Howler

Upon the Sunset Sea; World of Darkness RP

Name: Michelle Darrens
Age: 26
Species: Garou
Breed: Homid
Auspice: Ahroun
Tribe: Get of Fenris

Personality:
"Baby I got a plan, run away fast as you can."

There are some people you just get bad feelings about. The kind that you know have something wrong with them, some kind of mental illness or something. They don't laugh at the right jokes, they laugh too much at the wrong jokes, and when you look them in the eyes all you get is Chianti and fava beans. Michelle Darrens is one of those people on crack.

It's hard to express Michelle's personality because first one has to get over the very certain knowledge that you will still be alive when she starts to eat you. No bones about it, all 'when's not 'if's, the woman sitting across from you is waiting to rip you open by the flanks and feast on your insides like an elk. It's in the twitch of her fingers, the tension in her shoulders. It's right behind those dead-marble black eyes or that sardonic, 'isn't vivisection fun?' smile. Whatever monster there is under her skin wants out, badly and visibly, and it's really a shame because if you got to know her...

Well. She might have been such a nice girl, but life got there first.

Bored as acid and twice as caustic, Michelle is the kind of depressed you don't get better from. The kind that comes from not thinking but knowing that it's not going to be okay, that you will never be alright, and that one day you'll go out like you came into this world--naked, screaming, and covered in someone else's raspberry jam. She's so depressed that she's practically looped around to cheery, the kind of 'fuck it!' nihilism that lets her at least be mad at the world instead of just a mess. And lord is she mad at the world for all of the stupid, awful things it does to all of its stupid, awful people.

If you can get past all that, she's really just wants to look pretty in a sun dress.

Biography:
Once upon a time there was a little girl. Her mom was all sorts of a slut and went through four and a half 'boyfriends' by the time her daughter was eleven, but that's not really important. They were all of them decent enough guys with decent enough money, and if she never bothered to learn their names then at least they never molested her or anything. She never really had friends and never really knew or cared which one was her father, because none of them ever really knew her name or cared if they were her father either. Instead, they spent all day screwing and whatever else it was they did while her mother was off finding her next boyfriend and left Michelle to her own devices, which mostly included reading trashy magazines, making mediocre art, and trying to make friends at whatever school she happened to be at for the moment. It probably would have continued in much the same pattern had she not flipped out and eaten her mother's latest squeeze.

To be fair, he deserved it. Alright, alright, so maybe he didn't deserve it--he was a weasel of a guy with a salary job and a receding hairline, the kind that was always a little nervous but nice enough to make small talk. He was also the kind of guy who kept pictures of under-ten-year-olds doing very naughty things on his hard drive and forgot that his girlfriend's daughter came home early on Wednesdays, and boy was she mad when she found out. Mad enough to huff, and puff, and turn into a twelve foot wolf-monster. When she came to a half an hour later crying and throwing up fingers in the bathroom toilet, it was safe to say that Michelle's days of making fridge art were over.

Whatever happened to her fetch was anyone's guess; it took nearly two weeks for the local garou sept to track her down, during which she ran away from home and put at least one police squad attempting to bring her back home through what appeared to be some kind of blender. When the Get of Fenris finally got a hold of her it was clear enough that she was 'more than favored' by their favorite ferocious mythological wolf--she was barely controllable, the kind of monster that scares other monsters. Fortunately for her, fighting fire with fire was a time-honored strategy among those peerless warriors, and so they put her to work cleaning house for Gaia. And, for a while, she was almost happy.

But that was years ago. Two packs and three city's later, Michelle is pretty much done with pretending she's a monster for Gaia--now she's just a monster that kills monsters and tries not to kill good guys. Among the Get they call people like her Mjolnir's Thunder, homicidal sociopaths out to kill the Wyrm and cut down anything that gets in their way, but that's not quite true of Michelle.

Not yet, at least.

Upon the Sunset Sea; World of Darkness RP

"You ever played coyote?"

