Harpelynn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
destringed) wrote2012-10-19 08:59 pm
destringed) wrote2012-10-19 08:59 pm
EXITVOID APP
player.
NAME/HANDLE: Ruka
PERSONAL JOURNAL:blitzbrained
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: yes!
CONTACT: RukaCactus on AIM and rukafais on tumblr
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
character.
CHARACTER NAME: Harpelynn
AGE: 29
APPEARANCE: something like this. He's about 5"6 and looks fairly average, though he's definitely fit and more on the thin side than the stocky side. He has light brown hair and a perpetual smile on his face, and looks a little younger than he is.
BRIEF WORLD INFO:
Fallen London is, well, exactly what it says. Three decades ago - around the 1960s - London was stolen by bats and descended into the darkness of the underground; now it is a thriving community that is next-door neighbours with Hell and other unusual inhabitants. Things have rather changed since its descent, and new areas of interest have sprung up, catering to individuals of all tastes, professions and species. The new 'owners' of London - the fifth city out of eight - are the Masters, hooded and cryptic figures with agendas of their own and a peculiar fondness for love stories. The nature of this nebulous underground is such that death simply doesn't take as well as it should, and so most would-be murderers find themselves frustrated, since a simple stabbing tends to have the victim complaining about stained clothing; similarly, insanity is something that is more inconvenient than mind-shatteringly permanent (except in at least one very specific case).
The currency is Echoes and the easiest way to buy most common goods - clothing, weaponry and other creature comforts - is to use Echoes to purchase them at the Bazaar. However, Fallen London has a thriving barter system in the form of solid goods - pearls, red gold rings, trinkets from a city that came before - and odder, more nebulous concepts - secrets, love stories, memories of light; luckily, most of these things can be sold at the Bazaar as well, usually for handsome prices.
Of course, Fallen London is a bustling metropolis of activity, albeit a Victorian-era one, and a thief can profit just as well as a detective (maybe better). The city holds many secrets - some mundane and some more esoteric - and for proof of its strangeness one needs not look any further than the fact that memories, secrets and love stories can be traded just as easily as physical objects.
BRIEF CHARACTER HISTORY:
Not much of Harpelynn's early life was remarkable. He grew up somewhere in fairly-rural England, the youngest of three children and the son of a police officer and a seamstress. A curious child with a taste for adventure, he found himself in all manner of troubles and quickly learned how to extricate himself from them, or at least convincingly lie until he could hide the evidence.
At the age of thirteen, he lost an arm to an errant piece of factory machinery and applied his normal cheer to the problem, doing his best to adjust to his new, limited sphere of mobility - until a family friend visited seven months later and immediately offered to give him a new one. His father agreed to the experiment - Harpelynn had always expressed a desire for traveling abroad, and hopefully when he came back from his trip he would have settled a little - and he was quickly packed off to a town closer to the Neath, where he was given a mechanical arm made of brass and full of spinning gears that worked just as well as his old one had. The man who made that arm would later become his mentor - Harpelynn's burning curiosity had decreased in one respect, but he never returned to his hometown to settle down as his parents had hoped he might (though he wrote letters copiously and visited his family often).
When he was seventeen, his mentor's workshop was burned down by a jealous rival; almost everyone was killed in the blaze, and doctors considered his survival a miracle. Leaving himself no time to grieve over the loss, Harpelynn took it into his own hands to hunt the criminal down and bring him to justice. It took him a year and a half of constant pursuit to finally bring the man down and turn him in to the police, beginning his career as a freelance detective.
Inevitably, one of his cases led him to the fringes of the Neath, and his insatiable curiosity was inflamed once more. With his peculiar knack for trouble, he managed to get himself into the subterranean prison complex known as New Newgate soon enough, and it is there that his own foray into Fallen London begins.
He swiftly adapted to his new environment, forging swift ties with factions on both sides of the law, and soon built up his reputation as a detective once more. He's seen plenty of gruesome cases in his time, and the Neath is really no different.
