na: Theodore Renfield

OOC

GAME: Neopolis
DESCRIPTION: Freeze-rays and monsters and magic and superpowers, oh my!
DATE: May 2009
PB: Hugh Dancy
JOURNAL: not a dandy

IC

Previously in THE CHRONONAUTS…
A well-bred gentleman and scientific benefactor from the late steampunk 1800s, Theodore Renfield led a secret life as an inter-temporal thief, flitting back and forth between the timestreams in order to exploit mankind's history for monetary purposes. Of course, he and his partner also brought a great many historical, artistic, and cultural revelations to light, retrieving artefacts previously thought irretrievable — a benefit to mankind, in the long run! But all that came to an end when his business partner and their machine, the Caerus, disappeared in a chronoventure gone terribly wrong (and with more than a few suspicions of sabotage and treachery). Four years and a bit later, the man has managed to follow in her footsteps and show up in Neopolis, representing a particularly inconvenient blast from the past for one Patience Lethbridge, dean of science at Neopolis Academy. All this and more… in VOYAGES OF THE CAERUS!

Name: Theodore Frederick Renfield
Age/Birthdate: 30 / July 26th, 1852 (LEO)
Sexuality: Heterosexual, of course!
Alias/Codename: The Chronic Argonaut

Faculty: Science
Position: Teacher.
Courses taught: COMING SOON.
Skills: A keen scientific mind, specifically attuned towards clockwork engineering and theoretics — all tempered with a liberal dosage of moral ambiguity. He excels at gear-driven, cog-laden mechanisms and steam-powered designs. Renfield's plans are daring, innovative, and a little out of his own world; thanks to years of chronovoyaging, he's also become quite the expert at a) daring escapes, b) quick thinking on his feet, c) improvisational lies, and d) the eloquent narration of his own deeds, thus making him quite the epitome of a Wellsian adventurer. He enjoys tossing himself into harm's way, and enjoys wriggling his way out of it even more.
Alliance: He's too new to the city — and, indeed, this century — to have established much of an opinion on either the BHH or ELE. But to be honest, Renfield is decidedly self-serving, and will accept help from any quarter he can find — as long as they can repair the Caerus.

Personality: To his credit, Mr. Renfield comes from a good family with a good reputation, is well-liked amongst his scientific circles, and is an intelligent man with no end of dynamic ideas worthy of debate and discussion. To his discredit, he is arrogant, self-centred, and massively full of himself; the priveliges of the firstborn haven't gone unnoticed on him, and the man is a great deal cocky as a result. He believes quite highly in his own capabilities, and flaunts this a bit too freely, making him a tad pompous and overbearing to be around as a result. For all his well-deserved reputation as a genius, however, Renfield rarely chooses the path of most resistance; he enjoys the swiftest and speediest path towards gratification, style be damned. This innate impatience only hastened his turn towards a life of crime. But his and his partner's deeds never harmed anyone, he'd be quick to argue — and so what if they both profited enormously? No one was hurt. Except for, perhaps, those savages in Howondaland, or those French soldiers at the Somme, or those ancient Egyptian palace guards…

His role as the daredevil adventuring type contributed to his temperamental and moody nature, but his personality is also well-balanced by his role as a clever entrepreneur. Get him talking about his various pursuits, and he often sounds older than his given age; Renfield has always loved science and technology more than he loved women or his fellow man, and it shows. His ideas are daring and dynamic, and whenever he wasn't on a chronological adventure, he was neck-deep in blueprints and schematics — but he doesn't usually have the patience to come up with, initiate, and pursue projects frrom scratch and to their inevitable conclusion. Oh, Renfield comes up with all sorts of ideas — yet he only implements a few. Over his young but shining lifetime, however, some of his patents went off so tremendously successfully that they became his cash cows and instant ticket to fame, propelling him into scientific headlines everywhere. And, yes, he milked that fame for what it was worth — the Analytical Engine alone ensured a lifetime's worth of invitations to classy dinner parties and meetings with gentlemen's clubs.

Renfield can be huffy and prideful regarding his own achievements — but as far as he's concerned, he's absolutely earned them. He possesses no end of stories to share (yes, remember that time he and Patience met Queen Elizabeth?), and in a surprisingly endearing turn, he can be endlessly passionate about these past chronoventures and in extolling his partner's accomplishments before it all went pear-shaped. His scientific sermons might pander to his own ego a bit too often, but he owns a genuine love of learning and innovation, both of which he is keen to pass on to others. Renfield views nothing more sacred than a true meeting of scientific minds in absolute partnership.

Unless you are a canine, of course. Through a twist of fate, Renfield managed to bring his loyal and trustworthy sheepdog, Sam, along for the ride to Neopolis. Sam is his best friend in the entire world. Odds are, he loves him more than you.

