OOC INFORMATION
Name: Ang
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hopepunk
Are You Over 18?: Yes
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youngtimer
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Dr. Paul Feistus
Age: 56
World Information: His world is much like our own, with the inclusion of magical power accessible through ley lines. This power has a number of different applications and uses for those who are both sensitive to and gifted enough to wield it. Spirits live within the ley lines: some will occasionally forge very personal bonds with humans, and others act more like stereotypical demons, offering bargains and power in exchange for deeds. The world is part of a series of self-published novels. So far, Paul only appears in this one ... which means this whole app is a spoiler bomb. Since this is a published canon, I"m not sure if he straddles the line between Canon App and OC App, so for completion's sake I've put a few of his best scenes in this Google Doc.
Character Information:
Paul was born in the (fictional) Connecticut seacoast town of Port Haven (based on a combination of Portsmouth NH and coastal CT), where he grew up about as idyllically as a boy in the early 60s could do. He had a summer job at a pharmacy, and the pharmacist behind the counter - a black man named Ike Bradshaw - taught Paul a great deal about human rights, the issues surrounding equality, and how complicated the world outside their small seaside town could be. He helped mold Paul's fledgling morals, and this - coupled with the sudden suicide of a high school classmate - spurred him on to pursue psychology. He attended UConn, where he met the love of his life, Marilyn Marlowe, and the man who'd become one of his best friends and his colleague, Johann Fehler. His roommate, Warren Douglas, rounded out a steady trio of supportive friends. Paul and Marilyn were married a week after graduation, and moved to the southwest corner of the state: back to Marilyn's hometown, Aviario. Warren and Johann were each within a short drive, and so the friends began to grow their adult lives without much worry. Warren married his own college girlfriend, Anna, and not long after, Paul and Johann got jobs working for Aviario Regional Hospital on a viral research project, tending to patients. Johann handled the physical side, while Paul helped the patients navigate the psychological waters of having a rare illness.
It was strange adjusting to small city life after a bustling seacoast and a huge college, but Paul seemed to manage, even if the whole town was hell-bent on spreading rumors about his wife's family being cursed, and the whole town being full of strange magic. He kept his head down and his focus on what became known as the Hawkings Virus: a virulent strain which deteriorated whatever part of the body it had happened to infect. They lost one of their three patients after a few months, but in the course of their work, Paul became infected when a shard from a broken centrifuge tube cut his ankle.
The Hawkings Virus took a toll on his mental health, as well, adding to the already monumental stress the project had put him under, and one day he snapped, succumbing to paranoia and accusing Johann of trying to kill him. He was taken in by hospital security, then transferred to St. Dymphna's asylum in the north end of Aviario to cover up any potential bad press that the incident might bring to the hospital and the project. Essentially, the hospital's bureaucrats and the asylum's callous manager left him there to rot, cutting him off from the outside world.
By the time he was finally allowed to leave sixteen years later, Paul had truly gone mad, then come out the other side with a serene and secure knowledge of how to effectively fake a veneer of sanity, resolved to play out whatever lie was necessary to see his wife again. Unfortunately, since Paul had received none of her letters, he had no idea Marilyn had tried to tell him two crucial things. A few days after his admission, she found out she was pregnant, and had given birth to a little girl named Natalie. Several years later, as she was raising Natalie, Marilyn developed ovarian cancer, and died just two years before Paul was released.
Realizing that he'd been denied not only his wife, but any chance of building up a relationship with a daughter he hadn't known he had, Paul funneled his anger into two goals: undermining the hospital quietly from within, and amassing enough power to use magic to keep his illness at bay.
He threw himself into establishing and growing a modest practice, now affiliated with the hospital since he had been issued a clean bill of sanity. Paul saved enough money to buy his wife's old family home, then began to restore it, hoping that he might find some of the secrets and truths behind all the rumors of magic and curses. While in the middle of restoration, one worker was verbally and almost physically attacked by a woman who bore an amazing resemblance to Marilyn ... in calming down the intruder, Paul was reunited with Natalie, and the two began to make plans with each other to make Marlowe House their home. Natalie was bitter and angry from her time in foster care, having had to conceal most of her own magical power from her families ... and so she wholeheartedly agreed to help her father with his goals.
