APPLICATION
Series: Kraken by China Mieville
Series' Medium: Book
Character: William "Billy" Harrow
Age: 28 (An estimate, as the book says he’s a little shy of thirty.)
Sex/Gender: Male
Canon Role: Protagonist
"Real" Name: Frederick Aldrich
Please give us a personal history of your character's life and explain to us in detail how they grow and develop over the course of their canon: The London that Billy is from is a city of gods and magic, rooted in faith. Things are magical because peoples’ belief has convinced the world that they should be, and you can’t walk down a street without invoking one god or another. People who occupy the city and can consciously manipulate the world are common, but all of this exists beneath the surface of London, while most of the population remains oblivious.
Billy Harrow was born in the world of the mundane to an upper middle class family. He rarely got along with his older brother, and never had anything in common with his father. After his mother died when Billy was in his early twenties, he and his father fell out of contact due to a mutual disinterest. Even as a child, Billy was fascinated by marine life and museums, and would later write his masters thesis on marine molluscs. He was hired to work at the Darwin Center, preserving and bottling specimens. Initially, Billy was atrocious at his job, to the point where he was considering quitting. But a year after being hired, Billy told a story during a drunken outing with friends who were all trying to bluff one another. He claimed that he was the first successful baby born via in vitro fertilization, but due to complications the laurel was officially handed to another family some time later. He was extremely convincing, and the game ended before he could tell the truth.
Billy decided to keep up this joke when he returned to work, and for the next several years never corrected anyone. The talk was overheard by the museum’s guardian, a mnemophylax, an Angel of Memory. People place so much value onto the memories collected in museums that these places have real religious power, and eventually develop sentient angelic guardians. These Angels are able to choose prophets and messiahs, and the Darwin Center’s Angel, thematically made of preservation bottles, assumed that Billy was truly the first human born of glass. It chose him as its christ. Suddenly, Billy improved radically at his job. He became known for his uncanny ability to preserve animals (especially molluscs) in the most lifelike poses. Billy felt so confident in his talent that he believed he could preserve anything. His career flourished modestly, but nothing significantly changed, except that ever since then Billy began to hear odd noises. Bottles rolling on the floor when there was no one around, clattering test tubes in locked rooms, glass grinding in empty hallways... He associated these sounds with moments of anxiety or stress, and assumed it must have been all in his head. The one exciting incident since then was when the giant squid was delivered. Billy was amongst those who preserved the massive specimen.
Years later, Al Adler, an accomplished thief for the magical underworld, is commissioned by a powerful (and supposedly dead) man named Grisamentum to steal the squid. Out of traditional superstition, he went to the Londonmancers, a group of soothsayers connected to the city of London. They saw in his reading that stealing the squid would lead to the end of the world, and not just any end, but an end with no after.
When Adler didn't change his plan despite this, the Londonmancers recruited Simon Shaw's help. Simon had a ability that allowed him to transport any item or person as though they were being beamed Star Trek style. He beamed in Adler, all the while pretending to help him, but the plan was to use him as a distraction. While the Angel of Memory was preoccupied killing Adler, Simon transported himself in and stole the squid for the Londonmacers. Unfortunately, nothing changed in their prediction of the end of the world. In fact, the catastrophe seemed to feel even closer.
Billy was the one who discovered the squid was missing as he was conducting a tour. Amongst the police that arrive to investigate was a young woman who stood out to Billy. He later learned that her name was Kath Collingswood, and she was a very talented magic user. She knacked Billy and the rest of the witnesses present into not telling anyone about the missing squid. Billy, however, was able to resist the magical compulsion and told his friend Leon and Leon’s girlfriend, Marge. The next day he was called for a follow-up interview with an odd trio of policemen, which included Cloongswood along with two men, Baron and Vardy. After this odd encounter, Billy felt ill at ease and wandered the city aimlessly. In doing so, he spotted Dane Parnell, an unfriendly security guard who went missing after the squid theft. He seemed to be stalking Billy.
Billy returned to the Darwin Center the next day, and while there he heard the grinding glass of the Angel of Memory, which enticed him to follow it. He discovered the body of Al Adler, who’d been bottled like a specimen in a storage room. Baron, Vardy and Collingswood approached Billy again at the new crime scene, and this time they offered him a position as a consultant on the squid case. They explained the basics about what was happening, including that they were of the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit (FSRC), and they believed that theft of the squid is the work of a cult of squid worshippers.
Vardy, the profiler of the unit whose skill was his ability to adopt the mindset of the cults he hunted, saw Darwin’s Beagle samples while speaking with Billy. These samples eventually led Darwin to his theory of evolution. Vardy was so good at his job because he was motivated by his jealous loss of faith in literal Christianity, which he blamed on evolutionary theory. As a result of the squid’s theft, Vardy spotted these symbols of Darwin's work and he began to create a plot to reboot the world and bring it back to a state where he could revive his faith. Although no one knew it yet, this was the real threat to the the world.
Oblivious to this, the next day Billy yet again resisted Collingswood’s magical orders not to speak, and invited Leon over to tell him about what had happened. Leon accidentally brought in with him a package that hid the violent and dangerous Goss and Subby, a tall, older man and a young boy notorious throughout the magical world for their cruelty and invulnerability. The killers-for-hire murdered Leon and kidnapped Billy, and then dragged him before their current boss, the Tattoo. The Tattoo was once a normal mobster who rivaled Grisamentum. Gris punished him by having his soul tattooed onto the back of an unsuspecting man named Paul. The Tattoo now appeared as a living cartoon face on the back of Paul, who spent his time tied up and dragged around by the Tattoo’s goons.
The Tattoo wanted the squid for himself because of the power it supposedly held, and he believed Billy was the key to finding it. When it became clear that Billy was clueless, he had him taken away to face a fate worse than death. In a panic, Billy used his untapped, Angel-given knack to freeze time just long enough to escape Goss and Subby’s grasp. Dane was watching all along, and took the opportunity to jump in to help and quickly dragged Billy off to safety and into a car. Dane, as it turned out, was one of the squid worshippers Vardy mentioned, called the Krakenists. They believed that Billy was a prophet of their god, and they offered him protection that unfortunately also worked as a sort of captivity, since if Billy left he would be be found by the Tattoo's men. They fed him magically imbued squid ink to try and inspire strange, squid-themed fever dreams, which they hoped were prophetic. Billy was still in shock about what'd happened to Leon, and was unable to offer much resistance.
Dane, meanwhile, had made an agreement with the Krakenist head priest, the Tuethex. Dane was to pretend to abandon the church to search for the stolen squid while the Tuethex insisted that they didn't need to rescue their god. He referenced an important part of Kralenist theology to justify his "decision": the movement without moving. The rest of the congregation would assume Dane was an outcast, because it would make him extremely trustworthy to outsiders. If he found the squid, he was to burn it. However, what wasn’t part of the plan was offering Billy a chance to escape and come with him. Wanting revenge for Leon and some control over his life, Billy agreed, and so Dane stole the Kraken prophet. They ended up hiding out in a series of safe houses to evade recapture by anyone searching for them.
They recruited the aid of Wati, an ancient Egyptian spirit who dedicated his life to organizing unions for magical servants. The Tattoo had been attacking his strikes, and because of that Wati agreed to help Billy and Dane keep the squid from him. The three of them then approached the Londonmancers, who were required to remain neutral, and because of that would be obligated to not betray Dane and Billy to their pursuers. They were given a reading, which again confirms the end approaching. Not long after, they received a message from none other than Grisamentum himself, who should have been long dead. When they went to meet him, they instead find Byrne, a thanaturge and Gris’s girlfriend. She appeared to channel Gris through writing with a special ink. He offered Billy and Dane a chance to work with him to stop the Tattoo. Dane wanted to accept, but the Angel of Memory interceded and warned Billy. Based on Billy's sudden distrust of Gris, they declined the offer.
Billy, Dane and Wati began to narrow their list of suspects capable of moving the squid until they finally reached Simon Shaw, a Star Trek aficionado whose knack had moulded itself to fit his fandom. Although Simon's teleportation was powerful, in this world, when Simon transported a living person, it killed them and replaced them with a perfect duplicate. Simon was being haunted by all of the past selves he had unknowingly killed, and it had driven him almost completely mad. They saved Simon and handed him over to get an exorcism just before Goss and Subby caught up with them. Billy also found what Simon was paid with to steal the squid: a real working phaser. After its discovery, Billy used it as his weapon for the majority of the book.
In order to find who bought the phaser to give to Simon, they asked for help from Jason Smyle, a man who magically seemed familiar to absolutely everyone. To their surprise, the information Jason found told them it was Saira Mukhopadhyay, one of the Londonmancers. They confronted Saira and Fitch, who admitted to their involvement without much trouble. They had hired Simon and used Adler as bait to get the squid to safety, but it seemed to have fixed nothing. They then agreed to take Dane and Billy to the squid, but as they were waiting to be led to it, Chaos Nazis attacked. The Chaos Nazis were one of dozens of groups that had been contracted by the Tattoo to find Billy, but Billy’s Angel manifested itself just in time and slaughtered most of their attackers. However, unconcerned with Dane’s safety, it allowed him to be kidnapped as soon as Billy was no longer threatened.
For a while, Billy was in shock. Wati protected and hid him until he found his bearings. When Billy did recover, he contacted Jason again for help lookng for Dane. This is a turning point for Billy, because up until now he's been an almost entirely passive character. After Dane is kidnapped, Billy began to take control of his life and became a driving force behind the final events of the story. Because of a dream he had saying he was looking in the wrong direction, Billy changed the angle of his investigation and tried to find out more about the Angels. He was introduced to an ex-angel, the one-time guardian of the museum of the commonwealth, now closed. It told him that Billy was the Christ of the Darwin Center, chosen because his Angel believed he was a child born from glass. Billy became briefly hysterical about the mistaken choice, and the realization that all of his dreams and powers were connected to the Angel, not the kraken. However, he decided that he needed to accept this and use what he had in order to fix things and find Dane.
