Dan Sagittarius (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hallelujahjunction) wrote2020-07-07 06:08 pm
hallelujahjunction) wrote2020-07-07 06:08 pm
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APPLICATION
Player Name/Handle: Lisa
Plurk Handle:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
hotpinkcoffee
Player Status: Current Player
Other characters: Mac
Character Name: Daniel Ruston “Dan Sagittarius” Sartoris
Fandom: Tabletop OC
Character Journal:hallelujahjunction
OU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? OC
Canon point: A few months after Eliora’s death in our Monster of the Week Campaign
PB: Ian Somerhalder
SETTING BACKGROUND
Dan comes from an urban fantasy setting: a world much like our own, but resplendent with cryptids, monsters, secret societies, wizards and ghosts tucked just out of view of most of the human populace. The supernatural underbelly of the world is colloquially known as The Weird. Dan’s a monster hunter, which means he is plugged into a network of people and beings aware of The Weird and is frequently summoned to help take care of them. While most monster hunters in his world are affiliated with a unionized secret society of magic users known as The Shield, Dan, while aware of the society’s existence, avoids the backbiting politics of The Shield and is essentiallya scab an independent contractor, which is something of a rarity.
HISTORY
• Dan was born sometime in the 80’s to two survivalist libertarian conspiracy theory preppers who lived in a bunker in Hallelujah Junction, California, off-the-grid. He was the second eldest of seven children.
• As a child, Dan and his siblings were homeschooled in their bunker and on their family’s land, where they learned plenty of practical skills – field medicine, sharpshooting, cooking, music – and neglected some very critical skills such as reading and writing. Dan never learned to read.
• While Dan had a few friends in Hallelujah Junction, throughout his childhood all his closest relationships were with his siblings. His youth was secluded and unusual but happy.
• When Dan was a teenager, his parents’ land was repossessed by the federal government due to a few million dollars in unpaid property taxes. His parents, devastated and spiteful, sought the assistance of a witch in Virginia City, Nevada, who would curse the land to be forever barren and useless. In exchange, Dan’s parents were to surrender their youngest child to the witch before the next full moon, a bargain they never intended to honor.
• Dan’s parents broke on the contract with the witch, who placed a curse on the entire family to perish one by one over the course of a decade. The witch then left the city.
• Within two years, Dan’s parents died in tragic accidents and his older sister Kitty legally adopted all six younger siblings. The siblings, aware that the curse was in effect, embarked on a road trip to try and find the witch and unbind the curse. Their efforts were not nearly as successful as they hoped, despite their becoming very familiar with The Weird, and each fruitless year one of Dan’s siblings died.
• After seven years under the curse, Dan and Kitty, the last two survivors of their family, finally found and confronted the witch. They were able to slay the witch, but Kitty was mortally wounded in the fight while shielding Dan from an attack. She died in Dan’s arms, comforted that the curse had been broken and at least one member of her family could live freely.
• Dan, alone, uneducated and aimless, took off on a road trip across North America with no destination in mind, picking up odd jobs washing dishes, fixing cars or stripping and sleeping in stranger’s beds. While working at a gay bar called The Zodiac in Dallas, he adopted the name “Dan Sagittarius” as his stripper name and eventually his official identity, abandoning “Sartoris” almost entirely.
• In Mexico, Dan purchased a classic car for a criminally low amount of money. He soon realized that the car was cheap because it was haunted as shit; upon setting the vehicle on fire, he inadvertently released the ghost of an eleven year-old girl, Eliora, who had been killed in a hit-and-run with that car.
• Dan and Eliora made a pact to find her killer, an endeavor that lasted several years. By the time they did track the man down and confront him, they’d become close friends, and Eliora chose to stay on this dimension to travel with Dan. Dan considered Eliora like a little sister or partner in crime, and they traveled together for several more years, grifting and slumming their way back and forth across the continent.
• Due to Eliora’s interest in connecting with members of The Shield and learning to control her spectral powers, the two of them began taking monster-hunting gigs, teaming up with other monster hunters, friendly ghosts and magic users. Eliora’s powers gave her intense bloodlust, and Dan’s role often boiled down to convincing her to not use cruel and inhumane magical powers just because she could.
• During one of these gigs, Dan received a lethal blow while fighting a vampire. Eliora gave up her life force to keep Dan alive, which resulted in her vanishing from the dimension and essentially dying.
• Dan is taken from a few months after Eliora’s death.
PERSONALITY
Dan Sagittarius is, in many ways, the best guy you’ll hope to meet. He’s brave, compassionate, supportive and generous. He’ll take a bullet for a stranger or drop everything to help an old lady cross the street safely. He’s wildly charismatic and nurturing and can make any person in the room feel like the center of the world. He gives excellent advice. He’s the first person in a group to circle around and make sure the stragglers are cared for, and possibly the first to even realize people are straggling. He’ll remember someone’s face, name, occupation and coffee order a decade after meeting them once. He cares deeply for other people, whether he’s known them for a second or a year, and is empathetic and perceptive enough to meet most people with the kindness they need to feel. Having lost so many, he values the uniqueness of each person’s life to an extreme degree, and stands without compromise with his notions of protecting the vulnerable and keeping an open mind to others. He’s kind, he’s community-minded, he’s attentive and he’s self-sacrificing.
