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Individual
Character's full name: Jacob “Jake” Townsend
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Jake refers to himself as Nexus, when he requires such a name, signifying the way the frayed connections between objects, people, and places come together through him.
Gender: Male
Age: 24
Birthday: October 17th, 1985
Nationality/ Ethnicity: American/Scottish
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Bellevue, Washington
Appearance
Hair colour and style: Jake's hair is a rich mahogany colour, which he wears short and tousled, never really bothering to style it at all.
Eyes: Pale White. While not totally blind, Jake's eyes have atrophied and cataracted with the coming of his power. He now relies totally on the Web of Fragments to navigate.
Height: 5' 11''
Build: Jake is of a medium build with plenty of ropey muscle.
Visible mutation: None
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Jake has numerous tattoos of strange design that litter his body. These are his personal sigils that stand for various things he cares about in his life, such as his family, his take on life, and a variety of other topics. To Jake, these tattoos are training aids that help him focus and hone his abilities over time.
Other features: None
Everyday clothing style: In the summer, Jake prefers to wear cargo shorts with lots of pockets and a t-shirt.
Uniform: (if applicable) None.
Sleepwear: Boxers
Miscellaneous clothing: In winter, he switches to cargo pants and a hoodie, along with a good pair of boots.
Character
Personality: (How you character behaves, social tendencies, quirks, etc.) Jake is a friendly, if somewhat quiet and observational person. After years of hostile interactions thanks to his insight into personal connections, he has learned to keep himself quiet and controlled, or else he may potentially alienate those around him. Jake enjoys spending time with his friends whenever possible, even during mundane tasks. One quirk is that he will only settle down and watch TV with someone else around. He can't exactly see it himself so he watches the emotional reactions that people have to the subject matter and listens.
Hobbies/ Interests: Martial Arts, Meditation, Exploration, Parkour
Job or part time job and description: (if applicable) Jake makes his living as a private consultant, quietly providing his services to those willing to pay. His rates vary depending on the nature of the job and how he feels about the client, and often takes on charity cases for no charge. Jake has little interest in money besides having enough to feed and house himself; once he has enough to tide himself over for a while, he tends to donate the excess to people in need. His personal specialty is finding lost items or tracking
people.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: Jake's greatest personal concern is managing his own karma. Whatever his actions, Jake creates connections of meaning to those around him based on how those people perceive and feel about him, which means he is constantly carrying the baggage of his past with him. If he causes a lot of negative emotions, those strands feel dark and polluted, and Jake has great difficulty forgetting what he has done. In terms of the conflict between Mutants and normal humans, Jake doesn't know where to stand. He understands that he is special compared to other humans, but he can't decide if that means he should be treated any differently then another person.
Morality
Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Jake would be considered a pretty nice guy, overall. He's fairly detached from a lot of the worldly concerns that people cloak themselves in, and this leaves him room to consider and judge. Jake would rather have friends then enemies, or at least a healthy respect between himself and those around him.
Mutations:
~Web of Fragments~
Mutation description: The Web of Fragments is a sensory ability wherein Jake can see the emotional and functional connections between objects, people, and places. He gains a sense of the nature of these connections, their bearing and range, and the strength of those connections for the purpose of the . To him, the world consists of objects connected with gleaming strands of meaning that hum with purpose. Strong channels, those created by strong emotions and heavy meaning, grow bright like woven cables. Lesser connections appear as gleaming strings or threads.
The Web of Fragments lets Jake pull a startling amount of information out of thin air. Despite being almost totally blind, Jake can intuitively read over the weave of threads and understand the physical contours all around him, thereby allowing him to move with a fluid grace through the world although many small details escape him, such as clock faces, books, and television. Jake can, however, make out objects that would normally be invisible to normal humans by discerning the connections they possess to surrounding world. The only real exception to this are those who conceal themselves with some sort of mentally derived stealth, which Jake cannot pierce. In addition, by studying the connections between people and places, he can learn how they feel about those around them and can recognize people at a glance. This unconscious understanding of others makes Jake somewhat difficult to talk to, as he often digs up the uncomfortable truths that exist between people that go unspoken between them.
