Gunnar Frey

[Gunnar Frey]

The Basics

Name: Gunnar Ambros Frey, formerly Ambros Carsten Brandt.
Nicknames: N/A.
Age: 38, born 4th December 1975.
Orientation: Heterosexual.
Desired Rank/Job: Local, owner of The Ark pet store.
Powers: Non-powered.
Play By: John Simm.

The Details

Hair Color: Brown.
Eye Color: Brown.
Any Piercings? In the past he had his lip pierced. It was taken out long ago and has since healed over.
Any Tattoos? An ouroboros on his abdomen, dragon wings across his shoulders, a celtic gecko resting on his right collarbone, a celtic snake on his right hip, a scorpion on his left calf and an ace of spades on his left buttcheek. The ouroboros is the only one he doesn't regret as he got it done after his operation to symbolise his rebirth into a new person.
Any Scars? A small scar a few inches above his naval from a pancreatic necrosectomy. It is encircled by the ouroboros tattoo.

General Appearance: Gunnar is fairly average in height, standing approximately 5ft 9in and with a fairly lean build. The arrogant air that he used to carry is long gone, and he now often has stooped shoulders and a generally quiet and mildly submissive posture. Though he can look incredibly intimidating when the need arises, Gunnar is often reasonably soft in the face and has a smile that comes easily, even if it does still sometimes carry the weight of his past for those who look deeper than just the surface.

Despite the fact that he knows he could get laser surgery to remove them, Gunnar holds on to the various tattoos he has acquired because they are reminders of the person he once was. They are his deterrent – every time he finds himself itching for a beer he just glances at himself in the mirror and it is enough to steady his hand.

It is rare to see Gunnar in any kind of formal wear as he tends to find a select few pieces that he likes and rotates them until they are literally falling apart. Whilst he always looks relatively neat and tidy whilst running the store, he almost always sports some amount of facial hair and it is not uncommon to see him working in jeans and a clean T-shirt. The only jewellery he ever wears is his '5 years sober' charm on a plain leather cord bracelet.

Due to his belief in only offering for sale animals that are well handled and socialised, nine times out of ten he will have some form of critter about his person. This could be a parrot on his shoulder, a snake around his neck or a hamster in his pocket. During particularly busy periods he has been known to have pocket mice, a shoulder rabbit and a handheld chinchilla all at once.

Personality: Anyone who knew Gunnar back when he was still Ambros would have real difficulties recognising him based on a personality description. Gone is the selfish and arrogant hedonist, transfixed on fun and pleasure at the cost of anything else. Since Gunnar's party life came crashing down with a bang he has instead turned all that energy to more positive use. Turning away from all the heady pleasures of alcohol and sex, Gunnar is now focussed on a far more peaceful way of life wherein he can concentrate on the things that actually matter. He is a teetotal vegetarian and, whilst he does still find it very difficult sometimes, he is working hard to avoid a life of materialistic pleasures. Meditating frequently and enjoying the serenity of his surroundings, Gunnar is now learning to find contentment away from the chaos of his past. If anyone does happen to recognise him and query his past, he will usually deny ever even hearing about anyone named Ambros Brandt.

To those who don't know him closely, Gunnar is often seen as a laid back and relaxed guy who finds pleasure in the small things, but is a bit reserved and quiet and doesn't really seem to live for the moment. This is true to an extent, but many of those who know him better can see the wearing around the edges, the tiredness and jaded outlook that his prior life has weighed down on him. Whilst Gunnar does regret the actions of his past, he would do nothing to change them because they have brought him to this moment. He is just deeply thankful that he had the chance to try again, because he is all too aware that many are not quite so fortunate.

Gunnar's chromesthesia means he can come across as quite abrupt and curt around people with very high pitched voices. This is because their voices are a very bright and jarring shade of orange that clashes strongly with the surroundings and it is very off-putting. He always has some form of noise around him, be it the radio on in the background in the store or his iPod on when he is out and about. He is also fairly often to be found singing or talking to himself, especially if he is anxious or irritated. Silence creates an absence of colour patterns that is deeply unsettling to him, and has evolved into a fairly intense case of sedatephobia.