Meanwhile, Dane was being repeatedly tortured to death and then revived by his captors. However, he wouldn't reveal anything about the kraken or about where Billy might have been hiding.
Billy spoke to the sea next, which was the literal sea that had a cult of worshippers and possessed sentience. The sea was usually neutral, but Billy successfully convinced it to not only take a stance about the end of the world, but to assist him in saving Dane as well. The sea led Billy through the sewers, and Billy was able to storm the basement where Dane was being held. The sea then flooded the basement, killing the remaining nazis, and carrying Billy and Dane to safety. They reunited with the Londonmancers and were finally brought to the giant squid.
While that was going on, Jason Smyle attempted to sneak into the police station in hopes that they would know something about Dane’s whereabouts. There were suspicions that the Tattoo had dealings with the police. However, Jason’s ruse was seen through by Collingswood, and he was subsequently locked up. This gave Goss and Subby the opportunity to find Jason and then kill him when all the information he could give them was the phone number Billy called him from.
Billy and Dane followed some leads to a sort of end-of-the-world gathering that was arranged by the FSRC to gather information and find Billy again. Billy evaded notice, but in the chaos he and Dane managed to kidnap the Tattoo. They found out that the man unwillingly carrying the Tattoo on his back is named Paul, and he's been an unwilling participant in the Tattoo's cruelty for years.
They soon found out that Grisamentum had ordered the Krakenist church to be attacked, and most of its members were slaughtered, including the Tuethex. Dane was devastated, and admitted to Billy that all along he had been working with the Tuethex's blessings. Save, of course, for inviting Billy to come with him. In the aftermath, Dane assumed a position of leadership amongst the surviving Krakenists. Billy realized from the stolen library as well as assorted little paper birds left scattered around the church that Gris has actually become ink. After his body was burnt, Byrne turned the ashes into the ink that he was living on through. Billy boiled down the ink they could salvage off the paper birds, and interrogated Grisamentum by writing with his essence like Byrne had. The small piece of Grisamentum they had was vague and difficult, but Billy managed to make the connection that Gris planed to use the ink of the kraken to make himself, essentially, a god. By writing in the ink of a god, he could rewrite the world.
Dane and the remaining Krakenists decided to invoke a religious rite and become Krakenbit to combat Gris, which would grant them holy powers but would also change them permanently. Billy begged Dane not to, but was unable to convince him. In the end, he decided that if he couldn't change Dane's mind, he'd support him in his intended assault on Gris's workshop. The Londonmances, Billy and the Krakenbit, who have become half-human-half-squid monsters, attacked Grisamentum's forces the next day, but ultimately they failed. Grisamentum killed Dane during the course of the battle, Billy being unable to stop it, and then he discovered where the giant squid was being hidden.
Billy quickly constructed a plan to have the sea take back the kraken, since the sea was still ultimately neutral and Gris wouldn't risk invading it. With the help of a mostly recovered Simon Shaw, the kraken was transported into the Embassy of the Sea, which appeared as an underwater flat visible through a pane of glass below the harbor. Gris, however, was undeterred by the sea's neutrality and broke into the embassy, draining it of seawater. Billy was joined by Collingswood and Saira in the confrontation with Gris, but he reached the squid before they can stop him. Byrne used her magic to bring the squid partially to life, just enough to get it to produce ink. Gris then infected the ink of the god-squid, and began to rewrite rules. Billy only defeated him by redefining the squid, not as a god, but as his own bottled and preserved specimen. It robbed Gris of all his power, and he ceased to be entirely.
However, this did not avert the end of the world. Everyone could still feel it approaching, and Billy and Collingswood suddenly realized it's Vardy who's actually been causing all of this. The squid was just a bystander, and the real threat was Vardy noticing the Beagle specimens, and the research he had been doing on a sort of memory fire that erases from memory and reality all that it consumes. He planned to reboot reality and burn away the theory of evolution in order to recreate a world where a strictly literal Christian god still existed for him. However, without evolution, there would be no world, and no chance of a new one rising from the ashes.
Billy demanded that Simon beam him into the Darwin Center, even though it would kill him, so that he could stop Vardy. The last thing Billy will remember is the sensation of being torn apart.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's and why?: When Simon Shaw beams Billy into the Darwin Center. Billy dies, and a perfect new copy of him is sent into the museum. The original Billy, the one that technically was killed, will come to Landel’s.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality: Billy didn’t really stand out for most of his existence. He led a comfortable life, and was never so odd that he was socially unacceptable. He lived alone and had few friends, but wasn’t usually lonely. Although he was always nice enough, he was still benignly selfish and naive. Billy probably could have continued like this and led a moderately satisfying life; he didn’t particularly want anything else, or even anything more. When everything falls apart, however, Billy is pushed beyond his limits. The exciting life he had never particularly thought about ends up being more horrifying than adventurous, and he loses more than he gains, but Billy becomes someone more admirable in the process.
Billy wasn’t and still isn’t outgoing, but he’s personable. It’s not enough to make him stand out immediately, but just under the surface, Billy is also pretty eccentric. He anthropomorphizes exhibits in the museum where he works and makes up superstitions, such as insisting that when giving a tour, no one could say the name of the giant squid before they reached it or it would be bad luck. Billy is deeply romantic, and even if he rarely vocalizes his thoughts, he likens the mundane to the phenomenal, and comes up with colorful descriptions for his surroundings. He’s very imaginative, and seems somewhat aesthetically inclined.
He is what most people would qualify as a geek. Not only about marine molluscs, but also more standard geekery, such as sci-fi classics like Star Trek. As a scientist, Billy is interested in how these hobbies influence real world science (and magic), as he himself cites influence from a childhood television show. It’s mentioned only in passing as an old cartoon which involved singing preserved specimens, and he apparently still sings their song periodically while working. Billy is a bit of a dork, and unrepentantly so.
His sense of humor is dry and persistent. He’s not exactly a jokey sort, and usually presents himself as perfectly mild and composed. He’s hardly serious, however, and has an appreciation for the absurd. He dryly corrects Dane on his Star Trek trivia mistakes, and managed to convince all of his coworkers (and the nearby Angel of Memory) that he was a test tube baby simply by keeping up the ruse with a straight face. While usually his humor is good natured and not at anybody’s expense, Billy does become sarcastic and prickly when he’s frustrated.
Billy has always had scraps of confidence, often directed in ways that were less than useful. He compares his apparently un-aging face to Leonardo DiCaprio, and thinks he looks surprisingly cool for a nerd (and is subsequently disappointed when he realizes this isn’t unusual at all). The narrative often stops to allow Billy to congratulate himself for a job well done, or for reaching a new milestone in a relationship, or for saying the right thing. His self-worth hasn’t suffered from his slightly antisocial lifestyle, and he in fact seems to have a pretty high opinion of himself and his abilities when he’s on even footing. This grew with his induction into the world of magic, which eventually allows him to accept the Angel’s mistake in picking him as no more or less valid than the selection of any messiah. When his friends are struggling with their personal traumas, Billy has enough faith in his abilities and knowledge to take control of the situation. Still, with the amount of pressure put on him about being a squid prophet or a bottle prophet, Billy often feels inadequate. He never quite lives up to the expectations others have of him, although he might excel in other ways. It’s a combination of frustration and guilt that he can’t be what’s needed, or can’t deliver a proper prophecy. He does what he can though, even going so far as to pretend he’s more informed than he is and playing into peoples’ expectations to give his requests more clout.
But Billy isn’t a natural born leader, even if he’s confident enough now to take the reigns if there’s no other option. The whole experience has changed him, though. Billy’s unlikely to ever go back to being simply a follower, now that he’s fostered a willingness to take control of his life even when it’s in pieces. He also has much more weighing on him now, and his patience for letting anyone else tell him what’s best is significantly reduced. Billy is no longer passive, and no longer afraid, which were traits that defined him in the first several chapters.
He is, however, still rather kind and gentle. He feels guilt for hurting others, even if it’s minor in the grand scheme of things. The natural, selfish or naive skew to his niceness eventually fades. When Dane stole a car, Billy hoped they weren’t stealing it from anyone nice, or at least anyone he’d like. Later in the story, Billy develops a more realistic outlook on the world, and passing thoughts like that are dropped in favor of a more intense concern for real innocents, but with an acknowledgement of personal responsibility. Although he spends most of the book worrying about Marge becoming involved, eventually he realizes that it was all the better for her to make that journey for herself. He also actively protects Paul, aware of the threat he poses but willing to make that risk to save someone who’s a victim of circumstance. Billy also shows a lot of sympathy towards injured or struggling creatures, like Simon’s tribble or the retired Angel.
Partnership and cooperation amongst friends seems very valuable to Billy. He always points out in the narrative when he feels like he’s made some advancement in his relationship with Dane. Things like being able to keep up with him physically, being confident enough to disagree with him when he thinks Dane’s making a bad decision, or generally being treated like they’re in an equal partnership. Billy doesn’t want to be protected, even if he understands he’s less capable than a lot of the people he’s dealing with. He doesn’t seem to want to surpass Dane either, though, and doesn’t feel threatened by him. He just wants to be useful, and wants to be self-reliant. He notes these changes in himself with some awe, and seems to keep track of how things have grown since he first met Dane.
