Shizuochan

Aero Blue

he hears his master's voice
Original poster
LURKER MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Posting Speed
  1. One post per week
Online Availability
5-11 EST weekdays, anytime weekends.
Writing Levels
  1. Give-No-Fucks
  2. Adept
  3. Advanced
  4. Douche
  5. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Primarily Prefer Female
Genres
Superhero, urban fantasy, space opera, crime thriller, supernatural
Main Base: The Land
Name: Alphonse (‘Alfie’) Langretta
Nicknames: Jackdaw
Role: Criminal


Character Pitch: Alfie Langretta is a self-professed ‘thief-connoisseur’ - a snatcher of things aplenty. His distinguishing between the term and any regular thief: that he steals for pleasure, rather than necessity. Or so he claims.

A poor boy from the parish, the eldest son of a pair of paupers, abandoned; the theory was that, as the eldest son, he stood the greatest chance of survival on his lonesome. Working, for a time, as a coal-miner, he did indeed survive, through the sweltering heat of the Underground, and the smog of the Land. It was his desire, however, to do more than to simply slave in pursuit of survival.

His salvation was thievery. Not to sell, or wrangle off in exchange for food. To keep. To serve as trophies, inscribed with their own declaration; that Alphonse Langretta existed for more than just bleak, rout survival. He stole shoddy talismen from the Rats, worth little more outside of sentimentality - but sentimentality tantalized him. Parts and trinkets from the tinkers and merchants. And the rare moments a Floater and their various baubles came into his reach were precious ones indeed.

His feats of thievery transformed him in the eyes of others. Alfie’s ‘calling card’ of sorts was to rip a piece of fabric from all his marks, and adorn them upon himself, stitched unto his garb like patchwork. Over the years, this bit of symbolism - of a man whose apparel was stitched with sweat and craft - won him repute as one of the Golden City’s colorful cast of criminals.

Smog-sick, frail, and perhaps doomed to die young, Alfie self-professes as a fatalist with delusions of romanticism, desperately clinging to chances for brief glory. There can be no question that he has always attempted to distance himself from the coal-miner’s persona - he has made a habit of adorning his chalked, gravely worker’s voice with the affectations of the various marks he’s overheard in conversation; the charismatic menace of the crime-lord, the practiced mannerisms of the merchants, the vocabulary of the bookish. Fragments of personas to incorporate into his own, like the stitched patchwork of his garb.


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The above is an unblemished depiction of Alphonse, pale and weak-featured, almost waifish. Years of working amongst the coals has caked his face with charcoal black.

Written Appearance: The Jackdaw is, somehow, distressingly pretty. His features are soft yet narrow and lean, and his visage would be noticeably pale were it not for the patches of heat-burns and charcoal black that litter his face in permanence. Standing at 5’9”, his form is waifish and fragile, concealing a deceptive vestige of strength within.

His outfit screams out in its incongruence - the peaked cap of a Floater, a miner’s favorite boot, the heel of a merchant lady. The myriad patches of cloth taken from his numerous marks form a mosaic with some degree of rhyme or reason - the most colorful pieces have been patched on closer towards his outer extremities. He dons a representation of his namesake, ‘Jackdaw’; a beaked visor shoddily crafted from the remains of shattered porcelain.

Edit Log: Added Written Appearance with Nemo's approval!
 
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Main Base: The Land (Pariah Bay)
Name: Corbett Baines
Nicknames: None currently.
Role: Citizen, ex-Cloak.

Character Pitch: Some time ago, Corbett Baines was counted amongst the exemplary ranks of the Cloaks, justicars of the Inquisition. Born, however, to a family that struggled and slaved away despite their every good intention and strand of moral fiber - and the lover of a girl who had succumbed to smog-sickness -, the second-eldest son of the Baines family saw his station as a means to an end. He was not a malicious man, just an ambitious survivalist, a cynic that prized material wealth above all else - traits that mattered little to his fellow Cloaks who caught him in the act of conspiracy*. Disgraced and disavowed, he was cast down, well-being intact due only to the grace of a Council House**, who forced a task upon him; the protection and guardianship of a certain Grey Goose.

