Dowle Fenn
"I don't much like the Queen - but I bet her house burns nicely."
Dowle Fenn
Age: 31
Race: Caucausian - Irish
Gender: Male
University and Degree: University College Dublin - Masters' Degree in Chemistry (Completed).
Appearance: Dowle Fenn stands at 6"4, rather intimidatingly, and is possessed of soft, rich, light brown hair, and a thick, healthy beard. He is an attractive, charming looking man, who can - assuming he acts accordingly - inspire confidence in most reasonable people without fault. He is, additionally, very well muscled, and built like a fucking tank. He has no major visible scars, and possesses an admirable shoulder to waist width ratio, and legs that are proportionally muscled to his arms - which is to say, very muscled indeed.
Personality: Dowle Fenn is an attractive man - or rather, he would be, if it weren't for the fact that he is an unstable, unpredictable, violent individual with a penchant for blowing things up, setting things on fire, or a twisted combination of the two. He is almost certainly the sufferer of several very serious mental health conditions, but in the past has absolutely refused any sort of psychiatric analysis or treatment, and is unlikely to ever come around to it. His emotional state can vary widely from paranoid to entirely muted, and in times of great stress he has previously experienced mild to moderate auditory hallucinations - though he has never 'seen things'. It is from this, as well as an intense and complicated variety of environmental factors, that his nature as a political extremist first arose, and it remains with him, even having moved on to private employment.
Biography: Dowle Fenn was conceived by a pair of hardline Irish Republicans, with previous links to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and naturally was never going to be raised in a healthy environment - even since the Good Friday agreement, his parents had remained entirely unsatisfied with what they deemed to be 'too great an influence of Imperialist Britain in the Republic.' Keep in mind that when I say hardline Republicans, this is in the context of
The Troubles. Dowle's early life consisted of strange jumps between the relatively normal life offered to him by his school, and the intensely anti-British life he had at home; it's a strange thing to walk past a memorial to the protestant children killed by a catholic republican's pipebomb every day on the way to school, when it's entirely possible that your parents knew and were friends with the killer - even stranger, it is, to
not feel immediate disgust at the seven murders committed by a man your parents were raising to call 'comrade'. Even the most radical individual, if thus far unexposed to violence, and the rhetoric of brutal murder, can be expected to experience something of a turn of their stomach when confronted with a bloody and unjustified massacre - especially involving children.
But not Dowle.
Somehow, it was all he ever expected from the world.
And that continued to be all he expected from the world, for years and years. His parents kept their jobs at the local branch of the biotech corporation
ProZase, and he kept his schooling, and they all four of them - including his sister, Catriona - kept the faith, and hated the English, as well as the Welsh, for 'collusion' or somesuch. To be perfectly honest, if you asked him today Dowle wouldn't even try to pretend that he cared about the reasons behind the reasons, or how true they were. It just felt right to be hating someone like that - and not even in the kind of way you might think, as if he'd been looking for some radical ideology to join, and that he couldn't function without it. It just felt acceptable, normal, and like the right thing to be doing. He liked it.
At 17, he killed his first man. It was actually an accident, but he didn't much mind - Mr. O'Brien was another colluder, see. He'd worked with the English during the Troubles, his parents said, and he'd ratted out his father's brother to the British police, gotten him killed. No, Dowle had only meant to burn his house to the ground, and watch the flames lick over the brick skeleton of the house for a few hours before heading home, because it was just rural enough that nobody would be around to report it until morning came, and Mr O'Brien was meant to be on a business trip to England - the collaborator he is. When the screaming had started, Dowle left in a hurry, but he didn't feel bad or anything.
And they never connected it to him. Or his parents, funnily enough - and he did think it was kind of funny. Not for any particular reason, it just amused him that the British, high and mighty so they were, couldn't find him, or even know what they were meant to be looking for - though, to their credit, they'd figured out it was arson quick enough.
And his parents were so proud. He would have done anything to please them, he really would have. In fact, the reason he picked up his grades and got into university was to make them proud, too - they'd always suggested chemistry. Said it was a noble science. He didn't much mind either way, but was enthused when they were given the usual safety talks about explosive compounds, as we all saw coming. He was the best student in the class, developing two new explosive mixes that were simultaneously more powerful than, and more stable than, modern Dynamite, as well as providing major contributions to several other anti-cancer research projects, some of which reached fruition and may have actually gone on to save lives. Whilst all this went on, he got involved more and more with the radical republican arm of the student politics in his University, and took up boxing, and shooting. This would all continue without incident, his naturally violent and extremist tendencies even dying down, subsiding to the calming way he took to research work, until he graduated with full honours, and the admiration of his class - and, more tragically, crossed the point of no return.
Because immediately after he graduated, politics became very relevant once more in Northern Ireland.
