Hadriel App

[nowherewolf]

PLAYER

Player name: Leu

Contact: Leucrotta

Characters currently in-game: Michael Munroe

CHARACTER

Character Name: Raridan James Tucker (goes almost exclusively by Tucker; his "official" name is James Tucker)

Character Age: 26

Canon: Original/D&D

Canon Point: May, 2017 (two weeks after his "castmates")

World Description: Tucker's from the same D&D setting as in-game characters Kyna and Harlan! It's modern-day fantasy, where magic is integrated with technology, but some parts of the world are still wild and filled with monsters. Fantasy races like dwarves and gnomes are around, but often not living with humans except in major cities (this is by choice, not force). Elves seem to be pretty common though. Adventuring is a legit career path, though usually done through a guild.

Relevant to Tucker specifically: In this setting, there's a race of people who turn into animals. They get one animal form and it's hereditary (though stories exist of people with many forms). They're pretty rare, to the point where many people don't know they exist. Those who do typically distrust these people or even see them as lesser, especially the ones that turn into predatory animals. Complicating matters further is the fact that lycanthropy exists, a magical disease that turns people into bloodthirsty monsters on the full moon. Shapeshifters mistaken for were-creatures (and they usually are) often face the same less-than-humane treatment the lycanthropes get, including imprisonment and vigilante justice.

History: Tucker's biological family is a group of nomadic wolf-form shapeshifters that live separated from humanity, traveling between wild spaces and typically staying as wolves. They brush against the civilized world from time to time, and it was during one of these brushes that Tucker, at about 2 or 3 years old, got separated from the pack and discovered by people who had no idea he was anything other than a lost human child. He wound up in the foster-care system, shuffled between several different homes.

At about 9, he experienced his first change into wolf form, thankfully not in the presence of anyone else. A few years later, at 12-ish, he started to worry that people were catching on to his less-than-human nature, (not that he really knew what he was,) and for this and several other reasons, he went off on his own. He just sort of wandered for a couple years, picking up odd jobs here and there, usually with other groups of traveling folk, like carnival/fair workers. At about 14 he joined up with a group of performers, where he learned several later-relevant skills. His "mentor" in the group was a former con artist who sort of accidentally (or not?) shared his criminal wisdom with the already morally dubious teenager.

Predictably, when he broke off from the performing troupe a few years later, it was to become a smalltime conman and thief. He stayed at this game until one of his cons ended badly with the police involved. Tucker managed to slip away, but he needed a place to go for a while, and mutual criminal contacts got him in touch with a woman named Mercury who operated a smuggling business in NYC. She needed couriers for her packages, and Tucker needed a new job. He's been in NYC for about three years.

Of course, his restless streak got the better of him somewhere along the line, and he signed on for a second job with an adventuring guild called Kairos. This is where he met his teammates: Kyna, Harlan, and Corbet. They've been on lots of missions for the guild, but I'll summarize the relevant ones:

On their first mission, Tucker talked a dragon out of murdering them in exchange for a shiny gold idol. A few missions later, a pair of werewolf hunters nearly outed his secret to his team, only stopped short by their untimely murders (not his fault, it was a ghost). At one point a demon body-swapped Tucker and Kyna, which led to Kyna discovering the secret anyway. Tucker finally outed himself as a non-human to the rest of the team in order to save Harlan's girlfriend Panna from said demon, and they took it really well, actually, so he started to trust them a bit better. On the mission just after the demon affair, the dragon Tucker persuaded earlier came back with a vengeance, because it turns out the idol was cursed and drove her mad. It was because of this mission that Tucker may or may not have accidentally killed an innocent bystander with an errant bullet, which started to make him question the morality of his actions and how they affect other people.

Some time later, another mission brought he and his team into contact with his actual family, who were causing trouble for a rural town. He realized he wasn't really anything like them, and decided not to join them or try to follow them when they left. He did learn, however, that he had a twin who went missing from the pack at the same time he did. Discussing his past and related issues with Harlan and Kyna brought them a bit closer together. The next mission almost resulted in his death several times over, so that was fun to deal with, too. His team's most recent string of jobs has actually led to them rescuing several children from an evil cult, taking them to a safe place, and then risking their lives to keep said place safe in the future. Tucker is discovering that perhaps it's nice to do things that benefit other people. Weird.

Personality: The first phrase that comes to mind is "self-serving". Above all else, Tucker values his own personal safety, freedom, and interests, and to be honest, the rest of his personality traits kind of revolve around that concept. He approaches all situations and problems with the perspective of using it to benefit himself, and given the choice between someone else's life and his own, he'll pick his every time. In that way he's... kind of an asshole, really.