Strengths:
360 Degree View: Jake is so intuitively connected to the network he sees all around him that there are no holes in his sensory abilities. Jake can see though many forms of invisibility by seeing the strands that these concealed objects and people carry with them. The exception are those who utilize mental powers to conceal themselves: these powers affect Jake like they would anyone else.
Discerning Sight: Jake can read the connections between people, places, and objects. He can tell what they love, fear, and hate, although not the details of this relationship. This makes him tricky to lie to unless you have some sort of mental shielding because the connections will differ from the words that are spoken. Connections are two way between people, showing both people's opinions, so if one is tricked by the other, the difference in connection will be obvious to Jake, although once again not the details.
Tracking Sight: The Web of Fragments shows the direction and range of a connection, which makes it useful for tracking people provided that Jake has a suitable focus to work from.
Perfect Detail: Jake's ability to perceive contours is limited to around 100 yards. Inside this range, Jake can see with near perfect detail the shapes and structures around him. Jake cannot see through any structure which normal people consider opaque, because the connections they create also consider such places opaque, thus Jake can see through glass windows, but not through a stone wall.
Weaknesses:
Mental Power Vulnerability: Jake is particularly vulnerable to mental attacks, particularly those that influence the senses. Such disruptions cause him to lose coordination, causing him to be unable to stand.
Drug/Poison Vulnerability: Jake's mental chemistry is unlike anything that human science has seen before, and that makes him react violently and unpredictably to any agent that alter the normal balance of neural transmitters in the brain. This can causes seizures, bleeding from the mouth and nose, or - in extreme cases - comas.
Only Form of Sight: Jake is so used to using the Web of Fragments to see that basically cannot coordinate his own body without its aid. Even through he has been legally blind for years, if Jake loses the use of the Web of Fragments, he will essentially unable to function as anyone else who was suddenly blinded would be.
Unique Brain Physiology: Jake's brain has a unique and difficult to understand structure that took two years of him lying in a coma ward to develop. This means that any attempt at providing medicine or performing surgery on Jake's brain is substantially more difficult and could have far reaching effects. Jake is particularly prone to long comas.
Limited Range: Jake's ability to see the world is limited to around 100 yards. Beyond this range, contours fade and the world becomes an ocean of connections from which Jake cannot pick one from another. He is essentially blind as a normal blind person would be beyond this range.
~To Awe and Shroud~
Secondary Mutation Description:
Jake's psionic talents have developed to the point where he can manipulate the threads of meaning that originate from himself and flow out into the world, either by supercharging them with psionic energy or strangling the power contained within them and limiting their ability to interact with the world. This essentially gives him two abilities in one, depending on how he utilizes this power, and 'Awe Mode' and a 'Stealth Mode'. He refers to these different aspects as the Awe and the Shroud respectively.
In 'Awe Mode', Jake pours his psionic powers into his personal connections, supercharging them and making him appear larger then life. While using this power, Jake takes on an overwhelming appearance and charm, making him a natural leader for those around him and making them more likely to bow to his suggestions and reasoning.
In 'Stealth Mode', Jake shuts down these connections, causing him to be seen, but not noticed. People around Jake in this state have great difficulty giving any importance to his presence and simply ignore him, even to the point of unconsciously avoiding him. While this power has no effect on true physical security, such as a video camera, a security guard watching such a camera could be mentally tricked into simply ignoring Jake's presence if he is in range of Jake's psionic powers, although any recordings of the video would show him clearly.
Strengths:
'Awe Mode' aka The Awe:
Charisma: Jake gains tremendous personal charisma while using this power in this way. Everything he says seems more reasonable, important, and influential then it would from any normal person. People tend to react more positively towards his suggestions then they otherwise would. Most people would describe him as just a really cool guy.
Appearance: While in this state, Jake gains an almost overwhelming boost to his appearance. Besides seeming to be incredibly handsome, he gives off a sense of importance and meaningfulness that people find hard to ignore. Even with a glance, people want to pay attention to him, as if he were a celebrity of some kind.