History:

Born into an alternate universe version of our Victorian London, in which clockwork mechanics reign supreme as an everyday element of the household, and technology has soared faster than in our own history — yet all through the medium of steam. Yes, he came from a steampunk reality. Rest assured, your humble author is just as jealous too.
Theodore Renfield came from the upper-middle-class family of one Charles P. Renfield, a banker in London with a more than modest income. Being the firstborn, he was set to inherit father's property and business — indeed, Theodore played the role of businessman and entrepreneur well, but ended up a little bit too fond of science for the Renfields' tastes. Had they been somewhat lower-ranked socially, they could have safely let one son roam off to pursue clockwork engineering to his heart's content — but there were banking branches to be managed, and they couldn't very well have the future lord of the household locking himself up to tinker with gears and cogs, could they? He needed to socialise, and with far more charming company than those stuffy scientific types. Business over science.
As such, his plans were actively discouraged. He had a younger brother going into the clergy, but Theodore was shuttled off to spend his education with tutors, then at public school, then at the university of Cambridge. He still possessed no end of creative ideas, but he rarely got the opportunity to practice them; as such, his development as an engineering genius was stunted, and he lived more in the realm of potentia and possibility rather than concrete development. He had Ideas. He just never learnt how to practice them.
After his education, he was betrothed at 21. The engagement lasted two years, then… well. After a few humiliating misunderstandings involving a third party — Theodore hadn't quite learnt how to make up his mind — the engagement was broken and it was unquestionably his fault. In a dreadfully embarrassing turn for his entire family, it resulted in legal action and a breach of promise suit, the Renfields needing to pay off the injured girl's family in legal recompense. What a hilarious misunderstanding! Theodore withdrew from women after that, and instead sought solace in science, the cordial company of other bright minds, and the occasional stringless enjoyment.
Given free rein in London, he indulged a little bit too much in various hedonistic pleasures which attract young men of loose income — in their attempts to keep him from becoming a bookish recluse, the Renfields accidentally created a prodigal son. Still a genius, but one of negotiable morals, he did eventually turn his mind towards various scientific ideas he'd been sitting on for the past several years. He joined a slew of gentlemen's clubs and debated theory and electrodynamics with the best of them, particularly staying abreast of the developments of one Nikola Tesla. Now coming into his inheritance, he unabashedly started using the family money to do so.
Member of the University of Cambridge's Society for Psychical Research; Renfield was intrigued by their investigations into paranormal oddities and queerities, but steadfastly maintained that there is always a scientific explanation for such phenomena. There is no such thing as magic. At least that's how it functioned in his universe, good lord — Neopolis is a whole new can of worms.
His largest claim to fame as a gentleman scientist — which propelled him to the upper echelon of society and fame, thus finally invalidating his parents' worries about him — was his completion of the analytical engine a few years after Charles Babbage's death in 1871. The invention was perfectly possible within this alternate universe: yet another example of the steampunk world's hasty acceleration of scientific advancement.
After the Engine, however, Renfield's greatest break came when he heard the stirrings of various agitated rumours in his academic circles. Boldly deciding to act on this hunch, he broke into one of the huffy stuffy universities in order to steal what he'd heard of: the blueprints for time travel. It was far too much of a glorious idea to resist, even despite the dangers of plagiarism. He worked on the plans alone and hired some engineering peons — but wasn't enough of an inventor to pull it off by himself. Theodore needed a partner! He knew exactly what uses he wanted to put this revolutionary new science to, but he needed a second opinion, and it had to be someone new: someone honest, and someone not from his own gentlemen clubs (all of whom would stab each other in the back for fame and fortune). So he found Pat. Lethbridge.
Who turned out to be… well… a woman. But she was honest (if a little naive), and he was the only gentleman scientist willing to work with her and provide the materials she truly needed to flourish. With Master Renfield as a financial backer — using his money and ideas and her genius — they built the Caerus. The machine was an astounding success after its first almost-calamitous test run. It could travel through the slipstreams of time, cruising the waves of history.
Thus began their underground thievery (Renfield's idea, his scheme from the start): retrieving long-lost ancient artefacts and selling them to museums at exorbitant rates. The cash flow kept them comfortable and made sure they could afford the (dreadfully expensive) repairs, maintenance, and upgrades for the Caerus. If it ever broke down while on a jaunt, the mistake could be fatal.
A couple years passed. Their world regained invaluable treasures and artistic artefacts long deemed lost — and Renfield and Lethbridge grew richer.
Upgrades finally led to the inevitable, which was Patience's idea: taking a look at the future.
In what was a dizzying and complicated turn of events, Theodore ended up stranded by himself in 1878 without the Caerus. After four years of fuming and raging (and eventually feeling immensely guilty — what if Lethbridge had perished? had she even survived in the future?), he finished duplicating their old plans and rebuilt a working facsimile of the machine — but lacking a crucial piece of equipment, it was unable not go anywhere else but the future. Renfield could spend years fixing the engine to resume going back into the past. Or he could go into the future and retrieve his errant partner. His choice.
On the eve of its ultimate test, however, disaster struck, and the Caerus was pulled off-course by a timesplosion somewhere in the future: by Patience Lethbridge's experiments with her own faulty Caerus, as fate would have it. All of a sudden, Renfield found himself with some Neopolitan students.

Played-By: Hugh Dancy

fun questions!
Aspirations: To repair the Caerus and return to his own universe, where fame, fortune, and exciting adventures await. To his absolute horror, nobody's heard of him here!
What would be the title of the comic book starring your character? The Chrononauts, detailing the daredevil exploits of the duo across time and space, having tea with George Washington, watching the queen's coronation, and fleeing from battles with great lizards. After the cliffhanger conclusion of this series (and after some time with no news regarding further publication, which would leave fans worried and frustrated), the adventures of Renfield and Lethbridge continued… in the FUTURE! in a charming little title called "Voyages of the Caerus".