Application

[maladjustedmonoped]

Player Information
Player name: Liz
Contact: plurk: bizzylizzy AIM: bizzylizzybee
Are you over 18: Yup.
Characters in the game already: None
Proof of Reserve: Reserve

Character Information
Character Name: Landon Narramore
Canon: Original
Canon Point: Before novel starts, six months after losing his leg and being discharged from the Marines.
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive
History: Landon was born as a very normal boy in a very normal world. He lived with his parents in a small apartment on the edge of a busy city. His mother was an avid photographer, and his father was intensely devoted to the outdoors. Camping trips were a favorite family pastime. His father worked as a Certified Public Accountant. Landon's mother worked from home until his younger brother was born, and then decided to take up the life of a housewife.

Landon was an outgoing, energetic kid who was often in trouble, injured, or into something. He also had a massive imagination, or so he thought. He had imaginary friends everywhere, and sometimes he could see what people were feeling. Only, sometimes the friends were scary and wouldn't leave him alone, which made sleeping extremely difficult. Landon's mother's solution to this was to teach him to chant Latin prayers, saying everyone needed to know a little Latin, and if that didn't get him to sleep, nothing would. Sometimes chanting prayers would make the more frightening of his visions vanish, but some didn't care at all.

Landon's younger brother Shawn was born the year Landon turned eight. The household had been chaotic before. His parents had a turbulent relationship, and the new baby only made everything louder. Landon instantly adored the squirming bundle of noise, stealing the fussy baby away to pillow forts when he was home from school and trying to take him out for walks when no one was looking. It didn't help that all the girls in Landon's class thought Shawn was cute and that Landon took care of Shawn was cute too. Landon, from an early age, greatly enjoyed the attention of girls.

As Landon grew he became more able to tell what was real and what wasn't. He learned to tell what was dangerous, and when a person had a dark cloud around them, they were feeling really awful and down. It happened a lot to his father, especially during tax season. By the time Shawn was walking and could follow Landon everywhere, he had become more a nuisance than a novelty. His mother had started working again by the time Shawn was two, so Landon was often the baby sitter for his little brother.

Despite the auras and other things he saw and his slightly annoying younger brother, Landon thought his life was pretty good. His family was involved in a single car accident when Landon was eleven. They hit a patch of ice and went off the highway, flipping the car and hitting a tree. Landon and Shawn in the backseat were unharmed except for bruises, but neither of their parents survived. Landon lay awake and watched his mother bleed out and listened to his father choke on the blood in his lungs. It took over an hour for someone to spot the car in the ditch and rescue workers to arrive.

Shawn and Landon were then sent to live with their father’s brother and his wife, their Uncle Carson and Aunt Joe. From the night of the crash on, Landon’s ability to see things had grown much stronger and gotten much harder to control. Everywhere he looked he saw something, and being added to his Aunt’s already crowded household only made things worse. For his part, Shawn was confused and kept demanding to go home, wanting to know where their parents were, and being picked on by the younger cousins. Landon had to admit Shawn was an easy target, but as Shawn was also the only living member of his nuclear family, that meant sticking up for the whiny brat with a vengeance.

In school or at home, Landon was constantly in trouble for fights or vandalism or anything in between. Landon had decided by this time that he was horribly schizophrenic, and had only told Patrick Evans, his cousin and best friend. Patrick failed ninth grade to go through highschool with Landon, pretty sure his cousin would do something stupid or fatal if he didn’t have closer supervision.

During his senior year, Landon met a recruiter for the Marines who seemed dead set on having him join up. It wasn’t until a bar brawl with local werewolf got him almost thrown in juvvie the recruiter pressed Landon hard enough Landon said he was ineligible because he was crazy, which got him a laugh. The recruiter promised Landon he wasn’t schizophrenic, he was a Seer, and if he went into the Marines, they’d teach him how to control it. With that, Landon was sold. Convincing his family took some work, and then there was the problem of Shawn. Landon had promised his younger brother he would whisk them away from Aunt Joe’s the moment he was eighteen, but joining the Marines put a damper on things. Landon couldn’t have sole custody of a kid and be an active military personnel, but he realized he need to do something with the mess he’d made of his high school career, and technical college wasn’t going to cut it.