'Stealth Mode' aka The Shroud:
Ignorable: In this state of being, Jake is tremendously easy to ignore. He is seen by those around him, but their minds are tricked into not placing any importance on his presence. People will step around him in a crowd as they would any other minor obstacle and will not recall his presence unless influenced by some form of mental manipulation or hypnosis.
Bypasses Manned Sensors: Sensors and sensory abilities that are actively governed by a person typically don't work on Jake because the Ignorable property tricks them into ignoring his presence despite his being detected.
Weaknesses:
'Awe Mode':
Lack of Subtlety: While in this state, Jake is the center of attention and he cannot be anything but. He cannot attempt to use stealth in any way without first deactivating this power. If he is concealed and uses this power, people will be VERY likely to look in his direction and pay attention to everything that happens to him.
Memorable: Because of the power of the connections, people hang on Jake's every word while in this state. They will not forget a single fact about his actions while maintaining this power. His face will be etched into people's memories and the importance of those events that took place around him will be larger then life and often massively exaggerated in the retelling.
Exhausting: Maintaining this level of mental power is difficult to do and gradually exhausts Jake. After an hour or two, he begins getting a migraine. Further use can cause bleeding from the nose and ears, seizures, and eventually comas.
Limited Range: Jake's ability to supercharge his connections is limited to around 20 yards.
Addictive Quality: Jake's Awe has a strong addictive quality to it that makes him hunger for its use. He also tends to use it when startles or challenged unexpectedly. This causes Jake to have something of a cruel calculating streak.
'Stealth Mode':
Ignorable: While using this power, people fail to compensate for Jake's presence other then to usually step out of his way when he walks past. If Jake, for example, was between a person with a weapon and one they intended to shoot, they might well attempt to shoot through Jake as if he wasn't there. This includes friends as well as enemies, which makes using this power in combat rather risky.
No effect on physical security: This power has no influence over cameras, lasers, trip wires, or motion detectors. These sensors detect Jake as they would any other normal person, although if they are monitored by a person, that person may be fooled into thinking a glitch has occurred or that he saw nothing of importance.
Connection Atrophy: When Jake utilizes 'Stealth Mode', the normal energies that maintain his connections become backed up much like water behind a dam. When Jake releases the ability, that flow surges back into the connection and it fluctuates in a manner that disrupts Jake's ability to reactivate Stealth Mode. This disruption period is roughly the same duration as he uses 'Stealth Mode' for, causing him to use it in short spurts whenever possible.
Fighting Style:
Explanation:
Jake's fighting style focuses around a solid core of martial arts that stemmed from his personal athleticism and need for personal protection. Originally, his combat training was intended purely for his own defense, but since coming to New York, it is clear that he is going to need a more expansive repertoire of skills in order to survive. Things just aren't as simple here.
The center of his fighting ability stems from his long experience with Parkour, which is something of a cross between a sport and a martial art, in which a person learns to travel from one point to another as smoothly and efficiently as possible using only the human body. Jake, therefore, is unusually skilled at employing his acrobatics and agility in real world situations and this has become part of his fighting style. This means that Jake moves fast and can maneuver well even under adverse conditions.
When the time came for Jake to learn how to fight effectively, he sought out and added elements of Aikido, Krav Maga, and Capoeira, which added heavily to his ability to position and defend himself. In combat, Jake never stops moving, and thanks to the Web of Fragments, he can often catch people off guard by striking from unusual angles and reacting to changes in battle no normal person could see.
Pros for fighting style:
Jake's combat style is three-quarters defensive, one-quarter offensive, and takes into heavy account the surrounding terrain and weaponry of opportunity. Jake is very skilled at dealing with hand-held weapons with close-combat strikes, such as disarming pistols and defending against knives. His style is very fast and brutal when it comes to it, incorporating a variety of savage punches and elbows with rolling kicks and maneuvers. Jake is also unusually adept at handling multiple attackers due to the clarity granted to him by the Web of Fragments.