The words came first, muffled and distorted like they came through a tin can. The pain followed after, daubed on like paint from a trowel all up and down his right arm. The next moment it was insistent, demanding and hot as it radiated up from his hand, but when he tried to jerk it back to his chest it stuck fast just like--

"Puta madre, are you fucking kidding me?!" Enrique half snarled, half whimpered as he hissed through his teeth and squeezed his eyes back shut. He'd been through a lot of things in his twenty years of life, even been shot once, but he'd never had--oh what the hell, six nails?!--punched through the back of his hand before. They stuck out at odd angles like angry little quills, big nine-goddamn-inch carpenter nails rammed right down through the table, and he had a pretty good idea who put them there as the world started catching back up with him. He could practically hear things speeding up as the adrenaline started kicking in.

"No, no, it's not a race thing." The white bitch in the black sundress admonished from where she sat across the table, flipping her hands up in an innocence that didn't bother to reach her flat, atonal voice. She raised one up over the stubble on her shaved, inked head. "Come on, man, it's not funny if I have to explain it..."

But oh, Enrique got it. He got it enough to want to get up and knock her damn teeth out, only that was what got him into this mess to begin with. She'd shown up out of nowhere while he and his homies had just been kicking back, asking to score like she wasn't marching into his fucking house, and when they told her to get lost she laughed. And then he'd pulled out his piece, smacked a bitch like she earned it, and--

Been punted across the room. Into his refrigerator. Where he must have passed out, or something, because not only did he not remember her playing Bob the Builder with his goddamn right hand, he didn't remember her turning the rest of his buddies into spare parts either. He could see them in the living room over her shoulder, lying there, soaking into his carpet and couch and...wall paper...

"Jesus Christ." He muttered and closed his eyes, trying to take a breath. Having just lost cabin pressure, he was pretty sure he was starting to hyperventilate--his breathing came quickly, his heart was starting to race. His eyes were starting to spin in his head. They were right there, man, they were right there and dead--it had just been another afternoon--

The woman snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, twice, close enough to make him blink and sharp enough to make him wince.

"Hey. Hey. Pay attention. This is the important part." She said pointedly, letting her hand slap to the table as he swallowed and tried not jump. The important part--right. Now was the time to focus. Whatever fight Enrique had in him was leaving very quickly as he tried to find somewhere to look other than... other than. The trouble was the bitch wasn't any more comforting, her shark-dark eyes bored and hungry with no more recognition of him than a pair of black marbles. There was something about the way the muscles in her shoulders moved, the way they seemed to crawl through her forearms, but she was talking and he wasn't listening. He did better, tuned in, because he had the distinct impression that if she didn't think he got the message she'd make it clearer.

"You and your little cholo assholes are done here. Okay? Donezo." She was saying, slicing a hand through the air with apathetic finality. "I mean, they don't have much choice in the matter--pretty sure you're the only one juiced up here, they haven't moved in a while--but you're officially over. No more parties, no more girls, no more little white bags of what I can only assume is at least half talcum powder, you're through. And you know who else is through on this street? Your little boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Whoever it is that put a little vamp in you? Similarly donezo." She leaned back and tugged a cigarette out of a pack that used to be his and lit it with a Bic that used to be Roy's. It cherried to life as she took her drag, watching him without changing expression, before letting the smoke out through her nose. Enrique licked his lips, trying not to panic.

"I don't--I mean, that's not--"

"Wait, wait." She interrupted, raising a hand pointedly and closing her eyes. "You're about to tell me that's not your call to make, because whatever leech is giving you his backwash has made damn sure you know that. And when you do, I'm going to backhand your jaw off and walk out that door without a care in the goddamn world. And since we've established you've never played coyote before..." She leaned over and pat him on the back of his staved-in hand, getting to her feet with the kind of wry smile that barely moved the rest of her face. "I'll cut you a break and tell you that'll make this a whole lot more difficult for you."

"So run off to see the Wizard, Dorothy." She added as she turned for the door with a two-fingered wave over her shoulder to the sweating gangbanger. "Maybe you'll get lucky and he'll give you some balls."

She flicked off the light before she left.

---

Michelle Darrens was a familiar, if not necessarily welcome, sight at the Sunset Lounge. Not because of anything she did--half the time she just drank herself into a stupor--but because drinking with her was a little like sitting across the way from an active tac nuke. Sure, it wasn't likely to go off, but did you really want to be anywhere nearby when it did?