Yes, four years later, nearly a week after his final graduation from the MSc course, the
Troubles restarted. Britain had made terrible mistakes in their relations with the Northern Irish Taioseach, and had utterly ruined the devolved government it had until then been subject to! Historians would debate for a very long time just where it all started going wrong, but eventually the British government showed favour to just enough of the wrong parties in the North that there came a great schism once more, and the radical movement of the IRA gained popularity enough that they were able to blow up a convoy carrying three Unionist MPs, and kill six of their assigned security detail before being routed themselves.
Warfare having evolved, the Troubles weren't as long this time - but that did not mean they were any less fierce, especially thanks to the cacophonic symphony of explosives, poisons, fires, and sheer
madness that Dowle was now equipped to bring, having excelled all his life at violence, and chemistry. Though through his work at university, many lives may have been saved through the honourable art of scientific medicine, he was now wiping that goodness from his slate entirely, and is still reputed amongst the Republican elements of radical politics in Ireland to have been responsible for more Loyalist deaths than almost anyone else, through careful application of explosives, and homemade nerve gas. He was excelling again, just... at something less productive than pure science.
But, as always happens, extremism loses its appeal to the public. Eventually, the Northern Irish republicans lost favour, and a second version of the Good Friday agreement was reached between the remaining Republican forces that retained any semblance of respect from their opposition, and the Loyalists whose ranks had also been worn thin by the fighting.
And when that happened, and the flow of resources to Dowle's makeshift lab finally stopped...
Well. He was as close to insane as can be realistically depicted, but smart enough to understand the concept of defeat - and to him, it was indeed a defeat, jarred even more by the revelation that he had never been naturally conceived by his parents.
His sister had found out, you see. They themselves had been killed in the fighting, and would never have told him anyway. She'd had to pull their medical records from the biotech company they'd worked for - which, of course, provided in-house medical care - and then go to great lengths to fill in the blanks created by obvious censorship and cover-up, too. Both of them had turned out to be designer babies - only, they'd been fucked up entirely in the process.
He was born with a genetic predisposition to psychological disorder, and mental illness - similarly to Catriona, who had developed depression, anorexia nervosa, and histrionic personality disorder in her own time at university. It was almost like a sort of tradeoff - they had all the benefits they'd been trying to breed into them, from natural physical health and fitness to incredible minds, for the most part, but in return they were almost undoubtedly amongst the most unbelievably mentally ill people in the world, and worse still, Dowle had never even been that smart or anything! He got more of the negatives, his sister got more of the positives - after all, she'd never burnt down houses for fun, or released improvised poisons to please her parents.
No, instead, she got help, and became a healthier individual than Dowle knew he could ever hope to be. She fell in love, moved to Scotland, and as far as he knew, lived happily ever after. The last he'd heard of her, she'd had three children, and was expecting twins on top of that.
He left Ireland too. Went to England, of all places. Managed to mostly get over his hatred of the English, for what it's worth, even if simply by way of being unable to avoid the bastards.
And then, halfway to the bottom of the chasm of alcoholism, and unable to find it within himself to go through the same complicated health service that his beloved sister had, he was picked up by The Employer. Nowadays, he's more stable than ever, even if only because destruction is a part of his job - which, by the way, pays very well. Feels much nicer than any of what those radicals he used to shack up with had given him. Great benefits. He owns two houses, and a flat in London - which is where he's been for the past week, preparing for this latest operation.
Skills: Probably relevant to their degree. You may have more than just 2, but be balanced.
- Synthesis - He's a chemist, and a good one. He can make shit from other shit, given time and apparatus.
- Things that go Bang in the Fight - At this point, he is an explosives and demolitions expert that would rival one with formal training.
- Murder, and all things murdery - He's a killer, and is good at it - this extends to the art of intimidation.
Weaknesses: - Disturbed - He is, at his core, an exceptionally mentally ill individual. Though there was a time in his life where proper intervention might have made him almost normal, he's long past that - and given his status as a designer baby, even a failed one, some forms of medication do not have their intended effects.
- The Republican's Curse - Though it's been some time since anyone was actively searching for members of the IRA, and he was always good at concealing his identity, there are plenty of people on both sides of the political spectrum that would happily murder him for his former affiliations - and they're not hard to find out.
- Far from Home - Unlike both of the other professional criminals employed to oversee this operation, he speaks no language but English, and fragmented Irish gaelic. Given the nature of the heist they intend to pull off, this will disadvantage him enormously.
- The Shade of Remorse - Somewhere, deep inside of him, he knows that what he does, and has done, is among the purest forms of evil that a human being can commit. He regrets it, and it weighs over him. On his good days, at least.
Other: He has something of a preexisting relationship with Archibald Mercer - in that he once tried to kill him. Neither is aware of this, fortunately, as their faces were covered.
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