Together, Natalie and Paul made contact with Iknara, a ley line spirit sealed away beneath Marlowe House. He promised them both the power, influence, and instruments of revenge they sought if they could bring him enough souls to break the seal on his line. Sure, it was Natalie who went on the murdering spree, but it was Paul who helped her lay the plans to not be caught, Paul who pulled the strings from behind the scenes, and Paul who began adding magical components to his patients' prescriptions just to see what effects it might have on their bodies or minds. Unfortunately, one of Natalie's victims was just a little too well-loved by a group of people in the community, and they were able to bind together and restore the nearly broken seal on Iknara's line and arrest Natalie. Paul - through the design of his own plans - escaped any sort of charges or persecution. As of his canon point, he is lamenting his limited access to power, and trying to come up with a plan to get Natalie acquitted and released back into his care so that they can try again.
If I had to give Paul a Pop Culture shorthand, he'd be Hannibal Lecter meets Raistlin Majere.
Personality:
Between the effects of the Hawkings Virus and his hospitalization, Paul has become decidedly unhinged, but his insanity comes in the form of snap-of-the-finger mood swings. On the whole he is calm and collected - the careful facade he built in order to gain his freedom. But even the slightest irritation can cause him to snap at someone and raise his voice or lose his temper under the right circumstances. He's quick to excuse himself in public if this occurs, however, writing it off to exhaustion, stress, or occasionally low blood sugar: all socially acceptable causes for a momentary lapse of calm. This is just one of the many ways he can and will manipulate the people around him... being a psychologist gives him an ample toolbox for analyzing and judging minds, reading people and ferreting out their motivations, their moods, and the things that make them tick. He can then arrange the gears of other people's mental engines so as to achieve a certain effect. (By giving Natalie the parental love that was cut so short by her mother's death, for example, and leveraging it against her own mental instability, he gains an ally devoted enough to not only kill for him, but take the fall and be ready and willing to come back to try again.) He also manipulates people in a sense by putting on that facade of sanity and calm ... the one which makes people see him as trustworthy and approachable.
In his goal of undoing the hospital and destroying their reputation, Paul falls just short of obsession. His need for revenge against them was strong, and only doubled when he realized he had lost Marilyn along with the prime years of his life. His time in the asylum not only made him vengeful, but bitter and self-preserving... he does not believe anyone will help him but himself, since the hospital he devoted himself to betrayed him, and betrayal always deserves comeuppance. That sense of social justice instilled in his youth was twisted so that he still believes in it, but does not trust any social system such as police, doctors, or politics to make the sort of changes necessary. True human rights must come from the hands of humans who need them, not the systems which stripped them away in the first place. At this point, it's necessary to note that he does still function as a perfectly capable psychologist and will work with patients to help them through their own issues. He just ... happens to use the process to gain whatever knowledge about his own struggle as he can, as well. (Canon example: a police officer with a pain medication dependency due to an on-the-job injury becomes one of his guinea pigs for placebo study.)
Basically, Paul functions as an everyday, upstanding member of society and passes for it extremely well, with a reputation in his home world as a good psychologist who was tragically unable to see the warning signs of his own daughter's problems. He lets people see the frail old man they want to see, and silently, quietly watches every detail of the world around him, poking and prodding unobtrusively until he finds the things he needs to sustain himself. If he is able to find someone willing to help provide and care for him as Natalie was, he will have absolutely no problem taking advantage of that, and dote on them to ensure that they think the relationship is mutually beneficial. On lower days, he will occasionally brood a bit about Marilyn and Things That Could Have Been, but for the most part, the past is for the deluded, and the present and the future are where the true treasures lie.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Two-faced
Manipulative
Vengeful
Curious
Bitter
Parasitic
Analytical
Self-preserving
Mercurial
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? FIT him like a straitjacket please.