The girl’s a troublesome sort, driven to some wishful end, while her protector is… endlessly pragmatic and self-serving. Nonetheless, the burden is his to bear and - like the calloused hands of his father and brothers, and the blackened lungs of the girl he loved - outside his means to control.

*Conspiracy in question is more in the sense of bribes - criminal conspiracy as opposed to political.
**The senior branch of the Grey Goose's House, as briefly detailed in her sheet.

Written Appearance: A rigidly built man, yet with but a narrow-ish, small-shouldered frame to contain his musculature; compact, in a sense. Square-faced, with pointed jaw and prominent nose, a hard, stern man, yet also a reasonably handsome one. Hair that has turned grey and white all too soon, and a constant layer of shadowy facial hair along his jaw cast him as a grizzled man. Nonetheless, there are aspects of him that hint towards a more refined nature, or perhaps even vanity. He hides his dull blue eyes behind glasses of a scholarly affectation, while the bulk of his outfit - while not elegant Floater regalia - are always immaculately fitted and assembled. In particular, he seems to have a fixation on a navy-like color, as well as a fondness for black and white ties.



Edit Log: snuck in a written appearance while this was still in processing! 2018-01-13.
 
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Main Base: The Underground
Name: Tobin Heath
Nicknames: ‘The Ostrich’
Role: Criminal


A Report Regarding a Person of Some Small Interest

I write this report to you as a faithful servant of the Inquisition - whose capacity for service has been snatched away by nefarious means. It is my hope that this report will assist in the capture and, summarily, the execution of ‘the Ostrich’.

In deciphering the bestial mind of the criminal, it is imperative that we operatives understand the man. Prior to our eventful confrontation, I tracked the villain in question to his now-former base of operations, a run-down tinkershop - it was here that I, shrouded within the shadows, uncovered documents revealing his true face and nature. He is one ‘Tobin Heath’, a son of tinkers, who himself was a tinker, yet one of substandard qualities, hapless in his artifice - a specialist in failure, I may hazard to say.

I say this not to undermine the man’s considerable capacity for danger. He is a man versed in failure, and failure has turned this man into a walking effigy of low cunning and treachery, ever eager to exact torturous stigmata upon his betters.

He came upon me in the darkness.

I deign not repeat the vile, base words he spewed as he hunted me, but I sensed that - in having become the predator - this man gleamed no lack of perverse satisfaction. He cackled as if the success of his pursuit was inevitable, all the while wielding weapons and contraptions of shoddy and archaic creation; pistols that fired blanks loaded with horse-blood, pouches that exploded into little more than a flurry of pigeon feathers, and a crossbow that squealed obscenely before firing a single flag of white - a jest at my expense, I am sure. Perhaps it was the intention of this villain, his inferiority as a tinker crudely juxtaposed with his facilities for torture.

When he subdued me, he stared into my eyes with the gleeful joy of demons.

It is my intention that this report will have cast light upon the nature of the Ostrich, Tobin Heath. It is, furthermore, my hope that this man is brought to justice in order to protect the citizenry and, I must selfishly confess, attain vengeance for mine own self.


Appearance: The moniker of ‘Ostrich’ is well-earned; Tobin Heath is a man long of body and limb, lanky and gangly. His neck is particularly pronounced, a frail structure with an Adam’s apple so prominent it seems almost sharp, threatening to tear through the skin over his throat. Otherwise, he is a man of visage innocuous (save for, perhaps, a sharpish nose and large-ish ears), appearing nearabouts his forties, dark-haired, clean-shaven and stone-faced. His dress is similarly nondescript, greying shirts, brown pants and dark boots concealed by an overflowing grey cloak.

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