Polyphemus

Miss Hobbs' Paranormal Detective Agency

They wanted him to go in through the back.

Mr. Samuel Wu, Esq, could tell simply from looking at the building. Upper East Side, clad in marble. The kind of building where the tenants had names like Stuyvesant or Rockefeller. A Chinese man such as himself would be expected to go around to the servants' entrance and scrape and bow. The only reason he would be expected is if he spoke in broken English and was delivering a load of “crean raundry”.

And so he walked towards the front door. He wasn't suicidal, if asked he would go around to the back. This wasn't the time or place to be obstinate. But it felt good to take a minor stand.

“Greetings, my dear fellow,” he said to the uniformed doorman with a winning smile. “Mr. Samuel Wu, Esq, here as a guest of Miss Hobbs.” He adjusted his tie, waiting for the order to turn around and walk away, waiting for his entire lunatic adventure to collapse at the first obstacle.

But the improbable happened. The doorman looked him over with a credulous and vaguely disgusted air, but let him through. He actually let him through, with a recitation of an obviously prewritten welcome and directions. By George.

Mr. Wu took a moment to savor the rare combination of wealth and taste that marked the décor in the lobby, then let himself in through the stairs- he may have gotten past the doorman, but he wasn't going to press his luck any further in interactions with the elevator operator or other residents of this building. Besides, a man his age who spent most of his time in an office had to keep trim. The ten stories were a brisk climb.

He was greeted by a matronly Irishwoman and escorted into the study, once again displaying sensibility and taste. And there, at last, was the elusive Miss Hobbs, clad in a daringly short dress. Mr. Wu cleared his throat nervously, uncomfortable with the nude statues and overt display of feminine sexuality. His eye lingered for a moment over the bronze form of a male athlete, before he greeted the two women and one man in the room. “Hello. I trust that I am on time, tardiness is an abominable habit with which I take great pains to not engage. I am Mr. Samuel Wu, Esq, of the Benevolent Fraternity of Merchants. Please, take one of my cards.” He reached into his vest pocket, dexterously sorted through the three business card holders with his fingers- one for English, one for Mandarin, one for Cantonese. With a small bow, he handed each person in the room an English card. “I must confess that I have little experience with the art of detecting, however I hope my own small talents will be in their way a worthy contribution to our endeavors.” With that, he sat in one of the available armchairs, determined to watch and learn.

Miss Hobbs' Paranormal Detective Agency

I love that there's only one straight person on this team thus far.

Miss Hobbs' Paranormal Detective Agency

The Gentleman Detective

Name:Mr. Samuel Wu, Esq.
Age: 34
Sex: Male
Sexuality: ”Straight”. It's 1921, after all.
Relationship Status:Confirmed bachelor.

The Body

Height:5'6”
Weight: 138 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Skin Tone: East Asian
Appearance:Wu is a well-heeled man of cultivated and genteel appearance. His hair is carefully done, he dresses exclusively in tailored suits, and there is never so much as a speck of dust on his person.

The Soul

Likes: Opera, a glass of wine, the latest investment opportunity, promoting the interests of New York's Chinese population
Dislikes: The Tongs, dirt, racist sentiment (it's 1921 so that is most sentiment)
Skills:

• Skilled banker and investor
• Moderate wealth
• Influence in Chinatown
• Wine connoisseur
• Speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Italian, and English
• Expert knife thrower

Brief History:

• 1887: Born in Chinatown to immigrant parents.
• Schooled in the American tradition, spends as much time as possible in the library. Learned knife throwing from less savory characters in the neighborhood, still practices for stress relief.
• 1912: Rather than join his brothers in running his father's small tailoring shop, Wu instead goes to work for the Benevolent Fraternity of Merchants, a Chinese-American organization that protects local rights.
• Frustrated by the refusal of Chinese custom by local white banks, the Fraternity begins operation as an unchartered bank for the Chinese population. Wu is placed in charge of investments and helps make the enterprise profitable.
• 1900 on: Amidst Wu's slow rise, two local Tongs, the Hip Sing and the On Leong, go to the mattresses. It is a simmering, ongoing war that occasionally explodes into open violence. The Fraternity and the ordinary citizens of Chinatown are caught in between. However, the police and other white authorities largely ignore the brutal gang war. Wu's efforts against the Tong come to naught.