At present, he is chasing down the whereabouts of a contact and close acquaintance of his, a music-hall singer left for dead in the Forgotten Quarter. He's discovered plenty of information that he's not entirely comfortable with - and he's sure it will only lead to darker places than the gaslit streets of Fallen London.
PERSONALITY: Harpelynn has a sharp mind and a sharp wit; he's quick on his feet and even quicker in thought. Clever and ingenious, he has no problems with figuring out the best route from A to B, and will probably pocket a few valuables along the way if there's an opportunity to. At first glance, he seems just the type to adopt a thief's life; curious as a cat and with the same knack for getting into trouble, he has an eye for valuables - or potential valuables - and something of a survivalist nature.
However, aside from his natural curiosity and his sharp mind, most of these behaviours have been adopted out of necessity - it takes a special kind of skill to make a comfortable living in the Neath. As a result, he's become something of a hoarder, though this is tempered by his amateur knowledge of what he can get for particular items. He's trustworthy enough to close friends, but he has trouble making them; he is a loner by nature, and he finds it difficult to form close bonds with people. This was only heightened by his time in the Neath; being too trusting is a sure recipe for disaster, and he quickly found that while he could gather many effective aquaintances and accomplices, genuine 'friends' were a rare commodity. Still, he's personable and friendly, enjoyable to be around, and quite cheerful. Just don't expect him to be more than a passing acquaintance, unless you really gain his trust. His perpetual smile often unsettles, if you're around him long enough, and he talks about morbid and terrible things just as happily as he would mundane and pleasant ones.
His moral compass is an odd one; he was a detective once (and still is), but he enjoys thieving and finds it fun. Espionage and blackmail are his delights; he serves as a very effective middleman for those who don't want his services in stealing important information to be traced back directly to them. He's well-experienced in spycraft, and his inquisitive nature allows a more in-depth and thorough investigation of his commissioned or chosen targets; he'll never get bored on a case or theft, that much is certain. However, this curiosity is a double-edged sword; he'll follow his target to the ends of the earth if he has to, and often that can pitch him into trouble he wasn't expecting - curiosity killed the cat, after all. He often gets in over his head, and it's a good thing he has the necessary skills to at least passably stay afloat.
He has a cheerful disposition, but his career as a detective has scarred him deeply. Despite his less than impressive physical prowess, he's capable of doing awful things if his ire is ever roused - and he has the jump on his unfortunate soon-to-be-victim. He is very good at killing people, and good at killing them permanently if he has to; death, paradoxically, has become a part of life for him. People die - sometimes he kills them - and if he has to block out the significance of that to stop himself from hearing the screams of their victims, then so be it. As a result, he's desensitized himself to death quite a bit, and he's more likely to examine a gruesome murder scene than be remotely shocked by it. Dead bodies don't tend to bother him, as a rule - though he does have a peculiar hang-up about deaths that have occurred by fire, related to a case that deeply traumatised him in the past.
ABILITIES:
Good at assassination and capable of holding his own in brawls; in good physical shape, but more agile than strong. Very accomplished in larcenous activities. Excellent at problem solving and finding alternate paths around things. Has plenty of experience as a coroner and autopsier.
Scholar of the Correspondence - knows some of the language of the Correspondence, an eldritch language made up of sigils that, when written down, have an alarming tendency to set things on fire at random (including the writer).
POSSESSIONS:
Pockets: 1x Exquisite Toy, 5x Phosphorent Scarab, 8x First City Coin
On Person: 1x Tasseled Sword-Cane
Pets: 1x Fairly Tame Sorrow-Spider, 1x Subtle Mole
Set of comfortable, well-worn clothing that allows him to move stealthily, plus top hat; black suit that seems to absorb light, boots that make no noise other than footfalls, gloves with eyes and teeth embedded in them.
samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE:
Well, then. Isn't this an interesting little device! [ He sounds incredibly cheerful for being...here.... ] Very advanced, I have to say. I wonder what it runs on - certainly not clockwork.
