Post by Blue on Feb 7, 2013 20:40:05 GMT -5
Player: Josiah
Contact: PM me
Intentions: Good Slave
Background
Name: Wilhelm S. Tokarev
Race: Beastfolk
Species: Yellow Labrador Retriever (1/4th Grey Hound)
Age: 22
Tier: 3
Social
Place of Birth: A few miles east of Rasgrad
Allegiances: Ruthenia
Aspirations: Be a good dog
Nicknames: Bill, Blue
Titles: Secret Agent, Codename: "Grindylow"
Relatives: Deceased
Significant Other: "Red"
Mental
Personality: Blue needs a leader, in an almost literal way. The young canine is marked by a level of submission that the Ruthenian government wishes the rest of the Beastfolk would display. Extremely quiet both now and in the past, he used to be studious, busy young boy. For close to seven years, he's only been able to study what the government wants him to study, and he's as busy as they can make him. Government "training" (more like "adjustment") has crafted him into a perfectly willing assassin.
Likes: Reading, Theatre, Shakespeare, Warm fireplaces, Stars, Skyscrapers, Swimming, Being "taken care of", Confidence, Revenge
Dislikes: The Mines, Being underground, Alcohol (for himself), Public speaking, Pretentiousness, Laziness, Whining, Spoiled brats, Hard kills
Strengths: Behind meek young eyes is an intelligent mind being vastly underutilized. Blue possesses a high level of retention, allowing him to remember large chunks of information and repeat it almost verbatim. His favorite is a long-deceased poet by the name of Shakespeare. He has a natural ability for focusing even while multitasking, allowing him to concentrate on several tasks at once without missing a beat. A high tolerance for pain and a well-fortified will to push himself are both products of his many years as miner and ... other things.
Weaknesses: Blue has an extremely limited education, with general knowledge closer to a young teen than a young twenty-something. He never finished high school, and while self-teaching has taken him a bit further, the government has determined for him what is best for him to know. He is much more worse off, emotionally speaking. Rain is in an almost constant state of anxiety and worry as he endeavors to please his betters (which he sees as practically everyone). Outright fear is rarer though, and has largely been beaten out of him.
Physical
Major Details: blue eyes, short blonde fur, tail, 5'11"
Appearance: The first thing noticable about him is the color of his fur - a soft yellow, almost golden-white. He has a thick but short waterproof coat befitting his specie. Second is his face - an innocent, gentle face that looks like it belongs to someone several years younger. Unclothed is another story. Hard years in the mines, and harder years of "training" under the government, have beaten a powerful, athletic build under his fur, lacking in much body fat of any kind. Natural genes more suited for running then lifting have ensured he hasn't actually gotten "big" in terms of muscle mass, giving him a dense but highly lean physique. There are more scars on his body then any one person should have, though these are mostly hidden under fur and clothes.
Natural Abilities: Blue has the abilities of an athletic man of his size, capable of lifting two hundred pounds without factoring in his Enhanced abilities or his enchanted items. He has the skill and dexterity of limb that comes from training, armed or unarmed. He is a talented swimmer by birth.
Natural Traits: Blue has the usual Beastfolk traits of a canine kind, with tiny dog claws rather then nails.
Strengths: Genetically speaking, he was born to be a swimmer. His body is compact and (forcibly) well-developed, giving him greater strength and ability than a person would guess at first glance. His senses are better than the human norm, and his agility itself is closer to an Olympic gymnast, with martial training designed to take advantage of that.
Weaknesses: Blue has limited experience with most melée weapons beyond the knife - and he has a thing against knives. He's had training at firing ranges to handle guns, but has rarely carried them on missions for the same reason he's been sent on missions to begin with: because of his capacity as a "living weapon." Physical combat itself is really his last recourse.
Magical
Specializations:
- Tier 1: Mental (Water), proficiency 4. Blue is able to control Water with his sheer thoughts, creating it, manipulating it, or augmenting it.
- Tier 2: Mental (Spatial), Proficiency 4. Blue is able to control spatial aspects of the time-space continuum, manipulating or augmenting it (and thus things within it) with his sheer thoughts.
- Tier 3: Physical (Spatial), Proficiency 4. Blue is able to control spatial aspects of the time-space continuum, manipulating or augmenting it with his physical motions.