The Story

The phonograph scratched as the needle caught, and the small but comfortable study was filled with the swell of strings. The overture to Bellini's Il Puritani, featuring as Talbo none other than the incomparable Enrico Caruso (may he rest in peace, gone earlier this year).

Mr. Samuel Wu, Esquire nursed a small glass of sherry as he looked over his mail. As he had expected, much of it was letters he had hopefully dropped off at the post office, returned unopened when his Chinese surname and Chinatown return address were noted. Crestfallen, he looked over them. His missives to the New York Post, the Board of Aldermen, the District Attorney, anyone he thought might listen. Despite the perfection and eloquence of his English they had not bothered.

With all the talk of mobsters and racketeers, all the men like Rothstein and Dwyer and Morello, no one in this town seemed aware of the decades-long mob war being fought below 14th Street. The Hop Sing and the On Leong had perfected the art of murdering one another over turf and opium long before any of the Jewish, Irish, or Italians began running rum and trading bullets. So many young men dead, so many parents suddenly childless. Wu was suddenly hit by a wave of powerlessness. There had to be something he could do.

Maybe if the law would not help it was time he acted on his own.

The idea hit him like a thunderbolt. It was silly, it was impractical, of course. But the idea of acting the chivalrous hero, to be a Parsifal or Don Ottavio, it appealed to the child in him.

But where to begin? He knew nothing of policing or detecting. Unless he were to take a sabbatical to somehow learn and practice such skills, and then teach them to other community-minded individuals. . .

Wu picked up the newspaper he had idly leafed through earlier, trying to find the ad he spotted earlier in the day. He found it, read it over twice to be sure. He nodded to himself. This was the right choice.

He wound up the telephone, lifted the earpiece from the receiver, spoke in his most cultured voice, which coincidentally was his standard voice. “Hello, operator? Kindly connect me to Miss Elizabeth Hobbs, please.”

The Ether

Color Code:6A5ACD
Theme Song: Prelude to Cavalleria Rusticana

Header

Miss Hobbs' Paranormal Detective Agency

Submitted for your consideration. Let me know if any changes or alterations are needed. Thanks for your time!

Mr. Samuel Wu, Esq

Name:Mr. Samuel Wu, Esq.
Age: 34
Sex: Male
Sexuality: ”Straight”. It's 1921, after all.
Relationship Status:Confirmed bachelor.

The Body

Height:5'6”
Weight: 138 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Skin Tone: East Asian
Appearance:Wu is a well-heeled man of cultivated and genteel appearance. His hair is carefully done, he dresses exclusively in tailored suits, and there is never so much as a speck of dust on his person.

The Soul

Likes: Opera, a glass of wine, the latest investment opportunity, promoting the interests of New York's Chinese population
Dislikes: The Tongs, dirt, racist sentiment (it's 1921 so that is most sentiment)
Skills:

• Skilled banker and investor
• Moderate wealth
• Influence in Chinatown
• Wine connoisseur
• Speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Italian, and English
• Expert knife thrower

Brief History:

• 1887: Born in Chinatown to immigrant parents.
• Schooled in the American tradition, spends as much time as possible in the library. Learned knife throwing from less savory characters in the neighborhood, still practices for stress relief.
• 1912: Rather than join his brothers in running his father's small tailoring shop, Wu instead goes to work for the Benevolent Fraternity of Merchants, a Chinese-American organization that protects local rights.
• Frustrated by the refusal of Chinese custom by local white banks, the Fraternity begins operation as an unchartered bank for the Chinese population. Wu is placed in charge of investments and helps make the enterprise profitable.
• 1900 on: Amidst Wu's slow rise, two local Tongs, the Hip Sing and the On Leong, go to war. It is a simmering, ongoing war that occasionally explodes into open violence. The Fraternity and the ordinary citizens of Chinatown are caught in between. However, the police and other white authorities largely ignore the brutal gang war. Wu's efforts against the Tong come to naught.

The Story

The phonograph scratched as the needle caught, and the small but comfortable study was filled with the swell of strings. The overture to Bellini's Il Puritani, featuring as Talbo none other than the incomparable Enrico Caruso (may he rest in peace, gone earlier this year).

