IndividualCharacter's full name: Rex Alejandro Vidales
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Crucible, The Firewalker, St. Florian
Age: 38
Date of Birth: July 17, 1982
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: New York City, New York
Nationality: United States
Ethnicity/ Cultural Heritage: Mexican American
AppearanceHair color and style: Black hair kept short and simple
Skin Tone: Light, but he tans very easily
Eye Color: Brown
Height: 6’2
Build: Muscular and athletic, toned rather than bulky
Visible Magical Corruption: None.
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: A small cross between his shoulder blades and the text of Psalm 23:1 on his left pec. He has mild burn scars on his lower back and a few smaller ones on his left calf.
Other features: Nothing special.
Everyday clothing style: Either casual button down, jeans, and work boots or some kind of business casual.
Uniform: Firefighter gear, when he’s actually working.
Sleepwear: Sleep shorts and a t-shirt
Miscellaneous clothing: A gold wedding band he refuses to take off.
CharacterPersonality: Rex is a very focused and determined man. He throws everything he has at a situation and attacks it with vigor. He’s pretty serious and has a no-nonsense way about him, to the point where many people have accused him of not having a sense of humor. He can be brusque and blunt and doesn’t back down from a challenge or a problem. He’s a man of conviction. He does what he thinks is right and what should be right. This is the scaffolding he clings to and when he breaks a conviction, he tends to spiral.
He’s very pragmatic and a believer in doing something right the first time, as quickly and efficiently as possible. He doesn’t have time for mistakes or second guessing - there’s always something needing fixing, some fire to be putting out. That doesn’t mean he isn’t extremely critical of his own actions - in fact, Rex is prone to brooding and worrying over how he could’ve done something better - but once Rex chooses his course of action, he doesn’t waver from it, regardless of the consequences.
Hobbies/ Interests:
Job or part time job and description: Firefighter Lieutenant, currently on extended leave. In the meantime, he’s a roaming Urban Wizard, soul-searching and wandering the streets to try to help others whenever he can.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns:
- Never seeing his wife and children again
- Losing his soul
- Watching one more person dying in a fire
- Mutants on a rampage
- Being evil
Special talents:
- Paramedic training
- Fluent in Spanish, Italian, and Latin
- Quick thinking in a crisis
- Speed reading with full comprehension
- Sewing
MoralityGood/ bad/ neutral/ other: Rex strives to be a very good person.
Feelings toward Mutants: Mutants are like fire. Fine in small amounts, quite useful in controlled conditions, but don’t take your eyes off them for a minute or the consequences can be disastrous. They need to be kept in check.
Feelings toward Humans: Humans are capable of such depth, ranging from saints to wicked servants of evil, but we must love them all the same.
Feelings toward Adapteds: What’s an Adapted? Oh? Oh. That’s it? That’s not much of a long-term solution.
MagicAdvanced/Praeditus Arcana: Evocation
Intermediate/Muetadi Arcana: Aceision
Power Growths: 1/9/2024 - Upgraded Asceision to Second Tier/Intermediate/Muetadi Arcana.
Preferred Foci: Fire, tools for making fires, and biblical quotations
Magical Theme: Fire magic, including mastery over it and using it as a medium through which other magic is performed. Much of it has a biblically-influenced style.
Snap Spell: Pillar of Fire -
Surrounds the user in a personal vortex of flames without burning them.Physical AbilitiesGeneral Physical Capabilities: Rex has been a professional firefighter for nearly twenty years and has high strength and endurance for a man his age. He’s in excellent shape all around and pushes himself constantly to do better and be better since lives literally depend on him.
Fighting Style: Bullrush you, grapple you, and wrestle you into submission. Failing that, he’ll put his door-busting skills to use and bust you up with a good swift kick to somewhere vital.
Fighting Style Pros/Cons: Great for taking down individuals, not so good with groups or armed people.
History Of Your CharacterRex is a man who lost his way and is trying to get it back.
Rex’ life was on a pretty good trajectory. He had a mother and father who loved him, a brother and a sister he got along with as well as any siblings would, did okay in school and sports and had a pretty good life. He was an altar boy at his local church and never missed a service. He never got into serious trouble and few people ever had anything negative to say about him.
After college he joined the NYC fire department, to set his sights on becoming a firefighter and saving lives. Along the way he met a pretty girl and they got married, beginning a new life together and eventually starting to raise two children. Life was good.
In 2017, Rex’ life was forever changed when he and his team were sent to a burning building as a result of a fight between two mutants. The fire was horrible and the building was full of people, many of them trapped inside.
A long time later it was revealed that he’d knowingly left a woman and her children behind, ignoring their enfeebled and hoarse cries for help because they were in a dangerous section of the building and in that moment, he couldn’t bear the thought of getting hurt. So he’d convinced himself he hadn’t heard anything.
Their bodies began haunting his nightmares. Rex’ family referred to the event as The Fall.
The guilt began gnawing away at him. He refused to mention this fact to anyone and managed to hide it during the post-call debriefs and counseling. He repressed everything and if he seemed more withdrawn or snappish than normal? Well, that’s Lieutenant Vidales for you. He’s always under a lot of stress and is always Mr. Serious.
At home he started changing as well. Rex began to become more controlling, given to angry outbursts over the slightest things. He went from only drinking the sacramental wine to practically living on alcohol when at home. He stopped attending church, hated when his wife and kids left the house, and began spending most nights when not on duty at some bar or other.