Cons for fighting style:
The primary limitations of Jake's fighting style are his lack of ranged elements, the exhaustive nature of his high-speed style, and his dependence upon his powers as a means of sensing and dealing with opponents. Jake has no training with firearms, making his best hope of hurting someone at range a thrown weapon or object. If Jake looses his powers somehow, he will either be totally incapacitated or be limited to his feeble sense of hearing to provide him with targets (depending on how the power was lost), making him very vulnerable.
Faction Allegiance
The X-men/ The Order/ The Kabal/ Other/ Unaffiliated
Jake hasn't established any real idea on how humans and mutants should interact with each other. He is dissatisfied with the current state of things, but can't figure out what would be better. Is he dangerous? Sure. Is he out of control? No. Are mutants superior to humans? He doesn't know. More capable, perhaps, but they cause as much strife as good. It's better to say they are just different.
History Of Your Character:
Jake was born to a small suburban family in Bellevue, Washington, and for the most part was a pretty normal kid. His mother and father, Alice and Frank Townsend, ran a decent enough household for Jake and his sister. The early years were pretty conventional. Jake was an active kid and played soccer almost constantly as a child. His sister was more bookish, but he liked her, and the family was pretty happy. Jake also learned a lot about the world from his father, who traveled extensively, but took care to teach his boy what he could when he was around. The pair would often take on family projects, such as fixing a car or hiking the local forests and parks. It was a good life. Life continued on as Jake moved into high school and expanded his interests to include other sports and competitions.
It was at age seventeen that Jake's mutation began to manifest itself. The Web of Fragments came first, slowly creeping into his senses. At first, Jake began collecting lost objects and bobbles, finding them insatiably interesting while still unable to recognize why. His parents, as any parents probably would, began to become concerned with this seeming obsession, and took Jake to a psychiatrist, and they began to have weekly sessions. No muted words from a psychiatrist would stop the procession of such a mutation, however, and it wasn't long before he began suffering 'visual hallucinations'. Objects and items all around him began to shimmer and shift constantly. Jake began to lose the ability to function effectively. When the psychiatrist suggested a brief stay at a facility so that Jake could come to grips with himself, the family was crushed, but eventually relented despite Jake's pleading not to go.
Inside the facility, Jake entered what he refers to as the Black Time, a period wherein the Web of Fragments began to meld into his everyday senses. Jake lost all sense or orientation, he couldn't even keep himself upright. Heavy courses of psychotropic medications warped and confused his perceptions, twisting them into nightmares woven of fear, love, trust, and hate. Gradually, Jake's eyes atrophied and his family watched on in horror as he slipped into darkness and became nonreactive as his natural senses slipped away. In this time there was nothing but abject darkness to Jake. He couldn't see, touch, taste, or hear. He was alone. Eventually even time fell away.
Jake slipped into a coma for two years and spent his time at a local hospital. Many of the best doctors came to study his case, but no one had ever heard of anything akin to his situation before. Jake's scans revealed that his mind was utilizing a massive quantity of processing capacity - where the average person's brain uses, on average, 13% of its capacity at any one time, Jake was peaking at just over 80%. The hospital even had to cool him artificially to offset a natural fever that seemed a constant companion. Then, suddenly, near the end of the coma the brain activity simply died off. He settled back to an unusual 46% brain activity, but this level was stable and showed no signs of wavering in the immediate future. Then one day, Jake woke up, and everything changed.
To Jake, the world was filled with light. The Web of Fragments had settled into its fully developed state, and it was beautiful on a level that he couldn't describe. Jake was almost physically blind by this point, his sense of vision having atrophied at a rapid rate compared to the rest of his body. More scans revealed that the visual cortex and much of the other areas of his sensory cortex had conglomerated into some wholly new neural organ. Jake soon began to find that he could navigate his environment with almost superhuman ease. He began getting flashes of insight about those around him, and began scaring the doctors and nurses that he met, dredging out their inner secrets without intended to. It didn't take long for him to learn a measure of discretion around others, so as not to alienate them.