Today was no different than most days, which meant she was there killing brain cells, boredom, and time by the droves. She wore her little black sundress like gang colors, moving with the liquid fluidity of the mildly drunk and the swagger of a John-Wayne-meets-Jason-Statham action hero. It was a cute little joke to herself, one most people never got. She slipped in past the toughs at the door with a snort at the familiar scent of death and cologne before moving for the bar top, saddling a seat and sinking to her elbows.

"Tecate and a tequila for me and whoever owned the assholes on 7th and Lake. I broke his stuff."

Muskets & Magic - Dark Fantasy RP

@Vietmyke
One does what one can. I edited his backstory to give him a few years of training, which realistically he totally would have had and put himself through, and I edited slightly to highlight his competence rather than excellence at soldiery. I'm not worried about him being too OP personally--he's intended to be a support character who can hold his own but won't upstage anyone offensively. If you notice me playing it otherwise by all means let me know.

Upon the Sunset Sea; World of Darkness RP

Let's see if this works. She's not exactly everyone's cup of tea, but when you need someone to carve up your local jerkwads...

Michelle Darrens

Name: Michelle Darrens
Age: 26
Species: Garou
Breed: Homid
Auspice: Ahroun
Tribe: Get of Fenris

Personality:
"Baby I got a plan, run away fast as you can."

There are some people you just get bad feelings about. The kind that you know have something wrong with them, some kind of mental illness or something. They don't laugh at the right jokes, they laugh too much at the wrong jokes, and when you look them in the eyes all you get is Chianti and fava beans. Michelle Darrens is one of those people on crack.

It's hard to express Michelle's personality because first one has to get over the very certain knowledge that you will still be alive when she starts to eat you. No bones about it, all 'when's not 'if's, the woman sitting across from you is waiting to rip you open by the flanks and feast on your insides like an elk. It's in the twitch of her fingers, the tension in her shoulders. It's right behind those dead-marble black eyes or that sardonic, 'isn't vivisection fun?' smile. Whatever monster there is under her skin wants out, badly and visibly, and it's really a shame because if you got to know her...

Well. She might have been such a nice girl, but life got there first.

Bored as acid and twice as caustic, Michelle is the kind of depressed you don't get better from. The kind that comes from not thinking but knowing that it's not going to be okay, that you will never be alright, and that one day you'll go out like you came into this world--naked, screaming, and covered in someone else's raspberry jam. She's so depressed that she's practically looped around to cheery, the kind of 'fuck it!' nihilism that lets her at least be mad at the world instead of just a mess. And lord is she mad at the world for all of the stupid, awful things it does to all of its stupid, awful people.

If you can get past all that, she's really just wants to look pretty in a sun dress.

Biography:
Once upon a time there was a little girl. Her mom was all sorts of a slut and went through four and a half 'boyfriends' by the time her daughter was eleven, but that's not really important. They were all of them decent enough guys with decent enough money, and if she never bothered to learn their names then at least they never molested her or anything. She never really had friends and never really knew or cared which one was her father, because none of them ever really knew her name or cared if they were her father either. Instead, they spent all day screwing and whatever else it was they did while her mother was off finding her next boyfriend and left Michelle to her own devices, which mostly included reading trashy magazines, making mediocre art, and trying to make friends at whatever school she happened to be at for the moment. It probably would have continued in much the same pattern had she not flipped out and eaten her mother's latest squeeze.

To be fair, he deserved it. Alright, alright, so maybe he didn't deserve it--he was a weasel of a guy with a salary job and a receding hairline, the kind that was always a little nervous but nice enough to make small talk. He was also the kind of guy who kept pictures of under-ten-year-olds doing very naughty things on his hard drive and forgot that his girlfriend's daughter came home early on Wednesdays, and boy was she mad when she found out. Mad enough to huff, and puff, and turn into a twelve foot wolf-monster. When she came to a half an hour later crying and throwing up fingers in the bathroom toilet, it was safe to say that Michelle's days of making fridge art were over.

