Morden Man — Roleplayer Guild

| Identity |

Detective Richard “Dick” Grayson, better known as the masked vigilante Nightwing.

| Origin & Backstory |

Dick Grayson became the ward of Bruce Wayne shortly after his parents, John and Mary Grayson, were murdered by the mobster Tony Zucco over a failed attempt to extort money from the circus that the Flying Graysons belonged to. Wayne would train Grayson’s body and mind to help him channel the rage he felt as his parent’s murder into something productive: becoming Batman’s teenaged sidekick, Robin.

Batman and Robin would have many adventures over the years and Dick would prove his prowess as a leader and crime-fighter in his own right whilst leading the Teen Titans. Against Bruce’s wishes Dick chooses to strike out on his own, renouncing the name Robin, and taking up the mantle “Nightwing” after a Kryptonian superhero Superman once told him about.

Dick relocates to the neighbouring city of Blüdhaven and Nightwing becomes the city’s protector by night. During the day Dick polices the streets of Blüdhaven from within Blüdhaven Police Department’s homicide department. The two roles often cross over and Dick follows up those investigations he can’t solve as Detective Dick Grayson as Nightwing.

| Attributes |

Dick is a world-class gymnast, the only person in the world capable of a quadruple somersault, and an Olympic level athlete through over two decades of vigorous training. Dick is also a master of at least a dozen martial arts, rivaling Bruce Wayne in his proficiency at hand to hand combat, whilst adopting a more acrobatic, Aikido-centric style that makes use of his unparalleled gymnastic abilities.

On top of his physical skills, Dick is one of the world’s preeminent deductive minds. Though not quite the detective that Bruce Wayne is, Dick’s many years of tutelage beneath Bruce in criminology, stealth, and disguise. He puts these skills to use on a daily basis working at Blüdhaven’s Police Department on crime scenes, in the interrogation room, and out on Blüdhaven’s streets.

Foremost amongst Dick’s attributes though is his leadership ability. It has been noted by Superman himself that Dick Grayson is the finest leader that the DC Universe has to offer and his time leading the Teen Titans and Young Justice has made him an excellent field leader and manager of people. He has an easy, jovial manner that puts people at ease and earns him the trust of strangers almost without trying. It’s that nature, more so than his physical capabilities or his deductive skill, that makes Dick Grayson and Nightwing a force to be reckoned with.

| Character Notes |

What more is there to say? Dick’s a great character, capable of inspiring others in the direst of situations, and given the events that lead into this game, he’ll be more needed than ever before. In the comic books Dick has a relationship with Superman that is very different to his relationship with Bruce. Bruce can seem aloof, disinterested, and overly critical at the best of times where Clark is more openly nurturing and considerate. It’s Clark that gives Dick the idea for his name, after all, and I think with Clark gone Dick will feel a responsibility to fill that void as best he can. To provide some light and hope to a world that otherwise might feel lost.

Bruce Wayne/Batman - Dick's currently estranged friend, mentor, and adoptive father.
Alfred Pennyworth - The Batman family's emotional core. The nurture to Bruce's nature.
Barbara "Babs" Gordon/Oracle - Dick's on again/off again girlfriend and first love.
Wally West/Kid Flash - Dick's best friend, former Teen Titan and Young Justice member.
Roy Harper/Arsenal - One of dick's closest friends, former Teen Titan and Young Justice member.
Koriand'r/Starfire - Dick's friend and sometime love interest, former Teen Titan and Young Justice member.
Detective Amy Rohrbach - Dick's partner at Blüdhaven PD.