When he finally met his old family, they were overjoyed at his partial recovery, but Jake could understand their inner feelings clearly. After two years in a complete comatose state, their connections to him had grown thin and transitory. They had moved on while he had laid unconscious in a coma ward, and they weren't prepared to deal with the inhuman aspects of Jake's understanding and awareness. Lisa was downright hostile to him, and this scarred him. Even in the first few minutes of meeting his family, he knew that he didn't have a place with them anymore.
Jake continued on in the hospital for another six months, struggling through physiotherapy for his atrophied body and suffering the usual collection of scientists and researchers who turned up interested in his case. Perceiving these people as hollow in their intentions, and being officially no longer a minor, Jake checked himself out of treatment, collected his things from the Townsend household, and moved out. With a small amount of money in his pockets from his father and from the government as an officially handicapped person, he moved into downtown Seattle and got himself a small apartment, and then tried to find something to do with himself.
At first, Jake explored extensively. He enjoyed constantly coming to new locations and following the paths of meaning that intersected a major city like Seattle. It wasn't long before he bumped into a few fellows practicing Parkour, and he too picked up the sport. Combined with the awareness of the Web of Fragments, Jake found the urban obstacles an insatiable and ever-changing puzzle to be explored.
By this point, his ability had matured to a point where Jake could easily follow the connections between objects. At first, it was a way to help his more understanding neighbors. He would find lost wedding rings and other small items. When one of the local children was kidnapped by her nanny and the police failed to locate her, they asked Jake to look into it and offered him a healthy reward. Jake agreed and readily tracked the child to a small town in Oregon and brought the police down upon the nanny.
In time, Jake developed a small and unofficial business as a private investigator and consultant. People brought him in on business deals, and to deal with disputes of a variety of type. Many people loved him, and just as many despised his inhuman capacity. As hostility mounted, Jake became increasingly isolated, staying home and reading or keeping to the building tops unless he knew those around him. As a social person, this was a serious blow. Despite this, there were two occasions in his twentieth year when Jake suffered beatings at the hands of small mobs of mutant haters, and eventually he began to learn martial arts extended from his personal training in parkour. Jake became a decent enough martial artist, enough for him to hold his own against most people.
It was late into his twentieth year that Jake began to learn how to manipulate the connections that spread out before him. At first, he learned that he could twinge the connections closest to him. Nudge them a little to make them richer and more meaningful, but isolating a singular connection proved very difficult, and in fact Jake continues to build this skill to this day. He did, however, realize that the wholesale modification of his local connections could prove exceedingly useful, although it took him a long time to perfect his control. By forcing power into his connections, Jake became exceedingly noticeable. An instant celebrity, you might say. He could also cut off the influence of the strings, causing people to forget he was ever there at all. Once Jake had learned how to use his abilities in this manner, he found control a difficult thing to master and was prone to brutal swings in power that caused him large quantities of grief.
In one memorable moment, while he was walking down a Seattle street feigning disability with a cane, his power accidentally flared and he found several hundred people looking at him with almost frantic attention. Jake, startled, attempted to get away, but a mob rapidly formed and began following him through the streets obsessed with knowing more about him. Jake wasn't able to lose them for some time, when he climbed a near by building and hid until his power returned to normal and he could slip away to his apartment. After several other such encounters, Jake began to notice a shift in the opinions of the people around him. People in suits turned up and began asking after him, claiming to be government officials. Jake could feel connections of suspicion and worry begin to coil around him. His neighbors stopped talking to him. Things had changed, and it was time for a change. It was time to leave Seattle, forever.
Jake decided to head roughly East. He knew that New York was the mecca for mutants. He had yet to meet another like himself, but he couldn't imagine any other possibilities. Gathering what little he needed, he abandoned his old life and traveled by bus, train, and foot. He spent only a few short days in any one location, and slowly perfected his abilities in the dark places discarded by all others. By moving in the areas with the least connections, he was largely ignored. By the time he finally hiked into New York itself, he had mastered the Web and his ability to manipulate wholesale connections to himself. It was time to find himself a proper life.