Whatever happened to her fetch was anyone's guess; it took nearly two weeks for the local garou sept to track her down, during which she ran away from home and put at least one police squad attempting to bring her back home through what appeared to be some kind of blender. When the Get of Fenris finally got a hold of her it was clear enough that she was 'more than favored' by their favorite ferocious mythological wolf--she was barely controllable, the kind of monster that scares other monsters. Fortunately for her, fighting fire with fire was a time-honored strategy among those peerless warriors, and so they put her to work cleaning house for Gaia. And, for a while, she was almost happy.

But that was years ago. Two packs and three city's later, Michelle is pretty much done with pretending she's a monster for Gaia--now she's just a monster that kills monsters and tries not to kill good guys. Among the Get they call people like her Mjolnir's Thunder, homicidal sociopaths out to kill the Wyrm and cut down anything that gets in their way, but that's not quite true of Michelle.

Not yet, at least.

Muskets & Magic - Dark Fantasy RP

There we are. Let's see if it makes muster.

Lt. Arthur Harker

Name: Arthur Harker
Age: 37
Race: Human
Profession: Mage

Personality:
"Every man is guilty of the good he did not do."

If you had to come up with a word to capture Arthur, it would be dedicated. Arthur believes firmly in the precept that one should never ask of another what one wouldn't do oneself--if you need to press the advantage, you press. If you need to hold the line, you hold. Not one to be concerned with popularity or pride, his pragmatic and joyless disposition hide a rare kindness--the mage would give you the jacket off his back if he thought it would help you make it through the night. It is this kindness and willingness to take on the job himself that prevents him from being overly disliked by the young-bucks who find him a grueling and merciless taskmaster. Arthur doesn't expect people to work as hard as he does only because he knows betters. Instead, he expects them to work harder than they ever have in their lives because he wants them to survive to live them.

Patient to a fault, Arthur is a conservative defender and a believer in defense as the best offense. Never one to rush into a situation without understanding it, Arthur preaches luck as the moment when opportunity meets preparation and teaches those he works with to think similarly. Dying for what you believe in is easy--waking up tomorrow to fight again is harder, and Arthur has never been one for the easy road.

Backstory:

Maer is a small nation compared to the powerhouses of Ilyra or the Ironhoff Dominion, but it survives because it plays to its strengths. Such was the nature of the Harker family who for generations capitalized on the magic that threaded its way through their bloodlines. While not all members of the family have the gift there are enough of them that any given generation can be expected to produce a few mages of quality; Arthur is one of them, as was his father.

Professor Isaac Harker was a talented mage in his own right, but his sons were brighter and more talented than he could imagine. His first son, Dorien, was a veritable genius in a way that few men are. Magic was a gift to him and came naturally, spontaneously, and inflated his ego in much the same vein. It was dour young Arthur who took to it with effort and force of will, but through his studies and his works he acquired a mastery of barrier magic and defensive tactics second to none. Dorien jokes even now that his brother's 'turtle-shell' was an early innovation to prevent any number of pranks that might have been played upon him as a child, in truth Arthur has simply always been a young man with an instinctive knowledge that the world is not a kind place and that if one is to survive it, one must be able to endure it.

Both brothers were accepted to The Academy at young ages and distinguished themselves even outside of their relation to their father (who had for many years been the Dean of Projections and the foremost authority on energy distribution). Dorien's theories on magical density and the manipulation of the coiled-energy projectile were instrumental in developing a more efficient network of basic defense spells, while Arthur's application of Deghast's Fourth Theory of Binding quickly became worthy of more advanced study. While Dorien jumped eagerly at an early acceptance to a doctorate program and the promise of a Professor's position within a few scant years, both he and Arthur were instead proposed as research assistants to a particularly prestigious program geared towards the New Frontier and the understanding of its' Shamans' nature magic. In tow of a proper professor and a few other prospective students, they made the journey across eleven years ago.

Of them, only Arthur and Dorien lived to regret it.