I've taken the liberty of poking around a tad. I have to say, the interior could do with a paintjob, though I'm sure it won't happen. Whoever's in charge here probably has loftier goals than making the ship comfortable. As long as it doesn't fall apart, I'm sure it's considered a job well done! [ oddly no sarcasm in this at all. he's had worse. slept in worse. ]
Honestly, though, I'm sure that if nothing else, it will be interesting. My name is Harpelynn - pleased to make your acquaintances.
THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE:
It says something about the conditions he's found himself in - and subsequently gotten used to - that the state of the place he's currently in doesn't bother him in the slightest. It could be worse, all things considered; it's quiet and he's certainly been in colder.
It could be worse. You could be down with a fever in that crypt you slept in, his mind whispers, unwanted, and a momentary frown twitches on his lips, there and gone again. He tries not to listen to that part; it dredges up unpleasant memories. As good as he is dealing with terrible things, he's still not good enough (will he ever be good enough?) to deal with his own.
It's almost ironic, but he doesn't let that trouble him, does he. Cheerful and smiling, always smiling, right up until something really very awful happens and the smile freezes, brittle, on his face, or until he does something awful himself and the smile never quite goes away. Not even when the blood is pooling - cooling rapidly - all over the floor and the stains are setting into his clothes, and his only concern is that it will make the fabric stiff.
He'd almost fear for his sanity if he weren't vaguely reassured by the fact that as long as the Correspondence sigils continued to bother him immensely, and that he kept having surreal dreams and nightmares, he was probably not going to crack any time soon. For the moment, he doesn't concern himself unduly with it. There are more interesting things to be concerned with. Such as the little device on his person, which is something he's never seen before in his life and is certainly too delicate to be any sort of machinery that he's familiar with.
He preoccupies himself thusly, and the rocking of the ship is something that is soothing rather than unsettling. It can't be worse than the Unterzee.
NAME/HANDLE: Ruka
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
blitzbrainedARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: yes!
CONTACT: RukaCactus on AIM and rukafais on tumblr
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
character.
CHARACTER NAME: Harpelynn
AGE: 29
APPEARANCE: something like this. He's about 5"6 and looks fairly average, though he's definitely fit and more on the thin side than the stocky side. He has light brown hair and a perpetual smile on his face, and looks a little younger than he is.
BRIEF WORLD INFO:
Fallen London is, well, exactly what it says. Three decades ago - around the 1960s - London was stolen by bats and descended into the darkness of the underground; now it is a thriving community that is next-door neighbours with Hell and other unusual inhabitants. Things have rather changed since its descent, and new areas of interest have sprung up, catering to individuals of all tastes, professions and species. The new 'owners' of London - the fifth city out of eight - are the Masters, hooded and cryptic figures with agendas of their own and a peculiar fondness for love stories. The nature of this nebulous underground is such that death simply doesn't take as well as it should, and so most would-be murderers find themselves frustrated, since a simple stabbing tends to have the victim complaining about stained clothing; similarly, insanity is something that is more inconvenient than mind-shatteringly permanent (except in at least one very specific case).
The currency is Echoes and the easiest way to buy most common goods - clothing, weaponry and other creature comforts - is to use Echoes to purchase them at the Bazaar. However, Fallen London has a thriving barter system in the form of solid goods - pearls, red gold rings, trinkets from a city that came before - and odder, more nebulous concepts - secrets, love stories, memories of light; luckily, most of these things can be sold at the Bazaar as well, usually for handsome prices.
Of course, Fallen London is a bustling metropolis of activity, albeit a Victorian-era one, and a thief can profit just as well as a detective (maybe better). The city holds many secrets - some mundane and some more esoteric - and for proof of its strangeness one needs not look any further than the fact that memories, secrets and love stories can be traded just as easily as physical objects.