In the end, Patrick became Shawn’s guardian, with the promise that Landon would get custody as soon as he was out of the Marines. Of course, Shawn might be eighteen by then, but Landon had to make the promise anyway, even if it still felt like a cop-out. In Basic, Landon displayed that he was not only an incredibly powerful Seer, but also an excellent marksman. These two abilities, neither that spectacular on their own but deadly together, put Landon on a very specialized fast track. With a bare minimum of requirements (and some of those maybe fudged a little), Landon found himself the newest member of a highly specialized military group that focused on supernatural threats. They took on their “baby sniper” with a good amount of patronization and humor. They were the ones mostly responsible for pounding into him everything he needed to know to be a fully functional member of the group, from skills to coping mechanisms and discipline, and no one ever really let Landon forget his jumped up rank was because of his freakish talents, not anything he’d done--well, for the first year, at least.

From them Landon learned he was also the group's new “unicorn bait.” Evidently virgins in the Marine Corps were hard to keep or come by even with the pay bonus, and Landon had been too busy being melodramatic over his supposed insanity to ever get serious with a girl.

Landon’s squad went everywhere and did everything. They were all psychics or trained in some obscure ritual that might be needed for handling supernatural threats the military might encounter. Landon’s life became divided between his time on assignment and his time at home. Patrick knew about Landon being a Seer, but Shawn was kept in the dark. It seemed safer for him to know nothing about the more unnatural side of life. Shawn was Landon's complete opposite, constantly being bullied at school, though he was very good at running away and getting out of fights where Landon had been good at starting them.

Six months ago, the convey Landon was travelling with ran over a IED. Landon was one of the lucky survivors, but his left leg was partially severed below the knee and eventually amputated. Landon was sent home to recover, given counselling, and honorably discharged. Landon received a “bionic leg” almost two months after the explosion, and has suffered through therapy, physical and mental. Landon’s now in the process of legally getting custody of his brother, learning how to walk with a metal leg, how to be a civilian again, and trying to pick a place to settle down.

Personality: At first blush, Landon’s a fairly friendly if dry person. He’s obviously cynical with a self-deprecating, sarcastic sense of humor and a slightly grating personality. He’s superficially interested in new people, usually as long as it takes him to learn whatever he needs to know about the area or the person in question. He doesn’t go out of the way to please or aggravate most people, unless he’s either very fond of them or especially not fond of them. This doesn’t mean he agreeable, just that most of the people he annoys, he doesn’t put much effort into it.

At this point in time, Landon’s loyal only to his family. He feels that he shuttled Shawn off to the side to deal with his personal issues, and has now devoted himself to taking care of his little brother in an attempt to make up for that. Landon has learned he would rather be loyal to a person, no matter how fallible people are, than a cause or organization. He operates with the basic understanding that every system, no matter how good, uses people as a means to an end. He feels he’s put in his time being a means to an end, and is now going to selfishly devote himself to taking care of the people within his reach, and not worry about the greater good.

Landon is an outrageous flirt. The longest he’s kept a girlfriend is two weeks, but he has no problem picking one up, usually. Landon likes to compliment girls mostly to see them blush and also because he spent high school being able to see depression and with his own problems the most help he usually managed for girls was some short complimentary pep talks. The habit’s stuck, as Landon’s a great teaser anyway. If he can’t drive someone he loves to frustration with a few words, how would they ever know he loved them?

Landon doesn't usually consider the danger a certain situation will put him in. If it’s something that needs doing and he’s the most qualified person around or no one else is taking the initiative, he’ll do it. He goes for the plan or method most likely to succeed, not the one least likely to get him killed, hurt, or mangled. He doesn’t take unnecessary risks, just those needed to reach his goal most expediently and effectively.

Landon has always been a problem solver. When something is wrong or doesn’t work right, he wants to fix it. With a few left-over neurosis from deployments and being literally blown up, Landon operates best when he has a goal, even when under incredible stress. If he’s in a bad situation with nothing to do, he’s sleeps less, gets more and more paranoid, and is likely to create his own goal with more than faulty logic. Landon is aware of this problem and if he catches himself early enough in the cycle, he sets up small, fairly mundane goals to keep himself going. He figures it’s better to be intensely militant about the dishes instead of trying to sniper-proof the house and refusing to let people go outside without body armor.

Landon generally refuses to act seriously in serious situations, especially when it concerns his own health. The less he can do about a situation, the harder it is to make him talk seriously about it. He’ll joke about it freely, usually in a slightly bitter tone but one with enough bite he can sometimes shut down those trying to help him. If there’s something he can do, Landon usually goes about things calmly and lacks the gravity most people think a situation deserves. On the inside, Landon might be sweating, but it’s rarely going to show unless things have gotten apocalyptically bad, something managed to hit a mental trigger, or Shawn’s welfare is involved. When combat goes bad, Landon faces it with a vicious little grin.

