![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
app for hadriel.
PLAYER
Player name: Rae (the other one).
Contact: last laugh blues at AIM; ventose at Plurk.
Characters currently in-game: None!
CHARACTER
Character Name: Nichole “Nick” Rivenna
Character Age: 25
Canon: Original character from unpublished fiction, with previous game developments (very loosely set in the Nightbane continuum).
Canon Point: About a month after her Becoming.
World Description: Nick’s world is fairly ordinary and corresponds closely with the real North America in 2009 - the main difference is the existence of creatures called Nightbane.
Some additional background information on Nightbane from the Rifts Wikia page:
History: Nick was born in the small town of Winchester, Kansas, on the 18th of June, 1983, the only child of Jack and Marlene Rivenna, a mechanic and housewife, respectively. Nick’s life was fairly uneventful until she was eight years old; that winter, her father died unexpectedly. He and Nick’s mother had driven to a New Year’s Eve party a couple towns over; roads were icy, and Nick’s mother lost control of the truck, rolling into a ditch. Nick’s father hadn’t been wearing his seat belt, and he was thrown from the truck. His injuries were severe enough he died almost instantly. Nick’s mother, on the other hand, escaped the wreckage with minor injuries and a major case of guilt that would only worsen as the years went on.
The singular event of her father’s death would become the defining factor in shaping Nick’s life from there on out - she would later place this incident as “the point my life basically went to shit.” Her mother’s personality drastically changed after the accident; she had always been ill-equipped as a mother, but after her husband’s death (for which she felt entirely responsible), she became even more distant, even downright abusive toward Nick. Now forced into the role of sole provider for herself and her child, Nick’s mother took a job as a waitress at the local bar. She found the long hours agreeable; the more time she spent at work, the less time she had to spend taking care of Nick.
Nick found this an agreeable arrangement as well; she quickly grew to hate her mother and found that the less time they spent in each other’s company, the better. She grew into a fundamentally angry person - angry at her father for dying, angry at God for the same reason, angry at her mother for her near-constant verbal abuse and rapid descent into alcoholism - basically, angry at the world for the difficult hand she’d been dealt.
Nick began to get involved in fights with other children in fourth grade; by fifth grade, she’d started regularly skipping classes. Her grades suffered, not because she wasn’t smart or capable, but because she simply didn’t care enough to put forth the effort, and nobody (especially not her mother) gave her any real encouragement. Nick had also earned a reputation as something of a troublemaker by the time she entered junior high; she listened to loud music, picked up smoking at the age of 14, loudly proclaimed to be an atheist (something unheard-of in a small, Bible-belt town like Winchester), and generally fit the mold for juvenile delinquent.
Throughout all of this, the one bright spot in Nick’s life was her best friend, a small, frail, brilliant but socially awkward boy named Andy. Andy and Nick became friends basically on accident their first year of junior high. Nick’s reputation as something of a bruiser preceded her, and when their science teacher assigned Nick and Andy as lab partners, Andy broke down in tears. Nick was a little shocked; she’d never elicited that kind of unprovoked response from anyone before, and she ended up dropping the tough-girl facade long enough to reassure Andy she wasn’t going to actually kill him or anything.
It was an odd sort of friendship, but it worked; Nick and Andy were both misfits in one way or another, so it made a sort of sense that they would find friendship in each other’s company. Andy quit getting picked on by basically everyone else once Nick was in his corner (she did have that reputation for a reason, after all), and Nick found something of a confidante and comrade in Andy. They spent most of their time together, in school and otherwise, all the way through high school. Nick’s academic performance still suffered, and she did still get in fights, but at least with Andy around, she didn’t drop out of school - she even managed to show up for classes most of the time. Nick’s mother continued her borderline antipathetic attitude toward her daughter and her new best friend, and Andy’s parents vocally disapproved of their friendship as well, concerned that Nick would be a bad influence on their son. Nick and Andy didn’t care; as far as either of them was concerned, their bond was unshakeable, and when Andy made the plan to move to Chicago to study at UIC’s School of Architecture after graduating from high school, Nick decided to go with him. She had no reason to stay in Winchester, after all; she hated her mother and the rest of the town, too. She felt that Andy was basically the only thing she had going for her - why wouldn’t she move with him? She got a job at the same auto shop where her father had worked, doing odd tasks around the office, mostly, and saved everything she could in order to move with Andy at the end of the summer after they both graduated from high school.
