Alan H. Remboldt
Feb 4, 2011 4:45:20 GMT -5
Post by Alan Remboldt on Feb 4, 2011 4:45:20 GMT -5
[/i][/size][/right]The Basics
Name: Alan Heraclitus Remboldt
Nicknames: None yet.
Age: 46
Orientation: Hard to say
Desired Rank/Job: Power trainer
Powers: Limited precognition, clairvoyance
The Dao is a philosophy/religion centric to the Asian cultural tradition; it literally translates to "The Way". Daoists claim that the entire can be thought of as one continuous, never-ending flow in which all of cause and effect is contained; everything in existence is actually a drop in this singular flow. Alan isn't quite sure where he stands on all this, but he does feel aware both of some sort of flow and his place in it; he knows what's going to happen to him next (where he, the drop of water, is headed), and he has perfected his grasp of this to the point where he can make similar predictions about entities that are close to him (near him in the flow). He can also feel the world around him as part of the flow of which he is a component as well (he's described the feeling as how you know your nose is on your face but only if you remind yourself of it). After a fair amount of research and introspection, Alan has decided that the Dao tradition is the ideology that describes his abilities most accurately, though he'd never go so far as to commit himself to it. Alan's powers can manifest both as a blessing and a curse: Alan has had to train very hard to prevent the combined emotional weight of the planet from crushing him. When Alan becomes careless, and lets his mental blocks falter, he is in danger of losing his sense of self completely, which induces anything from minor narcolepsy to full-on catatonia.
Also, Alan knows why the meaning of Bodidharma's coming to China is the oak tree in the front garden.
Play By:Jeff freakin' Bridges
The Details
Hair Color: dark brown
Eye Color: green
Any Piercings? Heavens, no
Any Tattoos? Pyramid with an eye in, lower back
Any Scars? Nah.
General Appearance: Alan's a little, aged man. He has peach-pink skin that's been weathered evenly, like the leather armchair that's the pride of the family, with the exception of significant crinklage around his eyes and the corners of his mouth: proof positive that he's been using them to make a face of astonished glee repeatedly for many years. He has a carefully cultivated goatee of a few silver hairs adorning his small lips, and is rapidly losing the rest of the hair on his head. He has therefore taken to wearing a beret. The rest of him is a bit pudgy, and he's definitely a little out of shape--he'll wheeze as soon as he manages a second flight of stairs, and his arms visually bereft of bulk. He walks with a slow, moseying gait that only the truly care-free possess.
Alan likes to wear turtlenecks, because he thinks (with good reason) that they suit him. Sometimes he'll wear vests; his general theme is to balance flair with some degree of dignity. The former usually wins out.
Personality: Think what would happen if Winnie the Pooh became a drama teacher, and you have more or less the sort of person Alan is. Alan's a jovial, young soul: quick to enthuse, slow to anger, and even quicker to forgive. Years of seeing the Dao have ensured that he no longer worries much when things aren't going his way; he figures they'll either get better now, or they'll get better later. He's calm when he isn't talking about something he likes, but once he starts he begins to get caught up in the majesty of expression. For this reason, Alan can be pretty long-winded, which is endearing and even educational for the while that you can understand what the hell he's saying, but eventually he'll start to lose lucidity and it's time to shut him up. Alan's a bit of a mystic, since he can see the hint of truth in basically every belief system with which he comes into contact (how they are part of the flow that he perceives and reflect it in some way), and has a sizable crystal collection and a larger-than-average knowledge of belief systems of all kinds. The satirical ones are somewhat of a hobby of his. He's almost permanently happy and is therefore quick to laugh and very friendly, sometimes to a fault. Alan's word choice is usually somewhat bizarre, influenced as it is by a classical education and a mind that constantly communicates the sheer enormity of the outside world.
Alan loves to explain things about the world, and he loves other people even more. The fit as a teacher presents itself rather well.
Your Vices
Likes: Coffee (black as night, sweet as sin), art, puzzles and riddles, (slam) poetry, passion, theology, music with big ringing chords.
Dislikes: Closed-mindedness, intolerance and prejudice, selfishness.
Strengths: Mediation and counsel, calming people down, cheering people up, crosswords.
Weaknesses: Leaving people alone, specific interpersonal relations (Alan finds it very difficult to constrain his affection to any one person), concentration
Fears: Sometimes, very, very late at night, Alan can feel the world ending. He doesn't sleep on those nights.
Secret: Nothing you could make a compelling plot out of. Yeah, Alan smoked weed before he came to the Institute, whoop de doo.