He’s also a lying con artist who’s grifted, thieved and ghosted his way across the continent several times, cutting legal and sometimes ethical corners willy-nilly, weaponizing his charm and empathy to get what he wants. Dan’s extremely manipulative and dishonest, with a tendency to self-servingly believe that what someone doesn’t notice won’t hurt them, and that as long as he isn’t causing actual injury or ruin to anyone else anything he does is fair play. His ploys range from distasteful (feigning illness to get free things, hooking up with strangers to steal their wallets, counting cards) to over-the-line (blackmail, property damage, impersonation, bomb threats). He typically is able to justify these behaviors as part of Robin Hood schemes or as necessary tactics to protect people, but the truth is that on some level, Dan feels very entitled to other people’s lives and property. By virtue of feeling responsible for others, by appointing himself their protector, he also feels as if they owe him.
Nor does Dan’s deep, sincere reverence for the life and safety of others translate to intimacy, as Dan closes himself off emotionally from others. In his view, he doesn’t need someone to be his friend to care about them, so why bother with vulnerability? He holds himself at a distance, always taking in more information from others than he’s willing to give and cutting and running as soon as things get close. His distaste for commitment is reflected in his relationships with places and lifestyles, too; Dan’s never in his adult life spent more than six weeks in a single location. Part of it is natural restless wanderlust, and part of it is an allergy to routine or familiarity. Dan's from a literal and metaphorical earthquake state, and never wants to let complacency lower his guard.
Dan closes himself off from his own emotions as well. He’s intensely uncomfortable sitting with his feelings, particularly the overwhelming grief he feels from losing his family and Eliora. He distracts himself with risky, self-destructive behavior, ranging from pedestrian (binge-drinking, anonymous sex) to fantastical (he once drove a car straight into a house rather than jimmy a lock). He’s impulsive and reckless, and while he’s always got an eye out for the safety of those around him, he has a complete blindspot when it comes to his own, and resents anyone attempting to look out for him. He isn’t suicidal, but he’s dodged his sense of self for so long that his own existence is a zero in his decision-making calculus, and he dislikes having to go back to the chalkboard.
Wonky survival calculus aside, Dan’s quite intelligent and resourceful. Dan’s attention to detail doesn’t extend solely to the minutiae of people’s lives; he’s got an incredible knack for auditory memory and direction, as he’s never been able to write things down and has just had to remember them. On account of having consuming literally hundreds of hours of audiobooks and documentaries and thousands of hours of NPR, he’s got a broad knowledge of current events and a deep wealth of trivia. Dan’s accustomed to showing up in strange situations with no money and limited resources against supernatural foes, and as such is quick to analyze his surroundings and suss out any beneficial angle. He’s skilled at a variety of disciplines that others might not expect from him, such as trapping and carpentry. He’s never ostentatious about his smarts, and his impulsivity and especially his illiteracy often lead people to assume he’s stupid; he rarely tries to disprove them, aware that “dumb but pretty” or “stupid but sweet” are stereotypes that play in his favor. He doesn’t have any ego about it.
Dan’s deepest dream, naturally, is to just feel comfortable stopping - to no longer feel beholden to society, to just fuck off to the desert as is the birthright he inherited from his hermetic antisocial parents, to no longer find himself called by the ache of sympathy to protect others or the grief of having cared. But, whether he resigns himself to this or not, he’s fundamentally incapable of separating himself from the world; with so little knowledge of his own heart, all he can do is follow his instincts to gather and tend to those around him. He’s more than just a social creature; he’s a social symbiote, sustained only by the importance of each soul he surrounds himself with.
Ultimately, Dan’s just a mess of contradictions: a man who can recite a hundred poems from memory but can’t read a dinner menu, whom you can rely on but never trust, who has lost but never grieved, who loves everyone and yet is close to nobody, a loner who thrives in a community.
Great guy. Kind of an asshole.
CANON POWERS
None.
POWER SELECTION
Noospheric Powers: I’d like Dan to have the ability to “store” a bit of emotion from someone he’s interacting with face-to-face, with the option to give back to them later. For example, if he’s around someone who’s feeling joy, he’ll be able to stockpile a little bit of joy from them and then put it back into them later, such as to help counteract despair if they’re feeling upset. Being Dan, he’ll likely use this for positive emotions like happiness, relief, security, hope, etc. primarily, but he’ll probably keep a small stockpile of fear, anger and sorrow for people he doesn’t trust if he can get his hands on it. The other party may not realize it’s happening during collection or return.