Mr. Samuel Wu, Esquire nursed a small glass of sherry as he looked over his mail. As he has expected, much of it was letters he had hopefully dropped off at the post office, returned unopened when his Chinese surname and Chinatown return address were noted. Crestfallen, he looked over them. His missives to the New York Post, the Board of Aldermen, the District Attorney, anyone he thought might listen. Despite the perfection and eloquence of his English they had not bothered.

With all the talk of mobsters and racketeers, all the men like Rothstein and Dwyer and Morello, no one in this town seemed aware of the decades-long mob war being fought below 14th Street. The Hop Sing and the On Leong had perfected the art of murdering one another over turf and opium long before any of the Jewish, Irish, or Italians began running rum and trading bullets. So many young men dead, so many parents suddenly childless. Wu was suddenly hit by a wave of powerlessness. There had to be something he could do.

Maybe if the law would not help it was time he acted on his own.

The idea hit him like a thunderbolt. It was silly, it was impractical, of course. But the idea of acting the chivalrous hero, to be a Parsifal or Don Ottavio, it appealed to the child in him.

But where to begin? He knew nothing of policing or detecting. Unless he were to take a sabbatical to somehow learn and practice such skills, and then teach them to other community-minded individuals. . .

Wu picked up the newspaper he had idly leafed through earlier, trying to find the ad he spotted earlier in the day. He found it, read it over twice to be sure. He nodded to himself. This was the right choice.

He wound up the telephone, lifted the earpiece from the receiver, spoke in his most cultured voice, which coincidentally was his standard voice. “Hello, operator? Kindly connect me to Miss Elizabeth Hobbs, please.”

The Ether

Color Code:6A5ACD
Theme Song: Prelude to Cavalleria Rusticana

Miss Hobbs' Paranormal Detective Agency

This is very much my jam and I'm hard at work on a CS.

Pitch of the Night

The clerk at the convenience store on the turnpike had been one of them. A pile of wriggling, glistening worms, stacked in the rough shape of a man and squeezed into a yellow polyester polo shirt with a nametag proclaiming the pile of worms to be named Brian. Edward Donahue could make out the overskin at the same time, like two films projected on top of one another. Brian masqueraded as a friendly-faced man in his mid-twenties, and that was the facade Donahue made sure to react to. His mother had told him it was rude to stare, and Donahue didn't want to find out what happened if the pile of worms that called itself Brian realized it had been made. So he grunted a few banal pleasantries and made sure not to make contact with Brian's slithering and oozing hands while taking back his change for the pint bottle of Absolut vodka.

Even now, a few hours later, Donahue couldn't shake the image of those countless worms, crawling over one another and leaving trails of slime even as they formed lips and ears and fingers. It was far from the worst thing he had ever seen but it wasn't terribly fun either. He absently cleared his throat, straightened his cheap Van Heusen tie, pulled his shirt cuff over the weird little birthmark on his wrist, checked his whereabouts once again. The diner at the Brier Hill Inn was nothing special, clearly a shadow of what it had once been.. Neither was the coffee he was pounding back. But it seemed like the place to start his surveillance job.

Keeping a watchful but inconspicuous eye from behind the newspaper he was only pretending to read, Donahue mentally reviewed the case notes. Charles Sandrelli, forty-five. Agricultural supplies sales rep. His wife knew he made frequent and seemingly unnecessary stops in Brier Hill during his business trips, she wanted grounds for a divorce and suspected ol' Chuck had a girlfriend tucked away up here. Or maybe a boyfriend, Donahue idly speculated. Not that it mattered, he was a Nineties guy. Just another philandering husband, another paycheck, another podunk little town, another few hours before he clocked off and went back to his room to anesthetize himself with Swedish vodka and basic cable in an effort to forget about Brian back on the turnpike and his throbbing face made of worms.

And so Donahue sat in the diner, drinking coffee, staring at a newspaper, keeping an eye out for Sandrelli so that he might follow him.

Just a few more hours before his retainer of billable hours ran out for the day and he could feel the sweet blessed relief of the vodka, still in its brown paper bag in his room. Donahue could hardly wait.