Visual Display: When Blue really pushes himself, his eyes glow a watery light blue and an aura of the same appears around him.
Special Abilities: Familiar (Collar), Elemental Shapeshifting (Water), Chimerical Shapeshifting, Alternate Sense (Magic)
Bonus Special Abilities: Enhanced Speed, Enhanced Toughness
Unique Abilities: None
Strengths: Blue's natural connection to water is his greatest asset and his mind's first recourse. Even small bits of water, shot at high velocity, can prove lethal. His facility for multitasking allows him to perform a wide assortment of techniques too complicated for spoken spells and even many physical mages. Barriers of water - snapped together at a moment's thought and harder than steel when push comes to shove - have saved his life more than once. Indeed, playing on the defensive is where he is especially good. Keeping much of his Spatial magic as a trump card, he can catch people off guard with sudden uses of telekinesis and teleportation.
Weaknesses: Aside from things like filling a room a completely full of water or teleporting large distances, most of Blue's magic is ephemeral. It doesn't take long for his magical efforts to expire after he releases his hold on it, causing bent space to snap back in order or floating water to come crashing down. While he can do a lot of "small" magical spells (relatively speaking), he can only push himself so far before the strain becomes too great on his mind. After his most intense fights, he suffers migraines that only get worse the more pressed he is. Government training has purposefully pushed this breaking point as much as possible, but one's endurance can only be raised so high.
Inventory
Mundane: Knife, wallet, dog tags, blue slave collar (color courtesy of Red)
Magical:
Focus Bracers - Written (Perpetual). Lightweight bracers on his arms, capable of being worn underneath his clothes. Runes along the metal help to strengthen his water magic with arm motions and gestures, as if utilizing it as a Physical magic instead.
History
It's common knowledge that Fey have the shortest stick in Ruthenia. Beastfolk don't fair much better though. Bill Wilson was the son of a maid and a miner - a typical Ruthenian couple for Beastfolk. But Bill never met his mother. She died during childbirth due to "complications" at the hospital. Malpractice was insinuated but there's little justice for the "lesser" races. His father's claims were dismissed without investigation, leaving a highly embittered young husband and his wife's parents to take care of a newborn that looked too much like her.
That worked out at least marginally well, for a time. Bill's father, Anton Wilson, kept his distance and let his grandparents raise him, but they had both passed away a little after Bill was old enough to read. At that point, Anton's life had spiraled into a dark place known to far too many. By day, Anton worked in the mines until he was bone tired and a shell of the dark furred retriever he was. By night, he drank and drank and spent his time idle on the couch, until passing out and having to start again. If he was a drunk before the death of Bill's mother, or if the drinking was a new development because of it, Bill never knew. The only people he could have asked were dead by then.
The lack of a female presence and possessing only the shadow of a father meant that Bill had to learn to take care of himself from a very young age. While others were building model trains and learning multiplication, he cooked, he cleaned, and did everything around the house himself. His father never seemed to notice or care when Bill had done something to clean, but the opposite was painfully true. That is, his father always noticed when something was wrong, and it was invariably always his fault.
Bill got used to the pain after awhile. You just have to learn how to drown it out.
Though Ruthenia is not known for its developed school programs for Beastfolk, he still remained an apt student - or rather, as much as it was possible with his home life. He especially excelled in language and rote memorization. By the time he was a young teen, while other kids entertained themselves with the privileges of wealth, he was taking up any odd book he could find and secreting himself in a silent corner of the world.
That all changed in the cave collapse though. It took days before they finally managed to get all the bodies out. The grizzled dark retriever was just one among the many.
0 for 2 in the parent department - and since he never knew his other grandparents at all - Bill suddenly found himself without an income supporting his livelihood. School was literally a privilege he couldn't afford anymore, and the threat of a country that cares little for Beastfolk "rights" was heavy on his mind. A few lies about his age later, and he was picking up one of the only readily available forms of a work in his town for someone who hadn't finished high school: the mines.
This was both literally and metaphorically the darkest time in his life. The work was demanding, unforgiving, and never paid as well as it was supposed to. There was a time - a terrifying, nerve shaking time - he considered The Bottle the same as his father had. Conveniently, shattering glass is a common sound, so no one was alarmed enough to call the "authorities".
