UK.
+++Ethnicity: Caucasian
+++Languages Spoken: Swiss-German, Standard German, English and to a poorer degree, Standard Korean and Swiss-French.

+++Religion: Orlando is firmly an atheist - something which he justifies in a post-Reveal world with a simple, but not entirely sound logic: “We live in a world with vampires, faeries and the like. Things we can see. Yet, you’re telling me to also believe in some old man in the sky who we can’t see? Yeah right.”

+++Birthplace: Guildford, Surrey, the United Kingdom.

+++Permanent Residence: Eindhoven, New Leiden, Portocielo
+++Criminal History: N/A.

+++Skills:

Orlando possesses significant skills in various areas, all of which have been honed through the numerous life experiences that he’s had. For instance, his time as a conscript in the Swiss Army and later PTI and cavalryman in the British Army have left him with things like knowledge of small unit tactics, basic vehicle mechanics and proficiency with numerous light and heavy weapon systems - rifle, machine gun, mortar, and some lighter vehicle-mounted armaments. He also has excellent knowledge of the human body and it’s limits.

Further afield, Orlando is also an excellent planner - a skill gained as an English teacher in South Korea and less so working in close protection, who is able to make detailed, high quality briefings for whatever Black Dog might require. Therefore, given that he has the information available to do so, he can easily make it so that investigators have simple, concise and effective instructions at their disposal - greatly increasing their own effectiveness.

Finally, he’s also quite effective with a pistol - having attended several courses on their use as part of his employment in close protection, being able to wield one with a good degree of precision and accuracy.

+++Equipment: If you were to ask Orlando, he’d tell you that Swiss products are the benchmark in regards to quality and that all other products should be based off of them. It’s for this reason that he only really carries a Sig Sauer P238 - for its concealable nature and quality, a Swiss Army knife - for its utility, and his wallet, car keys and a water bottle. Other things, should they be needed are usually carried in his car - like a bullet-resistant vest, disposable gloves, spare ammunition, a little extra money and a civilian-variant of the rifle he used during his conscription in Switzerland: the SG 550.
+++Magical Abilities: N/A

+++Bio:

Born in Guildford, a town in the Southern English county of Surrey on the 13th of December 1979. Orlando Austin Paulus came into the world to a father who was a chemist and originally from Zurich, Switzerland. His mother on the other hand, was a bank clerk who was originally from Colchester, Essex. From an early age, Orlando wanted to be a soldier - not due to any preconceived notions about war or glory but rather due to growing up on a diet of GI Joe movies and war movies set in Vietnam: for the first one, he thought fighting enemies with cool names would be well... cool, and for the 2nd, he just liked the look of jungles and green uniforms.

Orlando’s childhood was uneventful, and he’d graduate secondary school in 1996, receiving good GCSEs. He’d then study a two year qualification in computer science, before deciding for definite that he’d join the British Army in 1998. Unfortunately however, it wasn’t to be - the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was rapidly approaching but not yet there, and so with an abundance of recruits in peacetime and little need for them, the army would disqualify Orlando during the medical stage: a recently fractured toe putting a temporary hold on his military ambitions. After this, he’d spent the next year working - retail, restaurants etc.

In early 2000, he would head to Switzerland - in order to both improve on his German language ability and to fulfil one of his goals, at least partially anyway: serving in an army. Thus, in accordance with Swiss law, Orlando would be conscripted into the Swiss Army - completing 20 weeks of basic training, and then his military service - which due to him opting for the option of ‘long service’, would finish 300 days later. After his brief service as an infantryman, Orlando would return to the UK in October 2001.

An event entirely unrelated to Orlando which occurred just before his return home would then give him the chance to serve in the British Army: 9/11. On the 11th of September 2001, four aircraft flying out of several East Coast airports across the United States would be hijacked by Al Qaeda members: they’d be crashed into several locations within hours - the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and finally, when the passengers resisted, a field in Pennsylvania, all together causing over 2,000 deaths. Weeks later, the United States, supported by a coalition of nations which included the UK would invade Afghanistan, hunting for the man responsible - Osama Bin Laden.