Limitations: Dan can only collect an emotion that’s already been present before him; he can’t take joy (or whichever) from one person and use it for another, and he can’t give someone joy if he’s never seen them happy in person. The more nuanced and subtle an emotion is, the harder it is to collect and return – sheer bliss, terror and rage are likely the easiest to handle, weird emotions like unease and nostalgia much harder. Effects will be limited to a short duration, probably a maximum of ten minutes. Furthermore, this will affect emotions, not thoughts, and could lead to some cognitive dissonance – someone with literally nothing to be happy about isn’t likely to get much of an effective boost from Dan’s skills, and may actually end up worse off. An emotion that was collected recently will be less powerful than one he’s had in his back pocket for a few weeks or more, because it won’t have had time to solidify. He needs to use touch to collect and return emotions – it doesn’t have to be much or skin-to-skin, but he does need to hold a hand, pat a shoulder, high-five, something like that at both stages of the process.
This will all be opt-in for other PCs each time and be coordinated with the mods for NPCs.
All this plays into not only Dan’s skills as a charming con artist who manipulates people emotionally, but also into his self-image as someone who can be trusted to manage others. It'll also be useful for morale boosts and, potentially down the line, hamstringing cowardly pencilnecks.
ABILITIES
Dan’s great with people and animals. He’s got very “friend to all living things” vibes, and is a particularly calming presence for children or people who feel scared or vulnerable. He’s got a keen enough eye for body language and tone that he can communicate well even when he doesn’t share a language or species with others.
Dan’s a great liar, actor and impersonator.
Dan can play piano incredibly well (though he can’t read music). He’s particularly good at ragtime.
Dan’s got a good deal of “badass normal” skills on account of being a monster hunter raised by preppers. He’s comfortable with most firearms and has good wilderness survival and field medicine/first aid skills. He’s in great shape and can hold his own in hand-to-hand combat, but has no formal martial arts or boxing training. His favored weapon is a metal baseball bat, although he tries to kneecap before straight-up bludgeon.
On account of his odd jobs and past adventures/hobbies, he’s skilled with knots, power tools, bartending, table-waiting, doing math in his head, operating heavy machinery, fixing vehicles, swimming and driving motorboats.
* Can’t sing worth a good goddamn, though. His vocal range is like, a fifth of an octave.
SETTING/SUITABILITY
➤ How do you expect your character to respond to the setting? Even if they plan to rebel in the long term, will they be able to at least obey enough to not get shocked to death?
Dan’s going to be straight-up horrified the first time the Jorgmund treats living people as disposable collateral, and immediately align himself with any party that values life more than profit. He’s not, however, stupid about this, so after the initial shock he’ll keep his head down so as not to jeopardize the others – he’ll have no illusions that the Jorgmund wouldn’t hurt hostages or his teammates to keep him in line.
As for the setting itself, Dan’s going to hate it. Going one mile an hour is a sort of psychological torture for him, and the corporate setting and inability to just up and leave when he gets restless is going to be a major adjustment for him.
➤ What do you hope to do with your character long-term?
I definitely want Dan to bond with others, first on a superficial and then on a much deeper level as he can’t just ghost when people get too close. I’d love for him to be a valuable part of the rebellion, perhaps as the conscientious workhorse mitigating collateral damage to vulnerable PCs and NPCs.
➤ Does your character currently have skills that would allow them to adapt, survive, and do the heroic things being asked of them? If your character doesn't, do you think they'd have the capacity to learn quickly?
Yes, Dan’s quite skilled in a variety of areas, learns quickly, is adaptable, is shrewd about how to work in a group, and is selflessly heroic. He’ll be fine.
➤ If they're not used to cooperating with others, what makes you think they'll be able to adapt to cooperating with the group?
Dan’s used to cooperating with people from all different backgrounds; even though he’s no great fan of many members of the Shield and actively despises some of the people he’s teamed up with to hunt monsters in The Weird (particularly the cold-blooded hunters who care more about magic and power than about keeping people safe), he’s able to put the greater good first with only minimal grousing.
➤ Will your character have long-term plans to rebel against Jorgmund? If so, how? Will they betray the other PCs and cooperate with Jorgmund? If so, how do you plan to handle the negative CR that might arise?
Dan wouldn’t betray the other PCs unless there were serious division about how to handle a threat and what acceptable losses and actions are, in which case he might go rogue rather than cooperate with the group. I don’t see that sort of situation happening here given the mix of heroes, but it could theoretically happen on a side mission – if it does, I’m fine with having Dan try and make amends after the fact or taking any punishment on the chin. He’ll absolutely develop longterm plans to rebel against the Jorgmund, who stand for basically everything he loathes.