Eventually his wife left him. Not a divorce, not quite a separation, but she took the kids and told him he’d see them again when she saw the Rex Vidales she had married. As a parting gift, she called his captain and filled him in on everything, which led to Rex being placed in enforced psychiatric therapy and temporary leave, to “get his head on straight”.
Little did anyone know that his therapist was a member of the Welldrinker Cult, who helped Rex understand that all of these things that had happened to him were just the result of mutants running rampage. After all, wasn’t there a causation between the disproportionately high number of mutants living in New York and the amount of fires there, as compared to the rest of the country? Mutants were the problem. Weren’t Mutants the ones who had caused the accident that fateful day? Weren’t they to blame for most of the damage and death the city faced? People had to walk through metal detectors or get frisked so they couldn’t bring guns into place - what was keeping a mutant from walking in and burning the place down with their thoughts? Mutants were like a fire. And how did you stop a fire?
You snuffed it out.
Now if only there was a way that ordinary, rational, God-fearing people like us could help control the mutant problem….
That’s how Rex began attending Welldrinker meetings, listening to their messages and taking them to heart. Until the day he had the chance to drink of the well himself.
Then came his revelation.
Words unbidden rose to his mind, words he’d memorized as a child. His mouth opened and he began quoting from the Book of Exodus and suddenly a swirling twister of flames erupted around him, filling the room with light and heat, scorching a ring on the concrete floor and soaking up the flames from the candles all the other members held. Yet Rex himself was unharmed.
But on the inside, he was shaken. He fled that meeting, nobody daring to stand in the way of the man with his personal fire tornado. He ran to his church for the first time in years, exhausted, the flames having finally died off and leaving him weak and feverish. He met with his old priest and begged him to tell him what it all meant. At the end of a long night of crying, talking, and confessing, Rex made some new vows, to turn his life around and try to become the man he used to be. Or better. Maybe this fire wasn’t a curse, wasn’t damnation. Maybe it was a warning, a gift. Not to be used to hurt, but to help?
With the aid of his priest, Rex found a new therapist. He ceased going to the cult meetings. He’s tried cutting ties with the Welldrinkers. He’s trying to atone for all his misdeeds and wasted time. All those years he could’ve been helping people, serving a higher purpose? But now he had a gift. Never again will he fear the fire. Never again will he turn his back on those in need. Never again will he allow a mutant to put others in danger. Never again will he return to the Welldrinkers.
A new day has come and it’s burning bright.
RoleplayWhat’s your OOC alias?: Zek
Where did you learn about this site?: My early teenage years.
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: Zek &
Liz Sundance Sample RP:“A corrupted green dragon in a zombie dungeon wants to kill you but also this is LARP” - prompt by Mugen.
Rex halted his jog through the park as the sounds of shouting and clashing of metal drew his attention. He immediately began jogging in place as he swiveled to hone in on the source of the noise, his years of experience on the job immediately trying to analyze the noises for potential dangers.
Rex shook his head.
“Get with it, Rex. That’s not your job right now. You’re not on duty.” Nor are you qualified, not yet. But then again, it could hurt to just see what all the fuss was about, right? Perhaps someone needed 911 to be called?
Rex nodded once. That was what he would do. He was just going to watch, to be a bystander and make sure everything was okay. That was his civic duty.
He began jogging in the direction of the noise and as he came around a bend in the road and slipped between some trees, he saw a battlefield.
In a cleared-out meadow, he saw people fallen everywhere, some groaning but many worryingly silent. He skidded to a stop and immediately began assessing the situation. Okay, from over here, that looked like blood. And on that woman, too. And that one. And that man. And that person. Rex’ eyes widened and he immediately crossed himself.
He whipped his cell phone out and started dialing and then…
...Then he saw the two people dressed as knights flailing away at each other with foam swords. Within seconds, one of them poked the other with his sword and the other person dramatically fell backward in an Oscar-worthy performance.
By some cue, that’s when all the bodies on the ground began to rise up. Except they weren’t bodies, but people also dressed in various medieval-style clothing. And most of them had foam or plastic weapons too. They started groaning and moaning and stumbling toward the standing knight and on closer inspection, Rex noticed very obviously fake blood.
Now it was his turn to groan.
“Heaven help me, it’s one of those nerd conventions.” He rubbed his eyes with a palm and pocketed his phone.
“Rude!” said one of the ambling zombies, glaring at Rex from behind vintage horned-rim glasses. Similar glares game from other zombies as they shuffled by, meandering methodically toward the knight, who was now shouting things at them. “The time has come to call upon my boon. By the blessed horn of Zecrothoss, I summon thee, Ambergonite!”
The zombies all stopped.
One person coughed.
“....I summon thee, Ambergonite!”
Suddenly a massive green dragon burst out from behind a nearby tent and it went roaring toward the zombies, who immediately cleared a path for it.
Only it wasn’t a dragon. It was more like a miniature parade float of a dragon head attached to an inverted canoe on top of a jeep, with massive plastic wings jutting out to the side. The “dragon” went barreling through the well-vacated corridor until it met up with the “knight” who climbed aboard the jeep. “Fly, Ambergonite! I have the mithril gem! Away!”
Rex felt that was as good a time as any to make his own escape.
The things people came up with to waste their time. He shook his head grimly as he began jogging back the way he’d come.