The Ark is Gunnar's pride and joy, by far the best thing to have come out of all the chaos. With each passing day it remains open a little more light and serenity enters Gunnar's life, and even though it can be busy and stressful at times it does bring him a great amount of joy. He may never be a completely joyful and jubilant human being, but he is finding contentment slowly day by day. It takes a lot to force his hand now and he will go out of his way to avoid any kind of violence or temptation, but if cornered and left with absolutely no other choice then he would do whatever it took to defend himself and the things he has worked so very, very hard to achieve.

Your Vices

Likes:

• All animals in general but reptiles in particular.
• Record keeping, especially for his breeding stock.
• Contacting other breeders to look for new morphs to bring into his collection.
• Showing off his animals at herpetology expos.
• Steve Irwin was his ultimate hero. Gunnar mourned gravely when Steve passed away.
• Horror computer games – Amnesia, the Slender saga and Outlast are his favourites.
• Word games.
• Reading, but he always tends to lean towards non-fiction.
• Well played piano. The patterns the colours make are incredibly beautiful.
• Playing the piano, playing the guitar and singing.
• Scented candles. He knows they are girly. He doesn't care.

Dislikes:

• Silence.
• People who get reptiles because they are 'cool', with no thought on how to care for them.
• PETA. They cause far more suffering than they prevent.
• People who keep large animals (lions, bears, wolves, crocodiles etc.) as pets.
• High pitched noises and static.
• Badly played musical instruments and out of tune singing.
• Firearms.
• Junk food. Even the smell of heavy grease now is enough to make him nauseous.
• Most popular modern music. He prefers the more obscure stuff.
• Going to the cinema – he'd rather wait and buy the DVD and watch it in the comfort of his own home.
• Having too much attention placed on him.

Strengths: Patient, very knowledgeable about what he loves, very talented guitarist, pianist and singer, good social skills, gets along well with most people, fairly serene, working hard to improve his life, creative, excellent listener, more intelligent than he gives himself credit for.
Weaknesses: Former alcoholic (five years sober), trying to avoid his past being uncovered, still regularly seeing a therapist, fairly jaded, reminders of his past can make his serenity slip, very uneasy in the absence of some sort of sound.
Fears: Whilst he has the same general worries everyone has (losing his business, home, wallet etc.), Gunnar also has fairly intense sedatephobia (fear of silence). He is also deathly afraid of his pancreatitis coming back.
Secret: His therapist knows the secrets of his past.

Family Ties

Father: Maik Brandt, 73, living in Kent.
Mother: Christina Brandt, passed away August 2013 from breast cancer, aged 76. Gunnar flew back home to attend the funeral.
Siblings: Sophia Kirsh, 42. Lukas Brandt, 35. Lissa Weiss, 31.
Any Other Important People:
Robert Snowden – Gunnar's assistant manager and good friend (adoptable).
His therapist (adoptable or playable).
Slender – male black palm cockatoo and the store's mascot.
Dapper – blind male mini-lop rabbit he found abandoned in a trashcan outside the store.
Even though Gunnar has a large amount of reptiles that are his personally, he doesn't class them as pets except for a few specific individuals. They are mainly breeding stock for the store.

History

Maik Brandt is a half-German born and raised in the stunning countryside surrounding Kent in southern England. He met Christina Laker in his early twenties, but both decided they wanted to focus on their careers before beginning a family. Maik was a fairly successful gamekeeper and Christina a writer for a fashion magazine, and when they did eventually decide to start a family they were very well equipped and funded to bring their children into their world.

In his youth Ambros was a fairly quiet boy, keeping mainly to himself and not spending much time playing with other children. He was always fascinated by unusual sounds and when he began school he very quickly took to music classes, learning quickly and seeming to have a natural talent for the way instruments worked. However his teachers were often concerned about him because the things he said often didn't make much sense. When singing or playing an instrument he would often scold himself when he got it wrong, saying things like it wasn't upright enough or it needed to be more blue. The teachers and his parents put it down to just a quirk of his nature, but as he got older Ambros began to grow more and more frustrated that people could not understand what he meant; made even worse when they told him that they could not see the colours too. When he was thirteen Ambros was taken to a specialist. That was when he was diagnosed with chromesthesia, a very harmless neurological condition meaning he could actually see sounds as colours and patterns in the air in front of him. Discovering that helped his parents and teachers find new ways to understand how the young boy saw the world, and it also went a way towards explaining why he always got restless and anxious when he was kept in silence, such as during exams.