After living in a small town all her life, a big city like Chicago was a kind of urban paradise for Nick. She and Andy ended up renting a house in Pilsen with a rotating cast of three other roommates, usually fellow students, artists, and/or punk types. Andy focused solely on school and mostly lived off student loans; Nick got a series of basic customer service-type jobs in various places around town, finally settling in on a schedule of bartending most nights at one of the city’s quasi-dive bars, followed by opening most days at a neighborhood coffee shop. It was a perhaps unconventional schedule, but it paid the bills, at least. Nick was more or less content with her life, as it was.
Six years into this routine, everything changed for Nick.
The main catalyst for this upheaval was the in-town arrival of Andy’s favorite cousin, Kennedy. Kennedy and her parents had been living abroad in the UK for the eight years previous, and as a result of some “scandalous” behavior on Kennedy’s part, her parents sent her away, back to the States, to continue her studies out of their sight. Andy, of course, was thrilled to have his cousin back in a closer locale, and insisted she move in with them, but Nick took an immediate dislike to the other girl. Kennedy had a certain smugness that rubbed Nick the wrong way, and Nick saw Kennedy’s relocation as an intrusion coming between her and Andy. In truth, Andy, who was already halfway through his master’s program in architecture, had simply started to drift away from Nick; the two were clearly moving in different circles by this point in their lives, but Nick was determined to cling to the notion she’d developed in the past - that she and Andy would stick together forever.
The fact that Kennedy was an over-privileged, somewhat manipulative brat who was used to getting her own way didn’t do anything to help with getting into Nick’s good graces, either. Nonetheless, Kennedy became rather infatuated with Nick; she was drawn to the other girl’s standoffish nature and rude demeanor. Kennedy had received substantial parental pressure her entire life to fit a certain mold (polite, gracious, well-mannered, etc.), so Nick presented both a change Kennedy found refreshing, and a challenge of sorts in earning her friendship.
But Nick was more than a challenge to Kennedy - she was downright hostile to the other girl, even sometimes physically abusive. Still, Kennedy enjoyed hunting for which of Nick’s button’s to push to get the desired reaction, even if she did end up bruised from the encounter. Kennedy had set her sights on bending Nick to her will, and she was determined to see the task through to the end. Nick found Kennedy’s attention irritating and infuriating, most of the time, but eventually, Nick began to reluctantly admit to herself that she found it somewhat pleasurable. In the wake of almost-total absence of parental affection and the void left by the declining companionship with her best friend, Kennedy’s insistence on being part of Nick’s life was something Nick found both puzzling and oddly satisfying.
After a significant amount of wheedling from Kennedy, Nick agreed to join the all-girl indie rock band Kennedy had formed, which was lacking one key element - a vocalist. Nick had zero classical music or voice training, but she’d held a passion for music her entire life (a holdover from her father’s influence), and her voice was decent enough without formal training. Mostly, Nick agreed because Kennedy pushed the right button, and Nick wanted to prove that she could do it, that she wasn’t afraid of singing in front of other people. And Nick didn’t have any other hobbies to speak of; joining a band was just something to do to fill her time, and help her avoid the reality of her slowly disintegrating friendship with Andy.
The band enjoyed a small measure of local success, but more importantly, served as a means by which Kennedy was able to start breaking down some of Nick’s walls and become closer to the other girl. Nick begrudgingly forged a prickly sort of friendship with Kennedy, which in time, through a fair number of obstacles and setbacks, grew into a tumultuous quasi-romantic affair. This aspect of their relationship, however, was short-lived; Kennedy broke things off rather abruptly and decided to return to the UK permanently, on a marriage offer from an ex.
Kennedy’s decision to leave had a seriously negative impact on Nick’s emotional state. The way Nick saw it, she’d gone out on a limb and opened up to the other girl, and all she ended up with was what amounted to a giant slap in the face - the biggest, worst slap in the face in the history of ever, in point of fact. With Kennedy’s departure, under serious emotional distress, Nick finally admitted both to herself and to Andy that they’d remained friends out of habit, and it was time for both of them to move on into their respective disparate circles. Nick put this change into motion quite literally, and in perhaps the most drastic manner possible - she packed a bag, filled up her truck, and left town without once looking back.
Personality: Nick’s what you might call an eternal pessimist. She tends to expect the worst out of people, for the most part - that’s what she’s seen most of her life, so why would she expect otherwise? And she pretty much flaunts and revels in her bad attitude - she’s been given the “bad girl” badge, and she wears it with pride.