Items on your character at canon point: Prosthetic leg, jeans, a T-shirt, heavy leather jacket, and sturdy boots (for walking).

Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:

Seer Abilities: Landon is, as far as he knows, one of the strongest Seers on record. Unfortunately for him, it’s a very passive skill so it doesn’t actually give him a lot of power. His Seeing allows him to see the auras of magical or spiritual energy, and in some cases people’s emotions. While the information for Seeing is taken in through the eyes, Landon's supercharged talent means he often perceives auras also as sound, taste, or sensations. This helps him distinguish the subtle difference between auras other Seers probably miss.

Seeing is just like enhanced eyesight. The farther away something is or the more solid objects that are between you and it, the harder it is to See whatever it is. Even if he’s smelling an aura, Landon still has to see the aura to perceive it with any of his senses.

Seeing has only a few practical applications in a fight. For Landon, who’s a sniper, it’s incredibly useful for picking out a target who happens to be a psychic or pinpoint a supernatural creature that would normally be blocked by his line of vision.

Things without auras:
-Buildings
-People without psychic gifts or magical abilities of any kind
-Mundane animals

Things with auras:
-Supernatural creatures or beings
-Humans with psychic gifts or who use magic
-Non-ordinary trees and plants, usually those hosting curses, dryads, naiads, or anything else.
-Cursed or magical objects
-Intense emotions, usually the negative ones.
-Ghosts

Combat skills
Landon used to be a fairly good brawler in high school. He got better with the training he received in the Marines, but now he’s pretty easy to unbalance and his mobility isn’t what it was. He can still through a pretty mean punch and is passable at wrestling. His pain tolerance and lack of concern for his own safety generally helps him in close confrontations.

Firearms: Landon’s deadly with a M40A5, the rifle he trained on and used as a sniper. He’s a great shot with a regular rifle and shotgun, and passably accurate with a handgun.

Weaknesses:
-Paranoia
-Missing half a limb
-Evaluating seriousness of threats
-Overreacting to a situation with deadly or more destructive solutions than are necessary.
-Doesn’t do domestic very well.
-Overreacts to threats.
-Low self worth.

Strengths:
-Sharp shooting
-Decisions making in combat situations where deadly force and extreme measures are needed.
-Taking the initiative to get things done, or following orders to get things done.
-Operates best under live or die circumstances.
-Good problem solving skills. Won’t sleep until he has a solution.
-Taking the initiative and getting things done


Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
[While he speaks, Landon’s gaze is sweeping around steadily. He’s tense, slightly distracted, but trying his best to look pleasant.] You guys have no idea how happy I am to be in your cheery little...metropolis. I hear due to the popularity of this place housing’s tight, so I’m looking for a place to live.

Unfortunately the only thing I can cook is pancakes, but I can shoot, not that there’s a lot of ammo here. I can clean game, I suck at fishing, but you will always be able to outrun me. [Landon flashes a brilliantly cynical grin at that. ] I also don’t sleep much, so any time you need someone to take the night watch while the more sane people get some rest--and no, not a vamp, just don’t need as much sleep as the rest of your mortals.

Prose Log Sample: Breathe, center, focus.

It’s easy to fly away into nerves and an endless cycle of useless questions and assessments. Yeah, the situation was pretty fucked right now. Didn’t matter. Was he currently being attacked or stalked? Not as far as he could tell, and that was all that he could allow to matter. He had a pretty good defensive position, even if he had no real weapon right now. It was all about stay focused. Staying functional and breathing in long, deep draws that would leave him ready for action.

Yeah, he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He had no idea where he was. On the plus side, this wasn’t a nightmare, and so far nothing had tried to eat, kill, or maim him. He could still See, but he couldn’t See anything of note. The walls were blocking most of that. Nice thick walls. Sturdy. He’d almost rather be randomly in the woods, but he had weird preferences.

Okay. Focus. Breathe. Plan. He needed to know where he was, what was up, and get a weapon and food. All those required moving. Exploratory forays into the great unknown and possibly getting eaten. Landon grinned to himself. Way better than hiding in a corner and twitching at every noise, now. Far better.

He just had to make the first move, and then it would all slide into place. That was always the hardest thing--getting the resolve to move when staying still took no effort. Landon shifted, testing unconsciously the give of his new leg. Still not used to the permanent prosthetic. Still getting used to the numbness of a foot that wasn’t there. Still getting used to being only part of what he was before.

And now... He moved. Landon started forward at a cautious walk, leaving the precious safety behind him.