Billy is detail-oriented and has a mindset that, while very creative and brilliant at making deductions, is slightly meandering. Dane gives Billy focus and provides an intensity to their efforts that Billy can only muster up in dire situations. Billy lives in theory, and even if the answer isn’t necessarily useful, or of the plan isn’t viable, he will still get caught up in wondering. This can be especially pronounced if he can get others to participate with him. Billy’s tendency to question how things work is in stark contrast with the world Dane and Wati live in. For them, it doesn’t matter why the thugs with human fists for heads can see despite having no eyes, because all that’s important is that they’re coming after them. Billy, however, can’t let this stuff go. He can’t take things at face value. This ends up benefitting him, because Billy’s refusal to accept that some things just don’t make sense helps him to solve most of the major problems his team is presented with. Billy eventually asserts himself as the brains of the operation, and his companions learn to listen to him when he hesitates over the dots not connecting like they should.
He’s remarkably bright far beyond his research work in the lab. Not only does he draw connections quickly and accurately, he catches on to how magic works pretty easily. The magic of Billy’s world is all about being persuasive and drawing a reasonably convincing conclusion about how things work, and as it turns out, Billy is surprisingly good at this. He’s often the first character to realize what the antagonists are plotting, largely due to an aptitude for analyzing their wants and empathizing with them just enough to understand their motivations. He started trying this after being told how Vardy works his cases, and while Billy’s not so extreme in his methods, he is good at understanding others through putting himself in their shoes. Billy’s a sensitive and emotional sort of profiler, and finds his conclusions through understanding how someone is thinking rather than through hard fact. It also makes him fairly good at coercion and interrogation. He interrogates Gris successfully, and convinces the sea to abandon its neutrality, even if he found using reverse psychology on the sea to be more than slightly ridiculous.
Related to this, Billy is very introspective. He spends a lot of time in his own head, analyzing his surroundings and what it all means on a few different levels. While of course he has an intellectual tendency to want to make sense of things, Billy is also sensitive to symbolic meanings and emotional consequences. He can see his situation from the outside, and he can draw some rather dramatic conclusions about it all. In fact, Billy is once accused of being melodramatic, and it’s not an unfair assessment. He does have a fairly strong sense of drama, and paints pictures in his head about himself and the people in his life and how it might seem to someone looking in. His thoughts about Dane’s martyrdom, his own position as a prophet and Wati’s struggling strike are all very heartfelt and affectionate, even adoring, but also a little overwrought. Not only that, but Billy is pretty vocal when he’s annoyed or unhappy, often reverting to sarcasm or exaggeration. Although he’s not much of a complainer, he’s not good at the stiff upper lip routine. He has a very difficult time recovering from the death of his friend Leon, periodically to the frustration of some of his companions.
Although Billy is sensitive, it doesn’t mean that he’s flawless in his interpersonal dealings. Although he tries, he doesn’t usually know how to comfort people. While Dane is distraught, he stays with him, but doesn’t seem to be able to summon up any really meaningful words to help him. When Billy himself is upset, he appears to withdraw, sometimes to the point of shutting down. When Dane is kidnapped, Billy doesn’t move and the narrative suddenly becomes devoid of his typical introspection. He in fact doesn’t move until Wati shows up and convinces him they have to leave. When Dane dies later, he’s more expressive, but still withdraws, and doesn’t express anger or sadness until he’s alone.
Billy has become more muted in the past weeks as a direct result of being hardened by his experiences. He was never a loud and gregarious man to begin with, but recent events have forced him to be more serious and more realistic. His previous naive outlook has dried up, and he knows he has to be able to rely on himself for survival, especially in the wake of Dane’s death. He’s not to the point of cynicism yet, but there’s a new moroseness to him, and a determined willingness to do what he has to if he wants to succeed.
Please give us a physical description of your character: Billy is pretty normal, all things considered, but as of late he’s adopted a more confident, even slightly feral edge to him. He looks a little young for his age of nearly thirty, though, making most people place him in his early or mid twenties instead. He’s a skinny man with blue eyes, pale and freckled skin, and very dark tousled hair. Based on his slightly vain opinion of his own looks, Billy is probably moderately attractive. Not long ago, he was rather weak and out of shape, but due to his new lifestyle and Dane’s influence, he’s lost weight and developed a little bit of wiry muscle that seems atypical of his nerdy image. Billy is farsighted and wears glasses constantly.
What kinds of otherworldly abilities does your character have, if any?: Billy is the chosen Christ of an Angel of Memory for the Darwin Center, as well as assumed to be a prophet of the god Kraken. As such, he has a handful of small but notable abilities.
First off, Billy has very vivid and highly symbolic dreams. They were first triggered by drinking squid ink, but continued long past its use. They’re not truly prophetic, but are heavily influenced by what’s going on outside of his perception. Their source is, of course, the Angel of Memory. Billy’s dreams are often about being underwater, and they usually involve an appearance by his preserved giant squid. For a long time they left him confused and somewhat disturbed, but now that he knows their source he’s become more accepting of them to the point where his incoherent dreams are usually addressed with little fanfare. They’re actually more a point of exasperation, considering how little sense they make, or how the filter of his brain sometimes makes them a little ridiculous. Even when he doesn’t dream, Billy describes sleeping as giving him the sensation of being underwater.
More tangibly, the Angel of Memory of the Darwin Center actively protects Billy and its patronage has granted him some odd, glass-themed supernatural abilities. In addition to those, the Angel of Memory itself follows him around and manifests itself when he’s in danger. The Angel of Memory seems to create a “body” from a combination of formaldehyde bottles and pieces of skeletons or other preserved dead creatures, and it lashes out violently when Billy is seriously threatened. After tearing apart the target, it seems to “eat” them and bits of its victims’ flesh can be seen floating in the bottles that make up its torso. When the Angel is weak, the bottles it’s made of are small, and the bones are from rodents. In this form, its obviously unable to give Billy any aid. The Angel protects Billy, and Billy alone. For instance, when it manifests to attack his pursuers, it stops as soon as Billy is safe and allows Dane to be kidnapped. Although it’s never seen, the Angel also seems to have the power to preserve its victims in glass bottles like specimens.
However, most of the time the Angel just follows Billy around as an unseen presence. But even if the Angel doesn’t manifest itself physically, it makes itself known to Billy through glass related noises only he can hear. Glass grinding against glass, a shattering test tube, glass clinking, something rolling across the floor, etc. Billy uses these noises as a sort of out-of-tune spider sense. Mostly they confuse him, although periodically he’s able to interpret them as vague instructions to follow this, or avoid that, or you’re in danger. When things are particularly bad, they give Billy a headache and he can barely hear over the noise.
When Billy is anxious or stressed, glass tends to behave oddly around him. It might vibrate, appear to warp or even shatter under extreme circumstances. When Billy looks through glass, he has an increased chance to notice the supernatural. Since he wears glasses, he has almost constant access to this ability. It’s not flawless, but when things are off, Billy can usually spot them. His eyes are just drawn to what or who’s out of place. Whether or not he can interpret them is another matter. (Which is to say he usually can’t.) Furthermore, his glasses always remain clean and unscratched.
Billy also has extremely limited time control. When he focuses, Billy can slow down time for a second or two, usually just enough to escape someone’s grasp or dodge a deadly blow. When he becomes more confident and can call on it more reliably, he often uses it to slow down his enemies so he can take a shot at them. He can also seem to summon up a sort of barrier that can block attacks. All of these powers are often associated with nearby glass shattering, but not always.
Billy is amazingly talented at preserving specimens in glass. His specimens almost look like they’re still alive, and he can position them expertly. Prior to the Angel taking an interest in him, Billy was pretty awful at his job, which does make this skill a magical power, albeit a very small one.
Although it’s not clear where it came from, Billy is resistant to magical compulsions. Collingswood twice attempts to magically command him to not speak about certain subjects, and Billy is able to resist this both times, much to her surprise. She comments on it being impressive.
Billy’s last ability is more of a comment on the world he comes from at large. Magical ability and intensity is determined by the amount of symbolic worth an idea has. It’s a matter of working with what is already available, and changing the world accordingly. Doing this is called knacking, and sometimes people with notable ability are called knacksmiths. Technically speaking, Billy’s time and glass powers are his knack, but the whole system is more complicated than the handful of people that have thematic, natural powers. Billy is completely untrained, but has a vague idea of how the idea of symbolic power works. He is therefore, theoretically, able to make something mundane into something magical simply by saying it is and assigning it symbolic worth. Said items never do anything particularly magical, but can be made so by definition. In one of the final confrontations, he undermines Grisamentum by redefining the giant squid as a specimen instead of a god.
Lastly, all magic users in Billy's world are sensitive to the catastrophe of the end of the world. It makes them feel ill and apprehensive, and it gets worse the closer it is to the disaster.
If present, how do you plan to tweak these powers to make your character appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's?: In Damned, Billy’s Angel of Memory will be extremely weakened and unable to manifest to protect him, so it will only be present as an unseen, unheard stalker. It’s still attached to him, however, and as such Billy will still be able to hear it “talking” when it deems the situation important enough. The Angel will sometimes make a meaningful glass-related sound which Billy can loosely interpret as either a warning, a request to follow the noise, or an affirmation that something is a good idea. If he’s in immediate danger of dying, but doesn’t know it (for instance, hanging out with a character who intends to kill him or cause him great harm), the noise might reach an intensity where he finds it hard to focus and it gives him a headache. Billy in fact likens trying to communicate with his Angel as trying to talk to his headache. There is no possibility for Billy to get more detail than that out of the sounds, and misinterpretation is possible. NPC mods can choose whether or not to warn me OOC ahead of time if Billy’s about to be attacked, to see if the Angel will try to inform him. However, since its “appearances” in the book are irregular, and it doesn’t always warn him when danger is afoot, consistency isn’t important. If other psychics pick up on the Angel’s presence, they won’t be able to get any defined words out of it, but they may feel deep, oppressive waves of regret and guilt.