Pitch of the Night

Edward Donahue

_{Name: Edward Donahue
Age: Forty-seven
Gender: Male
Profession: Private Investigator}

◈ ◈ ◈ ◈ ◈

_{P H Y S I C A L A P P E A R A N C E}

Donahue is a dour, stolid middle-aged white man of unremarkable appearance. His attire is conservative and professional while still being cheap and unambitious.

He's in good shape for his age, though he is rarely called upon to do anything physical and concerned he's losing the athleticism of his youth

_{I N H E R I T E D C U R S E}

True Sight

_{C H A R A C T E R T R A I T S}

» The World Unmasked: Ever since he was a child, Donahue has been privy to a terrifying truth- some of the people around us are not people but instead clever imitations. Somehow, in some way, he is able to see through these disguises and see the creatures beneath them.
» Investigator: Perhaps stemming from the above, Donahue has a compulsive need to understand and solve mysteries. He spent several years as a detective for the Providence, Rhode Island police department and now works as a private investigator on retainer with several law firms. He is fairly skilled in detecting and sniffing out clues after a few decades of practice.
_{D A R K H U N G E R S ( P E R S O N A L C H A L L E N G E S )}

» The World Masked: In spite of being able to see past the human faces of creatures around him, Donahue rarely if ever acts on this knowledge. He is frightened by what he sees and reasons that letting on to his ability will endanger him. Accordingly, he has developed an admirable poker face.
» Functional Alcoholic: Part of it is police culture and peer pressure, part of it stems from a lifetime of pretending everything is fine. While he never is impaired at work, Donahue needs a moderate amount of alcohol in order to relax and fall asleep at night. His consumption is usually proportionate to the amount of stress he is feeling.

_{A S P I R A T I O N S / P E R S O N A L M O T I V A T I O N S}

Edward Donahue has been brought to Brier Hill for purely professional reasons- collecting evidence of a man's infidelity to his wife for a juicy divorce case. He just wants to finish up, head back to Providence, and collect his paycheck.

Pitch of the Night

Here's my character. Let me know if any changes or rewrites are needed.

Edward Donahue

_{Name: Edward Donahue
Age: Forty-seven
Gender: Male
Profession: Private Investigator}

◈ ◈ ◈ ◈ ◈

_{P H Y S I C A L A P P E A R A N C E}

Donahue is a dour, stolid middle-aged white man of unremarkable appearance. His attire is conservative and professional while still being cheap and unambitious.

He's in good shape for his age, though he is rarely called upon to do anything physical and concerned he's losing the athleticism of his youth

_{I N H E R I T E D C U R S E}

True Sight

_{C H A R A C T E R T R A I T S}

» The World Unmasked: Ever since he was a child, Donahue has been privy to a terrifying truth- some of the people around us are not people but instead clever imitations. Somehow, in some way, he is able to see through these disguises and see the creatures beneath them.
» Investigator: Perhaps stemming from the above, Donahue has a compulsive need to understand and solve mysteries. He spent several years as a detective for the Providence, Rhode Island police department and now works as a private investigator on retainer with several law firms. He is fairly skilled in detecting and sniffing out clues after a few decades of practice.
_{D A R K H U N G E R S ( P E R S O N A L C H A L L E N G E S )}

» The World Masked: In spite of being able to see past the human faces of creatures around him, Donahue rarely if ever acts on this knowledge. He is frightened by what he sees and reasons that letting on to his ability will endanger him. Accordingly, he has developed an admirable poker face.
» Functional Alcoholic: Part of it is police culture and peer pressure, part of it stems from a lifetime of pretending everything is fine. While he never is impaired at work, Donahue needs a moderate amount of alcohol in order to relax and fall asleep at night. His consumption is usually proportionate to the amount of stress he is feeling.

_{A S P I R A T I O N S / P E R S O N A L M O T I V A T I O N S}

Edward Donahue has been brought to Brier Hill for purely professional reasons- collecting evidence of a man's infidelity to his wife for a juicy divorce case. He just wants to finish up, head back to Providence, and collect his paycheck.

Pitch of the Night - IntChk

This is my jam, consider me interested.

Justice League: Shadow of the Gods (Always Open)

Alright, a word of explanation- my newest post is a collab with Didact and posted with his and webboy's permission. This is the new plot post, every new development is straight from Didact. I don't usually go in for colorful text but if people prefer I can make some edits.