Enlisting in early 2002, Orlando would make a fateful decision: opting to join the Blues and Royals, part of the Household Cavalry - one of the British Army’s armoured regiments. After 14 weeks of basic training, and another 20 of job training once he got to the regiment, Orlando would be ready. However, he’d have to wait several more months for a deployment. During the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, he’d get it - deploying with his regiment in a reconnaissance capacity for the 16th Air Assault Brigade to Basra, near the Iraqi coast. Unfortunately, Orlando would be there for an infamous incident on the 28th of March: his vehicle, one of four in a grouping that was patrolling ahead of another larger force, on the lookout for Iraqi forces were strafed by two A-10s of the Idaho Air National Guard. Luckily, there were no casualties - so while another vehicle’s operators tried to radio to the Americans to get them to stop their attack, Orlando and the crewmen of the other, now disabled vehicles left theirs - choosing instead to take cover beneath them instead...

...Which was fine, the American aircraft would have to realise who they were attacking eventually, right-

The aircraft then launched a second strafing run.

In the chaos, a crewman for one of the vehicles would be killed - burned alive inside of it, and five other crewmen would be severely injured - one of whom had his skull split open during the attack. It was then, that an uninjured crewman would force his way into his now burning vehicle and radio for help. In a stroke of luck for Orlando, and the rest of the patrol, the radio that crewman used would turn out to be still functional - and he’d survive, unscathed physically but not mentally.

After this episode, Orlando would complete two more deployments - one in Afghanistan and one more in Iraq, before seeking a different career within the army: he’d qualify as an All Arms Regimental Physical Training Instructor, staying in this position until he’d choose to leave the army in 2008, leaving the army the following year after giving the necessary notice. Following the army, Orlando took a serious look at himself: he was young, the fittest he’d ever been and he still wanted to do something active as a career.

Accordingly, with his background, it wouldn’t be long until he was put into contact with an international company specialising in the protection of people and property. He’d impress them enough to be offered a role with them, which he’d accept: beginning several training courses soon afterwards in order to get ready for his new job.

Guarding celebrities wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, but the money was good - especially considering he was getting free travel and accommodation on those celebrities’ dime too. In 2011, he made his first trip to Portocielo - staying there for a few weeks while a celebrity he was employed by took a holiday. He liked it, it was nothing to write home about, but it was still a good way to spend some time. Following a particularly stressful incident in 2013, Orlando would take a step back and leave close protection behind - instead wanting a complete change of career, and a doctor’s check up.

Once he got his doctor’s check up, it would change him significantly - everything fell into place: he’d been struggling ever since the incident in Iraq a decade previously, and now it was explained. Simply put, he had PTSD. Counselling and numerous medications followed, with Orlando meeting with a mental health team and his GP for much of the following year. Gradually, Orlando began to notice results - life just became easier suddenly. If he’d blinked, he’d have missed it. He wasn’t cured, but he felt much better.

With this change in mood, Orlando would enrol in university - paying off much of it with an educational grant from the army. He’d complete an three year degree in computer science before embarking on his next career.

Funnily enough though, Orlando didn’t expect teaching English in a South Korean high school to be it - he’d submitted an application to a programme that organises just that as a bit of joke. It’s just turned out that, when the only qualifications required are being white, a native English speaker and possessing a university degree - relevant or not, more often then not, there won’t be a high bar to employment. Still, it was fun - once he’d gotten over the initial culture shock: he’d teach English by day, and explore Gangnam - Seoul’s clubbing and red-light district by night. The money was great too - adding very nicely to everything he’d saved while in the army and working for celebrities. By the time he left South Korea in 2018, he’d picked up a new language, made some good friends - mostly US Army soldiers on deployment, some even better memories and seen several incredible places.

After all that, Orlando would spend the next year between the UK, Portocielo and Switzerland - spending most of his time back home in Surrey, his summer in Portocielo and his winter in Switzerland. In early 2020, Orlando would respond to a posting looking for employees by Black Dog Investigations - being very pleased when he was accepted a short time later.



+++RP Example: Already provided. (Members of WoF, who have been invited via Discord, or who were in Reverend Norv's Likely Lads or The Breaking Point RP or Cylarn's Hands in the Night do not need to provide this, merely a link to their apps, unless they're the OPs in which case DUH.)

ROWLING-IS-A-HACK (DO NOT REMOVE)

[Wolfenium]

App done. Never expected to go with magic robot. *thonk*

[Rupudska]

*snip*

Very nice. Accepted.

*snip*

Works for me. Accepted.

I'm aiming for the IC to be up possibly some time over the weekend, or early the coming week.

[Celritannia]

Question. IS it possible to merge technology with magic?