App
User Name/Nick: Meredith
User LJ: shiplizard
AIM/IM: Tejarik
E-mail: shiplizard at gmail.com
Other Characters: Vasilia Aliena, Chief Brachi Stildyne
Character Name: Richard B. Riddick
Series: Pitch Black (also Dark Fury, Chronicles of Riddick)
Age: 37
From When?: The fight with the Lord Marshall in Chronicles, assuming he actually got his soul yanked out for a second.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. So immensely inmate. Completely inmate.
Riddick's a multiple-murderer with no love lost between him and the world around him, a man who will go through people like tissue paper if they stand between him and the nearest exit.
He needs a warden who can overpower him, with a combination of strength and responsibility to show him that it's possible to make the harder decisions (like not solving all of your problems via homicide) without being an idiot or a martyr. His own universe is ... short on that.
Abilities/Powers: Strength slightly greater than a human of his size should be able to muster, senses better than a human's should be (most notably, a very developed sense of smell). Some creative surgery in prison left him with a metallic coating under his corneas that amplifies and bends light, allowing him to see in the dark. (Not so great in daylight or bright fluorescents, though. )
Personality:
Richard is a foundling, the victim of attempted infanticide by a death cult called the Necromongers who had a vendetta against his people, a warlike society called the Furyans. (No points for creative names.) From these people and this start in the world he inherited a charming pentient for extreme violence and a chip on his shoulder against the entire universe. Not quite a misanthrope because that would imply that he expended a lot of effort, not a sociopath exactly, he drifts through the universe as a lone wolf, occasionally blundering into the role of antihero. He has a battered, tarnished impulse to see the right thing done-- his first stint in prison came when he blew the whistle on a corruption charge. His bad luck that the corruption went all the way up the ladder to the people he reported it to. He made a conscious decision at that point to give no more fucks.
He has been diagnosed with sociopathy and a 'primitive fight or flight response mechanism', neither of which are exactly correct. What Riddick has, really, is a set of genetically-engineered racial traits that give him highly specific (and yes, animalistic, although not in the way his bullshit would have you believe) instincts. He doesn't register most people as... people. They aren't part of his family group, and they just don't count. He was bred to be a pack animal, a fighter with a society-- the lack of any other Furyans makes him prone to create small pseudo-families. He doesn't understand this, doesn't understand the switch that flips in his brain and suddenly makes someone vitally important to him. He's lost everyone he's ever felt this familial bond to-- it's caused a lot of psychological pain. (We shed a single tear.)
He also has an instinctive aversion to seeing children harmed-- even strange children. This trait's gotten him into a lot of trouble been used against him. He tries to ignore it when he can. It's just more part of his genetic programming; the warlike Furyans needed mental checks in place to stop themselves from self destructing as a race, and making kids off limits was one of them. It tends to apply to animals, too, and anyone he perceives as helpless.
Other than that he lacks quite a lot of standard human social instinct. He has no particular psychological qualms about, say, cannibalism. He's not wired like other humans and that's very much by design. But it's not an excuse for choosing to cut your way through the galaxy. Which he has. His problem solving skills run pretty much thusly: 1. ask nicely 2. if that fails, knife in the gut. He doesn't kill for pleasure but will maim or mow down anyone he considers a threat or an obstacle. Quite a few innocent people have been obstacles over the years.
The side of his animalistic wiring that he refuses to acknowledge is that he isn't actually happy in eternal conflict. He blusters and bullshits and puts on a front of psychosis to salve his own ego and to keep people afraid of him (and less likely to come after him), but really, deep down, he'd like nothing more than someplace quiet to live, a little territory to get into scraps over, a well-maintained social pecking order and enough to eat. This doesn't fit with his Big Macho Image of himself, and he feels threatened by the very idea of letting down his testosterone-flavored smokescreen.
He'll be a difficult inmate on the barge-- he'll be geared first towards escape, because he's never actually been put somewhere that he couldn't escape from before. Being yanked back from a few ports and possibly going overboard and being retrieved will settle him down and let him face the fact that he legitimately can't get himself out of this one. He won't engage in casual violence-- he's not a bully. He's an escape artist. Wardens may get murdered, however, or inmates who attack him. He is not going to be easy to settle down in a prison environment, but it is doable. Being fed regularly will help.
Path to Redemption:
While not necessarily an evil creature, Riddick lacks instinctive taboos about a lot of things-- like murder. He uses this to his advantage, turning to violence at fairly mild provocations. If dude is going to function in society as more than a dangerous animal, he needs to make a choice not to take the easy way out and to curb his violent impulses. There's still a part of him that gives a fuck, but it's a part he actively denies.
He needs a warden strong enough to knock some sense into him and watch his blind side-- he does listen better when he's got the sense that he's not the only one looking out for him. But anyone who's got his back needs to be as strong or stronger than he is.
History:
Most of the history is culled from here
Riddick was found in a liquor store dumpster on Furya, after the sack of Furya. He was passed through government channels by the disinterested; by the time he landed in an orphanage they'd already lost the record of his place of birth and his middle name. He spent his early years in government homes and then juvenile detention facilities. He was offered a hand out of prison and into a co-op program that would teach him to pilot and give him a job as a xeno-surveyor.
He worked his way up through the company, his heightened senses and physical aptitude advancing him fast into weapons training and into the seedier side of the company, out of xeno-survey and ore-survey, into human trafficing. When he didn't like this, he exposed the practice... to the higher-ups who'd greenlit it in the first place. He was sent to prison and quickly turned his talents and training to escape. He was recaptured, then, and sent to a different prison. Rinse, repeat.