Slade Wilson/Deathstroke - mercenary that Dick has tangled with numerous times.
Harvey Dent/Two-Face - Once beat Dick near to death with a baseball bat, always dangerous.
Roland Desmond/Blockbuster - Blüdhaven's most dangerous crime boss.
Catalina Flores/Tarantula - Blüdhaven-based vigilante that doles out lethal justice.
The Joker - crippled Barbara Gordon and killed Jason Todd. Ever the wildcard.

| Character Goals |

I really want to put Nightwing at the center of the game. It’s where he is in the comic book universe because of his ties to so many teams and so many people. With the Teen Titans, Young Justice, Batman, and his relationship with Superman there really isn’t anyone that Dick hasn’t brushed shoulders with. He’s really going to take it on himself to try to keep people hopeful, to keep them optimistic and unafraid, despite Superman’s passing.

As Detective Grayson I’ll have Dick going through the more procedural side of crime fighting. Sure, he’ll be catching cases through the Blüdhaven Police Department that he’ll be forced to follow up with as Nightwing when they hit a wall but as Dick I want to show the human side of the crimes he’s investigating and the human cost.

| Sample Post |

Waterloo Docks, Blüdhaven

New Year’s Day in Blüdhaven means one thing and one thing only: bodies. New Year’s Eve was one of the busiest days of the years. Dick Grayson had learned from last year to expect a heavy workload in January as the corpses of drunken revelers were found in vacant buildings, doorways, and alleyways across Blüdhaven. Some would slip and crack their heads on the sidewalk, others choke on their own vomit after drinking too much, but the worst were the homeless that died of the cold as Auld Lang Syne echoed through the city’s streets. It was bad enough last year being called out to discern which of the stiffs would come back murders but there was something about this year that made it even worse. The celebrations had been so muted, so downtrodden, because of what had happened to Superman and the other heroes that had lost their lives fighting Doomsday. The thought of some poor guy or girl freezing to death whilst out on New Year’s Eve, determined to have a good time despite everything, made Dick depressed.

They were putting him in the ground this afternoon. Superman. The man that had given the whole world over hope. It still hadn’t quite sunk in for Dick and he wasn’t sure it would ever sink in. He wasn’t sure what he’d do without Bruce or Alfred, even thinking about it had his stomach in knots, but Superman was Superman for christ’s sake. He’d be there, of course, there was no way he couldn’t be there given his relationship with Clark but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to accept it. Not even once they’d put him in the ground. Instead Dick had decided to throw himself into the morning of sorting through the dead to take his mind off of things. As morbid as that was.

Dick sauntered up to the abandoned warehouse and climbed its rotten stairs to the crime scene. He found his partner Amy Rohrbach knelt beside the body of what looked to be a vagrant. The sodden wood beneath his feet creaked loudly as he walked towards Amy and she looked round at him with a scowl. 

“You’re late, Grayson.”

“Give me a break, would you? It’s been a long week,” Dick said as he knelt beside her and inspected the vagrant. “What do we have? Crack?”

With the tip of a pen Amy reached down and lifted one of the empty vials scattered around the body and frowned in its direction. “Doesn’t look like it.”

Amy was good police. She was one of the few police officers in Blüdhaven that wasn’t on the take. She was a hard woman, that was for sure, but a fair one all the same. She’d taught Dick the ropes and showed him no favour despite it being well known around the station that Dick had been Bruce Wayne’s ward. Some of the other officers had given Dick stick about it and he’d taken it in good humour but Amy had never once mentioned it. All that mattered to her was the work. She was serious about cleaning up Blüdhaven.

The first hurdle would be the drugs. Blüdhaven had been a prosperous docking town once but the world had long since left it behind. There was nothing left here but drugs and crime. Even Blüdhaven’s sports teams were god-awful. Organised crime had seeped into every facet of public life in Blüdhaven and there always seemed to be some new drug out there on the streets. The orangey-brown residue that stained the victim’s mouth and had collected around the rim of the vial was unfamiliar to Dick. 

He gestured to the victim’s mouth. “Any idea what this stuff is?”

“Don’t ask me,” Amy said with a shrug of her shoulders as she set the vial down. “We’ll send it off to the lab and see what exactly our John Doe took.”