Roleplay
Where did you learn about this site?: I was introduced to the site by Meld/Juka
Do you have any other existing characters, if so who: None
Sample RP:
It's amazing how much goes on in a small town in the early hours leading up till dawn. Jake smiled as he leaned up against the white stucco side of the Grey Hound station in Cozad, Nebraska. He had been traveling for three months now, and the wear and tear was starting to show. His sunglasses, cheap plastic ones that were once shiny and mirrored were now scratched in a half-dozen places. His clothes were similarly banged up, cut by brambles, and darkened with stains that may or may not have been blood. He was, however, happy. Control had started to come at long last. He could manage quite a bit now before collapsing into that ruinous, hacking cough that had haunted him over the last few months. Each day he could push farther, and the more complex actions came easier each time. He was happy, and so he watched, and reveled in pure and simple nature of the people around him.
The first person to come by was a mailman. He moved calmly and slowly. Jake could feel the boredom connecting him to every trapping of his business. His passage had become horribly routine, Jake imagined, he had seen it in so many others in his life. Wage-slaves you could call them, all coiled up inside waiting for something to change, for something to give their lives meaning. But that isn't how it all works. Each of us make our own way. Jake smiled wryly, a knowing grin, and watched intently as the man tried to ignore him and walk by the station. Despite the boredom weighing down the man, a kernel of something grew there. Fear. Maybe excitement. Whatever it was, it was rich and unusual. Nothing was said as the man passed, but Jake knew he had rattled him. Nothing to say he couldn't have some fun with them sometimes.
The next thing that caught Jake's attention was the soft click of a front door swinging open from the house opposite the station. It was a woman, middle aged and a mother. He could tell from the tendrils washing off of her fit form and back into the hulking knot of meaning that was her house. Also something else though. Reliance. A single mother then, he guessed. He watched as she walked down to her car and pulled it open. There was despise there, linking the car and her, and frustration. Expensive bills, or maybe just the colour? Who knows.
Another thunk echoed from the house next door and a man stumbled out fumbling for his keys. Coils, thick and strong wove between the two, heavy with interest and curiosity and sex. Jake smiled as if he had found a rare gem, two lovers still in the awkward stages, unsure of how to deal with each other. The man hurriedly locked his house and jogged for his own car and called a greeting to the woman, who smiled, somewhat flustered and waved back. He watched as the two drove off in separate directions. Jake hoped it would work out between them. She could use the help with those kids anyway, they felt like troublemakers.
Several minutes passed uneventfully before a decrepit pinto wove its way up the potmarked street and into the small packing lot beside the station. Mild boredom and an expectation of more wove itself with the station itself. Here we go, thought Jake, and he stood as a young woman stepped out of the car and made her way to the door and he stood to meet her at the door. She smiled, somewhat confused and startled as she rounded the corner from the lot to find him waiting.
“Oh, hi there. I'll just have everything all ready to go in a minute.” She smiled sweetly at him and raised her keys, indicating she was going to unlock the station doors. “You're here a little early aren't you. First bus isn't for another hour. Where are you headed?”
“New York.” Jake said simply and shouldered his bag, smiling kindly.
“Oh....Best I've got here will get you to Omaha. That okay?”
"Yeah, whatever you've got will be great. What time is it?”
The woman glanced at her watch, then towards the wall clock inside the glass doors of the station. He could feel a tendril of curiosity and confusion extend from her in his direction. She had realized that something about him was a little off. He smiled when realization and debased pity washed over her a moment later.
“Five-fifty....Sorry” she muttered glancing away.
Jake tried to put on his best grin, but felt guilty. Everyone felt that way about blind people, he didn't like it much, but most didn't have his gifts, although he couldn't tell her that.
“Don't worry about it. When's the Omaha bus?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“Two and a half hours. Okay...” Jake nodded.
“Do you...Do you want to come in and sit down?”
“Nah, I'm okay. Thanks though, I'm having fun listening to the street.”
Only silence followed for a moment. She nodded and stepped into the Station. Nice girl, Jake thought as he settled onto the bench. He could feel heat play across his skin. Sun's up. Should get pretty busy pretty quick.
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