Aside from this, Billy’s abilities are so small that they mostly don’t need to be limited. His dreams will remain incoherent, and will potentially give him vague insight about what the Angel is thinking. Considering the situation in Damned, the Angel's observations will be limited to things in Billy's immediate area and experience. They’ll remain oddly vivid and squid-themed, and mostly revolve around warnings about dangerous people or encouragement to investigate his surroundings so they can return to the Angel's priority: retrieving the squid and stopping the end of the world. Glass will also still react oddly to Billy's emotions. Usually it’ll just vibrate or hum when he’s stressed or focused, but may shatter if he experiences a serious shock. His glasses will also remain uncannily clean.
Billy’s supernatural perception only works when he wears his glasses or looks through a piece of glass, such as a window pane. When interacting with someone who’s a disguised supernatural creature, Billy might get a passing idea that something is “off” about the character, or his eyes will naturally be drawn to an unusual aspect of their appearance. (For instance, noticing a squirrel familiar that’s been assigned to watch him, or Collingswood standing out in his memory because she’s a magic user.) This will always remain vague, and it doesn’t necessarily protect Billy from any magical abilities a character might have beyond making him aware that the way that mind reader is looking at him is unusual. Billy, in fact, doesn’t seem to be aware of this ability at all.
Lastly and most notably, four times every night shift, Billy can manipulate time for one to three seconds. All of his powers focus around stopping or slowing things. It manifests in one of three ways: 1) everyone else slows down as Billy does not (often being used to avoid attacks or to be able to hit a fast-moving target), 2) Billy’s own movement (as well as up to one person he’s holding onto) slows, softening a fall or somesuch, or 3) he can make a momentarily impenetrable, invisble barrier (nullifies one physical attack) that feels like glass and disappears almost immediately after being struck. Additionally, if there’s any glass nearby, using this ability will cause that glass to shatter. The duration of the ability to those observing it lasts as long as it takes for the glass to hit the ground.
Billy will retain an increased chance of resisting falling for various magical compulsions. Anything that attempts to force him to do something he wouldn’t normally do, or doesn’t want to do, is about half as effective as it should be, and Billy can usually shake if off.
If Billy wants to redefine something as magical, he can still try to do so, or even accidentally do so (if, for instance, he’s lied to about something being magic when it’s not). However, in Landel’s what Billy changes will never be dramatic, and will rarely be useful, and the item must be somewhat similar to what the desired item is. If another magic using character required the use of a wand or magical focus, or a key magical ingredient, Billy could believe something similar into standing in for that item. However, he can’t actually create anything new or give an item properties it doesn’t have. For instance, if another magic user required the use of a special crystal, Billy could try to make a rock stand in for said crystal as a symbol that he’s assigned worth. However, the rock would ultimately remain a rock, only with new assigned magical significance. The more people Billy can persuade to believe in that significance, the more useful it will be. For game mechanics, if only Billy assigns this significance, it will last one day. If he convinces someone else the item is valuable or different, it will last two days, three people three days, etc.
His ability to preserve specimens will remain unchanged because it will probably never, ever come up.
He'll also be able to tell that the world is, in fact, not ending. Or at least this one isn't.
Does your character have any non-otherworldly abilities/training that surpass the norm?: After what seems to be a little under a month on the run from the entire magical underworld of London, Billy picked up some practical skills to protect himself. He was trained by Dane, who has military experience and is very adept at combat in this magical underbelly of London. Billy is far less skilled, but for his size and build he’s scrappy and determined. He won’t hesitate to act when push comes to shove, and doesn’t panic when threatened. He has some half-remembered Judo experience from university, and Dane showed him truncheon strikes and some basic hand-to-hand self defense. Billy’s also picked up on how to move quietly and cautiously, and moves pretty tactically for a scrawny guy with glasses.
Billy also has passably good aim with small firearms. However, he’s only practiced with a working model of a Star Trek phaser, which has no recoil or reload.
Billy is also, of course, very well informed in all areas concerning marine molluscs.
What do you see your character doing in the scope of the game and how do you plan to use the setting of Landel's Institute to develop them and affect their psychology in a unique, interesting way?: Coming from a normal life into a horrific and dangerous environment not very long ago, Landel’s will not be terribly shocking to Billy anymore. It won’t be the most upsetting or strange thing he’s seen so far, by far. Billy has come to cope with these things as best he can, which is pretty admirable. He was advised by Baron that it’s best not to get caught up in how things have happened when you can focus on the why. (Billy is actually not very good at this.)
With his life as out of control as it has been lately, Billy is likely to just see his inexplicable abduction as par for the course. It’ll take him some time to adjust to the idea that the world suddenly isn’t about to end in fire, but once he does, he’ll be able to approach Landel’s as simply a new chapter in the weird disaster his life has become. Billy likes to try and make sense of what’s happening around him, often getting caught up in details that make no sense even if they ultimately don’t matter. He’ll find it hard not to worry about similar problems in the logic of Landel’s. He’s likely to think of things, especially magical things, in the same symbolic roundabout way he’s been taught to look at London in. For instance, if intent makes something real, why wouldn’t fictional characters be real, if not here then somewhere else? What is fandom if not worship? Because of his geeky nature, Billy will have a somewhat meta perspective on the situation with the characters he recognizes. He’s controlled enough that, unless invited, he won’t be breaking any fourth walls. In fact, at this point, I think he’ll be very quick to accept fictional characters as real people, and he’ll probably enjoy theorizing about it in his own mind. In addition to any really obvious everyone-knows-it canons, Billy specifically references the following shows: Dr. Who, Supernatural, Buffy, Angel, American Gothic, Star Trek (shown to be a particularly knowledgable fan of ToS), Star Cops, Lexx, Farscape.
When he first arrives, Billy will think Simon somehow messed up the transport and sent him to the wrong place. If he manages to conclude that there's a copy of him soldiering on elsewhere, Billy's perspective will change radically. Since he died just prior to his arrival at Landel’s, and he would know that a perfect copy of himself should have picked up where he left off, Billy would be able to let go of what he left behind pretty easily. Not happily, but easily. The life he was taken from is over, and what’s left of it belongs to someone else now. Being in Landel’s will probably give him the time he didn’t have to mourn Dane, and to realize that he had lost everything in the past weeks. Not only did he lose his mundane life with his job at the Darwin Center, but he also lost his new friend, the Krakenists, and what little control he had managed to rebuild while on the run. He’ll trust that the new him is doing what needs to be done, but this Billy, the original Billy, has to accept that he can’t get any of that back. Therefore, his motivations will be more aligned with helping others and trying to right this wrong than getting home. He’ll also have to realize that because of all the mistakes and misinformation he and Dane were dealing with, a lot of people died unnecessarily, and maybe even Dane’s death could have been averted. He’ll miss Dane very acutely, and will have a difficult time recovering from that loss.
Given that this RP takes place in an unsettling and outright horrific environment, how do you justify your character as being appropriate in both body and mind for this kind of setting?: The setting of Kraken has Billy pretty well-prepared for Landel’s. He’s seen friends die, been attacked as well as helped by supernatural horrors, and he’s begun to adjust to the physical demands of his new lifestyle. While Billy is certainly not the toughest guy out there, he’s become hardened by his experiences. By the end of the book, he’s come from being a wide-eyed fish out of water, to handling all sorts of threats with caution and a respectable amount of wisdom.
Third-Person Sample:
Billy still felt like he was intruding on the imagined residents when he walked into certain rooms. The bathroom or the bedroom, mostly. Personal spaces that were only open to the closest friends. He wanted the place to feel dead and empty, to find the too-clean atmosphere of a hotel. That way he wouldn’t need to reflexively apologize to someone who didn’t exist when he tucked himself into their bed, or wonder how hygienic the contents of their cabinets were, for that matter.
Dane entered as Billy was in mid-inspection of a container of cheap hair product. The bathroom had seemed spacious moments ago, but Dane filled it up. The picture the mirror showed Billy was now mostly composed of Dane’s girth. Next to him, Billy appeared small, because he was, and ridiculous, because the clothes he had borrowed were.
“Need to do something with your hair.” Dane was looking hard at Billy’s reflection.
Billy ran a hand through his hair, separating waves and making the shape even less flattering. Sleep had left it shabby, but with enough similarities to the long-gone mild mannered scientist that he could see Dane’s point. Billy felt different, but the man staring back at him was unchanged. He was suddenly tempted to try a flex, to see if the new strength he felt was also something he could see, but Dane was standing right there and Billy’s embarrassment was tangible.
“Not much that can be done, is there?” he said and shrugged. He relied upon the optimistic thought that it would be ridiculously nitpicky to have included bacteria or mold in their false home, and squirted some of the gel onto his hand. Dane was still watching him as Billy pushed the gummy, stale stuff into his hair.
“It’s too recognizable. Maybe we can flatten it.” He wasn’t satisfied with Billy’s progress so far, apparently.
“You’re not any better.” Billy still applied more gel, which only really succeeded in making his hair look unpleasantly wet. His curls became tendrils and coils. “At least I have new clothes.”
“Take off your glasses.” Dane’s hand was open to receive them, and although Billy pulled them off with two sticky fingers, he didn’t hand the glasses over. He felt more blind without them than he remembered, his mind almost as blurry as his sight. Dane made some sort of a face, but a combination of poor vision and distractedness made it hard to evaluate the reaction.
“Maybe you could just leave them off,” said the mass of unrecognizable features.
Billy laughed over the consideration in Dane’s voice, and quickly replaced the glasses on his face. He had missed them even in their briefest of separations, but now the world was crisp and clear again, and Dane was more than just a looming dark shape. “Yeah, and see how useful I’ll be next time we get chased down.” Billy met Dane’s eyes, and tilted his head down to peer over the rim of his glasses, changing the image from perfect to incomprehensible. He noticed where Dane shifted and displaced behind the lenses. “Can’t see anything without them.”
First-Person Sample:
[Billy is cited as keeping notes, however, they seem to just be collections of names, dates and locations. He’ll probably continue to do so in Damned once he grasps the situation, but he wouldn’t keep an actual journal.]