She isn’t motivated by much - she works because it pays the bills, and she works in a bar or a coffee shop because she finds the work tolerable. She doesn’t have many marketable job skills, and she’s fine with that, for the most part. It’s not like she has many hobbies outside of getting in fights, listening to music, chainsmoking, and drinking heavily, so it’s not like she’d have much to do in any spare time she might have. Nick doesn’t aspire to much, outside of scraping by and not - emphatically not - turning out like her mother, a miserable drunk stuck in a dead-end nowhere town.
Nick’s not really what you’d call a people person by any stretch of the imagination, but she can be sociable - if mildly apathetic - as long as the other parties aren’t overly obnoxious. This is mostly a mode she’s trained herself into, though - deep down, pushed so far because it scares her, Nick truly wishes to have a solid connection with other like-minded people (if any exist, that is). She can be extremely loyal, but earning her loyalty is no easy feat. Losing her loyalty, on the other hand, can happen before you have a chance to blink, and once it’s gone, it’s almost impossible to earn back again. Nick doesn’t put much stock in second chances.
Nick truly thinks of herself as more or less worthless - it’s what she’s had hammered into her head from a very young age, thanks to her mother. She doesn’t think much of other people, either, or life, for that matter - it’s a series of struggles with a brutal, often fruitless end. She might consider herself a nihilist, if she cared enough to put much thought into it (or knew what a nihilist is).
Nick’s very stubborn. Once she sets her mind on something, it’s very difficult to convince her otherwise, and unfortunately, that determination often works against her, feeding her negative self-image and lack of self-esteem into an ongoing cycle of dysfunction. She believes her life is awful, and that it will never get better, so she doesn’t try to make things better, and in some cases, she actively (albeit unconsciously) works against improvement. The same can be said for her relationships with most people - she expects people to be mostly horrible, so she’s not especially agreeable to people who attempt to get close to her, thus setting herself up for a self-fulfilling prophetic circle of vicious unpleasantness.
She acts apathetic about most things, but the truth is, Nick does care - too much, sometimes, and the apathy is more often a front. She’s learned that caring about something means it can be exploited against you, so the only way to show no weakness is to show you don’t care. She can, however, be goaded into things by pushing the right buttons; usually, those buttons involve a challenge of some sort. Nick might claim to not care about what people think of her, but she has earned a certain reputation, and backing down from challenges or showing weakness or fear isn’t part of it.
Nick has a nasty temper, and a terrible violent streak. Nick’s mother was often physically violent with her when she was too young to fight back, and thus Nick picked up her mother’s tendency to slap her or push her into a wall when she was too angry to deal with her daughter in other, less abusive means. Nick isn’t afraid to start or finish a fistfight, and she can be downright vicious once she’s in the mood. She’s not the most physically intimidating person ever, but she does know how to go for the hurt.
Inventory: Just the clothes she’s wearing and a few things in her pockets: a mostly-full pack of cigarettes, a cheap plastic lighter, and a pocket knife.
Abilities: Nick is a Nightbane, and as such, she has two forms - a Facade and a Morphus.
For most of her life, Nick was just a garden-variety human, with no supernatural powers whatsoever. She was, however, able to develop the following skills: drink most people under the table, find a particularly stinging insult for every occasion, do her own oil changes, make both a perfect cappuccino and an excellent whiskey sour, and sing fairly well, especially considering she has no formal training to speak of. She retains these skills in her Facade form.
As a Nightbane, Nick’s main Talent (which hadn’t yet manifested ICly in her original game, but did emerge as of the test drive meme thread) is called Darksong: “The Nightbane can emit a piercing, deafening sound; it can be an inhuman howl, a mighty roar, an ultrasonic keening, or even electronic feedback, depending on the Nightbane's Morphus.” In her Morphus form, Nick also possesses heightened senses and defensive/regenerative capabilities, and resists psychic meddling.
(With mod permission, I'd like to entertain the possibility of developing additional Talents up to a total of six, as the game progresses, if that's acceptable?)
In her Morphus form, Nick takes the shape of a giant antique porcelain doll. She stands close to 6 and a half feet tall, her hair is long and brown, her glass eyes are wide and the same icy blue as in her Facade form, and all of her limbs work on hinges. Her clothing is early Victorian, a poofy multilayer black lace dress with ribbons and tight sleeves - highly impractical, and perhaps the exact opposite of Nick’s usual preference. A major defining feature of this form is the crack in her forehead - a visible hollow spot, with multiple fissure lines radiating outward. As a whole, Nick in her Morphus form is a fearsome, bizarre sight.