Not even a year after they arrived the calamity occurred and monstrous creatures descended on the town they pursued their studies in. As magical adepts they fared better than most and managed to make their way back to the ships, surviving side by side to make their way onto the only ship to return from that awful endeavor. Arriving at port and quickly drawn away to the Academy to report their findings, it was there that the two finally parted ways as Arthur... got back on the ship. Having seen what was there, having watched it tear through villagers and soldiers and friends, he could not in good conscience allow others to go where he himself would not. If they were to stand a chance against the threat they would need all the help they could get, and with so few of the survivors of that lone ship willing or able to return... Well. Some things are best done oneself.

The first years were a learning experience for Arthur. Though his magical arts had always included combat applications it was the day in, day out maneuvers and life of a soldier that took getting used to. Unwilling to simply advise, he preferred instead to put himself through the paces any other soldier would be expected to. He hadn't returned to research, he had come back to save lives. He didn't cut corners and he didn't rush through it, and when the time came to step into a leadership role there was no question that he had earned it.

Lieutenant Arthur Harker now serves as a squadron commander in the New Frontier. His mages, known as the Wallmakers (or, more colloquially, Wallers) are well renowned for their dedication under fire and their grim but resolute nature. They have higher mortality rates than most thanks to dangerous relief operations and a position that frequently places them under fire, but more than once a Waller has made the difference between a position overrun and a line held. Though there have been attempts made to promote him to a larger commanding position Lt. Harker has refused them all--his mind, he says, works best in small unit tactics and he has no desire to be taken out of the field.

Skills and Abilities:

The Wall
Arthur's primary expertise lies in his arcane magic and the creation of energy barriers of various shapes, forms, and sizes. As the foremost practitioner of his art Arthur can create sizeable barriers capable of withstanding tremendous punishment for an impressively long time. These range from defensive ramparts of pure energy to screaming barriers of lightning or fire to personal defense spells that outpace even the strongest armor. The larger the barrier the more energy and concentration it requires to maintain, as one might imagine, and so Arthur is careful to measure his magics.

Battlefield Manipulation
Arthur's secondary expertise is in the use of magic to manipulate an environment. A believer that magic should be used to support cheaper, more mundane methods of victory, Arthur has a gamut of abilities that most would consider supportive in nature--from stasis fields that can slow or stop an advancing force in its tracks to accelerant schemas that empower etherbolts that pass through them to greater effect, Arthur is a team player and tries to use magic as a force multiplier rather than a show-stopper.

Soldiery Most Fine
Unlike most mages, Arthur believes that magic should be relied upon to do what strength of arm can't rather than replace it entirely. As such he is well practiced with a rifle and bayonet, a capable swordsman, and a proficient tactician favoring defensive tactics and counterattacks. He's neither a marksman nor a duelist, but his level-head and dedication to competence puts him cleanly above your average rank-and-file. His technique is clean and practical, with heavy favor towards middle-ranged engagements.

Equipment:
Arthur's equipment is largely standard issue--able to provide much of his own armor, he prefers to demonstrate and master the weaponry that any given soldier can be expected to have rather than rely on fancy or enchanted equipment. That being said, one of the first things he teaches new mages is how to make waterproof, fireproof jackets and boots, and so he sports a pair of both.

His primary weapon is a New Rune Pattern Ethergun. He carries a short, heavy back sword at his waist alongside a dagger in case an engagement pushes to close range.

Muskets & Magic - Dark Fantasy RP

@Howler I thought I noticed you snooping

@vietmyke

Yup, just didn't finish my profile in time. Let me know if the deadline gets extended or you feel like making an exception.

Muskets & Magic - Dark Fantasy RP

Hey everybody, the guilds been acting really wonky for me lately, but I should be able to get the last of the character reviews out tomorrow. I also think I'll be halting any further interest/character applications at this time- unless you've already posted about your interest or pm'd me before this post, this rp is no longer open.

@vietmyke

Hah, I dillied when I should have dallied! Have a good game, then, I'll be keeping an eye on it.

The Star's Dreams: A Gathering of Interesting Individuals

I'm going to assume this petered out. Shoot me a PM if it gets back up and running, please.

The Star's Dreams: A Gathering of Interesting Individuals

@Dulcet Still about.

Mortem Cogitatio

I'm still about. Anyone else?