Kal Sterling

[Kal Sterling]

The Basics

Name: Kalvin David Sterling
Nicknames: Kal, Vinnie (only people he knew when he was young call him that)
Age: 20 (September 1st, 1995)
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: University of Vermont Student
Powers: Power Augmentation:
Kal can strength/weaken the powers of other Meta-Humans. Within ten meters of him, he can focus on up to five targets and either boost or diminish their powers by up to 5x. Within twenty meters, he can focus up to two targets at the same strength. Without line of sight, he can boost up to two people within 10 meters, but only if unobstructed by walls. He can only strengthen or weaken, not both at the same time.

Kal, a fairly focused youth, was able to develop strong control of his power even at a younger age, and now focuses on learning to use it more efficiently in order to reduce the side effects. Initially he was unable to control the flux of the powers around him and people within five meters would receive random surges or diminished strength of abilities. Now, it won't affect anyone unless he focuses on the person or he is under intense stress.

Side effects of using this power can include fatigue, headaches, and scattered concentration. The more he uses the power within a short time, or the more people he focuses on for a given time, the less effective his strengthening or weakening becomes.
Play By: Zac Efron

The Details

Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Soft Blue
Any Piercings? None
Any Tattoos? None
Any Scars? Across his back right shoulder from accident and surgery
General Appearance:
Kal comes in at 5'9"; but he makes up for average height with an above average body. The fitness and musculature of a former college football player, with the exception of his right arm, Kal's body is in peak shape, strong, firm, and keeping up a high-metabolic and fitness lifestyle that will keep him healthy.

A victim of a disastrous motorcycle accident, Kal has a brachial plexus injury to his right arm that has left it paralyzed. He will eventually be able to recover it and the hand attached to it to 80-95% functionality, but it will take years. As such, due to injury and surgeries, his right arm lacks the muscle definition of his left, and in general looks a little bit weaker. He does work it out as he can, but it is difficult.

Kal's clothes used to be trendy and higher class, and while he still has many garments of such nature, he focuses mainly on sweaters or otherwise soft shirts, anything that can make his arm and injury be less visible. Almost never seen without a jacket or dress blazer, which allows him to place his arm into his coat pocket so it moves around less. When home, he will willing lounge around without a shirt on or in a sleeveless workout shirt, old habits die hard.

Personality:
If you had met Kal nearly a year ago, you'd think he was the jerk waiting to be knocked down a peg. Well, that peg got knocked down. Once supremely confident, laser-focused, and complete uncaring of anyone except his father and sister, he's now left barely getting by with an injury that makes daily tasks difficult. He used to live and breathe football, motorcycles, parties, girls. Rarely an A-student, but he never got a C either.

Self-pitying, Kal won't always be there for or be helpful to others, instead rather telling people all of his woes than recognizing their own. At the same time, being brought down from the top of the mountain has shown him what it feels like to be at the bottom, and he has a greater respect for people than he used to.

His greatest respect is for anyone with a disability and how they manage to continue their lives with it. The ability to strive beyond the challenging. Something that Kal has always run from himself. If something was too hard for him, he'd do something else, and hope that it was easier for him later. Now, just living is hard. With his injury to his (dominant) arm, he has to learn how to use his left hand as a dominant one.

Kids have always meant a lot to him, even as people his age never did. Anyone more than a few years younger than him deserved to be treated better than the older people, that's just how Kal saw it. His therapist following his injury told him that his attachment to helping those younger than him probably came from his younger sister, one of the only two people he had cared about for more than himself. She was always that child to him that he was supposed to take care of and be there for. No one was going to hurt that girl. Without her around anymore, he volunteers around Pilot Ridge at events to benefit kids.

Your Vices

Likes:
Football
Mechanic Work
Workouts
Fitness
Girls (for a night or two)
Blue
Social Engagements
A bit of alcohol from time to time
Loud Music
School (no issue with it, likes the stories/ideas, and though he doesn't get 100s, he never gets lower than a B-; and that's just fine by him)
Superheroes / Comic Books (a recently added interest)
Card Games (another recently added interest)

Dislikes:
Attachment/Romance
Robots (real ones; fictional can depend; though he just about always roots against them)
Pink (not to be a man's man; but get that eye-searing stuff out of here)
Classical music
Peanut Butter
Chocolate (Coffee is fine though; somehow it's not the same for him)
His mother Catherine
Motorcycle driving (a recent dislike/fear)

Strengths:
Completes every job he starts promptly
"Work first, play later" focus on life
Mechanics
Motorcycle construction and customization
Knowledge of Football
Public Speaking
Getting to know people

Weaknesses:
Arm-Based Physical Activity
Caring about people (he doesn't; in most cases)
Self-centered
Crushed Superiority Complex (ie. he wishes he was still the hottest thing and tries to still act like it even if he can't back it up)

Fears:
Another accident that could take his healing right arm from "functional in 5 years" to "dead, might as well be amputated"
Driving a motorcycle
Personal commitment to anyone, particularly a romantic commitment to a woman

Secret:
He once got himself and his sister drunk when they were 17 and 13. It was quiet and at home so they didn't get hurt. But he promised himself never to put her or him at risk like that again.