(Dolls for reference: [1]; [2])
Flaws: Nick possesses an explosive temper, and she doesn’t much care about keeping it under control. If someone pisses her off, she’ll be the first to let them know, be it through yelled insults or physical blows. (She had a reputation as a teen bruiser for a reason, after all - one that wasn’t unfounded.)
Even without being provoked to anger, Nick defaults in her interpersonal interactions toward nastiness; she doesn’t care if people like her, and in fact, expects that they won’t, so she doesn’t see any point in making the effort to convince them otherwise. If people are going to see her as monster, she may as well live up to those expectations.
As the product of an abusive childhood home, Nick also has picked up abusive tendencies of her own, as is fairly common in the cycle of abuse. She doesn’t hesitate to punch, slap, or shove someone if she feels the use of force is justified (and really, when wouldn’t it be?); she also leans heavily on the side of verbal abuse, with hurled insults and obscenities. In some respects, Nick could even be considered a bully.
That’s not to say she’s a bad person overall - she’s just very deeply damaged, and hasn’t ever been made to hold herself accountable for her bad behavior.
CR AU
Previous Game and Time: Vancouver Nightbane; Feb-March 2009.
Previous Development: Nick drove wherever the road would take her - westward, then north, until she finally ended up about as far west as she could get, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She hadn’t set out for Vancouver in particular when she left Chicago; in all honesty, she only chose it because it was the only Canadian city she could remember in this part of the country, and she’d needed a convincing story when crossing the border. But it seemed like as good a city as any to cool her heels while nursing her broken ego - it was far enough away from the problems she’d run away from, nobody knew her there, and nobody from back home would think to look for her there, either. She managed to secure a room in a local hostel and prepared to mull over the wreck her life had turned into until her money ran out and she’d have to head back to Chicago.
Less than a week into her stay in Vancouver, Nick began to notice things - weird things - left for her like presents from an unsettling admirer. Most often, she found rose petals everywhere she went, and it creeped her out. Nick concluded from this evidence that she had a stalker, and she wasn’t wrong - as it turned out, she was being stalked, but not exactly in the way she imagined. She relocated to another hotel, not far from the hostel but better secured.
One night, Nick took refuge in the bar attached to a hotel and spent the evening self-medicating and (in a weird turn of events) talking about her stalking problem to the bartender, a somewhat-spacey man named Graham. Graham, figuring Nick for a dormant Nightbane, befriended her; the two spent some time chatting on a staff balcony, and Graham gave Nick some suggestions as to which sights to see while in town. Unbeknownst to Nick, Graham was also a Nightbane, as were most of the hotel’s other residents and staff, and Graham was part of a secret rescue effort for new Nightbane, who’d recently become targets of deadly attacks. Graham suggested Nick check out Stanley Park in particular, with the intent of both drawing her stalker out into the open and triggering Nick’s Becoming (i.e., transformation into a full-blown Nightbane from her latent human state); Nick suspected nothing out of the ordinary, of course, and followed his advice.
In Stanley Park, Nick was attacked by something hideous, and the trauma of the attack set off her Becoming, where, for the first time, Nick changed into her Morphus form, that of a giant, cracked antique porcelain doll. Luckily, Graham had sent another Nightbane named Jaqueline to follow and protect Nick; Jaqueline was able to fend off Nick’s assailant and bring her back safely to the hotel, where Graham could make with the explanations:
Nick was extremely reluctant to believe Graham, but he was finally able to make her see reason and agree to stick with him and his group, for her own safety, and so that she could learn how to use her new powers.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: Test driven; Not this bullshit again.
Player name: Rae (the other one).
Contact: last laugh blues at AIM; ventose at Plurk.
Characters currently in-game: None!
CHARACTER
Character Name: Nichole “Nick” Rivenna
Character Age: 25
Canon: Original character from unpublished fiction, with previous game developments (very loosely set in the Nightbane continuum).
Canon Point: About a month after her Becoming.
World Description: Nick’s world is fairly ordinary and corresponds closely with the real North America in 2009 - the main difference is the existence of creatures called Nightbane.
Some additional background information on Nightbane from the Rifts Wikia page:
The Nightbane are characters who discover that they not entirely human. In fact, they are shape-changers who possess a comparatively frail, human "facade" and a supernatural, superhuman "morphus."
The morphus is said to reflect the character's personality or subconscious fears, desires and self-image. Thus some are exotic and beautiful, while others (most) are misshapened monsters. No two appear exactly alike and even the most hideous can have the spirit of a saint, while the handsome and beautiful may be evil incarnate.