Series' Medium: Book
Character: William "Billy" Harrow
Age: 28 (An estimate, as the book says he’s a little shy of thirty.)
Sex/Gender: Male
Canon Role: Protagonist
"Real" Name: Frederick Aldrich
Please give us a personal history of your character's life and explain to us in detail how they grow and develop over the course of their canon: The London that Billy is from is a city of gods and magic, rooted in faith. Things are magical because peoples’ belief has convinced the world that they should be, and you can’t walk down a street without invoking one god or another. People who occupy the city and can consciously manipulate the world are common, but all of this exists beneath the surface of London, while most of the population remains oblivious.
Billy Harrow was born in the world of the mundane to an upper middle class family. He rarely got along with his older brother, and never had anything in common with his father. After his mother died when Billy was in his early twenties, he and his father fell out of contact due to a mutual disinterest. Even as a child, Billy was fascinated by marine life and museums, and would later write his masters thesis on marine molluscs. He was hired to work at the Darwin Center, preserving and bottling specimens. Initially, Billy was atrocious at his job, to the point where he was considering quitting. But a year after being hired, Billy told a story during a drunken outing with friends who were all trying to bluff one another. He claimed that he was the first successful baby born via in vitro fertilization, but due to complications the laurel was officially handed to another family some time later. He was extremely convincing, and the game ended before he could tell the truth.
Billy decided to keep up this joke when he returned to work, and for the next several years never corrected anyone. The talk was overheard by the museum’s guardian, a mnemophylax, an Angel of Memory. People place so much value onto the memories collected in museums that these places have real religious power, and eventually develop sentient angelic guardians. These Angels are able to choose prophets and messiahs, and the Darwin Center’s Angel, thematically made of preservation bottles, assumed that Billy was truly the first human born of glass. It chose him as its christ. Suddenly, Billy improved radically at his job. He became known for his uncanny ability to preserve animals (especially molluscs) in the most lifelike poses. Billy felt so confident in his talent that he believed he could preserve anything. His career flourished modestly, but nothing significantly changed, except that ever since then Billy began to hear odd noises. Bottles rolling on the floor when there was no one around, clattering test tubes in locked rooms, glass grinding in empty hallways... He associated these sounds with moments of anxiety or stress, and assumed it must have been all in his head. The one exciting incident since then was when the giant squid was delivered. Billy was amongst those who preserved the massive specimen.
Years later, Al Adler, an accomplished thief for the magical underworld, is commissioned by a powerful (and supposedly dead) man named Grisamentum to steal the squid. Out of traditional superstition, he went to the Londonmancers, a group of soothsayers connected to the city of London. They saw in his reading that stealing the squid would lead to the end of the world, and not just any end, but an end with no after.
When Adler didn't change his plan despite this, the Londonmancers recruited Simon Shaw's help. Simon had a ability that allowed him to transport any item or person as though they were being beamed Star Trek style. He beamed in Adler, all the while pretending to help him, but the plan was to use him as a distraction. While the Angel of Memory was preoccupied killing Adler, Simon transported himself in and stole the squid for the Londonmacers. Unfortunately, nothing changed in their prediction of the end of the world. In fact, the catastrophe seemed to feel even closer.
Billy was the one who discovered the squid was missing as he was conducting a tour. Amongst the police that arrive to investigate was a young woman who stood out to Billy. He later learned that her name was Kath Collingswood, and she was a very talented magic user. She knacked Billy and the rest of the witnesses present into not telling anyone about the missing squid. Billy, however, was able to resist the magical compulsion and told his friend Leon and Leon’s girlfriend, Marge. The next day he was called for a follow-up interview with an odd trio of policemen, which included Cloongswood along with two men, Baron and Vardy. After this odd encounter, Billy felt ill at ease and wandered the city aimlessly. In doing so, he spotted Dane Parnell, an unfriendly security guard who went missing after the squid theft. He seemed to be stalking Billy.
Billy returned to the Darwin Center the next day, and while there he heard the grinding glass of the Angel of Memory, which enticed him to follow it. He discovered the body of Al Adler, who’d been bottled like a specimen in a storage room. Baron, Vardy and Collingswood approached Billy again at the new crime scene, and this time they offered him a position as a consultant on the squid case. They explained the basics about what was happening, including that they were of the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit (FSRC), and they believed that theft of the squid is the work of a cult of squid worshippers.
Vardy, the profiler of the unit whose skill was his ability to adopt the mindset of the cults he hunted, saw Darwin’s Beagle samples while speaking with Billy. These samples eventually led Darwin to his theory of evolution. Vardy was so good at his job because he was motivated by his jealous loss of faith in literal Christianity, which he blamed on evolutionary theory. As a result of the squid’s theft, Vardy spotted these symbols of Darwin's work and he began to create a plot to reboot the world and bring it back to a state where he could revive his faith. Although no one knew it yet, this was the real threat to the the world.
Oblivious to this, the next day Billy yet again resisted Collingswood’s magical orders not to speak, and invited Leon over to tell him about what had happened. Leon accidentally brought in with him a package that hid the violent and dangerous Goss and Subby, a tall, older man and a young boy notorious throughout the magical world for their cruelty and invulnerability. The killers-for-hire murdered Leon and kidnapped Billy, and then dragged him before their current boss, the Tattoo. The Tattoo was once a normal mobster who rivaled Grisamentum. Gris punished him by having his soul tattooed onto the back of an unsuspecting man named Paul. The Tattoo now appeared as a living cartoon face on the back of Paul, who spent his time tied up and dragged around by the Tattoo’s goons.
The Tattoo wanted the squid for himself because of the power it supposedly held, and he believed Billy was the key to finding it. When it became clear that Billy was clueless, he had him taken away to face a fate worse than death. In a panic, Billy used his untapped, Angel-given knack to freeze time just long enough to escape Goss and Subby’s grasp. Dane was watching all along, and took the opportunity to jump in to help and quickly dragged Billy off to safety and into a car. Dane, as it turned out, was one of the squid worshippers Vardy mentioned, called the Krakenists. They believed that Billy was a prophet of their god, and they offered him protection that unfortunately also worked as a sort of captivity, since if Billy left he would be be found by the Tattoo's men. They fed him magically imbued squid ink to try and inspire strange, squid-themed fever dreams, which they hoped were prophetic. Billy was still in shock about what'd happened to Leon, and was unable to offer much resistance.
Dane, meanwhile, had made an agreement with the Krakenist head priest, the Tuethex. Dane was to pretend to abandon the church to search for the stolen squid while the Tuethex insisted that they didn't need to rescue their god. He referenced an important part of Kralenist theology to justify his "decision": the movement without moving. The rest of the congregation would assume Dane was an outcast, because it would make him extremely trustworthy to outsiders. If he found the squid, he was to burn it. However, what wasn’t part of the plan was offering Billy a chance to escape and come with him. Wanting revenge for Leon and some control over his life, Billy agreed, and so Dane stole the Kraken prophet. They ended up hiding out in a series of safe houses to evade recapture by anyone searching for them.
They recruited the aid of Wati, an ancient Egyptian spirit who dedicated his life to organizing unions for magical servants. The Tattoo had been attacking his strikes, and because of that Wati agreed to help Billy and Dane keep the squid from him. The three of them then approached the Londonmancers, who were required to remain neutral, and because of that would be obligated to not betray Dane and Billy to their pursuers. They were given a reading, which again confirms the end approaching. Not long after, they received a message from none other than Grisamentum himself, who should have been long dead. When they went to meet him, they instead find Byrne, a thanaturge and Gris’s girlfriend. She appeared to channel Gris through writing with a special ink. He offered Billy and Dane a chance to work with him to stop the Tattoo. Dane wanted to accept, but the Angel of Memory interceded and warned Billy. Based on Billy's sudden distrust of Gris, they declined the offer.
Billy, Dane and Wati began to narrow their list of suspects capable of moving the squid until they finally reached Simon Shaw, a Star Trek aficionado whose knack had moulded itself to fit his fandom. Although Simon's teleportation was powerful, in this world, when Simon transported a living person, it killed them and replaced them with a perfect duplicate. Simon was being haunted by all of the past selves he had unknowingly killed, and it had driven him almost completely mad. They saved Simon and handed him over to get an exorcism just before Goss and Subby caught up with them. Billy also found what Simon was paid with to steal the squid: a real working phaser. After its discovery, Billy used it as his weapon for the majority of the book.
In order to find who bought the phaser to give to Simon, they asked for help from Jason Smyle, a man who magically seemed familiar to absolutely everyone. To their surprise, the information Jason found told them it was Saira Mukhopadhyay, one of the Londonmancers. They confronted Saira and Fitch, who admitted to their involvement without much trouble. They had hired Simon and used Adler as bait to get the squid to safety, but it seemed to have fixed nothing. They then agreed to take Dane and Billy to the squid, but as they were waiting to be led to it, Chaos Nazis attacked. The Chaos Nazis were one of dozens of groups that had been contracted by the Tattoo to find Billy, but Billy’s Angel manifested itself just in time and slaughtered most of their attackers. However, unconcerned with Dane’s safety, it allowed him to be kidnapped as soon as Billy was no longer threatened.
For a while, Billy was in shock. Wati protected and hid him until he found his bearings. When Billy did recover, he contacted Jason again for help lookng for Dane. This is a turning point for Billy, because up until now he's been an almost entirely passive character. After Dane is kidnapped, Billy began to take control of his life and became a driving force behind the final events of the story. Because of a dream he had saying he was looking in the wrong direction, Billy changed the angle of his investigation and tried to find out more about the Angels. He was introduced to an ex-angel, the one-time guardian of the museum of the commonwealth, now closed. It told him that Billy was the Christ of the Darwin Center, chosen because his Angel believed he was a child born from glass. Billy became briefly hysterical about the mistaken choice, and the realization that all of his dreams and powers were connected to the Angel, not the kraken. However, he decided that he needed to accept this and use what he had in order to fix things and find Dane.