Dick rolled his eyes at that. “The Lab” was where cases went to die in Blüdhaven Police Department. Evidence regularly went missing, results for testing often took months when they should have taken weeks, and Dick was certain that someone in the BPD crime lab was on the payroll. It was a theory he’d not had time to investigate fully given everything that was happening but he was sure as hell that he wasn’t going to leave this one to the whims of “The Lab” again.

He stood up and took a look out of the warehouse’s window over at the skinny, blemished figure of a man that had been lurking around since before Dick had arrived. He had all the hallmarks of a man that was well acquainted with the needle. If someone knew what the hell was in those vials, it would be him. Dick skipped across the floors of the warehouse towards the stairs without a word to Rohrbach.

By the time he was halfway down the stairs he heard her voice calling out to him. “Where the hell are you going?”

Dick was halfway across the road before the junkie had spotted him. He was rail thin, no taller than five foot eight, and there was no way he weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds. Dick could see the puncture wounds up and down his arms where the man had prodded needle after needle. His eyes were sunken, his teeth were yellowed and cracked, and there were welts all across his face.

As Dick drew within a few feet of him the man lifted his hands into the air peacefully. “I don’t want no trouble, man.”

“Relax, I’m not here to bust your balls,” Dick said with a disarming smile. “You know the guy laid dead up there, right? He’s a friend of yours or something? You’ve been skulking around out here since before I got here, so he must mean something to you.”

To the untrained eye the micro-movements that flashed across the man’s face as he spoke might have gone unnoticed but Dick’s eye was far from untrained. He’d spent the best part of his adult life under the tutelage of the world’s greatest detective. He spotted the flickers of doubt, the uncertainty to the junkie’s attempts to retain some air of stoicism, and they told Dick everything he needed to know before the junkie had even opened his mouth to speak.

As he did so he shrugged his shoulders with a practiced nonchalance that might have been convincing if not for the shakes. “Might be.”

“You got a name for me?” Dick said as he pulled a notepad and pen from the inside of his navy suit. “Any idea what was in those vials?”

The junkie smiled wryly and rubbed his fingers together greedily. “It’s going to cost you.”

“What?” Dick said as he reached for his wallet in his trouser pocket. “Friendship’s not enough?”

In the front of Dick’s wallet was a picture of Dick and his parents in their Flying Grayson days and beside it was a smaller picture of Barbara Gordon. He smiled gently as he laid his eyes on the picture of his parents and then rifled around in his wallet in search of a note to hand to the junkie.

“No sir, not on these streets, it’s not.”

He passed it to him and the junkie held the note up in the air to inspect it before shoving it into the back pocket of the stained beige shorts he wore.

“I don’t know his full name but I know his first name was Reggie, went to school over on Freemont. They call that shit he took Schizo, has a motherfucker talking to themselves, happy one minute and angry the next, but boy does that high feel higher than any motherfucking high I ever felt before. Looks like Reggie rode that high a little further than he shoulda’ done.”

Dick jotted down the name of the drug and pushed the notepad back into the inside pocket of his suit. “Schizo, huh? Catchy.”

The junkie sauntered away and Dick stood there on the sidewalk of Waterloo Docks alone. He watched as the man faded out of view and thought back to where he’d been exactly a year ago. If memory served, he’d been over some vagrant in a doorway in Avalon Hill that had died in the night with the needle still hanging out of his arm. Not much had changed since then. Blüdhaven was still corrupt, drugs were still tearing the city apart, and Dick was still struggling to make the slightest difference. Now Superman was gone what hope did Dick have? If he failed how could Dick succeed? How could anyone succeed?

Dick gritted his teeth, pulled the notepad from within his suit pocket again, and drew a ring around the word “Schizo” with a determined scowl.

He was going to succeed, no matter the odds, he was going to clean Blüdhaven of the filth that had been allowed to do business without care for far too long, and he was going to make sure next New Year’s there’d be no more Reggies because the pushers ran this goddamn city.

And he was going to start with whoever the hell was behind Schizo.
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