Whether hideous or beautiful, cruel or kind, the Nightbane are feared and slaughtered by most humans who see only a monster. Creatures of shadows, when slain, they disappear like the morning mist, as if they never existed (and leaving no evidence of their existence).
A surprising number of Nightbane cherish and cling to their humanity. Many of these become secret protectors of humankind and champions of good. Yet even these misbegotten heroes must operate in secret lest fearful, evil or misguided humans torment or destroy them. But there are far greater horrors loosed in the world than this. Evil Nightbane, vampires, human sorcerers, supernatural predators and other dark forces all busy building their petty power structures, preying on the weak and innocent, or engaging in foul pursuits. Worse, the Nightbane are hunted and slaughtered without just cause and without mercy by the Nightlords and their minions.
The Nightlords plan to quietly seize control of the world! They have already secretly infiltrated the highest levels of world government and business, and have begun to manipulate and enslave humankind. Their only opposition: humans who have uncovered the truth, vampires (rivals for world domination), and the Nightbane who have elected to fight their own kind to save the human race.
Feared and hunted by humans, the Nightlords, and the forces of evil, the Nightbane are the ultimate anti-heroes who struggle to triumph against all odds!
History: Nick was born in the small town of Winchester, Kansas, on the 18th of June, 1983, the only child of Jack and Marlene Rivenna, a mechanic and housewife, respectively. Nick’s life was fairly uneventful until she was eight years old; that winter, her father died unexpectedly. He and Nick’s mother had driven to a New Year’s Eve party a couple towns over; roads were icy, and Nick’s mother lost control of the truck, rolling into a ditch. Nick’s father hadn’t been wearing his seat belt, and he was thrown from the truck. His injuries were severe enough he died almost instantly. Nick’s mother, on the other hand, escaped the wreckage with minor injuries and a major case of guilt that would only worsen as the years went on.
The singular event of her father’s death would become the defining factor in shaping Nick’s life from there on out - she would later place this incident as “the point my life basically went to shit.” Her mother’s personality drastically changed after the accident; she had always been ill-equipped as a mother, but after her husband’s death (for which she felt entirely responsible), she became even more distant, even downright abusive toward Nick. Now forced into the role of sole provider for herself and her child, Nick’s mother took a job as a waitress at the local bar. She found the long hours agreeable; the more time she spent at work, the less time she had to spend taking care of Nick.
Nick found this an agreeable arrangement as well; she quickly grew to hate her mother and found that the less time they spent in each other’s company, the better. She grew into a fundamentally angry person - angry at her father for dying, angry at God for the same reason, angry at her mother for her near-constant verbal abuse and rapid descent into alcoholism - basically, angry at the world for the difficult hand she’d been dealt.
Nick began to get involved in fights with other children in fourth grade; by fifth grade, she’d started regularly skipping classes. Her grades suffered, not because she wasn’t smart or capable, but because she simply didn’t care enough to put forth the effort, and nobody (especially not her mother) gave her any real encouragement. Nick had also earned a reputation as something of a troublemaker by the time she entered junior high; she listened to loud music, picked up smoking at the age of 14, loudly proclaimed to be an atheist (something unheard-of in a small, Bible-belt town like Winchester), and generally fit the mold for juvenile delinquent.
Throughout all of this, the one bright spot in Nick’s life was her best friend, a small, frail, brilliant but socially awkward boy named Andy. Andy and Nick became friends basically on accident their first year of junior high. Nick’s reputation as something of a bruiser preceded her, and when their science teacher assigned Nick and Andy as lab partners, Andy broke down in tears. Nick was a little shocked; she’d never elicited that kind of unprovoked response from anyone before, and she ended up dropping the tough-girl facade long enough to reassure Andy she wasn’t going to actually kill him or anything.
It was an odd sort of friendship, but it worked; Nick and Andy were both misfits in one way or another, so it made a sort of sense that they would find friendship in each other’s company. Andy quit getting picked on by basically everyone else once Nick was in his corner (she did have that reputation for a reason, after all), and Nick found something of a confidante and comrade in Andy. They spent most of their time together, in school and otherwise, all the way through high school. Nick’s academic performance still suffered, and she did still get in fights, but at least with Andy around, she didn’t drop out of school - she even managed to show up for classes most of the time. Nick’s mother continued her borderline antipathetic attitude toward her daughter and her new best friend, and Andy’s parents vocally disapproved of their friendship as well, concerned that Nick would be a bad influence on their son. Nick and Andy didn’t care; as far as either of them was concerned, their bond was unshakeable, and when Andy made the plan to move to Chicago to study at UIC’s School of Architecture after graduating from high school, Nick decided to go with him. She had no reason to stay in Winchester, after all; she hated her mother and the rest of the town, too. She felt that Andy was basically the only thing she had going for her - why wouldn’t she move with him? She got a job at the same auto shop where her father had worked, doing odd tasks around the office, mostly, and saved everything she could in order to move with Andy at the end of the summer after they both graduated from high school.