Opt-Outs: Merperson, Slime, Troll, Goblin
Roleplay Sample: TDM top level | Katara @ TDM | Tahani @ TDM
Name: Ang
Contact:
Are You Over 18?: Yes
Other Characters:
youngtimerCHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Dr. Paul Feistus
Age: 56
World Information: His world is much like our own, with the inclusion of magical power accessible through ley lines. This power has a number of different applications and uses for those who are both sensitive to and gifted enough to wield it. Spirits live within the ley lines: some will occasionally forge very personal bonds with humans, and others act more like stereotypical demons, offering bargains and power in exchange for deeds. The world is part of a series of self-published novels. So far, Paul only appears in this one ... which means this whole app is a spoiler bomb. Since this is a published canon, I"m not sure if he straddles the line between Canon App and OC App, so for completion's sake I've put a few of his best scenes in this Google Doc.
Character Information:
Paul was born in the (fictional) Connecticut seacoast town of Port Haven (based on a combination of Portsmouth NH and coastal CT), where he grew up about as idyllically as a boy in the early 60s could do. He had a summer job at a pharmacy, and the pharmacist behind the counter - a black man named Ike Bradshaw - taught Paul a great deal about human rights, the issues surrounding equality, and how complicated the world outside their small seaside town could be. He helped mold Paul's fledgling morals, and this - coupled with the sudden suicide of a high school classmate - spurred him on to pursue psychology. He attended UConn, where he met the love of his life, Marilyn Marlowe, and the man who'd become one of his best friends and his colleague, Johann Fehler. His roommate, Warren Douglas, rounded out a steady trio of supportive friends. Paul and Marilyn were married a week after graduation, and moved to the southwest corner of the state: back to Marilyn's hometown, Aviario. Warren and Johann were each within a short drive, and so the friends began to grow their adult lives without much worry. Warren married his own college girlfriend, Anna, and not long after, Paul and Johann got jobs working for Aviario Regional Hospital on a viral research project, tending to patients. Johann handled the physical side, while Paul helped the patients navigate the psychological waters of having a rare illness.
It was strange adjusting to small city life after a bustling seacoast and a huge college, but Paul seemed to manage, even if the whole town was hell-bent on spreading rumors about his wife's family being cursed, and the whole town being full of strange magic. He kept his head down and his focus on what became known as the Hawkings Virus: a virulent strain which deteriorated whatever part of the body it had happened to infect. They lost one of their three patients after a few months, but in the course of their work, Paul became infected when a shard from a broken centrifuge tube cut his ankle.
The Hawkings Virus took a toll on his mental health, as well, adding to the already monumental stress the project had put him under, and one day he snapped, succumbing to paranoia and accusing Johann of trying to kill him. He was taken in by hospital security, then transferred to St. Dymphna's asylum in the north end of Aviario to cover up any potential bad press that the incident might bring to the hospital and the project. Essentially, the hospital's bureaucrats and the asylum's callous manager left him there to rot, cutting him off from the outside world.
By the time he was finally allowed to leave sixteen years later, Paul had truly gone mad, then come out the other side with a serene and secure knowledge of how to effectively fake a veneer of sanity, resolved to play out whatever lie was necessary to see his wife again. Unfortunately, since Paul had received none of her letters, he had no idea Marilyn had tried to tell him two crucial things. A few days after his admission, she found out she was pregnant, and had given birth to a little girl named Natalie. Several years later, as she was raising Natalie, Marilyn developed ovarian cancer, and died just two years before Paul was released.
Realizing that he'd been denied not only his wife, but any chance of building up a relationship with a daughter he hadn't known he had, Paul funneled his anger into two goals: undermining the hospital quietly from within, and amassing enough power to use magic to keep his illness at bay.
He threw himself into establishing and growing a modest practice, now affiliated with the hospital since he had been issued a clean bill of sanity. Paul saved enough money to buy his wife's old family home, then began to restore it, hoping that he might find some of the secrets and truths behind all the rumors of magic and curses. While in the middle of restoration, one worker was verbally and almost physically attacked by a woman who bore an amazing resemblance to Marilyn ... in calming down the intruder, Paul was reunited with Natalie, and the two began to make plans with each other to make Marlowe House their home. Natalie was bitter and angry from her time in foster care, having had to conceal most of her own magical power from her families ... and so she wholeheartedly agreed to help her father with his goals.
