character FAQ {{ OOC }}
What the fuck is going on here?
Frederick Abberline was a real person. From Hell is a great graphic novel. This character has little to do with either.
Once upon a time there was Frederick Abberline, who was the lead investigator in the famous Jack the Ripper murders in 1888 in Whitechapel, London. In 1991, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell put out a graphic novel called From Hell that detailed the Ripper case, following the Stephen Knight theory. Abberline was portrayed as a hardworking but otherwise ordinary police officer working in tandem with a fraudulent psychic, Robert Lees. In 2001, the Hughes Brothers put out a film adaptation of From Hell, and somehow in the transition, the nearly-elderly and personality-less Inspector and the flighty, vengeful Lees had done a miraculous blend-and-transform into a singular entity - a conflicted, progressive, borderline-Libertine police officer who experiences clairvoyant visions with the aid of opium and absinthe, portrayed by Johnny Depp. Alan Moore promptly disowned the entire affair.
While I enjoy the graphic novel and finds its story fascinating, I could do without the characters (I feel aside from the Ripper himself, the development and expression is a little void), and I’m really rather fond of what the movie did for him. I feel like the spirit of the point of the novel - the definition of the culture of England at the time, the feel of London, and so forth - is really captured in how Abberline is characterized in the film, even if he could hardly be farther from the real Frederick Abberline.
Abberline was played for about a year, on and off, at a panfandom game using the journal ID bloodyuseless (taken from a line from the movie, spoken by Mary Kelly, describing the good inspector). That journal is still in use for another panfandom game, for good old turn of the century Frederick. I decided that since I was so fond of the development he went through at the old game, which I could no longer keep up with for a variety of reasons, that I wanted to do something fun with him from that timeline. So! Reborn in the future, kept his memories, dropped in the Nexus.
His family, history, etc, are not the real's. The biography for his 1800s incarnation can be found here, and is fabricated (based on the film) entirely by me for the purposes of role playing. It varies from the one used with this timeline; he died in 1929 at the age of 86 (and then woke up in the City, spent a year in game play, then was reborn, and eventually found his way to the Nexus).
Where and when does Frederick live?
Frederick lives in Westminster, in London, England, where it is the year 2032. It’s a slightly alternate universe - he refers to things as “her majesty’s [whatever]”, which means Queen Elizabeth is either over 100 years old, or someone had a daughter that killed everyone and took over. Take your pick.
Having the same name, family, birthdate and birthplace as a semi-famous police officer might be weird for a guy becoming a successful police officer, but fate decided to play a bit of a joke on Fred; where he lives, Jack the Ripper was an urban legend, and the famous unsolved murders of the turn of the century were committed by a man widely believed to have been a barber. Yes, really. Shut up, it’s funny, and Fred thinks so too.
Frederick inhabits a three-floor townhouse. The main floor has a dining/living room area that has become one giant office-type explosion, a kitchen, and a half bathroom. Upstairs is two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a balcony. The third floor is the basement, which is sunken in halfway, so that windows on the upper half of the front wall are level with the street. It has a room that he uses as an actual living room, with sofas and a television, a laundry room, and a garage that opens up in the opposite direction of the front door. Its single resident is a 2023 silver BMW sedan, which is a respectable, if a little out-dated model that he takes pretty good care of. It’s all about 2,600 square feet, in a fairly decent middle-class area.
Britcheck?
I am not English! I’m American. I’m sure it shows. I’ve never been to the UK. Things are going to be inaccurate and tweaked, but it’s all pretendy funtimes. I do try to stay at least peripherally aware of things. There is lots of Wiki and Google involved here, folks.
What does Fred do, and what CAN he do?
Frederick is a Chief Inspector of SCD 1, which is basically homicide. His office is in New Scotland Yard headquarters in Westminster, London. He operates largely off-book, because a handful of his superiors in various departments of law enforcement know about his ability and, after a number of investigations and negotiations early on in his career, is allowed a lot of leeway on his actions and activities in return for his cooperation with outside projects from Special Branch and Interpol, for which he is compensated well financially. Though he is definitely aided by his supernatural powers, he is a brilliant investigator and profiler, and has trained my young officers to excel beyond what is expected of them. He has a near perfect memory.
He is clairvoyant; this means he can see the future. He sees the future in a number of ways, the primary being visions through dreams. He frequently and regularly sees presently or soon to be occurring murders, which is why he does what he does professionally. Sometimes he will get random waking visions that invade his consciousness and leave him “spaced out” and unresponsive for a moment. He also just gets “intuitions” that turn out to be correct, as well as randomly occurring epiphanies about people when speaking to them. He can focus this ability with tarot cards, though he finds doing tarot readings a bit silly, and tends not to mention that to people. He can enhance his ability with the use of opium, and he really tends not to mention that. His visions, intuitions, and etc are all random and largely uncontrolled, except through intense effort that leaves him exhausted and ill.
He can also see the past, though it’s not nearly as frequently occurring. He tends to only see the past through dream visions, and they are almost always more personal things, about people he knows.
He's very good a guessing. Yes, guessing - "Which what should we turn?", "When do you think it'll stop raining?" etc. Card games, pick a number, which hand am I holding that in, etc. It's possibly luck, but probably just related to his clairvoyance. He is very accurate, though not fail proof.
Frederick is a little bit psychic (affectionately referred to as “opinionated empathy”). He cannot read minds or speak telepathically at whim (if someone speaks to him, he can reply, but he needs a little help with the initial connection, usually), and cannot exert mind control. He can get impressions about people easily, tell when they’re lying, tell if they’re supernatural, etc etc. Of course, because it’s very benign, even very low-level shields completely block him. He doesn’t have much control over it aside from turning it off and on, and cannot “target” people very well. His experiences with the supernatural over the course of his extended life have forced him to adapt and be able to block incoming mental attacks and invasions very well. He is able to learn new things and broaden his abilities, though it requires excessive effort or great catalyst. He has never been taught by another telepath or psychic.
Inside the Nexus proper, Fred "turns off" his ability, because he doesn't like getting random impressions from people (and it's a pain in the ass to coordinate). He might ping very quietly on anyone's radars, if they are powerful and very detail oriented. He can hear telepathic communication if it's directed at him, though he will respond verbally.