Early in his criminal carerer, trapped in the unlit, uncontrolled depths of the Ursa-Luna penal space station, he underwent a risky surgical procedure (locally known as a shine job) to allow him to see in the dark.
The next decade and a half were a cycle of escape-mayhem-recapture that culminated in a spaceship crash when his most persistent bounty hunter -- a man named William Johns-- booked them economy on a cheap, long-haul freighter called the Hunter-Gratzner. The few survivors were caught in the local tri-solar eclipse, the only time that the scorching surface of the planet went dark, and unfortunately also when the local super-predators came out to spawn. Riddick nearly died--was saved by the self sacrifice of a woman he'd gotten more attached to then he meant, the docking pilot Carolyn Fry. The bounty hunter Johns also died on the planet surface. The remaining three survivors (Riddick, a thirteen-year-old girl travelling under the alias Jack B. Badd, and a muslim teacher named Abu 'Imam' al-Walid) made for safety.
Their distress signal was picked up by a bounty-farming ship-- a massive hive of frozen bounty-hunters ready to be deployed when a profitable escapee was located-- helmed by a twisted captain who had her favorite captives cryogenically preserved and presented like taxidermy. As one does. The escape came at the cost of young Miss B. Badd's innocence; she took her first life saving Riddick's. Worried at the level of attachment she showed for him-- and the depth to which she'd bought into his mystique-- he left the girl with the al-Walid hoping she'd have a better life than he'd had.
Five years later, he was picked up again by a bounty-hunting team-- after stealing their ship and dumping them on the frozen world on which he'd been camping out, he went to confront al-Walid, the last man who knew where to find him. al-Walid copped to putting out the bounty on him to summon him back, hoping he'd serve as a defense against the scourge of a death-cult, murdering its way across the inhabited systems-- Riddick offered as a counter argument that he gave zero fucks. He also found out that Jack B. Badd had run away several years before, been sold into slavery, and been incarcerated for murdering her slavers.
Worried about Jack and more horrified than he'd admit even to himself when al-Walid was murdered by the Necromonger cult's soldiers, he set out to retrieve the girl and do what he could about the army.
Sample Journal Entry: [5-10 sentences, 1st Person POV]
[The feed flickers on, the journal propped up on a desk. It shows the off-kilter image of a large man in welding goggles, sitting with his fingers steepled, brow furrowed with what looks like earnest concern.]
This is the worst prison I've ever been in. Not joking. Have you people even met security?
I'm pretty sure this door is unlocked. [He strolls offscreen and there's the sound of the door opening, and his voice filters back from a distance]
This fucking door is actually unlocked, you people are shit at the incarceration thing. [Footsteps fade away; the journal sits, showing an empty desk]
Sample RP: [3-5 paragraphs, 3rd Person POV]
Riddick peered over the edge of the barge, frowning at the view. The barge was kind of like a water-craft fucked a passenger starship and they had a bastard child that didn't make any sense. He expected his prisons to conform to physics. Just common consideration.
He tipped his head to one side, slanting a glance over at the other people on the deck. Nobody close enough to stop him if he went over. No guarantee that wasn't suicide, though. They said you'd wind up somewhere else and the barge would chase you. Which, frankly: this thing didn't look like it could chase a planet if it was in a decaying orbit.
Another flick of the eye to the other bodies on the deck, their body language, their distance from him. Nobody alarmed, nobody on edge for him to go over. Why should they be. Look at it on paper, why would you want to leave? Forget prison, his room on the barge was warmer and more secure than he'd been able to pay for back when he'd been a junior surveyor and working honest. The food was better, too. And the instances of animal attack and homicide were pretty limited to once every two or three months. Practically nothing. The rehab thing was a joke, he could let it slide as long as he wanted.
The barge was a good place to lie low. Maybe he wouldn't have that itch to hit the exit doing 10 meters a second if the last thing he remembered before wasn't Jack's eyes, dull and clouded by whatever they'd done to her, if he didn't have an army to cut apart for hurting the last thing in the universe he gave half a shit about.
But that was the problem, sadly. He had shit to do. One way or another, he'd get off this scow. He'd get back to the Basilica and sort it out the best way he knew how, with blood and hard steel. He'd get out. Why wouldn't he? Never found the prison that could hold him yet.
His gaze slipped over the edge of the deck again, and he propped his elbows casually on the rail, letting his body weight slide forward onto that point of contact, resting it there and on the balls of his feet, coiled to launch forward. He looked down at who the fuck knew where and how high. He considered it, the odds that the barge would catch him against the odds that the ground would, neither option all that helpful. Increased security on him, or dead and shattered; not outcomes he was liking today.
Nah. Over the edge wouldn't get him out. He had to go farther inside, for that... there was always a man at the top. You had to get sent home? He'd just find something sharp. Then he'd find his way up and start negotiating.
Special Notes:
Canon sources are inconsistent about the extent of Riddick's enhanced senses and physical abilities. There's been speculation about precognitive or esper abilities.
On that subject: No. Not even if Dead Man Stalking makes it canon. Absolutely not.
Bloodhound sense of smell, yes. Cat-accurate hearing? yes. 'Smell your pheromones?' to some extent-- he can smell fear and (canonically) menstruation, things on that level. Inexplicable ability to perceive things he shouldn't be able to? No.
On that note: there's some inconsistency on where Riddick picked up his shine job. According to the Escape from Butcher Bay game the shine in his eyes appears magically when he's knocked out for another surgery in Butcher Bay. In a flash-based easter-egg on the Pitch Black website, he picks them up for a pack of cigarettes (collateral, for a hefty sum he never actually delivers) in Ursa Luna. No mystic wooj bullshit here: I go with the Ursa Luna timeline and really downplay any mystic side of the Furyans.