Ambros had always gotten along fairly well with his siblings but he was never particularly close to any of them. Sophia had her own friends and clubs and Lukas and Lissa were practically joined at the hip. As he moved into his later teen years Ambros was staying out at friend's houses more and more, and by the time he was eighteen he was out far more often than he was in. His parents swore that if it wasn't for his four pet corn snakes he would never have been in the family home at all.

In college Ambros achieved fairly high grades in the four courses he was taking (English language, biology, music and mathematics) and on receipt of his final grades he was accepted into the University of Kent to study biology, with the eventual aim of teaching at university and researching herpetology genetics. However, that plan all fell apart when the weekend-just-for-a-laugh band he was playing in with a few of his friends landed a small deal with a local record producer. Four months later and Synaesthesia had their first album on the shelves in a few local independent music stores, and all of Ambros' university plans went flying out of the window.

The next few years passed in a blur for Ambros and his friends. Whilst it took a little while for Synaesthesia to pick up any kind of real pace, the band were playing gigs locally three or four nights a week, with Ambros front and centre with a mic and guitar. Eventually they began to get noticed by other agents and producers, and by the time their third album was released Synaesthesia's music could be heard on indie music stations and was being sold in stores the length and breadth of the country. Sure they were hardly internationally famous (AC/DC and The Who would never be at any kind of risk from them), but Ambros felt indestructible.

His friends had seen it coming long before his family had, since Ambros had lost most of his contact with them by this point. The reckless after-parties full of alcohol began to get more frequent and more intense, and despite several warnings from both his bandmates and their manager Ambros felt too alive, too damned amazing to see sense. The after-parties were eventually joined by warm-up parties, and then day-off parties, and then eventually Ambros was intoxicated far more often than he was sober. His performance started to falter, his relationship with his managers and PR people began to fail, and eventually it began to take its toll on his friendship with his bandmates. Synaesthesia had become a laughing stock in the magazines and gig reviews, and it reached an ugly peak one night in April 2007.

Ambros had been feeling like shit for hours before they were due to go on stage, with intense abdomen pains and a horrid nauseous feeling that was refusing to shift. With a deep stubbornness he swallowed a couple of painkillers washed down with a Jack and coke before bounding onto the stage and giving it his all. He lasted until halfway through the second song before he collapsed, screaming in agony. The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital.

Ambros' friends and family were incredibly supportive throughout his recovery following the necrosectomy to remove the dead and damaged tissue on his pancreas. In the days following the operation Ambros was kept in intensive care as he both battled against the severe acute pancreatitis (which he had been worryingly informed has a 1 in 4 mortality rate), and battled against the alcohol withdrawal that his body was going through. Ambros was eventually discharged from the hospital, but from there he went straight into a rehabilitation centre to get help for his alcoholism. His time there was galling and a nightmare he will never forget, but it was nothing compared to what he faced when he left and stepped back out into the big bad world.

The journalists were harsh but the ex-fans were even harsher, and Ambros began to find it more and more difficult to go out and about without suffering some kind of jeer or abuse. He began to become more and more reclusive, but it also opened his eyes to the fact that he needed to become more than what he had been before. He needed to make a fresh start, away from all the chaos and temptation. It was nearly a year of appeals before Ambros got his green card request approved. Countless sessions with numerous therapists to assess whether he would be a danger to himself or others. Countless blood tests and even more health checks to make sure he was staying sober and had no other health issues. So many days of signing paperwork and speaking with lawyers and forming contacts and even more signing of paperwork... but eventually it all paid off. Ambros got a green card to live and work in small-town America in a branch of a discount pet store, as well as an official change of name.

In November 2009, Gunnar Frey landed in Burlington, Vermont.