SAMPLES
Network Sample
I. After they get the welcome spiel and see the slideshow, your character is put in front of a camera for an interview and attached to a polygraph. The polygraph may not be accurate, and can potentially give false positives and false negatives, so players can play with that all they want. If the Jorgmund staff interpret a response as a lie, they'll demand a different answer, causing characters to potentially need to respond honestly, craft a "creative" truth, or tell very good lie. The questions are completely absurd, especially after such a hostile welcome to the rig.
[Dan looks comfortable. There’s no reason for him to look comfortable right now, what with the polygraph and the camera and the interviewer and the disorientation and the fact that this setting is what he’s pretty sure Hell must be like, all fluorescent and tie-wearing and smelling of printer toner. But he’s pretty sure he’s being judged right now, and nothing quite kicks his disarming demeanor into gear faster than the reality that he’s being as scrutinized as he’s scrutinizing others. He loops an ankle over his knee and leans back with a bland smile, holding a perfectly polite amount of eye contact with the interviewer, slightly jiggling his foot with the affect of someone who’s just absentmindedly active, not actually fidgety.]
I’m an open book, sir. Do you want to be called sir? I don’t want to be presumptuous or anything.
"Success, integrity, or friendship, pick two and explain why?"
That depends on what the success is, don’t it? If you’re talking financial success, I like to think I’m a pretty humble person who won’t need all that. But if you’re talking success in your goals, that’s different, because there are plenty of goals that are more important than keeping your friends. [He’s thinking of his work, of times when the difference between winning and losing had a bodycount. In the burning light of some of the threats The Weird can cough up, the importance of individual relationships just shrinks and withers like scraps of paper. Besides, friendship can be heavy in a way that’s harder to carry and understand than the straightforward goal of saving lives. The edges are fuzzier, the disappointments somehow more painful, the stakes smaller and yet alarmingly higher. As often as not, Dan figures he not only could go without it but might even appreciate the opportunity.]
You don’t give up integrity, though. That’s one of those things that’s near impossible to get back once you give it up.
"If you could get rid of any one of the US states, which one would you get rid of and why?"
Texas. Don’t get me wrong, I love Texas, spent some of the best times of my life zipping around that giant state. But there’s plenty of the people there who ain’t so gung ho about the other forty-nine, and honestly, I don’t think that land should belong to the United States any more than it does to Mexico or the people who were there at the start. We didn’t exactly get it for honorable reasons.
[You know what’s great? Watching hours of late-night documentaries on the settling of the West while killing time in the shadiest motels the desert has to offer, picking up and taking snapshots of insight and trivia like bugs smacked against a windshield on the highway, at once both alone and yet at the same time so conscious of the breadth of human history and capacity. Falling asleep to the burble of televised tragedy and triumph and waking up knowing you’re just a tiny, barely-significant part of it. Dan’s best mornings are the ones after nights spent with Ken Burns wannabes.]
But if we’re talking places I personally wouldn’t mind never going back to, I can’t think of any place less enjoyable than Delaware. At least New Jersey had good food and nice people.
[The polygraph doesn’t buzz.]
"On a scale from 1 to 10, rate me as an interviewer."
An eight. [Dan grins. There’s a reason that despite the fact that he can’t spell even his own name consistently, has zero references, has a resume of abandoned two-week jobs longer than a CVS receipt, and routinely shows up to job interviews slightly hammered, he still waltzes into entry positions in any town he spends more than four days in. He’s got what headhunters call “soft skills”.] You’re professional, your questions are interesting, and even though you’re probably going to be promoted at some point soon, you haven’t checked out of this position yet, which means you got integrity. I’d score you higher but I pretty sure you’d think I was sucking up.
[He doesn’t really mean any of that, but it’s also not a lie; it’s that thin line of saying just enough things that are actually true and enough things that don’t actually matter that the polygraph only twitches ever so slightly and demurely, not buzzing.]
Prose Sample
TDM Sample
ADDITIONAL INFO
I’d like to handwave that Dan has voice-to-text and text-to-voice functions on his comm and any other tech he uses on the rig; I’d rather he not suddenly be able to read due to the translation mechanic. Bonus points for it being super buggy and occasionally giving bizarre mistranscriptions.
Additionally, I just want to flag that I know a character with high levels of charisma and manipulative skills is going to require a lot of communicating with other players, and I fully intend to keep that at the forefront of my playing to avoid accidentally info- or godmodding anyone.
FINAL QUESTIONS
➤ Will your character suspect some kind of guiding intelligence has brought them to the game? Or will they think it was random or done by Jorgmund?
Dan’s unlikely to think there’s any divine intelligence at play, but he’ll probably suspect that there are human or supernatural machinations hidden behind the scenes playing some kind of long con. He’s suspicious by nature and used to conspiracies and shadowy cults jacking up his day.
➤ If they think it was something other than Jorgmund, like God or some other force of fate, what character traits do they think of that intelligence as having? Is it cruel or kind? Capriciously punishing them or doing it for good reason?