BRIEF CHARACTER HISTORY:
Not much of Harpelynn's early life was remarkable. He grew up somewhere in fairly-rural England, the youngest of three children and the son of a police officer and a seamstress. A curious child with a taste for adventure, he found himself in all manner of troubles and quickly learned how to extricate himself from them, or at least convincingly lie until he could hide the evidence.
At the age of thirteen, he lost an arm to an errant piece of factory machinery and applied his normal cheer to the problem, doing his best to adjust to his new, limited sphere of mobility - until a family friend visited seven months later and immediately offered to give him a new one. His father agreed to the experiment - Harpelynn had always expressed a desire for traveling abroad, and hopefully when he came back from his trip he would have settled a little - and he was quickly packed off to a town closer to the Neath, where he was given a mechanical arm made of brass and full of spinning gears that worked just as well as his old one had. The man who made that arm would later become his mentor - Harpelynn's burning curiosity had decreased in one respect, but he never returned to his hometown to settle down as his parents had hoped he might (though he wrote letters copiously and visited his family often).
When he was seventeen, his mentor's workshop was burned down by a jealous rival; almost everyone was killed in the blaze, and doctors considered his survival a miracle. Leaving himself no time to grieve over the loss, Harpelynn took it into his own hands to hunt the criminal down and bring him to justice. It took him a year and a half of constant pursuit to finally bring the man down and turn him in to the police, beginning his career as a freelance detective.
Inevitably, one of his cases led him to the fringes of the Neath, and his insatiable curiosity was inflamed once more. With his peculiar knack for trouble, he managed to get himself into the subterranean prison complex known as New Newgate soon enough, and it is there that his own foray into Fallen London begins.
He swiftly adapted to his new environment, forging swift ties with factions on both sides of the law, and soon built up his reputation as a detective once more. He's seen plenty of gruesome cases in his time, and the Neath is really no different.
At present, he is chasing down the whereabouts of a contact and close acquaintance of his, a music-hall singer left for dead in the Forgotten Quarter. He's discovered plenty of information that he's not entirely comfortable with - and he's sure it will only lead to darker places than the gaslit streets of Fallen London.
PERSONALITY: Harpelynn has a sharp mind and a sharp wit; he's quick on his feet and even quicker in thought. Clever and ingenious, he has no problems with figuring out the best route from A to B, and will probably pocket a few valuables along the way if there's an opportunity to. At first glance, he seems just the type to adopt a thief's life; curious as a cat and with the same knack for getting into trouble, he has an eye for valuables - or potential valuables - and something of a survivalist nature.
However, aside from his natural curiosity and his sharp mind, most of these behaviours have been adopted out of necessity - it takes a special kind of skill to make a comfortable living in the Neath. As a result, he's become something of a hoarder, though this is tempered by his amateur knowledge of what he can get for particular items. He's trustworthy enough to close friends, but he has trouble making them; he is a loner by nature, and he finds it difficult to form close bonds with people. This was only heightened by his time in the Neath; being too trusting is a sure recipe for disaster, and he quickly found that while he could gather many effective aquaintances and accomplices, genuine 'friends' were a rare commodity. Still, he's personable and friendly, enjoyable to be around, and quite cheerful. Just don't expect him to be more than a passing acquaintance, unless you really gain his trust. His perpetual smile often unsettles, if you're around him long enough, and he talks about morbid and terrible things just as happily as he would mundane and pleasant ones.
His moral compass is an odd one; he was a detective once (and still is), but he enjoys thieving and finds it fun. Espionage and blackmail are his delights; he serves as a very effective middleman for those who don't want his services in stealing important information to be traced back directly to them. He's well-experienced in spycraft, and his inquisitive nature allows a more in-depth and thorough investigation of his commissioned or chosen targets; he'll never get bored on a case or theft, that much is certain. However, this curiosity is a double-edged sword; he'll follow his target to the ends of the earth if he has to, and often that can pitch him into trouble he wasn't expecting - curiosity killed the cat, after all. He often gets in over his head, and it's a good thing he has the necessary skills to at least passably stay afloat.
