OOC
GAME: Poesque
DESCRIPTION: Edgar Allan Poe and horrors.
DATE: May 2007
PB: Louis Garrel
JOURNAL: adaptability
CONCEPT: Sleazy, skeevy minion type, like Mortimer Toynbee. Cigarettes, a limp, a female Rottweiler named Clyde, chronic dishonesty and selfishness, and a tendency to slip into the background.
NOTE: Continued here for Audeamus, a year after his first inception.
IC
basic
Name: John Roscoe
Nickname: Johnny
Age: Twenty
Occupation: University student Drug dealer, go-to-guy, self-made merchant, one-man pawn shop and black market.
Hometown/Place of Birth: Orlins, Louisiana
Horror and Story: Narrator, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head"
Power: Persuasion. He's honed his ability to talk people into buying things, into selling things, into being more willing to give him things. This power is entirely based on his voice.
Attributes: An off-shoot of this ability is that hardly any of Johnny's possessions are permanent. He'll always eventually fob them off onto someone else to make a profit — stuff just doesn't stay with him for very long. He's also incredibly inconspicuous; one of his attributes is to simply slide out from under your perception. He doesn't turn invisible. You see him, of course. But you just don't notice.
background
Personality: His name is John. Simple and nondescript, making him one of millions scattered across the globe — which is, to a certain extent, exactly how he likes it. He grew up facing the consequences of his powers, which meant that John was incredibly easily overlooked, forgotten, or ignored throughout his childhood; and after his own period of sullen rebellion and acting out, the boy eventually settled. He learnt to slide off the radar, and to take advantage of the fact that people's eyes seemed to skim past him more often than not. His personality tends towards the snide and snarky side, often bluntly honest and rarely wasting time with niceties unless it's strictly necessary. Even then, any politeness on his part is forced, stilted, and fiercely unnatural. John's been an improviser since day one, taking life in stride and almost immediately trying to work situations to his own advantage, utilising them to make a profit. He sidles through life with an air of nonchalance, an attitude problem, and a chip on his shoulder a mile wide; he can be utterly rude and abrasive at times, but once he respects and listens to someone, Johnny will obey and do as he's told. Old habits die hard, after all, and he still remembers being blindly obedient to his grandfather.
Johnny hates losing his freedom or being caged from being able to do as he pleases. He'll fight to keep such freedoms, and one aspect of that includes creating his cool, calm, and collected exterior. But the truth remains that, well, Johnny's still a kid. Yes, very little ruffles his feathers, and he's turned apathy into an art. But though he likes to think he's wise in the ways of the world, he really does have a lot left to learn. His cocky arrogance is like that of most other twenty-year-olds who think they know something. In the meantime, however, the boy's in his element. He considers himself a jack of all trades. He makes a living out of surviving, and does it well.
Random Tidbits:
1. He goes by the name "John" with strangers. "Johnny" is strictly reserved for people who he considers friends.
2. He owns a female Rottweiler named Clyde. You'll hardly ever find him without the dog by his side. She serves as both a protective measure and as a devoted companion. Mess with his dog, and you've pissed Johnny off for life.
3. Despite being the very antithesis of a gentleman, he thinks highly of women. He knows they have the potential to be strong, independent and fiery indivuals — so if anything, he gets especially frustrated when he sees them wishy-washy, far too polite and treading on egg-shells.
4. He can usually manage to talk his way out of a bad situation, but you can't stay out of shit forever. A less-than-happy former employer hit him with a car a couple years back, resulting in a fractured leg bone. With no insurance, and pockets overflowing with illegal substances, he decided not to go to the hospital. Johnny figured he'd just pull in one of his contacts to patch it up, and he could recuperate at home and get on with his life.
It, uh, didn't work so well. They didn't set it completely right, he started walking on it too early, and no one deigned to tell him that smoking complicates bone growth. Johnny is now the owner of a busted leg, and walks with a limp to this day.
5. He doesn't have a particular dependency or addiction, but he does do some of the drugs that he sells. Recreationally. Every so often. (Ecstacy's his favourite.)
History: The Roscoes weren't always so inconspicuous. He lives by himself now, and both of his parents really are dead, but Johnny once came from a family of money. His grandfather was the previous family member to have their certain special ability, and he used it to build a corporate empire. Companies and trades and stocks were common ingredients of his fortune, but it all crashed when Gramps had a… less than fortunate encounter with another Horror.
Everything spiralled badly after that. Without the figurehead standing there to keep things together with his superhuman ability to negotiate, the company unravelled. Lawyers and their processing fees tore huge chunks out of the family finances. And after one last lawsuit, John's parents were left practically destitute. His childhood was normal enough — well, as normal as the childhood of a Horror can be — but come teenager years, John had already carved out a reputation for himself as a problem child. High school didn't come easily, and his relationship to academics was a turbulent and unpredictable one. He attended school sporadically, and was naturally clever at some subjects, but sheer absence and apathy eventually had him almost failing most of his final exams.
Today, he's an orphan. Prolonged sickness took his father, and his mother followed soon thereafter. Ask about his family, and he'll claim to be completely alone, but this is a blatant lie; John still has an aunt living in Lousiana, who pesters him with phone calls every so often to make sure he's alright. She slips him money, too, whenever the boy seems about to go off the deep end. He's a university student, but it's laughable how little time he actually spends on his studies. It's just a convenient place to be. Frontman. Fence. Dealer. It keeps him in touch with all the twitchy students who need their drives and need their kicks and need their stimulants. He learnt his own version of business in the middle of high school, and sticks to it today, making money wherever and however he can. If you ever gave him a paperclip and told him to bargain his way up to a house, he could probably do it quite easily, given enough time.
What he chooses to do with his powers, however, is to meander through life. Johnny panders to your hobbies and to your needs. If it can be sold, he will find a way to sell it. It's almost like an obsession with him: objects just can't stay in his possession very long before he finds some way to fob them off on someone else and wrangle a profit out of it. His apartment is sparse, utilitarian, and messy. He doesn't have a bed. He has a pallet on the floor. It suits him just fine, and it's not like home is supposed to be a place of luxury anyway.
Johnny's the nondescript guy at the back of the crowd: you know he was there but you can't quite remember his face. He stays in classes due to his ineffable ability to bargain — he persuades professors into keeping him. They don't remember him afterwards, but they remember the passing grade scribbled down in their notebooks.
He's still an undeclared major, too. His life seems generally aimless, but he promises himself there's some sort of direction to it. Maybe there's a little bit of an urge to regain what Grandpa Roscoe and his parents once had. But then again, perhaps he's utterly unsuited for such a life, and instead you'll always find him living out of a backpack, playing poker and pool, and wheedling even more money out of his peers.
We'll go for the latter.
physical
Height:
Weight:
Hair:
Eyes:
Appearance: He's basically… skeevy. Sloppily-dressed, laces untied, black t-shirts, and looks like he can be written off as your everyday teenage punk. Johnny's actually a bit older than that, but he radiates that self-assured nonchalance that all teens wish they had.
There's also that limp to consider. He clearly favours his right leg when he walks, and feels the occasional twinge of pain occasionally, often with changes in the weather.
LOGS
May 28, 2007: Doing business at an Orlins high school
June 1, 2007: Jones and Roscoe, partners in crime
June 22, 2007: Lucy's birthday party