He found solace where he always had.
By day, he worked in the mines. By night, he read and spent his time idle on the couch. Yet always ... always, he dreamed of a different world, away from barriers and mines and all the hatred that surrounded him. He'd look to the skyscrapers far away, and wish he could be up there.
He sought for work where he could, desperate for an escape from the underground, but when the foreman realized that he was trying to get out, things only got worse for him. The foreman had previously "overlooked" that he was underage. Now if he wanted to avoid being "turned in" somewhere, he had to do ... other things.
He got used to it after awhile. You just have to learn how to drown it out.
There was just one problem with that though.
He actually liked it. Oh, he hated the foreman. And he hated himself. He went months without ever being able to look into a mirror or stand the sight of himself in the water as mark after mark was added to his skin. He lost himself in whatever book was available to him and memorized all he could at that. The written word became more real than what happened to his own body.
But he liked it.
And then the foreman started choking him, and didn't let up no matter how much he tried to struggle or beg. He remembered every time before, every scar that lined his flesh, every bruise his father left, and it all exploded in an instant of life and revenge.
All his known life, Bill had been forced to drown out things in his own mind. He drowned the foreman in his own lungs. Years of abuse passed by between his eyes and the foreman's, wanting him to be perfectly clear why this reversal was happening to him, and exactly how much he deserved it. Then there was just a body left, and a corpse.
He wasn't sure why he was crying at the end of it all.
He threw on his clothes, and ran, and fell asleep hard on his own bed. He might have hesitated, if he had known he'd wake up somewhere entirely different - taken away in the night from the crapsack life he knew, and thrown into one that was even worse. This life came with a shock collar, round the clock supervision, and force-fed combat instruction to make his newfound power as lethal as it could be.
The training was simple: get better, or die trying. Bill fell into the former category. Years laboring in the mines had already worked into his lean body above average physical strength, endurance, a tolerance for pain and a strong self-will to cap it off. Government conditioning only took further advantage of a personality that had long since been beaten into submission, easily taking the innocent young man and forming him into the weapon of their choosing.
He didn't need guns to kill, destroy and maim. Like the others at that military installation, it was his magic they taught him to weaponize. His facility for multitasking allowed him to freely manipulate and control water like it was an extension of his imagination. The intense training he was forced to undergo still constantly tested his limits, pushing his boundaries further and further until passing out from the strain.
They were experiments. He knew that from the time they were ordered to fight each other, and his only chance was to win. So he did. He won again and again, and tried to focus on the praise, not the lives caught under ocean tides.
It felt good to be praised...
Day in, day out, it was all the same for years - until he came.
It was the bottle of beer that drew his attention first. Then it was his clothes. The tall, broad-shouldered figure had a rustic look about him in his blue jeans, red flannel shirt, and black jacket. A short but thick red beard went along with his hair, amber eyes framed by marble white skin. Resonating confidence in his very core, he had an aura about himself that spoke to the still young canine in an extremely primal way.
The "visitor" took another swig from his bottle, taking the time to gauge each other in the silence. And then he said it.
"You're mine now."
Funny how that didn't feel like a problem.
"I'm going to take you away from here."
That didn't bother him either. He left his "home" of six years like a feral dog on an invisible leash, happily going for a walk with his new owner.
The stars were gorgeous that night.
As Bill learned more about his new master and his new job, it turned out that metaphor was accurate on a number of levels.
Codename: "Firebird", the agent simply known as Red (Oh how Red hated his real name. It took weeks for it to slip out of him.) worked for the government as assassin and warrior. It was a job Bill would be expected to join in, and to perform alone eventually. It was what his "home" had been training him to do for years, after all.
He had a power, it was true. Red said he was special, and that the best way to use a special power was for the country. In service to the government meant he was serving everyone. That idea, simple as it was, despite having heard it before, somehow made him happier because he heard it from Red.
When Red finally told him that he was a vampire, and that he also expected Bill to perform other services ... the dog didn't mind.
He really didn't mind.
The exact particularities are unnecessary. What was important was that on that day, for the first time in his life ... he felt loved.