After living in a small town all her life, a big city like Chicago was a kind of urban paradise for Nick. She and Andy ended up renting a house in Pilsen with a rotating cast of three other roommates, usually fellow students, artists, and/or punk types. Andy focused solely on school and mostly lived off student loans; Nick got a series of basic customer service-type jobs in various places around town, finally settling in on a schedule of bartending most nights at one of the city’s quasi-dive bars, followed by opening most days at a neighborhood coffee shop. It was a perhaps unconventional schedule, but it paid the bills, at least. Nick was more or less content with her life, as it was.
Six years into this routine, everything changed for Nick.
The main catalyst for this upheaval was the in-town arrival of Andy’s favorite cousin, Kennedy. Kennedy and her parents had been living abroad in the UK for the eight years previous, and as a result of some “scandalous” behavior on Kennedy’s part, her parents sent her away, back to the States, to continue her studies out of their sight. Andy, of course, was thrilled to have his cousin back in a closer locale, and insisted she move in with them, but Nick took an immediate dislike to the other girl. Kennedy had a certain smugness that rubbed Nick the wrong way, and Nick saw Kennedy’s relocation as an intrusion coming between her and Andy. In truth, Andy, who was already halfway through his master’s program in architecture, had simply started to drift away from Nick; the two were clearly moving in different circles by this point in their lives, but Nick was determined to cling to the notion she’d developed in the past - that she and Andy would stick together forever.
The fact that Kennedy was an over-privileged, somewhat manipulative brat who was used to getting her own way didn’t do anything to help with getting into Nick’s good graces, either. Nonetheless, Kennedy became rather infatuated with Nick; she was drawn to the other girl’s standoffish nature and rude demeanor. Kennedy had received substantial parental pressure her entire life to fit a certain mold (polite, gracious, well-mannered, etc.), so Nick presented both a change Kennedy found refreshing, and a challenge of sorts in earning her friendship.
But Nick was more than a challenge to Kennedy - she was downright hostile to the other girl, even sometimes physically abusive. Still, Kennedy enjoyed hunting for which of Nick’s button’s to push to get the desired reaction, even if she did end up bruised from the encounter. Kennedy had set her sights on bending Nick to her will, and she was determined to see the task through to the end. Nick found Kennedy’s attention irritating and infuriating, most of the time, but eventually, Nick began to reluctantly admit to herself that she found it somewhat pleasurable. In the wake of almost-total absence of parental affection and the void left by the declining companionship with her best friend, Kennedy’s insistence on being part of Nick’s life was something Nick found both puzzling and oddly satisfying.
After a significant amount of wheedling from Kennedy, Nick agreed to join the all-girl indie rock band Kennedy had formed, which was lacking one key element - a vocalist. Nick had zero classical music or voice training, but she’d held a passion for music her entire life (a holdover from her father’s influence), and her voice was decent enough without formal training. Mostly, Nick agreed because Kennedy pushed the right button, and Nick wanted to prove that she could do it, that she wasn’t afraid of singing in front of other people. And Nick didn’t have any other hobbies to speak of; joining a band was just something to do to fill her time, and help her avoid the reality of her slowly disintegrating friendship with Andy.
The band enjoyed a small measure of local success, but more importantly, served as a means by which Kennedy was able to start breaking down some of Nick’s walls and become closer to the other girl. Nick begrudgingly forged a prickly sort of friendship with Kennedy, which in time, through a fair number of obstacles and setbacks, grew into a tumultuous quasi-romantic affair. This aspect of their relationship, however, was short-lived; Kennedy broke things off rather abruptly and decided to return to the UK permanently, on a marriage offer from an ex.
Kennedy’s decision to leave had a seriously negative impact on Nick’s emotional state. The way Nick saw it, she’d gone out on a limb and opened up to the other girl, and all she ended up with was what amounted to a giant slap in the face - the biggest, worst slap in the face in the history of ever, in point of fact. With Kennedy’s departure, under serious emotional distress, Nick finally admitted both to herself and to Andy that they’d remained friends out of habit, and it was time for both of them to move on into their respective disparate circles. Nick put this change into motion quite literally, and in perhaps the most drastic manner possible - she packed a bag, filled up her truck, and left town without once looking back.