The city was cold and wet and the people spoke weird and he didn't understand what half the things being sold to him were, but Gunnar enjoyed the laid-back pace of his job and the complete lack of anyone with a single clue who he was. Away from all the stress and temptation of home he found he could actually relax and enjoy himself in more sedate ways. He found a therapist and began meditating, and after some discussion (and several failed starts) he adopted vegetarianism. The fresh air and constant wave of new experiences began to quickly turn his life around, and within months he was already beginning to shape into a completely different person than he had been for so many years before.

In September 2010 Gunnar saw an advertisement in a newspaper about an old pet store that was going up for sale in a place called Pilot Ridge. Curious but with no real intent, Gunnar went to check it out and instantly fell in love with both the outdated but well loved store and the quaint little town that it resided in. Gunnar made an offer on the place the same day, and was both shocked and delighted when it was accepted. Purrrfect Pets was closed down for a serious refurbishment and remodel, and in January 2011 The Ark opened its doors for the first time.

Since then Gunnar has been fixated on his business, enjoying all the behind the scenes and customer-orientated work as well as taking a twice weekly business class so he can learn how to actually manage the place to the potential it deserves to be managed. He has set up breeding programmes for several reptile species, and works closely with a number of local animal breeders so he can ensure his store always has the highest quality and highest welfare-orientated animals possible.

Sure Gunnar does still have low days and bad times, but as time goes on they are becoming far less harsh and occurring far less often. The good days significantly outnumber the bad ones, and he is gradually become a far happier and much more well adjusted person. This is in part thanks to the therapist he still sees on a regular basis, and is also part thanks to the radical changes he has made that has lead him to this point. In August 2013 The Ark expanded into the store next door, creating a much larger store with more variety and a lot more fun distractions. The owner of the store next door on the other side is due to retire within the next year or so, and Gunnar is desperately hoping she puts the building up for sale so The Ark can expand even more. His dream is to eventually be able to incorporate a learning centre where school children can come for visits to meet some of the weird and wonderful critters up close, and realise that spiders and snakes and rats aren't at all creatures to be feared.

The only way Gunnar's life can go now is up, and he is determined to keep climbing that ladder as high as he possibly can. He knows what misery and danger lurks on the bottom rung, and he has absolutely no intention of ever sliding that low again.

Roleplay Example

'Good morning handsome!'
Gunnar chuckled softly as he flipped the pancake on the griddle, calling back over his shoulder in the direction the voice had come from. “Good morning to you too, handsome. Breakfast?”
'Breakfast!'
The answer had come loud and shrill, the slightly uncomfortable orange pitch blurring out the low background swirls from the radio, but it was immediately followed by the soft, flurrying white as the sound of wingbeats announced that Slender had landed on his perch in the kitchen. The large black palm cockatoo fussed with his currently empty bowl, chittering softly as he took a sip of water from the holder. 'Breakfast!'
“All right, misery. I heard ya the first time. Keep yer knickers on.” Gunnar flipped the pancake onto a plate before retrieving the little pot of mixed seeds, dried fruit and pellets that he had prepared the night before from the cupboard where he had hidden it. After emptying the food into the cockatoos' feeding dish, the Brit headed into the living room with his pancakes. Predictably Dapper, the blind lop rabbit, was asleep sprawled out on the sofa. Gunnar softly stroked the buck's back to wake him up, then gently placed him down onto the floor. Dapper sniffed around him for a moment before whiskers guided his very slow hops in the direction of the kitchen, where he knew his food bowl was.
Gunnar switched on the TV, absently flicking through the stations and picking at his fruit-laden pancake as he began to wake up properly. A sudden jolting crash of blinding yellow announced that Slender had knocked his metal food bowl onto the tiled kitchen floor, and it was echoed by the furious scrabbling of a blind rabbit that had just literally shit itself at the noise. It was clearly going to be one of those days...

What About You?

Name: Splatt.
Age: Plenty old enough.
Experience: Far too long… or not long enough. I can never decide.
How Did You Find Us? Via the other characters I have here.
Ready To Play? Aye!

[Lugia *]

Accepted

Please thread with James. Just saying.