In general, he tends to stay out of (big) things that don't directly concern him, especially if it's dire or important. Sometimes he even stays out of things that do concern him, provided there's a real risk to his well-being or freedom. This would seem to be at odds with his dangerous professions (smuggling and adventuring), but there's an exemption here. If Tucker could be said to serve anything aside from himself, it would be the almighty dollar; in addition to selfish, he's also hella greedy. If there's enough of a reward, he can be persuaded to risk himself to get it. Positive reinforcement works wonders with him. It's not that he wants to live in a lavish mansion or drive a fancy car, or really to live the high life in any way. Sure, his standard of living is decent, but flaunting his ill-gotten gains isn't his style. Instead, he just sort of hoards his money, sort of like the way people hoard healing items in video games- what if he needs it later?

This ties into another one of his primary personality traits, which would be lowkey paranoia. Tucker's had a lot of instability in his life. Things have gotten pulled out from under him plenty of times. Add to that his justified fear of getting identified as a shapeshifter, and it's a recipe for disaster. It sounds cheesy, but he doesn't really trust anyone entirely. He knows all too well how easy it is to lie to and betray others, and he just kind of defaults to suspecting everyone of doing so, or at least of being capable of it. He's extremely hesitant to give up his own secrets, even to the detriment of people around him.

It's not impossible to earn his trust to some extent, though it probably won't ever be complete, but even to people he mostly trusts, Tucker has a tendency to lie a lot. He does it on purpose, either to be a troll or to get something he wants, but he also just kind of does it out of habit, sometimes about things that aren't even worth lying about. This most often takes the form of feigning interest, or saying what he thinks the other person wants to hear in order to avoid upsetting them.

Speaking of which, he's very good at reading other people in that sense. Usually he can tell, after being around someone for a while (or faster, if they fit a "type" he's met before), exactly what they want out of a conversation, be that comfort, support, someone to disagree with them, someone to pat their ego, etc. He'll often then fake the reaction they're after in order to keep in their good graces or get them to do something for him. He's good at reading emotions, but he isn't all that great at actually empathizing with people, and genuine feelings are hard for him to deal with.

Honestly, he's just kind of fake in general. He has this surface-level aura of a cool, friendly, confident person. He jokes around a lot, though it's notably never self-deprecating. The sense of humor and the confidence are actually pretty real, but he also distrusts everyone he talks to, and he probably couldn't care less about them. (If he does, it's probably only because they can potentially provide something he wants.) He masks his own actual opinions and feelings at basically all times, and getting him to be 100% straight with you is like pulling teeth. He's way more likely to make a stupid joke about a serious situation than admit he's scared or hurt.

Of course, this isn't to say he's like a sociopath or something. He has trouble with empathy but he's not incapable of it by any means, and he's even formed bonds in the past. He has kind of a chronic fear of commitment, and tries his hardest not to get attached to things or people, but it happens. So far it's only happened to his pet cats (he has 3 of them now) and his teammates (mostly Kyna and Harlan, Corbet's a little more aloof). The cats happened because he saw something of himself in these discarded strays (he'd never in a million years admit that, though), and Kyna and Harlan happened because they've been through way too many life and death ordeals together by now.

Of course, even though he's close to his cats and his team, he'd still probably choose his own life over theirs. He sucks.

A couple of other noteworthy traits would be his confidence and his restlessness. Tucker thinks highly of his own abilities, and if he fails, it was probably just a fluke. He genuinely has a healthy sense of self-worth. One might say too healthy, to be honest. He believes in luck, but he also believes that he himself is lucky, thus negating any potential confidence problems that might arise from that belief.

As to the restlessness, it's almost to the point of him being antsy. He's impatient, hates to be idle, and can't sit still. This applies to the small scale as well as the large; honestly it's a miracle he's stayed in NYC for three whole years, and that's probably just because his job pays well and it's so far been stable. He sort of fears being trapped or stuck somewhere, which feeds into his inability to form attachments easily. His biggest fear in the world is probably jail or otherwise being imprisoned.

My final note here is just a mindset thing. Tucker isn't human, and despite being raised by them, he doesn't think of himself as one. Nor does he think of himself as a wolf with a human form, the way his family does. Rather he thinks of himself as something Other, a being having two separate but equal shapes. He's not a person or a wolf, he's both and neither.