Personality: Nick’s what you might call an eternal pessimist. She tends to expect the worst out of people, for the most part - that’s what she’s seen most of her life, so why would she expect otherwise? And she pretty much flaunts and revels in her bad attitude - she’s been given the “bad girl” badge, and she wears it with pride.
She isn’t motivated by much - she works because it pays the bills, and she works in a bar or a coffee shop because she finds the work tolerable. She doesn’t have many marketable job skills, and she’s fine with that, for the most part. It’s not like she has many hobbies outside of getting in fights, listening to music, chainsmoking, and drinking heavily, so it’s not like she’d have much to do in any spare time she might have. Nick doesn’t aspire to much, outside of scraping by and not - emphatically not - turning out like her mother, a miserable drunk stuck in a dead-end nowhere town.
Nick’s not really what you’d call a people person by any stretch of the imagination, but she can be sociable - if mildly apathetic - as long as the other parties aren’t overly obnoxious. This is mostly a mode she’s trained herself into, though - deep down, pushed so far because it scares her, Nick truly wishes to have a solid connection with other like-minded people (if any exist, that is). She can be extremely loyal, but earning her loyalty is no easy feat. Losing her loyalty, on the other hand, can happen before you have a chance to blink, and once it’s gone, it’s almost impossible to earn back again. Nick doesn’t put much stock in second chances.
Nick truly thinks of herself as more or less worthless - it’s what she’s had hammered into her head from a very young age, thanks to her mother. She doesn’t think much of other people, either, or life, for that matter - it’s a series of struggles with a brutal, often fruitless end. She might consider herself a nihilist, if she cared enough to put much thought into it (or knew what a nihilist is).
Nick’s very stubborn. Once she sets her mind on something, it’s very difficult to convince her otherwise, and unfortunately, that determination often works against her, feeding her negative self-image and lack of self-esteem into an ongoing cycle of dysfunction. She believes her life is awful, and that it will never get better, so she doesn’t try to make things better, and in some cases, she actively (albeit unconsciously) works against improvement. The same can be said for her relationships with most people - she expects people to be mostly horrible, so she’s not especially agreeable to people who attempt to get close to her, thus setting herself up for a self-fulfilling prophetic circle of vicious unpleasantness.
She acts apathetic about most things, but the truth is, Nick does care - too much, sometimes, and the apathy is more often a front. She’s learned that caring about something means it can be exploited against you, so the only way to show no weakness is to show you don’t care. She can, however, be goaded into things by pushing the right buttons; usually, those buttons involve a challenge of some sort. Nick might claim to not care about what people think of her, but she has earned a certain reputation, and backing down from challenges or showing weakness or fear isn’t part of it.
Nick has a nasty temper, and a terrible violent streak. Nick’s mother was often physically violent with her when she was too young to fight back, and thus Nick picked up her mother’s tendency to slap her or push her into a wall when she was too angry to deal with her daughter in other, less abusive means. Nick isn’t afraid to start or finish a fistfight, and she can be downright vicious once she’s in the mood. She’s not the most physically intimidating person ever, but she does know how to go for the hurt.
Inventory: Just the clothes she’s wearing and a few things in her pockets: a mostly-full pack of cigarettes, a cheap plastic lighter, and a pocket knife.
Abilities: Nick is a Nightbane, and as such, she has two forms - a Facade and a Morphus.
For most of her life, Nick was just a garden-variety human, with no supernatural powers whatsoever. She was, however, able to develop the following skills: drink most people under the table, find a particularly stinging insult for every occasion, do her own oil changes, make both a perfect cappuccino and an excellent whiskey sour, and sing fairly well, especially considering she has no formal training to speak of. She retains these skills in her Facade form.
As a Nightbane, Nick’s main Talent (which hadn’t yet manifested ICly in her original game, but did emerge as of the test drive meme thread) is called Darksong: “The Nightbane can emit a piercing, deafening sound; it can be an inhuman howl, a mighty roar, an ultrasonic keening, or even electronic feedback, depending on the Nightbane's Morphus.” In her Morphus form, Nick also possesses heightened senses and defensive/regenerative capabilities, and resists psychic meddling.
(With mod permission, I'd like to entertain the possibility of developing additional Talents up to a total of six, as the game progresses, if that's acceptable?)