Meanwhile, Dane was being repeatedly tortured to death and then revived by his captors. However, he wouldn't reveal anything about the kraken or about where Billy might have been hiding.
Billy spoke to the sea next, which was the literal sea that had a cult of worshippers and possessed sentience. The sea was usually neutral, but Billy successfully convinced it to not only take a stance about the end of the world, but to assist him in saving Dane as well. The sea led Billy through the sewers, and Billy was able to storm the basement where Dane was being held. The sea then flooded the basement, killing the remaining nazis, and carrying Billy and Dane to safety. They reunited with the Londonmancers and were finally brought to the giant squid.
While that was going on, Jason Smyle attempted to sneak into the police station in hopes that they would know something about Dane’s whereabouts. There were suspicions that the Tattoo had dealings with the police. However, Jason’s ruse was seen through by Collingswood, and he was subsequently locked up. This gave Goss and Subby the opportunity to find Jason and then kill him when all the information he could give them was the phone number Billy called him from.
Billy and Dane followed some leads to a sort of end-of-the-world gathering that was arranged by the FSRC to gather information and find Billy again. Billy evaded notice, but in the chaos he and Dane managed to kidnap the Tattoo. They found out that the man unwillingly carrying the Tattoo on his back is named Paul, and he's been an unwilling participant in the Tattoo's cruelty for years.
They soon found out that Grisamentum had ordered the Krakenist church to be attacked, and most of its members were slaughtered, including the Tuethex. Dane was devastated, and admitted to Billy that all along he had been working with the Tuethex's blessings. Save, of course, for inviting Billy to come with him. In the aftermath, Dane assumed a position of leadership amongst the surviving Krakenists. Billy realized from the stolen library as well as assorted little paper birds left scattered around the church that Gris has actually become ink. After his body was burnt, Byrne turned the ashes into the ink that he was living on through. Billy boiled down the ink they could salvage off the paper birds, and interrogated Grisamentum by writing with his essence like Byrne had. The small piece of Grisamentum they had was vague and difficult, but Billy managed to make the connection that Gris planed to use the ink of the kraken to make himself, essentially, a god. By writing in the ink of a god, he could rewrite the world.
Dane and the remaining Krakenists decided to invoke a religious rite and become Krakenbit to combat Gris, which would grant them holy powers but would also change them permanently. Billy begged Dane not to, but was unable to convince him. In the end, he decided that if he couldn't change Dane's mind, he'd support him in his intended assault on Gris's workshop. The Londonmances, Billy and the Krakenbit, who have become half-human-half-squid monsters, attacked Grisamentum's forces the next day, but ultimately they failed. Grisamentum killed Dane during the course of the battle, Billy being unable to stop it, and then he discovered where the giant squid was being hidden.
Billy quickly constructed a plan to have the sea take back the kraken, since the sea was still ultimately neutral and Gris wouldn't risk invading it. With the help of a mostly recovered Simon Shaw, the kraken was transported into the Embassy of the Sea, which appeared as an underwater flat visible through a pane of glass below the harbor. Gris, however, was undeterred by the sea's neutrality and broke into the embassy, draining it of seawater. Billy was joined by Collingswood and Saira in the confrontation with Gris, but he reached the squid before they can stop him. Byrne used her magic to bring the squid partially to life, just enough to get it to produce ink. Gris then infected the ink of the god-squid, and began to rewrite rules. Billy only defeated him by redefining the squid, not as a god, but as his own bottled and preserved specimen. It robbed Gris of all his power, and he ceased to be entirely.
However, this did not avert the end of the world. Everyone could still feel it approaching, and Billy and Collingswood suddenly realized it's Vardy who's actually been causing all of this. The squid was just a bystander, and the real threat was Vardy noticing the Beagle specimens, and the research he had been doing on a sort of memory fire that erases from memory and reality all that it consumes. He planned to reboot reality and burn away the theory of evolution in order to recreate a world where a strictly literal Christian god still existed for him. However, without evolution, there would be no world, and no chance of a new one rising from the ashes.
Billy demanded that Simon beam him into the Darwin Center, even though it would kill him, so that he could stop Vardy. The last thing Billy will remember is the sensation of being torn apart.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's and why?: When Simon Shaw beams Billy into the Darwin Center. Billy dies, and a perfect new copy of him is sent into the museum. The original Billy, the one that technically was killed, will come to Landel’s.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality: Billy didn’t really stand out for most of his existence. He led a comfortable life, and was never so odd that he was socially unacceptable. He lived alone and had few friends, but wasn’t usually lonely. Although he was always nice enough, he was still benignly selfish and naive. Billy probably could have continued like this and led a moderately satisfying life; he didn’t particularly want anything else, or even anything more. When everything falls apart, however, Billy is pushed beyond his limits. The exciting life he had never particularly thought about ends up being more horrifying than adventurous, and he loses more than he gains, but Billy becomes someone more admirable in the process.
Billy wasn’t and still isn’t outgoing, but he’s personable. It’s not enough to make him stand out immediately, but just under the surface, Billy is also pretty eccentric. He anthropomorphizes exhibits in the museum where he works and makes up superstitions, such as insisting that when giving a tour, no one could say the name of the giant squid before they reached it or it would be bad luck. Billy is deeply romantic, and even if he rarely vocalizes his thoughts, he likens the mundane to the phenomenal, and comes up with colorful descriptions for his surroundings. He’s very imaginative, and seems somewhat aesthetically inclined.
He is what most people would qualify as a geek. Not only about marine molluscs, but also more standard geekery, such as sci-fi classics like Star Trek. As a scientist, Billy is interested in how these hobbies influence real world science (and magic), as he himself cites influence from a childhood television show. It’s mentioned only in passing as an old cartoon which involved singing preserved specimens, and he apparently still sings their song periodically while working. Billy is a bit of a dork, and unrepentantly so.
His sense of humor is dry and persistent. He’s not exactly a jokey sort, and usually presents himself as perfectly mild and composed. He’s hardly serious, however, and has an appreciation for the absurd. He dryly corrects Dane on his Star Trek trivia mistakes, and managed to convince all of his coworkers (and the nearby Angel of Memory) that he was a test tube baby simply by keeping up the ruse with a straight face. While usually his humor is good natured and not at anybody’s expense, Billy does become sarcastic and prickly when he’s frustrated.
Billy has always had scraps of confidence, often directed in ways that were less than useful. He compares his apparently un-aging face to Leonardo DiCaprio, and thinks he looks surprisingly cool for a nerd (and is subsequently disappointed when he realizes this isn’t unusual at all). The narrative often stops to allow Billy to congratulate himself for a job well done, or for reaching a new milestone in a relationship, or for saying the right thing. His self-worth hasn’t suffered from his slightly antisocial lifestyle, and he in fact seems to have a pretty high opinion of himself and his abilities when he’s on even footing. This grew with his induction into the world of magic, which eventually allows him to accept the Angel’s mistake in picking him as no more or less valid than the selection of any messiah. When his friends are struggling with their personal traumas, Billy has enough faith in his abilities and knowledge to take control of the situation. Still, with the amount of pressure put on him about being a squid prophet or a bottle prophet, Billy often feels inadequate. He never quite lives up to the expectations others have of him, although he might excel in other ways. It’s a combination of frustration and guilt that he can’t be what’s needed, or can’t deliver a proper prophecy. He does what he can though, even going so far as to pretend he’s more informed than he is and playing into peoples’ expectations to give his requests more clout.
But Billy isn’t a natural born leader, even if he’s confident enough now to take the reigns if there’s no other option. The whole experience has changed him, though. Billy’s unlikely to ever go back to being simply a follower, now that he’s fostered a willingness to take control of his life even when it’s in pieces. He also has much more weighing on him now, and his patience for letting anyone else tell him what’s best is significantly reduced. Billy is no longer passive, and no longer afraid, which were traits that defined him in the first several chapters.
He is, however, still rather kind and gentle. He feels guilt for hurting others, even if it’s minor in the grand scheme of things. The natural, selfish or naive skew to his niceness eventually fades. When Dane stole a car, Billy hoped they weren’t stealing it from anyone nice, or at least anyone he’d like. Later in the story, Billy develops a more realistic outlook on the world, and passing thoughts like that are dropped in favor of a more intense concern for real innocents, but with an acknowledgement of personal responsibility. Although he spends most of the book worrying about Marge becoming involved, eventually he realizes that it was all the better for her to make that journey for herself. He also actively protects Paul, aware of the threat he poses but willing to make that risk to save someone who’s a victim of circumstance. Billy also shows a lot of sympathy towards injured or struggling creatures, like Simon’s tribble or the retired Angel.
Partnership and cooperation amongst friends seems very valuable to Billy. He always points out in the narrative when he feels like he’s made some advancement in his relationship with Dane. Things like being able to keep up with him physically, being confident enough to disagree with him when he thinks Dane’s making a bad decision, or generally being treated like they’re in an equal partnership. Billy doesn’t want to be protected, even if he understands he’s less capable than a lot of the people he’s dealing with. He doesn’t seem to want to surpass Dane either, though, and doesn’t feel threatened by him. He just wants to be useful, and wants to be self-reliant. He notes these changes in himself with some awe, and seems to keep track of how things have grown since he first met Dane.