Definitely not trustworthy, whatever or whomever they are. He’ll be sleeping with one eye open.
Player Name/Handle: Lisa
Plurk Handle:
Player Status: Current Player
Other characters: Mac
Character Name: Daniel Ruston “Dan Sagittarius” Sartoris
Fandom: Tabletop OC
Character Journal:
hallelujahjunctionOU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? OC
Canon point: A few months after Eliora’s death in our Monster of the Week Campaign
PB: Ian Somerhalder
SETTING BACKGROUND
Dan comes from an urban fantasy setting: a world much like our own, but resplendent with cryptids, monsters, secret societies, wizards and ghosts tucked just out of view of most of the human populace. The supernatural underbelly of the world is colloquially known as The Weird. Dan’s a monster hunter, which means he is plugged into a network of people and beings aware of The Weird and is frequently summoned to help take care of them. While most monster hunters in his world are affiliated with a unionized secret society of magic users known as The Shield, Dan, while aware of the society’s existence, avoids the backbiting politics of The Shield and is essentially
HISTORY
• Dan was born sometime in the 80’s to two survivalist libertarian conspiracy theory preppers who lived in a bunker in Hallelujah Junction, California, off-the-grid. He was the second eldest of seven children.
• As a child, Dan and his siblings were homeschooled in their bunker and on their family’s land, where they learned plenty of practical skills – field medicine, sharpshooting, cooking, music – and neglected some very critical skills such as reading and writing. Dan never learned to read.
• While Dan had a few friends in Hallelujah Junction, throughout his childhood all his closest relationships were with his siblings. His youth was secluded and unusual but happy.
• When Dan was a teenager, his parents’ land was repossessed by the federal government due to a few million dollars in unpaid property taxes. His parents, devastated and spiteful, sought the assistance of a witch in Virginia City, Nevada, who would curse the land to be forever barren and useless. In exchange, Dan’s parents were to surrender their youngest child to the witch before the next full moon, a bargain they never intended to honor.
• Dan’s parents broke on the contract with the witch, who placed a curse on the entire family to perish one by one over the course of a decade. The witch then left the city.
• Within two years, Dan’s parents died in tragic accidents and his older sister Kitty legally adopted all six younger siblings. The siblings, aware that the curse was in effect, embarked on a road trip to try and find the witch and unbind the curse. Their efforts were not nearly as successful as they hoped, despite their becoming very familiar with The Weird, and each fruitless year one of Dan’s siblings died.
• After seven years under the curse, Dan and Kitty, the last two survivors of their family, finally found and confronted the witch. They were able to slay the witch, but Kitty was mortally wounded in the fight while shielding Dan from an attack. She died in Dan’s arms, comforted that the curse had been broken and at least one member of her family could live freely.
• Dan, alone, uneducated and aimless, took off on a road trip across North America with no destination in mind, picking up odd jobs washing dishes, fixing cars or stripping and sleeping in stranger’s beds. While working at a gay bar called The Zodiac in Dallas, he adopted the name “Dan Sagittarius” as his stripper name and eventually his official identity, abandoning “Sartoris” almost entirely.
• In Mexico, Dan purchased a classic car for a criminally low amount of money. He soon realized that the car was cheap because it was haunted as shit; upon setting the vehicle on fire, he inadvertently released the ghost of an eleven year-old girl, Eliora, who had been killed in a hit-and-run with that car.
• Dan and Eliora made a pact to find her killer, an endeavor that lasted several years. By the time they did track the man down and confront him, they’d become close friends, and Eliora chose to stay on this dimension to travel with Dan. Dan considered Eliora like a little sister or partner in crime, and they traveled together for several more years, grifting and slumming their way back and forth across the continent.
• Due to Eliora’s interest in connecting with members of The Shield and learning to control her spectral powers, the two of them began taking monster-hunting gigs, teaming up with other monster hunters, friendly ghosts and magic users. Eliora’s powers gave her intense bloodlust, and Dan’s role often boiled down to convincing her to not use cruel and inhumane magical powers just because she could.
• During one of these gigs, Dan received a lethal blow while fighting a vampire. Eliora gave up her life force to keep Dan alive, which resulted in her vanishing from the dimension and essentially dying.
• Dan is taken from a few months after Eliora’s death.
PERSONALITY
Dan Sagittarius is, in many ways, the best guy you’ll hope to meet. He’s brave, compassionate, supportive and generous. He’ll take a bullet for a stranger or drop everything to help an old lady cross the street safely. He’s wildly charismatic and nurturing and can make any person in the room feel like the center of the world. He gives excellent advice. He’s the first person in a group to circle around and make sure the stragglers are cared for, and possibly the first to even realize people are straggling. He’ll remember someone’s face, name, occupation and coffee order a decade after meeting them once. He cares deeply for other people, whether he’s known them for a second or a year, and is empathetic and perceptive enough to meet most people with the kindness they need to feel. Having lost so many, he values the uniqueness of each person’s life to an extreme degree, and stands without compromise with his notions of protecting the vulnerable and keeping an open mind to others. He’s kind, he’s community-minded, he’s attentive and he’s self-sacrificing.