Inventory: Tucker is at all times wearing a St. Christopher medallion on a chain around his neck, and in his pockets you'll find his phone, wallet, keys, and sunglasses. He's also currently carrying his work gear, which consists of a backpack and various jacket pockets that contain the following:

- The Griffon Cloak: a gift from Kyna, it lets him blend easier into the background (not invisibility, just kind of makes people overlook him unless they know he's there, or he does something like attack or make noise).
- The Magneto Coaster: some weird disc-shaped elf artifact that works as a powerful magnet once a day. It might have historical significance but who cares.
- The Daylighter: a lighter that produces super bright light instead of fire.
- Wi-Fi Fork: typically it would give you wi-fi no matter where you are, but magic can disable it, so it's nerfed in Hadriel. Now it's just... a fork...
- Haunted Doll: it's supposed to save you from dying once, but he bought it from a shady salesman, so who knows??? It has yet to even display any paranormal activity whatsoever. Might not even be haunted. 2/10 very lame.
- Two Daggers: one is sharper and sturdier than the other. He had a third one but he recently lost it to glue rocks.
- A Revolver + Box of Bullets: the revolver is loaded, and the box has about 20 bullets in it (total 26).
- Lockpicks: for stealin' stuff.
- Rope: 30ft to be precise.

Abilities: Mechanics-wise in D&D, Tucker is a level 12 shapeshifter rogue with the thief archetype. Since that was probably nonsense to a lot of people, this is what that means:

- He's faster than a normal human would be, probably Olympic athlete levels in a flat-out chase. He also has heightened reflexes which make him very hard to hit, even if he's standing still. In game, he can dodge any attack (magic included) or any area-of-effect spell, at least enough not to take the full brunt of it. In rp this will translate to him just being really hard to hit unless it's by magic that targets him mentally/emotionally or in some non-attack way.

- He can do parkour. Okay not technically, but he's a very adept climber and has excellent balance. He can jump pretty far or pretty high up.

- He's good at being sneaky. He can move pretty silently or, in different situations, he can tail people without being noticed.

- Tucker is very skilled at sleight of hand. He knows a few magic tricks, but they're not real magic, just stage magic, mostly card and coin tricks. He can vanish or appear small objects (up to and including Harlan's stupid wand), lift an item off of someone, or plant objects on people leaving them never the wiser.

- Tucker is, for lack of a better word, lucky. Things sometimes coincidentally work out in his favor, like happening to fall just between the jagged rocks below, or an enemy tripping on their way to strike him. This is a very subtle quality, and it's by no means universal, but it tends to happen more often than can be brushed off as coincidence. He attributes it to some sort of actual favor by the forces of the universe. (DnD mechanics note: he has the Lucky feat.)

- He knows how to pick locks, juggle, and throw knives with decent accuracy. He isn't really skilled in close-quarters knife-fighting, but he knows how to stab a guy to make it count. He can shoot a gun, but his aim's not perfect yet. He's not great with any other weapons. I'm just lumping these all together because they're basically criminal skills. Yes, even the juggling. I'm sure he could find a criminal use for juggling.

- Tucker's a fast-talker. He can be persuasive, deceptive, or even kind of manipulative. He's an excellent liar especially, and is pretty good at detecting lies in other people. He can usually read people well enough to know what they want to hear in a conversation, but this is by no means a universal skill; it's not even supernatural, just learned.

- Tucker's only supernatural ability is the shapeshifting, and arguably that's just natural for him. In the span of a few seconds he can go from fully human to fully wolf, or back again. He can't stop anywhere in between, and these are his only forms. The change doesn't cause him any pain, but it can be exhausting if he's already tired, hurt, or sick. He can only do it a few times a day without wearing himself out. When in wolf form, he can't speak or do any tasks that require fine motor skills, but he retains his human intelligence.

- In both forms, Tucker has excellent hearing, can see in the dark, and has a powerful sense of smell. He also has a very strong bite, and, in human form, a few extra teeth in the back. Unlike a human, he can eat raw meat with no consequence.

- He can communicate with canines or canine-like species. He can also speak and read Abyssal, the language of demons, due to a bizarre magic lipstick incident.

Flaws: Tucker values his own freedom and wellbeing above all else, including silly notions like "the law" and "societal norms". He's not amoral by any means, but his personal code is pretty skewed. He's selfish and kind of a coward. His primary motivator in most situations is greed. He's also suspicious and distrusting to a fault, always questioning the motives of everyone, including his friends. He's so used to lying that he does it on instinct now, and sometimes even he's not sure when he's telling the truth.

If you want a list of wicked acts, it'd be pretty long, honestly, but in general terms it would include plenty of theft (both direct stealing and deceiving people out of their money/belongings), lies, and being complicit in the evil acts of others. He's stood by and let people die because he wasn't willing to disagree with their murder, and he's allowed teammates to execute enemies because he wasn't willing to get his own hands dirty. He temporarily threw Harlan's girlfriend under the proverbial bus to protect his secrets, and talked Kyna into letting a serial killer get away because his team was outnumbered and he didn't want to risk it. He once attempted to abandon his team when he thought their deaths were assured. He's a smuggler for a living. I could keep going, but, you get the idea.

SAMPLES

Action Log Sample: Link to his TDM toplevel!