Billy is detail-oriented and has a mindset that, while very creative and brilliant at making deductions, is slightly meandering. Dane gives Billy focus and provides an intensity to their efforts that Billy can only muster up in dire situations. Billy lives in theory, and even if the answer isn’t necessarily useful, or of the plan isn’t viable, he will still get caught up in wondering. This can be especially pronounced if he can get others to participate with him. Billy’s tendency to question how things work is in stark contrast with the world Dane and Wati live in. For them, it doesn’t matter why the thugs with human fists for heads can see despite having no eyes, because all that’s important is that they’re coming after them. Billy, however, can’t let this stuff go. He can’t take things at face value. This ends up benefitting him, because Billy’s refusal to accept that some things just don’t make sense helps him to solve most of the major problems his team is presented with. Billy eventually asserts himself as the brains of the operation, and his companions learn to listen to him when he hesitates over the dots not connecting like they should.
He’s remarkably bright far beyond his research work in the lab. Not only does he draw connections quickly and accurately, he catches on to how magic works pretty easily. The magic of Billy’s world is all about being persuasive and drawing a reasonably convincing conclusion about how things work, and as it turns out, Billy is surprisingly good at this. He’s often the first character to realize what the antagonists are plotting, largely due to an aptitude for analyzing their wants and empathizing with them just enough to understand their motivations. He started trying this after being told how Vardy works his cases, and while Billy’s not so extreme in his methods, he is good at understanding others through putting himself in their shoes. Billy’s a sensitive and emotional sort of profiler, and finds his conclusions through understanding how someone is thinking rather than through hard fact. It also makes him fairly good at coercion and interrogation. He interrogates Gris successfully, and convinces the sea to abandon its neutrality, even if he found using reverse psychology on the sea to be more than slightly ridiculous.
Related to this, Billy is very introspective. He spends a lot of time in his own head, analyzing his surroundings and what it all means on a few different levels. While of course he has an intellectual tendency to want to make sense of things, Billy is also sensitive to symbolic meanings and emotional consequences. He can see his situation from the outside, and he can draw some rather dramatic conclusions about it all. In fact, Billy is once accused of being melodramatic, and it’s not an unfair assessment. He does have a fairly strong sense of drama, and paints pictures in his head about himself and the people in his life and how it might seem to someone looking in. His thoughts about Dane’s martyrdom, his own position as a prophet and Wati’s struggling strike are all very heartfelt and affectionate, even adoring, but also a little overwrought. Not only that, but Billy is pretty vocal when he’s annoyed or unhappy, often reverting to sarcasm or exaggeration. Although he’s not much of a complainer, he’s not good at the stiff upper lip routine. He has a very difficult time recovering from the death of his friend Leon, periodically to the frustration of some of his companions.
Although Billy is sensitive, it doesn’t mean that he’s flawless in his interpersonal dealings. Although he tries, he doesn’t usually know how to comfort people. While Dane is distraught, he stays with him, but doesn’t seem to be able to summon up any really meaningful words to help him. When Billy himself is upset, he appears to withdraw, sometimes to the point of shutting down. When Dane is kidnapped, Billy doesn’t move and the narrative suddenly becomes devoid of his typical introspection. He in fact doesn’t move until Wati shows up and convinces him they have to leave. When Dane dies later, he’s more expressive, but still withdraws, and doesn’t express anger or sadness until he’s alone.
Billy has become more muted in the past weeks as a direct result of being hardened by his experiences. He was never a loud and gregarious man to begin with, but recent events have forced him to be more serious and more realistic. His previous naive outlook has dried up, and he knows he has to be able to rely on himself for survival, especially in the wake of Dane’s death. He’s not to the point of cynicism yet, but there’s a new moroseness to him, and a determined willingness to do what he has to if he wants to succeed.
Please give us a physical description of your character: Billy is pretty normal, all things considered, but as of late he’s adopted a more confident, even slightly feral edge to him. He looks a little young for his age of nearly thirty, though, making most people place him in his early or mid twenties instead. He’s a skinny man with blue eyes, pale and freckled skin, and very dark tousled hair. Based on his slightly vain opinion of his own looks, Billy is probably moderately attractive. Not long ago, he was rather weak and out of shape, but due to his new lifestyle and Dane’s influence, he’s lost weight and developed a little bit of wiry muscle that seems atypical of his nerdy image. Billy is farsighted and wears glasses constantly.
What kinds of otherworldly abilities does your character have, if any?: Billy is the chosen Christ of an Angel of Memory for the Darwin Center, as well as assumed to be a prophet of the god Kraken. As such, he has a handful of small but notable abilities.
First off, Billy has very vivid and highly symbolic dreams. They were first triggered by drinking squid ink, but continued long past its use. They’re not truly prophetic, but are heavily influenced by what’s going on outside of his perception. Their source is, of course, the Angel of Memory. Billy’s dreams are often about being underwater, and they usually involve an appearance by his preserved giant squid. For a long time they left him confused and somewhat disturbed, but now that he knows their source he’s become more accepting of them to the point where his incoherent dreams are usually addressed with little fanfare. They’re actually more a point of exasperation, considering how little sense they make, or how the filter of his brain sometimes makes them a little ridiculous. Even when he doesn’t dream, Billy describes sleeping as giving him the sensation of being underwater.
More tangibly, the Angel of Memory of the Darwin Center actively protects Billy and its patronage has granted him some odd, glass-themed supernatural abilities. In addition to those, the Angel of Memory itself follows him around and manifests itself when he’s in danger. The Angel of Memory seems to create a “body” from a combination of formaldehyde bottles and pieces of skeletons or other preserved dead creatures, and it lashes out violently when Billy is seriously threatened. After tearing apart the target, it seems to “eat” them and bits of its victims’ flesh can be seen floating in the bottles that make up its torso. When the Angel is weak, the bottles it’s made of are small, and the bones are from rodents. In this form, its obviously unable to give Billy any aid. The Angel protects Billy, and Billy alone. For instance, when it manifests to attack his pursuers, it stops as soon as Billy is safe and allows Dane to be kidnapped. Although it’s never seen, the Angel also seems to have the power to preserve its victims in glass bottles like specimens.
However, most of the time the Angel just follows Billy around as an unseen presence. But even if the Angel doesn’t manifest itself physically, it makes itself known to Billy through glass related noises only he can hear. Glass grinding against glass, a shattering test tube, glass clinking, something rolling across the floor, etc. Billy uses these noises as a sort of out-of-tune spider sense. Mostly they confuse him, although periodically he’s able to interpret them as vague instructions to follow this, or avoid that, or you’re in danger. When things are particularly bad, they give Billy a headache and he can barely hear over the noise.
When Billy is anxious or stressed, glass tends to behave oddly around him. It might vibrate, appear to warp or even shatter under extreme circumstances. When Billy looks through glass, he has an increased chance to notice the supernatural. Since he wears glasses, he has almost constant access to this ability. It’s not flawless, but when things are off, Billy can usually spot them. His eyes are just drawn to what or who’s out of place. Whether or not he can interpret them is another matter. (Which is to say he usually can’t.) Furthermore, his glasses always remain clean and unscratched.
Billy also has extremely limited time control. When he focuses, Billy can slow down time for a second or two, usually just enough to escape someone’s grasp or dodge a deadly blow. When he becomes more confident and can call on it more reliably, he often uses it to slow down his enemies so he can take a shot at them. He can also seem to summon up a sort of barrier that can block attacks. All of these powers are often associated with nearby glass shattering, but not always.
Billy is amazingly talented at preserving specimens in glass. His specimens almost look like they’re still alive, and he can position them expertly. Prior to the Angel taking an interest in him, Billy was pretty awful at his job, which does make this skill a magical power, albeit a very small one.
Although it’s not clear where it came from, Billy is resistant to magical compulsions. Collingswood twice attempts to magically command him to not speak about certain subjects, and Billy is able to resist this both times, much to her surprise. She comments on it being impressive.
Billy’s last ability is more of a comment on the world he comes from at large. Magical ability and intensity is determined by the amount of symbolic worth an idea has. It’s a matter of working with what is already available, and changing the world accordingly. Doing this is called knacking, and sometimes people with notable ability are called knacksmiths. Technically speaking, Billy’s time and glass powers are his knack, but the whole system is more complicated than the handful of people that have thematic, natural powers. Billy is completely untrained, but has a vague idea of how the idea of symbolic power works. He is therefore, theoretically, able to make something mundane into something magical simply by saying it is and assigning it symbolic worth. Said items never do anything particularly magical, but can be made so by definition. In one of the final confrontations, he undermines Grisamentum by redefining the giant squid as a specimen instead of a god.
Lastly, all magic users in Billy's world are sensitive to the catastrophe of the end of the world. It makes them feel ill and apprehensive, and it gets worse the closer it is to the disaster.
If present, how do you plan to tweak these powers to make your character appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's?: In Damned, Billy’s Angel of Memory will be extremely weakened and unable to manifest to protect him, so it will only be present as an unseen, unheard stalker. It’s still attached to him, however, and as such Billy will still be able to hear it “talking” when it deems the situation important enough. The Angel will sometimes make a meaningful glass-related sound which Billy can loosely interpret as either a warning, a request to follow the noise, or an affirmation that something is a good idea. If he’s in immediate danger of dying, but doesn’t know it (for instance, hanging out with a character who intends to kill him or cause him great harm), the noise might reach an intensity where he finds it hard to focus and it gives him a headache. Billy in fact likens trying to communicate with his Angel as trying to talk to his headache. There is no possibility for Billy to get more detail than that out of the sounds, and misinterpretation is possible. NPC mods can choose whether or not to warn me OOC ahead of time if Billy’s about to be attacked, to see if the Angel will try to inform him. However, since its “appearances” in the book are irregular, and it doesn’t always warn him when danger is afoot, consistency isn’t important. If other psychics pick up on the Angel’s presence, they won’t be able to get any defined words out of it, but they may feel deep, oppressive waves of regret and guilt.