Agent Grindylow has turned into a fine weapon for the Ruthenian people.
Contact: PM me
Intentions: Good Slave
Background
Name: Wilhelm S. Tokarev
Race: Beastfolk
Species: Yellow Labrador Retriever (1/4th Grey Hound)
Age: 22
Tier: 3
Social
Place of Birth: A few miles east of Rasgrad
Allegiances: Ruthenia
Aspirations: Be a good dog
Nicknames: Bill, Blue
Titles: Secret Agent, Codename: "Grindylow"
Relatives: Deceased
Significant Other: "Red"
Mental
Personality: Blue needs a leader, in an almost literal way. The young canine is marked by a level of submission that the Ruthenian government wishes the rest of the Beastfolk would display. Extremely quiet both now and in the past, he used to be studious, busy young boy. For close to seven years, he's only been able to study what the government wants him to study, and he's as busy as they can make him. Government "training" (more like "adjustment") has crafted him into a perfectly willing assassin.
Likes: Reading, Theatre, Shakespeare, Warm fireplaces, Stars, Skyscrapers, Swimming, Being "taken care of", Confidence, Revenge
Dislikes: The Mines, Being underground, Alcohol (for himself), Public speaking, Pretentiousness, Laziness, Whining, Spoiled brats, Hard kills
Strengths: Behind meek young eyes is an intelligent mind being vastly underutilized. Blue possesses a high level of retention, allowing him to remember large chunks of information and repeat it almost verbatim. His favorite is a long-deceased poet by the name of Shakespeare. He has a natural ability for focusing even while multitasking, allowing him to concentrate on several tasks at once without missing a beat. A high tolerance for pain and a well-fortified will to push himself are both products of his many years as miner and ... other things.
Weaknesses: Blue has an extremely limited education, with general knowledge closer to a young teen than a young twenty-something. He never finished high school, and while self-teaching has taken him a bit further, the government has determined for him what is best for him to know. He is much more worse off, emotionally speaking. Rain is in an almost constant state of anxiety and worry as he endeavors to please his betters (which he sees as practically everyone). Outright fear is rarer though, and has largely been beaten out of him.
Physical
Major Details: blue eyes, short blonde fur, tail, 5'11"
Appearance: The first thing noticable about him is the color of his fur - a soft yellow, almost golden-white. He has a thick but short waterproof coat befitting his specie. Second is his face - an innocent, gentle face that looks like it belongs to someone several years younger. Unclothed is another story. Hard years in the mines, and harder years of "training" under the government, have beaten a powerful, athletic build under his fur, lacking in much body fat of any kind. Natural genes more suited for running then lifting have ensured he hasn't actually gotten "big" in terms of muscle mass, giving him a dense but highly lean physique. There are more scars on his body then any one person should have, though these are mostly hidden under fur and clothes.
Natural Abilities: Blue has the abilities of an athletic man of his size, capable of lifting two hundred pounds without factoring in his Enhanced abilities or his enchanted items. He has the skill and dexterity of limb that comes from training, armed or unarmed. He is a talented swimmer by birth.
Natural Traits: Blue has the usual Beastfolk traits of a canine kind, with tiny dog claws rather then nails.
Strengths: Genetically speaking, he was born to be a swimmer. His body is compact and (forcibly) well-developed, giving him greater strength and ability than a person would guess at first glance. His senses are better than the human norm, and his agility itself is closer to an Olympic gymnast, with martial training designed to take advantage of that.
Weaknesses: Blue has limited experience with most melée weapons beyond the knife - and he has a thing against knives. He's had training at firing ranges to handle guns, but has rarely carried them on missions for the same reason he's been sent on missions to begin with: because of his capacity as a "living weapon." Physical combat itself is really his last recourse.
Magical
Specializations:
- Tier 1: Mental (Water), proficiency 4. Blue is able to control Water with his sheer thoughts, creating it, manipulating it, or augmenting it.
- Tier 2: Mental (Spatial), Proficiency 4. Blue is able to control spatial aspects of the time-space continuum, manipulating or augmenting it (and thus things within it) with his sheer thoughts.
- Tier 3: Physical (Spatial), Proficiency 4. Blue is able to control spatial aspects of the time-space continuum, manipulating or augmenting it with his physical motions.