He’s also a lying con artist who’s grifted, thieved and ghosted his way across the continent several times, cutting legal and sometimes ethical corners willy-nilly, weaponizing his charm and empathy to get what he wants. Dan’s extremely manipulative and dishonest, with a tendency to self-servingly believe that what someone doesn’t notice won’t hurt them, and that as long as he isn’t causing actual injury or ruin to anyone else anything he does is fair play. His ploys range from distasteful (feigning illness to get free things, hooking up with strangers to steal their wallets, counting cards) to over-the-line (blackmail, property damage, impersonation, bomb threats). He typically is able to justify these behaviors as part of Robin Hood schemes or as necessary tactics to protect people, but the truth is that on some level, Dan feels very entitled to other people’s lives and property. By virtue of feeling responsible for others, by appointing himself their protector, he also feels as if they owe him.
Nor does Dan’s deep, sincere reverence for the life and safety of others translate to intimacy, as Dan closes himself off emotionally from others. In his view, he doesn’t need someone to be his friend to care about them, so why bother with vulnerability? He holds himself at a distance, always taking in more information from others than he’s willing to give and cutting and running as soon as things get close. His distaste for commitment is reflected in his relationships with places and lifestyles, too; Dan’s never in his adult life spent more than six weeks in a single location. Part of it is natural restless wanderlust, and part of it is an allergy to routine or familiarity. Dan's from a literal and metaphorical earthquake state, and never wants to let complacency lower his guard.
Dan closes himself off from his own emotions as well. He’s intensely uncomfortable sitting with his feelings, particularly the overwhelming grief he feels from losing his family and Eliora. He distracts himself with risky, self-destructive behavior, ranging from pedestrian (binge-drinking, anonymous sex) to fantastical (he once drove a car straight into a house rather than jimmy a lock). He’s impulsive and reckless, and while he’s always got an eye out for the safety of those around him, he has a complete blindspot when it comes to his own, and resents anyone attempting to look out for him. He isn’t suicidal, but he’s dodged his sense of self for so long that his own existence is a zero in his decision-making calculus, and he dislikes having to go back to the chalkboard.
Wonky survival calculus aside, Dan’s quite intelligent and resourceful. Dan’s attention to detail doesn’t extend solely to the minutiae of people’s lives; he’s got an incredible knack for auditory memory and direction, as he’s never been able to write things down and has just had to remember them. On account of having consuming literally hundreds of hours of audiobooks and documentaries and thousands of hours of NPR, he’s got a broad knowledge of current events and a deep wealth of trivia. Dan’s accustomed to showing up in strange situations with no money and limited resources against supernatural foes, and as such is quick to analyze his surroundings and suss out any beneficial angle. He’s skilled at a variety of disciplines that others might not expect from him, such as trapping and carpentry. He’s never ostentatious about his smarts, and his impulsivity and especially his illiteracy often lead people to assume he’s stupid; he rarely tries to disprove them, aware that “dumb but pretty” or “stupid but sweet” are stereotypes that play in his favor. He doesn’t have any ego about it.
Dan’s deepest dream, naturally, is to just feel comfortable stopping - to no longer feel beholden to society, to just fuck off to the desert as is the birthright he inherited from his hermetic antisocial parents, to no longer find himself called by the ache of sympathy to protect others or the grief of having cared. But, whether he resigns himself to this or not, he’s fundamentally incapable of separating himself from the world; with so little knowledge of his own heart, all he can do is follow his instincts to gather and tend to those around him. He’s more than just a social creature; he’s a social symbiote, sustained only by the importance of each soul he surrounds himself with.
Ultimately, Dan’s just a mess of contradictions: a man who can recite a hundred poems from memory but can’t read a dinner menu, whom you can rely on but never trust, who has lost but never grieved, who loves everyone and yet is close to nobody, a loner who thrives in a community.
Great guy. Kind of an asshole.
CANON POWERS
None.
POWER SELECTION
Noospheric Powers: I’d like Dan to have the ability to “store” a bit of emotion from someone he’s interacting with face-to-face, with the option to give back to them later. For example, if he’s around someone who’s feeling joy, he’ll be able to stockpile a little bit of joy from them and then put it back into them later, such as to help counteract despair if they’re feeling upset. Being Dan, he’ll likely use this for positive emotions like happiness, relief, security, hope, etc. primarily, but he’ll probably keep a small stockpile of fear, anger and sorrow for people he doesn’t trust if he can get his hands on it. The other party may not realize it’s happening during collection or return.