Together, Natalie and Paul made contact with Iknara, a ley line spirit sealed away beneath Marlowe House. He promised them both the power, influence, and instruments of revenge they sought if they could bring him enough souls to break the seal on his line. Sure, it was Natalie who went on the murdering spree, but it was Paul who helped her lay the plans to not be caught, Paul who pulled the strings from behind the scenes, and Paul who began adding magical components to his patients' prescriptions just to see what effects it might have on their bodies or minds. Unfortunately, one of Natalie's victims was just a little too well-loved by a group of people in the community, and they were able to bind together and restore the nearly broken seal on Iknara's line and arrest Natalie. Paul - through the design of his own plans - escaped any sort of charges or persecution. As of his canon point, he is lamenting his limited access to power, and trying to come up with a plan to get Natalie acquitted and released back into his care so that they can try again.
If I had to give Paul a Pop Culture shorthand, he'd be Hannibal Lecter meets Raistlin Majere.
Personality:
Between the effects of the Hawkings Virus and his hospitalization, Paul has become decidedly unhinged, but his insanity comes in the form of snap-of-the-finger mood swings. On the whole he is calm and collected - the careful facade he built in order to gain his freedom. But even the slightest irritation can cause him to snap at someone and raise his voice or lose his temper under the right circumstances. He's quick to excuse himself in public if this occurs, however, writing it off to exhaustion, stress, or occasionally low blood sugar: all socially acceptable causes for a momentary lapse of calm. This is just one of the many ways he can and will manipulate the people around him... being a psychologist gives him an ample toolbox for analyzing and judging minds, reading people and ferreting out their motivations, their moods, and the things that make them tick. He can then arrange the gears of other people's mental engines so as to achieve a certain effect. (By giving Natalie the parental love that was cut so short by her mother's death, for example, and leveraging it against her own mental instability, he gains an ally devoted enough to not only kill for him, but take the fall and be ready and willing to come back to try again.) He also manipulates people in a sense by putting on that facade of sanity and calm ... the one which makes people see him as trustworthy and approachable.
In his goal of undoing the hospital and destroying their reputation, Paul falls just short of obsession. His need for revenge against them was strong, and only doubled when he realized he had lost Marilyn along with the prime years of his life. His time in the asylum not only made him vengeful, but bitter and self-preserving... he does not believe anyone will help him but himself, since the hospital he devoted himself to betrayed him, and betrayal always deserves comeuppance. That sense of social justice instilled in his youth was twisted so that he still believes in it, but does not trust any social system such as police, doctors, or politics to make the sort of changes necessary. True human rights must come from the hands of humans who need them, not the systems which stripped them away in the first place. At this point, it's necessary to note that he does still function as a perfectly capable psychologist and will work with patients to help them through their own issues. He just ... happens to use the process to gain whatever knowledge about his own struggle as he can, as well. (Canon example: a police officer with a pain medication dependency due to an on-the-job injury becomes one of his guinea pigs for placebo study.)
Basically, Paul functions as an everyday, upstanding member of society and passes for it extremely well, with a reputation in his home world as a good psychologist who was tragically unable to see the warning signs of his own daughter's problems. He lets people see the frail old man they want to see, and silently, quietly watches every detail of the world around him, poking and prodding unobtrusively until he finds the things he needs to sustain himself. If he is able to find someone willing to help provide and care for him as Natalie was, he will have absolutely no problem taking advantage of that, and dote on them to ensure that they think the relationship is mutually beneficial. On lower days, he will occasionally brood a bit about Marilyn and Things That Could Have Been, but for the most part, the past is for the deluded, and the present and the future are where the true treasures lie.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Two-faced
Manipulative
Vengeful
Curious
Bitter
Parasitic
Analytical
Self-preserving
Mercurial
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? FIT him like a straitjacket please.
Opt-Outs: Merperson, Slime, Troll, Goblin
Roleplay Sample: TDM top level | Katara @ TDM | Tahani @ TDM