Aside from this, Billy’s abilities are so small that they mostly don’t need to be limited. His dreams will remain incoherent, and will potentially give him vague insight about what the Angel is thinking. Considering the situation in Damned, the Angel's observations will be limited to things in Billy's immediate area and experience. They’ll remain oddly vivid and squid-themed, and mostly revolve around warnings about dangerous people or encouragement to investigate his surroundings so they can return to the Angel's priority: retrieving the squid and stopping the end of the world. Glass will also still react oddly to Billy's emotions. Usually it’ll just vibrate or hum when he’s stressed or focused, but may shatter if he experiences a serious shock. His glasses will also remain uncannily clean.
Billy’s supernatural perception only works when he wears his glasses or looks through a piece of glass, such as a window pane. When interacting with someone who’s a disguised supernatural creature, Billy might get a passing idea that something is “off” about the character, or his eyes will naturally be drawn to an unusual aspect of their appearance. (For instance, noticing a squirrel familiar that’s been assigned to watch him, or Collingswood standing out in his memory because she’s a magic user.) This will always remain vague, and it doesn’t necessarily protect Billy from any magical abilities a character might have beyond making him aware that the way that mind reader is looking at him is unusual. Billy, in fact, doesn’t seem to be aware of this ability at all.
Lastly and most notably, four times every night shift, Billy can manipulate time for one to three seconds. All of his powers focus around stopping or slowing things. It manifests in one of three ways: 1) everyone else slows down as Billy does not (often being used to avoid attacks or to be able to hit a fast-moving target), 2) Billy’s own movement (as well as up to one person he’s holding onto) slows, softening a fall or somesuch, or 3) he can make a momentarily impenetrable, invisble barrier (nullifies one physical attack) that feels like glass and disappears almost immediately after being struck. Additionally, if there’s any glass nearby, using this ability will cause that glass to shatter. The duration of the ability to those observing it lasts as long as it takes for the glass to hit the ground.
Billy will retain an increased chance of resisting falling for various magical compulsions. Anything that attempts to force him to do something he wouldn’t normally do, or doesn’t want to do, is about half as effective as it should be, and Billy can usually shake if off.
If Billy wants to redefine something as magical, he can still try to do so, or even accidentally do so (if, for instance, he’s lied to about something being magic when it’s not). However, in Landel’s what Billy changes will never be dramatic, and will rarely be useful, and the item must be somewhat similar to what the desired item is. If another magic using character required the use of a wand or magical focus, or a key magical ingredient, Billy could believe something similar into standing in for that item. However, he can’t actually create anything new or give an item properties it doesn’t have. For instance, if another magic user required the use of a special crystal, Billy could try to make a rock stand in for said crystal as a symbol that he’s assigned worth. However, the rock would ultimately remain a rock, only with new assigned magical significance. The more people Billy can persuade to believe in that significance, the more useful it will be. For game mechanics, if only Billy assigns this significance, it will last one day. If he convinces someone else the item is valuable or different, it will last two days, three people three days, etc.
His ability to preserve specimens will remain unchanged because it will probably never, ever come up.
He'll also be able to tell that the world is, in fact, not ending. Or at least this one isn't.
Does your character have any non-otherworldly abilities/training that surpass the norm?: After what seems to be a little under a month on the run from the entire magical underworld of London, Billy picked up some practical skills to protect himself. He was trained by Dane, who has military experience and is very adept at combat in this magical underbelly of London. Billy is far less skilled, but for his size and build he’s scrappy and determined. He won’t hesitate to act when push comes to shove, and doesn’t panic when threatened. He has some half-remembered Judo experience from university, and Dane showed him truncheon strikes and some basic hand-to-hand self defense. Billy’s also picked up on how to move quietly and cautiously, and moves pretty tactically for a scrawny guy with glasses.
Billy also has passably good aim with small firearms. However, he’s only practiced with a working model of a Star Trek phaser, which has no recoil or reload.
Billy is also, of course, very well informed in all areas concerning marine molluscs.
What do you see your character doing in the scope of the game and how do you plan to use the setting of Landel's Institute to develop them and affect their psychology in a unique, interesting way?: Coming from a normal life into a horrific and dangerous environment not very long ago, Landel’s will not be terribly shocking to Billy anymore. It won’t be the most upsetting or strange thing he’s seen so far, by far. Billy has come to cope with these things as best he can, which is pretty admirable. He was advised by Baron that it’s best not to get caught up in how things have happened when you can focus on the why. (Billy is actually not very good at this.)
With his life as out of control as it has been lately, Billy is likely to just see his inexplicable abduction as par for the course. It’ll take him some time to adjust to the idea that the world suddenly isn’t about to end in fire, but once he does, he’ll be able to approach Landel’s as simply a new chapter in the weird disaster his life has become. Billy likes to try and make sense of what’s happening around him, often getting caught up in details that make no sense even if they ultimately don’t matter. He’ll find it hard not to worry about similar problems in the logic of Landel’s. He’s likely to think of things, especially magical things, in the same symbolic roundabout way he’s been taught to look at London in. For instance, if intent makes something real, why wouldn’t fictional characters be real, if not here then somewhere else? What is fandom if not worship? Because of his geeky nature, Billy will have a somewhat meta perspective on the situation with the characters he recognizes. He’s controlled enough that, unless invited, he won’t be breaking any fourth walls. In fact, at this point, I think he’ll be very quick to accept fictional characters as real people, and he’ll probably enjoy theorizing about it in his own mind. In addition to any really obvious everyone-knows-it canons, Billy specifically references the following shows: Dr. Who, Supernatural, Buffy, Angel, American Gothic, Star Trek (shown to be a particularly knowledgable fan of ToS), Star Cops, Lexx, Farscape.
When he first arrives, Billy will think Simon somehow messed up the transport and sent him to the wrong place. If he manages to conclude that there's a copy of him soldiering on elsewhere, Billy's perspective will change radically. Since he died just prior to his arrival at Landel’s, and he would know that a perfect copy of himself should have picked up where he left off, Billy would be able to let go of what he left behind pretty easily. Not happily, but easily. The life he was taken from is over, and what’s left of it belongs to someone else now. Being in Landel’s will probably give him the time he didn’t have to mourn Dane, and to realize that he had lost everything in the past weeks. Not only did he lose his mundane life with his job at the Darwin Center, but he also lost his new friend, the Krakenists, and what little control he had managed to rebuild while on the run. He’ll trust that the new him is doing what needs to be done, but this Billy, the original Billy, has to accept that he can’t get any of that back. Therefore, his motivations will be more aligned with helping others and trying to right this wrong than getting home. He’ll also have to realize that because of all the mistakes and misinformation he and Dane were dealing with, a lot of people died unnecessarily, and maybe even Dane’s death could have been averted. He’ll miss Dane very acutely, and will have a difficult time recovering from that loss.
Given that this RP takes place in an unsettling and outright horrific environment, how do you justify your character as being appropriate in both body and mind for this kind of setting?: The setting of Kraken has Billy pretty well-prepared for Landel’s. He’s seen friends die, been attacked as well as helped by supernatural horrors, and he’s begun to adjust to the physical demands of his new lifestyle. While Billy is certainly not the toughest guy out there, he’s become hardened by his experiences. By the end of the book, he’s come from being a wide-eyed fish out of water, to handling all sorts of threats with caution and a respectable amount of wisdom.
Third-Person Sample:
Billy still felt like he was intruding on the imagined residents when he walked into certain rooms. The bathroom or the bedroom, mostly. Personal spaces that were only open to the closest friends. He wanted the place to feel dead and empty, to find the too-clean atmosphere of a hotel. That way he wouldn’t need to reflexively apologize to someone who didn’t exist when he tucked himself into their bed, or wonder how hygienic the contents of their cabinets were, for that matter.
Dane entered as Billy was in mid-inspection of a container of cheap hair product. The bathroom had seemed spacious moments ago, but Dane filled it up. The picture the mirror showed Billy was now mostly composed of Dane’s girth. Next to him, Billy appeared small, because he was, and ridiculous, because the clothes he had borrowed were.
“Need to do something with your hair.” Dane was looking hard at Billy’s reflection.
Billy ran a hand through his hair, separating waves and making the shape even less flattering. Sleep had left it shabby, but with enough similarities to the long-gone mild mannered scientist that he could see Dane’s point. Billy felt different, but the man staring back at him was unchanged. He was suddenly tempted to try a flex, to see if the new strength he felt was also something he could see, but Dane was standing right there and Billy’s embarrassment was tangible.
“Not much that can be done, is there?” he said and shrugged. He relied upon the optimistic thought that it would be ridiculously nitpicky to have included bacteria or mold in their false home, and squirted some of the gel onto his hand. Dane was still watching him as Billy pushed the gummy, stale stuff into his hair.
“It’s too recognizable. Maybe we can flatten it.” He wasn’t satisfied with Billy’s progress so far, apparently.
“You’re not any better.” Billy still applied more gel, which only really succeeded in making his hair look unpleasantly wet. His curls became tendrils and coils. “At least I have new clothes.”
“Take off your glasses.” Dane’s hand was open to receive them, and although Billy pulled them off with two sticky fingers, he didn’t hand the glasses over. He felt more blind without them than he remembered, his mind almost as blurry as his sight. Dane made some sort of a face, but a combination of poor vision and distractedness made it hard to evaluate the reaction.
“Maybe you could just leave them off,” said the mass of unrecognizable features.
Billy laughed over the consideration in Dane’s voice, and quickly replaced the glasses on his face. He had missed them even in their briefest of separations, but now the world was crisp and clear again, and Dane was more than just a looming dark shape. “Yeah, and see how useful I’ll be next time we get chased down.” Billy met Dane’s eyes, and tilted his head down to peer over the rim of his glasses, changing the image from perfect to incomprehensible. He noticed where Dane shifted and displaced behind the lenses. “Can’t see anything without them.”
First-Person Sample:
[Billy is cited as keeping notes, however, they seem to just be collections of names, dates and locations. He’ll probably continue to do so in Damned once he grasps the situation, but he wouldn’t keep an actual journal.]