He has a cheerful disposition, but his career as a detective has scarred him deeply. Despite his less than impressive physical prowess, he's capable of doing awful things if his ire is ever roused - and he has the jump on his unfortunate soon-to-be-victim. He is very good at killing people, and good at killing them permanently if he has to; death, paradoxically, has become a part of life for him. People die - sometimes he kills them - and if he has to block out the significance of that to stop himself from hearing the screams of their victims, then so be it. As a result, he's desensitized himself to death quite a bit, and he's more likely to examine a gruesome murder scene than be remotely shocked by it. Dead bodies don't tend to bother him, as a rule - though he does have a peculiar hang-up about deaths that have occurred by fire, related to a case that deeply traumatised him in the past.
ABILITIES:
Good at assassination and capable of holding his own in brawls; in good physical shape, but more agile than strong. Very accomplished in larcenous activities. Excellent at problem solving and finding alternate paths around things. Has plenty of experience as a coroner and autopsier.
Scholar of the Correspondence - knows some of the language of the Correspondence, an eldritch language made up of sigils that, when written down, have an alarming tendency to set things on fire at random (including the writer).
POSSESSIONS:
Pockets: 1x Exquisite Toy, 5x Phosphorent Scarab, 8x First City Coin
On Person: 1x Tasseled Sword-Cane
Pets: 1x Fairly Tame Sorrow-Spider, 1x Subtle Mole
Set of comfortable, well-worn clothing that allows him to move stealthily, plus top hat; black suit that seems to absorb light, boots that make no noise other than footfalls, gloves with eyes and teeth embedded in them.
samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE:
Well, then. Isn't this an interesting little device! [ He sounds incredibly cheerful for being...here.... ] Very advanced, I have to say. I wonder what it runs on - certainly not clockwork.
I've taken the liberty of poking around a tad. I have to say, the interior could do with a paintjob, though I'm sure it won't happen. Whoever's in charge here probably has loftier goals than making the ship comfortable. As long as it doesn't fall apart, I'm sure it's considered a job well done! [ oddly no sarcasm in this at all. he's had worse. slept in worse. ]
Honestly, though, I'm sure that if nothing else, it will be interesting. My name is Harpelynn - pleased to make your acquaintances.
THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE:
It says something about the conditions he's found himself in - and subsequently gotten used to - that the state of the place he's currently in doesn't bother him in the slightest. It could be worse, all things considered; it's quiet and he's certainly been in colder.
It could be worse. You could be down with a fever in that crypt you slept in, his mind whispers, unwanted, and a momentary frown twitches on his lips, there and gone again. He tries not to listen to that part; it dredges up unpleasant memories. As good as he is dealing with terrible things, he's still not good enough (will he ever be good enough?) to deal with his own.
It's almost ironic, but he doesn't let that trouble him, does he. Cheerful and smiling, always smiling, right up until something really very awful happens and the smile freezes, brittle, on his face, or until he does something awful himself and the smile never quite goes away. Not even when the blood is pooling - cooling rapidly - all over the floor and the stains are setting into his clothes, and his only concern is that it will make the fabric stiff.
He'd almost fear for his sanity if he weren't vaguely reassured by the fact that as long as the Correspondence sigils continued to bother him immensely, and that he kept having surreal dreams and nightmares, he was probably not going to crack any time soon. For the moment, he doesn't concern himself unduly with it. There are more interesting things to be concerned with. Such as the little device on his person, which is something he's never seen before in his life and is certainly too delicate to be any sort of machinery that he's familiar with.
He preoccupies himself thusly, and the rocking of the ship is something that is soothing rather than unsettling. It can't be worse than the Unterzee.