Family Ties

Father: Levi Sterling (Deceased)
Mother: Catherine Miller
Siblings: Amanda Sterling (Sister; 16)
Any Other Important People: Pat Michaels (Pretty much the only person who cares he exist right now; the feeling is mutual) None

History

Born on September 1st, 1995, Kalvin David Sterling was welcomed into a fairly comfortable family in Texas, father Levi Sterling, mother Catherine Sterling. Levi, a mechanical engineer and consultant for multiple automotive companies, and Catherine, a popular women's magazine writer, weren't short for money.

Kalvin grew up a bit spoiled with anything he wanted, but he had to be a "perfect man" as his father told him, to get it. When he didn't follow the rules, stay focused, complete what he was told, what he wanted was delayed or cancelled. Spoiled, but not rotten. Even after his sister was born in 1999, she was held to the same standards. Levi, the middle child in his family, knew what it was like for siblings to be treated differently and he promised Kalvin when he was young that they would always be equal to him. But, because Kalvin was older, that meant that he had to take care of his sister too. Kalvin promised.

The perfect family situation didn't last. In 2005, when Kalvin was 10 and Amanda 6, it was found out that Catherine had been cheating on Levi for the past two years with her (female) assistant at the magazine. She had just broken it off, but that didn't matter.

The betrayal by his mother forever left an impact on Kalvin, while Levi filed for a divorce. Because Levi had always been there for both kids while Catherine was obsessed with work (and apparently other things), custody was able to awarded to Levi.

Levi did everything for his children after it was just them. He taught him everything about how mechanics and electronics worked. They raced motorbikes together, they built and rebuilt cars and motorcycles. And they loved football. There was at least one or two car designs out in the world that Kalvin and Amanda had helped their father finalize. But as cars were getting more advanced, Levi's freelance work became less and less common. He didn't work at companies he wasn't constantly learning and experiencing the changes to the industry. Less people were coming to him for advice.

Around this time, Kalvin (now 13 and going by Kal at school), got a headache on a bus ride and suddenly the whole bus electrified and crashed. There had been another kid just discovering the power of electrokinesis on the bus, and Kal had power-boosted. When he was checked out, he was discovered to be a meta just like the kid who had actually electrified the bus. Hammel contacted the family, telling them what was going on and what would be happening. Levi decided, with his freelance business pretty much dead in the water, that he'd move him and Amanda to Vermont with his son, selling everything that the three couldn't fit in an 18-wheeler.

Setting up a vehicle customs shop right in Pilot Ridge, Kal began going to school at Hammel while his father ran his new business, getting business from across the New England area. Levi Sterling's name meant something again and he and Kal couldn't be more proud. They were comfortable, but had it not been for the child support from his mom, they wouldn't have been while Levi was saving for their college educations.

Though Kal & Amanda visited Catherine a few times a year, she never gave them much of her time and they didn't give her much of theirs. Once Kal was at Hammel, Catherine didn't even bother keeping up visitation for him.

His time at Hammel was a blur for Kal overall. Powers training took some time, but he got the hang of it. Kal was never at the loss for cool looks and had the strong personality to match them. As soon as he reached 15, he was dating girls. Though most people at the school considered him a ladies' man (as he did himself), it was often thought he was dating many more than he was. He dated many, his personality and forward nature getting him in the door, but girls dropped him as often as he dropped them, most relationships barely qualifying as superficial.

His love for football only grew as he grew up, and he wanted to play. He wasn't the best at school, but he focused on his classes, determined to get into a good school so he could have a chance to play on a team.

During his time at Hammel, no true friends were made. Kal was charismatic and popular and people often wanted to be his friend. But Kal was so focused on his body, school and being "cool", that he never developed strong emotional connections to anyone. He knew everyone's name, he could carry conversations on his own. Popular in the moment, but when he wasn't around, people didn't think of him much. He never needed that best friend because he had Amanda and his dad. They were his best friends. Everyone else was just for fun.