Limitations: Dan can only collect an emotion that’s already been present before him; he can’t take joy (or whichever) from one person and use it for another, and he can’t give someone joy if he’s never seen them happy in person. The more nuanced and subtle an emotion is, the harder it is to collect and return – sheer bliss, terror and rage are likely the easiest to handle, weird emotions like unease and nostalgia much harder. Effects will be limited to a short duration, probably a maximum of ten minutes. Furthermore, this will affect emotions, not thoughts, and could lead to some cognitive dissonance – someone with literally nothing to be happy about isn’t likely to get much of an effective boost from Dan’s skills, and may actually end up worse off. An emotion that was collected recently will be less powerful than one he’s had in his back pocket for a few weeks or more, because it won’t have had time to solidify. He needs to use touch to collect and return emotions – it doesn’t have to be much or skin-to-skin, but he does need to hold a hand, pat a shoulder, high-five, something like that at both stages of the process.
This will all be opt-in for other PCs each time and be coordinated with the mods for NPCs.
All this plays into not only Dan’s skills as a charming con artist who manipulates people emotionally, but also into his self-image as someone who can be trusted to manage others. It'll also be useful for morale boosts and, potentially down the line, hamstringing cowardly pencilnecks.
ABILITIES
Dan’s great with people and animals. He’s got very “friend to all living things” vibes, and is a particularly calming presence for children or people who feel scared or vulnerable. He’s got a keen enough eye for body language and tone that he can communicate well even when he doesn’t share a language or species with others.
Dan’s a great liar, actor and impersonator.
Dan can play piano incredibly well (though he can’t read music). He’s particularly good at ragtime.
Dan’s got a good deal of “badass normal” skills on account of being a monster hunter raised by preppers. He’s comfortable with most firearms and has good wilderness survival and field medicine/first aid skills. He’s in great shape and can hold his own in hand-to-hand combat, but has no formal martial arts or boxing training. His favored weapon is a metal baseball bat, although he tries to kneecap before straight-up bludgeon.
On account of his odd jobs and past adventures/hobbies, he’s skilled with knots, power tools, bartending, table-waiting, doing math in his head, operating heavy machinery, fixing vehicles, swimming and driving motorboats.
* Can’t sing worth a good goddamn, though. His vocal range is like, a fifth of an octave.
SETTING/SUITABILITY
➤ How do you expect your character to respond to the setting? Even if they plan to rebel in the long term, will they be able to at least obey enough to not get shocked to death?
Dan’s going to be straight-up horrified the first time the Jorgmund treats living people as disposable collateral, and immediately align himself with any party that values life more than profit. He’s not, however, stupid about this, so after the initial shock he’ll keep his head down so as not to jeopardize the others – he’ll have no illusions that the Jorgmund wouldn’t hurt hostages or his teammates to keep him in line.
As for the setting itself, Dan’s going to hate it. Going one mile an hour is a sort of psychological torture for him, and the corporate setting and inability to just up and leave when he gets restless is going to be a major adjustment for him.
➤ What do you hope to do with your character long-term?
I definitely want Dan to bond with others, first on a superficial and then on a much deeper level as he can’t just ghost when people get too close. I’d love for him to be a valuable part of the rebellion, perhaps as the conscientious workhorse mitigating collateral damage to vulnerable PCs and NPCs.
➤ Does your character currently have skills that would allow them to adapt, survive, and do the heroic things being asked of them? If your character doesn't, do you think they'd have the capacity to learn quickly?
Yes, Dan’s quite skilled in a variety of areas, learns quickly, is adaptable, is shrewd about how to work in a group, and is selflessly heroic. He’ll be fine.
➤ If they're not used to cooperating with others, what makes you think they'll be able to adapt to cooperating with the group?
Dan’s used to cooperating with people from all different backgrounds; even though he’s no great fan of many members of the Shield and actively despises some of the people he’s teamed up with to hunt monsters in The Weird (particularly the cold-blooded hunters who care more about magic and power than about keeping people safe), he’s able to put the greater good first with only minimal grousing.
➤ Will your character have long-term plans to rebel against Jorgmund? If so, how? Will they betray the other PCs and cooperate with Jorgmund? If so, how do you plan to handle the negative CR that might arise?
Dan wouldn’t betray the other PCs unless there were serious division about how to handle a threat and what acceptable losses and actions are, in which case he might go rogue rather than cooperate with the group. I don’t see that sort of situation happening here given the mix of heroes, but it could theoretically happen on a side mission – if it does, I’m fine with having Dan try and make amends after the fact or taking any punishment on the chin. He’ll absolutely develop longterm plans to rebel against the Jorgmund, who stand for basically everything he loathes.
SAMPLES
Network Sample
I. After they get the welcome spiel and see the slideshow, your character is put in front of a camera for an interview and attached to a polygraph. The polygraph may not be accurate, and can potentially give false positives and false negatives, so players can play with that all they want. If the Jorgmund staff interpret a response as a lie, they'll demand a different answer, causing characters to potentially need to respond honestly, craft a "creative" truth, or tell very good lie. The questions are completely absurd, especially after such a hostile welcome to the rig.