Visual Display: When Blue really pushes himself, his eyes glow a watery light blue and an aura of the same appears around him.
Special Abilities: Familiar (Collar), Elemental Shapeshifting (Water), Chimerical Shapeshifting, Alternate Sense (Magic)
Bonus Special Abilities: Enhanced Speed, Enhanced Toughness
Unique Abilities: None
Strengths: Blue's natural connection to water is his greatest asset and his mind's first recourse. Even small bits of water, shot at high velocity, can prove lethal. His facility for multitasking allows him to perform a wide assortment of techniques too complicated for spoken spells and even many physical mages. Barriers of water - snapped together at a moment's thought and harder than steel when push comes to shove - have saved his life more than once. Indeed, playing on the defensive is where he is especially good. Keeping much of his Spatial magic as a trump card, he can catch people off guard with sudden uses of telekinesis and teleportation.
Weaknesses: Aside from things like filling a room a completely full of water or teleporting large distances, most of Blue's magic is ephemeral. It doesn't take long for his magical efforts to expire after he releases his hold on it, causing bent space to snap back in order or floating water to come crashing down. While he can do a lot of "small" magical spells (relatively speaking), he can only push himself so far before the strain becomes too great on his mind. After his most intense fights, he suffers migraines that only get worse the more pressed he is. Government training has purposefully pushed this breaking point as much as possible, but one's endurance can only be raised so high.
Inventory
Mundane: Knife, wallet, dog tags, blue slave collar (color courtesy of Red)
Magical:
Focus Bracers - Written (Perpetual). Lightweight bracers on his arms, capable of being worn underneath his clothes. Runes along the metal help to strengthen his water magic with arm motions and gestures, as if utilizing it as a Physical magic instead.
History
It's common knowledge that Fey have the shortest stick in Ruthenia. Beastfolk don't fair much better though. Bill Wilson was the son of a maid and a miner - a typical Ruthenian couple for Beastfolk. But Bill never met his mother. She died during childbirth due to "complications" at the hospital. Malpractice was insinuated but there's little justice for the "lesser" races. His father's claims were dismissed without investigation, leaving a highly embittered young husband and his wife's parents to take care of a newborn that looked too much like her.
That worked out at least marginally well, for a time. Bill's father, Anton Wilson, kept his distance and let his grandparents raise him, but they had both passed away a little after Bill was old enough to read. At that point, Anton's life had spiraled into a dark place known to far too many. By day, Anton worked in the mines until he was bone tired and a shell of the dark furred retriever he was. By night, he drank and drank and spent his time idle on the couch, until passing out and having to start again. If he was a drunk before the death of Bill's mother, or if the drinking was a new development because of it, Bill never knew. The only people he could have asked were dead by then.
The lack of a female presence and possessing only the shadow of a father meant that Bill had to learn to take care of himself from a very young age. While others were building model trains and learning multiplication, he cooked, he cleaned, and did everything around the house himself. His father never seemed to notice or care when Bill had done something to clean, but the opposite was painfully true. That is, his father always noticed when something was wrong, and it was invariably always his fault.
Bill got used to the pain after awhile. You just have to learn how to drown it out.
Though Ruthenia is not known for its developed school programs for Beastfolk, he still remained an apt student - or rather, as much as it was possible with his home life. He especially excelled in language and rote memorization. By the time he was a young teen, while other kids entertained themselves with the privileges of wealth, he was taking up any odd book he could find and secreting himself in a silent corner of the world.
That all changed in the cave collapse though. It took days before they finally managed to get all the bodies out. The grizzled dark retriever was just one among the many.
0 for 2 in the parent department - and since he never knew his other grandparents at all - Bill suddenly found himself without an income supporting his livelihood. School was literally a privilege he couldn't afford anymore, and the threat of a country that cares little for Beastfolk "rights" was heavy on his mind. A few lies about his age later, and he was picking up one of the only readily available forms of a work in his town for someone who hadn't finished high school: the mines.
This was both literally and metaphorically the darkest time in his life. The work was demanding, unforgiving, and never paid as well as it was supposed to. There was a time - a terrifying, nerve shaking time - he considered The Bottle the same as his father had. Conveniently, shattering glass is a common sound, so no one was alarmed enough to call the "authorities".