In her Morphus form, Nick takes the shape of a giant antique porcelain doll. She stands close to 6 and a half feet tall, her hair is long and brown, her glass eyes are wide and the same icy blue as in her Facade form, and all of her limbs work on hinges. Her clothing is early Victorian, a poofy multilayer black lace dress with ribbons and tight sleeves - highly impractical, and perhaps the exact opposite of Nick’s usual preference. A major defining feature of this form is the crack in her forehead - a visible hollow spot, with multiple fissure lines radiating outward. As a whole, Nick in her Morphus form is a fearsome, bizarre sight.
(Dolls for reference: [1]; [2])
![[1]](http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/sarkao/sarkao1007/sarkao100700027/7443584-antique-porcelain-doll.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](http://www.craftster.org/pictures/data/500/medium/161189_13Sep09_100_8739.JPG){kind=link}
Flaws: Nick possesses an explosive temper, and she doesn’t much care about keeping it under control. If someone pisses her off, she’ll be the first to let them know, be it through yelled insults or physical blows. (She had a reputation as a teen bruiser for a reason, after all - one that wasn’t unfounded.)
Even without being provoked to anger, Nick defaults in her interpersonal interactions toward nastiness; she doesn’t care if people like her, and in fact, expects that they won’t, so she doesn’t see any point in making the effort to convince them otherwise. If people are going to see her as monster, she may as well live up to those expectations.
As the product of an abusive childhood home, Nick also has picked up abusive tendencies of her own, as is fairly common in the cycle of abuse. She doesn’t hesitate to punch, slap, or shove someone if she feels the use of force is justified (and really, when wouldn’t it be?); she also leans heavily on the side of verbal abuse, with hurled insults and obscenities. In some respects, Nick could even be considered a bully.
That’s not to say she’s a bad person overall - she’s just very deeply damaged, and hasn’t ever been made to hold herself accountable for her bad behavior.
CR AU
Previous Game and Time: Vancouver Nightbane; Feb-March 2009.
Previous Development: Nick drove wherever the road would take her - westward, then north, until she finally ended up about as far west as she could get, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She hadn’t set out for Vancouver in particular when she left Chicago; in all honesty, she only chose it because it was the only Canadian city she could remember in this part of the country, and she’d needed a convincing story when crossing the border. But it seemed like as good a city as any to cool her heels while nursing her broken ego - it was far enough away from the problems she’d run away from, nobody knew her there, and nobody from back home would think to look for her there, either. She managed to secure a room in a local hostel and prepared to mull over the wreck her life had turned into until her money ran out and she’d have to head back to Chicago.
Less than a week into her stay in Vancouver, Nick began to notice things - weird things - left for her like presents from an unsettling admirer. Most often, she found rose petals everywhere she went, and it creeped her out. Nick concluded from this evidence that she had a stalker, and she wasn’t wrong - as it turned out, she was being stalked, but not exactly in the way she imagined. She relocated to another hotel, not far from the hostel but better secured.
One night, Nick took refuge in the bar attached to a hotel and spent the evening self-medicating and (in a weird turn of events) talking about her stalking problem to the bartender, a somewhat-spacey man named Graham. Graham, figuring Nick for a dormant Nightbane, befriended her; the two spent some time chatting on a staff balcony, and Graham gave Nick some suggestions as to which sights to see while in town. Unbeknownst to Nick, Graham was also a Nightbane, as were most of the hotel’s other residents and staff, and Graham was part of a secret rescue effort for new Nightbane, who’d recently become targets of deadly attacks. Graham suggested Nick check out Stanley Park in particular, with the intent of both drawing her stalker out into the open and triggering Nick’s Becoming (i.e., transformation into a full-blown Nightbane from her latent human state); Nick suspected nothing out of the ordinary, of course, and followed his advice.
In Stanley Park, Nick was attacked by something hideous, and the trauma of the attack set off her Becoming, where, for the first time, Nick changed into her Morphus form, that of a giant, cracked antique porcelain doll. Luckily, Graham had sent another Nightbane named Jaqueline to follow and protect Nick; Jaqueline was able to fend off Nick’s assailant and bring her back safely to the hotel, where Graham could make with the explanations:
"There are Nightbane as old as history. We're a race of people, who age as humans, then turn into something different when we undergo an event that jars us. I nearly got blown up, you got attacked. Now both of us are going to age one year for every one hundred that we live. Now both of us can change forms."
Nick was extremely reluctant to believe Graham, but he was finally able to make her see reason and agree to stick with him and his group, for her own safety, and so that she could learn how to use her new powers.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: Test driven; Not this bullshit again.
no subject