[Dan looks comfortable. There’s no reason for him to look comfortable right now, what with the polygraph and the camera and the interviewer and the disorientation and the fact that this setting is what he’s pretty sure Hell must be like, all fluorescent and tie-wearing and smelling of printer toner. But he’s pretty sure he’s being judged right now, and nothing quite kicks his disarming demeanor into gear faster than the reality that he’s being as scrutinized as he’s scrutinizing others. He loops an ankle over his knee and leans back with a bland smile, holding a perfectly polite amount of eye contact with the interviewer, slightly jiggling his foot with the affect of someone who’s just absentmindedly active, not actually fidgety.]
I’m an open book, sir. Do you want to be called sir? I don’t want to be presumptuous or anything.
"Success, integrity, or friendship, pick two and explain why?"
That depends on what the success is, don’t it? If you’re talking financial success, I like to think I’m a pretty humble person who won’t need all that. But if you’re talking success in your goals, that’s different, because there are plenty of goals that are more important than keeping your friends. [He’s thinking of his work, of times when the difference between winning and losing had a bodycount. In the burning light of some of the threats The Weird can cough up, the importance of individual relationships just shrinks and withers like scraps of paper. Besides, friendship can be heavy in a way that’s harder to carry and understand than the straightforward goal of saving lives. The edges are fuzzier, the disappointments somehow more painful, the stakes smaller and yet alarmingly higher. As often as not, Dan figures he not only could go without it but might even appreciate the opportunity.]
You don’t give up integrity, though. That’s one of those things that’s near impossible to get back once you give it up.
"If you could get rid of any one of the US states, which one would you get rid of and why?"
Texas. Don’t get me wrong, I love Texas, spent some of the best times of my life zipping around that giant state. But there’s plenty of the people there who ain’t so gung ho about the other forty-nine, and honestly, I don’t think that land should belong to the United States any more than it does to Mexico or the people who were there at the start. We didn’t exactly get it for honorable reasons.
[You know what’s great? Watching hours of late-night documentaries on the settling of the West while killing time in the shadiest motels the desert has to offer, picking up and taking snapshots of insight and trivia like bugs smacked against a windshield on the highway, at once both alone and yet at the same time so conscious of the breadth of human history and capacity. Falling asleep to the burble of televised tragedy and triumph and waking up knowing you’re just a tiny, barely-significant part of it. Dan’s best mornings are the ones after nights spent with Ken Burns wannabes.]
But if we’re talking places I personally wouldn’t mind never going back to, I can’t think of any place less enjoyable than Delaware. At least New Jersey had good food and nice people.
[The polygraph doesn’t buzz.]
"On a scale from 1 to 10, rate me as an interviewer."
An eight. [Dan grins. There’s a reason that despite the fact that he can’t spell even his own name consistently, has zero references, has a resume of abandoned two-week jobs longer than a CVS receipt, and routinely shows up to job interviews slightly hammered, he still waltzes into entry positions in any town he spends more than four days in. He’s got what headhunters call “soft skills”.] You’re professional, your questions are interesting, and even though you’re probably going to be promoted at some point soon, you haven’t checked out of this position yet, which means you got integrity. I’d score you higher but I pretty sure you’d think I was sucking up.
[He doesn’t really mean any of that, but it’s also not a lie; it’s that thin line of saying just enough things that are actually true and enough things that don’t actually matter that the polygraph only twitches ever so slightly and demurely, not buzzing.]
Prose Sample
TDM Sample
ADDITIONAL INFO
I’d like to handwave that Dan has voice-to-text and text-to-voice functions on his comm and any other tech he uses on the rig; I’d rather he not suddenly be able to read due to the translation mechanic. Bonus points for it being super buggy and occasionally giving bizarre mistranscriptions.
Additionally, I just want to flag that I know a character with high levels of charisma and manipulative skills is going to require a lot of communicating with other players, and I fully intend to keep that at the forefront of my playing to avoid accidentally info- or godmodding anyone.
FINAL QUESTIONS
➤ Will your character suspect some kind of guiding intelligence has brought them to the game? Or will they think it was random or done by Jorgmund?
Dan’s unlikely to think there’s any divine intelligence at play, but he’ll probably suspect that there are human or supernatural machinations hidden behind the scenes playing some kind of long con. He’s suspicious by nature and used to conspiracies and shadowy cults jacking up his day.
➤ If they think it was something other than Jorgmund, like God or some other force of fate, what character traits do they think of that intelligence as having? Is it cruel or kind? Capriciously punishing them or doing it for good reason?
Definitely not trustworthy, whatever or whomever they are. He’ll be sleeping with one eye open.