In 2014, Kal managed to get into the University of North Carolina (UNC) and was able to make the team as a backup wide receiver in freshman year. The very lifestyle from Hammel was continued, just at the more bombastic college scale. After his first week of classes, Kal was talking to his father, when he got bad news that Levi was waiting to tell him until he was sure nothing could be done: Levi had pancreatic cancer, and the doctors had given him until January.

Though he found it hard to focus on what he was doing, his father told him to stay there and keep working, that he had Amanda to take care of him. Kal managed to get to play in a few football games after injury by starting receivers, and was told by the coach that if he kept playing like that, he'd be a starter the next year, and maybe even have a future in the NFL.

Making it until February, Kal came home for his father's death and funeral. Levi and Amanda had sold the house the month before, and in his will, he left Kal enough money to finish college, the Customs shop, and all of the vehicles (2 cars and 4 motorcycles) except for Amanda's favorite car. He left Amanda with her car and the rest of the money (safely in a fund for when she turned 18; so Catherine couldn't touch the money). With Levi dead, custody of Amanda returned to Catherine, and Kal was left alone. He returned back to school, focused more than ever on his potential football career.

2015 continued on to be the worst year of Kal's life. In March, while driving along a cliff-side on his motorcycle, a car veered and Kal swerved to avoid. The high impact collision of the motorcycle with a rail sent him and the bike flying and tumbling across rock, metal and road.

It took two days for Kal to wake up. And the only one to greet him was a guy named Pat Michaels. Pat was a junior, the water boy and well known geek at the college. When the hospital called the school, the coach sent Pat to watch him, as his next of kin wasn't up to date. Kal wondered why he couldn't move or feel his right arm. The doctors told him that he had a brachial plexus injury to his right arm, and that there was a chance with future surgery in the coming months that he'd eventually get mobility back in 5-10 years.

A maybe in 5-10 years was an obvious end for his potential football career. And with the cost of the upcoming surgeries, the money his father left for him wouldn't be enough to satisfy the bills and allow him to stay at UNC. Still, in memory of his father, the beaten down Kal finished his first year of school. While he was recovering, Pat became the only person who would even talk to him. No spending money, no sports, crippled arm, no one cared about Kal except for him. For the first time, Kal was on the outside looking in. Hanging out with Pat, Kal learned (and found he enjoyed) card games and read comic books about superheroes, who fought against extraordinary odds to save the world. It was an escape that helped him get through the last few months of school.

Kal returned home to Pilot Ridge. It was too late to apply for transfer into the University of Vermont, so he did the work to ensure he could start in the Spring semester. It was much cheaper than UNC (less than half), so he was pretty sure the savings would cover it. He sold one of the cars to give him a bit extra of a push. Leaving him with enough money for college and basic eating for the next 3 years...and one place to live: the old Customs shop, which had been closed for just over a year at that point, after his father was diagnosed with cancer.

Directionless and the only people who cared about him a long distance phone call away, Kal resolved one goal. He'd fix up the shop before he went back to school, even with the bad arm, and he'd work in the shop to make extra money while going to college. He wasn't going to be defeated by the injury, he would get his education and then...he'd figure something out. Anything out. He began the new year with a new open sign in front of "Sterling Customs", a class schedule for the Spring 2016 semester at the University of Vermont, with enough money to keep the lights on, a few motorcycles with for sale signs, and his dad's old '69 Camaro with disability license plates.

Roleplay Example

See Serena Varsair or any posts from Serena Varsair / Cade Maddox / Emerald Parker

What About You?

Name: Nova
Age: 20
Experience: Years and Years
How Did You Find Us? Ad on RPG-Directory
Ready To Play? Yep!

[Kal Sterling]

Done! Apologize in advance for the long history.

[Admin!]

Not Quite

It's great to see another character from you, Nova, but Kal needs a great deal of work before he can be accepted.

First, for his power, you need to provide details about his range and limitations. How many people can he affect? How long do the effects last? What is his radius of power? (You state 'has to focus' which is not a radius, and give no other information.)

Everything else has to do with the history, which requires heavy revision, or needs to be redone completely depending on what you choose to do. From how Kal reads, you gave him a bunch of opportunities only to take them away for drama. I understand that you want him to have to grow as a person and learn to live with less and with a disability, but his history is full of excessive drama that seems to serve no other purpose but to make him suffer.