He found solace where he always had.
By day, he worked in the mines. By night, he read and spent his time idle on the couch. Yet always ... always, he dreamed of a different world, away from barriers and mines and all the hatred that surrounded him. He'd look to the skyscrapers far away, and wish he could be up there.
He sought for work where he could, desperate for an escape from the underground, but when the foreman realized that he was trying to get out, things only got worse for him. The foreman had previously "overlooked" that he was underage. Now if he wanted to avoid being "turned in" somewhere, he had to do ... other things.
He got used to it after awhile. You just have to learn how to drown it out.
There was just one problem with that though.
He actually liked it. Oh, he hated the foreman. And he hated himself. He went months without ever being able to look into a mirror or stand the sight of himself in the water as mark after mark was added to his skin. He lost himself in whatever book was available to him and memorized all he could at that. The written word became more real than what happened to his own body.
But he liked it.
And then the foreman started choking him, and didn't let up no matter how much he tried to struggle or beg. He remembered every time before, every scar that lined his flesh, every bruise his father left, and it all exploded in an instant of life and revenge.
All his known life, Bill had been forced to drown out things in his own mind. He drowned the foreman in his own lungs. Years of abuse passed by between his eyes and the foreman's, wanting him to be perfectly clear why this reversal was happening to him, and exactly how much he deserved it. Then there was just a body left, and a corpse.
He wasn't sure why he was crying at the end of it all.
He threw on his clothes, and ran, and fell asleep hard on his own bed. He might have hesitated, if he had known he'd wake up somewhere entirely different - taken away in the night from the crapsack life he knew, and thrown into one that was even worse. This life came with a shock collar, round the clock supervision, and force-fed combat instruction to make his newfound power as lethal as it could be.
The training was simple: get better, or die trying. Bill fell into the former category. Years laboring in the mines had already worked into his lean body above average physical strength, endurance, a tolerance for pain and a strong self-will to cap it off. Government conditioning only took further advantage of a personality that had long since been beaten into submission, easily taking the innocent young man and forming him into the weapon of their choosing.
He didn't need guns to kill, destroy and maim. Like the others at that military installation, it was his magic they taught him to weaponize. His facility for multitasking allowed him to freely manipulate and control water like it was an extension of his imagination. The intense training he was forced to undergo still constantly tested his limits, pushing his boundaries further and further until passing out from the strain.
They were experiments. He knew that from the time they were ordered to fight each other, and his only chance was to win. So he did. He won again and again, and tried to focus on the praise, not the lives caught under ocean tides.
It felt good to be praised...
Day in, day out, it was all the same for years - until he came.
It was the bottle of beer that drew his attention first. Then it was his clothes. The tall, broad-shouldered figure had a rustic look about him in his blue jeans, red flannel shirt, and black jacket. A short but thick red beard went along with his hair, amber eyes framed by marble white skin. Resonating confidence in his very core, he had an aura about himself that spoke to the still young canine in an extremely primal way.
The "visitor" took another swig from his bottle, taking the time to gauge each other in the silence. And then he said it.
"You're mine now."
Funny how that didn't feel like a problem.
"I'm going to take you away from here."
That didn't bother him either. He left his "home" of six years like a feral dog on an invisible leash, happily going for a walk with his new owner.
The stars were gorgeous that night.
As Bill learned more about his new master and his new job, it turned out that metaphor was accurate on a number of levels.
Codename: "Firebird", the agent simply known as Red (Oh how Red hated his real name. It took weeks for it to slip out of him.) worked for the government as assassin and warrior. It was a job Bill would be expected to join in, and to perform alone eventually. It was what his "home" had been training him to do for years, after all.
He had a power, it was true. Red said he was special, and that the best way to use a special power was for the country. In service to the government meant he was serving everyone. That idea, simple as it was, despite having heard it before, somehow made him happier because he heard it from Red.
When Red finally told him that he was a vampire, and that he also expected Bill to perform other services ... the dog didn't mind.
He really didn't mind.
The exact particularities are unnecessary. What was important was that on that day, for the first time in his life ... he felt loved.
Agent Grindylow has turned into a fine weapon for the Ruthenian people.