Additionally, the crux of his history, the potential NFL career and the sports scholarships, wouldn't happen with attending Hammel. Hammel only has club sports, which means that the students on the football team only play each other for fun. There are no real games, and, since Hammel doesn't allow for outside visitation (in order to keep the specifics of the school secret and to maintain student privacy), there would be no recruiters that would come to him or learn about his football abilities. All of that needs to be removed, and you need to think of a different reason for him to go off and then return.

Regarding the rest of his history and the drama: the custody agreement makes no sense, because the only way for the children to grow up post-divorce as described is for each parent to fully sever their parental rights to the other child, and no court in the U.S. would allow for that. It's against public policy, and, at best, it would be the subject of a lawsuit against the judge in question. At worst, it would lead to both parents losing custody of their children, who are taken into foster care temporarily while the parents learn how to provide for both children and not put their inability to see each other above the well-being of their children. Ten and six are certainly old enough under family law statutes for them to have a vested interest in staying together.

Related to this, the information you provide about the trust fund is contradictory and doesn't follow actual estate law. You wrote that Kal's grandfather changed the terms of the trust at the time of the divorce, on his death bed. This implies that he died before Kal's father did. Since the trust fund was to pay out every year after his death, this means that Kal was already collecting money for several years from the trust fund, and, more importantly, he had a vested interest in the trust. The money received would go into an account to be held, either until adulthood (at the age of 18) absent a specific age, or, presumably 21, as you mention that is when his sister would inherit. With a vested interest in the trust, he couldn't have it simply taken away from him without legal representation. The lawyer who arranged the trust on behalf of his grandfather could be disbarred for having a relationship with a client, and, more importantly, for the malfeasance on behalf of other clients (specifically Kal in this case). The money held in the account for him would still be his at 21, and, if he found himself without support, he could petition the court to have access to reasonable costs before that. Such estate cases take years to work through the legal system; it couldn't happen in the couple of weeks after his accident due to non-specific "legal loopholes." This situation simply wouldn't manifest the way you lay it out.

With his father's illness, which took his life after less than a year, what was done with all of the money that they had? His father would have been earning the trust money for all of that time, and, even with his scaled-down business reputation, there should be income to take care of him. With that type of money in play, it wouldn't make sense for his father to do nothing to plan for Kal's future, particularly when he still had the energy and ability to travel down to Florida for football games. This seems to be thrown in just to give him more drama along his riches to rags story.

The other parts of his time at Hammel are also contradictory and seem set up to make him close to perfect but aloof. He has no friends, but he's super popular, girls throw themselves at him, everyone actually wants to be his friend (even if they don't care about him), and he can't relate to other people. Yet, despite that, he still saves unpopular people from bullies, but he won't make friends with any of them because they're beneath his social class. The social class that he has inexplicably, given that nobody actually cares about him, and he doesn't care about anyone else. Rather than straddle the line, he oscillates wildly in his traits and social history, presumably because he needs to be the All-American Good Guy, while also being aloof and smug and believing himself better than everyone else.

Given that you want all of this to happen just to knock him down a few pegs, I would suggest simplifying, or scrapping this. There are plenty of arrogant, middle class people who are full of themselves, particularly when they're straight, cisgendered, white, able-bodied men who happen to be conventionally attractive. It would be cleaner and wouldn't have the RL-law breaking scenarios created to heap unnecessary misery. Coping with a newfound disability in the prime of one's life is more than enough to knock one down a few pegs, particularly if that person is used to being able-bodied and self-sufficient, and if he had plans for his future that were time-dependent. It's made worse when losing a parent.

If you have any questions, please ask a staff member. When you've edited just bump this topic so staff can take another look!

[Kal Sterling]

Yikes, wall of text! (I should expect it by now; first version always needs revision)

Will get to work on this ASAP. Some of this is clarity-based (it might be more understandable if I write it differently), but most of this I completely see the problem or why there's an issue.

[Kal Sterling]

Alright, it's been updated.

Removed the fund, clarified a bunch, gave more specifics on power use, gave reasonable reason for his stable but limited financial state. Fixed the RL-law breaking scenarios. Made it more clear his situation at school and removed hyperbole.

Pancreatic cancer can be diagnosed and result in death within 3-6 months (74% don't make it past a year), so I felt that was fair.

Removed the saving from bullies thing, he wouldn't have been a bullier himself, but he wouldn't have stopped it unless it was a young kid (the original intention of that which went awry).

Kept football but made him work for it, and made him less successful with it given the lack of background the college would have.

[Kal Sterling]

Gonna rebump on the outside chance that the original bump was missed.

[Admin!]

Accepted!

You know what to do! Have fun!