Family Ties
Father:Pyoter Remboldt {78}
Mother:Aida Thompson Remboldt {72}
Siblings:Nope
Any Other Important People:Sei, a tabby cat
History
Alan H. Remboldt was born in Sausalito, California, to a first-generation Russian immigrant who fled to the states before the start of the Cold War and the daughter of local well-to-do executives. The family owned a small veterinarian's' practice until the threat of a malpractice lawsuit (wrought by the nigh-legendary hypochondria of middle-aged white people) forced them to close up shop to find better work. The problem here was not so much the difficulty of finding another occupation, but the conflict of ideology that eventually arose. Pyoter, a hardy native of Stalingrad, was well-accustomed both to the hard life and governmental jobs, and had no qualms accepting the potentially thankless job of FDA farm inspection. Aida, however, knew the crucial importance of a cushy trust fund had to both a family's safety and their social acceptance--at least as far as Aida's immediate circle of friends could be said to constitute a society--and therefore was dead-set on joining the elite ranks of horse-jockey vets. The disconnect became the spike that, six years later, drove the Remboldt marriage apart. Young Alan, now a boy of twelve, chose to stay with his father, travelling with him across the country and learning a few tricks of the trade. It was on the road that Alan's curious power unlocked itself. Maybe it was being surrounded by animals in every waking moment; maybe it was the nature of the road, the wind, the windows forming a swirling tunnel that Alan could feel he shot through, surging through the all-encompassing channel of the universe. Maybe it was both. Whatever it was, Alan emerged from his years as a traveller a changed boy. Fortunately, the nature of his power made it relatively easy to conceal from those who might be scared of it (he was always pretty good about guessing who would be scared of it), except perhaps in its early stages, when his lack of control of the feelings he got from it sometimes had the potential to render him senseless. While this was always somewhat vexing for his family, his "disability" netted him a very reasonable set of financial aid offers. He therefore had the means to begin a somewhat rocky journey through boarding school, a notion that his erstwhile mother refused to give up given her husband's transitive (read: low) lifestyle and her own inability (read: unwillingness) to be a single mother.
Alan's passion during his school days was a cappella singing. Alan's always liked the feeling of many disparate units coming together in perfect concert, and there's very few places where that happens so consistently and beautifully as in music. Alan signed up within the first week of class, and participated emphatically in the introductory performance that choral directors like to set up so parents can hear for themselves how much their kids have improved, and hopefully decide to fund the fine arts. It was here that Alan was recruited into Hammel; recruiters have learned from much experience that performances have a way of making meta powers readily apparent. This recruiter was, for some measure of the performance, quite interested in the second baritone from the left, though for the life of him he couldn't figure out why. That's when he realized that the boy's body language was responding to the director's cues before he actually made them , with such regular timing as to make merely very good practice an unlikely possibility indeed. This was a distinct tip-off, but his visible effort to resist swooning during the climactic chord of the ballad, was a bit more telling. A bit of asking around revealed that Alan had had similar problems for a while, but there were no known events in his past that would have caused this nor any indications that he suffered from the disability attached to his student file. (You don’t stay as a Hammel recruiter for very long without getting a very good idea of what an epileptic seizure looks like. The episode in the performance wasn’t one.)
The recruiter decided to go straight to the source. Alan decided that being truthful with the fellow would do more good than harm, and in this way, he was sent to the institute, where he learned not so much to develop his power as to contain it. He finished the rest of his schooling with a minimum of fuss or actual effort, squeaking by in most of his classes and excelling in those that he found particularly interesting, history being the chief example. After a few years of accruing the self-discipline required for minimizing episodes--he took longer than average--Alan moved back to his native California to attain a college education at UCSF.
It was in San Francisco, living as a down-and-out student, that Alan quite accidentally capitalized on the training that had turned his more unique properties from hindrance to boon. Knowing what people want and how they’ll react under certain impulses is really all you need to get them to give you what you want. For example, Alan’s super, Jon, was a devoted soccer fan, and was always willing to be less strict with rent payments for the one man in the block who knew Chelsea’s recent history better even than he. (Alan, of course, knew none of this at all; he just had gotten the distinct impression that uttering a specific combination of syllables at a specific time would make his life a lot easier. Once he’d parsed what he just said, though, Alan was very impressed with Ken Monkou’s playing.) Alan’s gift got him everything he wanted, from food to shelter to pleasant conversation, and the time he spent writing lessened more and more as the months drifted by and more people seemed willing to keep him happy. Eventually, the act of helping others with his actions became as natural and involuntary as breathing; the feeling of others being happy, relieved, and grateful around him was intoxicating. Then, one day, he remembered the children of Hammel: scared, unhappy, and in dire need of help. The inspiration was never something Alan really understood how he'd gotten, though he vaguely remembered something about it in a dream; nevertheless, he slipped back to Vermont without telling a soul, or a second thought.
Of course, a man who lives entirely on the courtesy of others does not have much in the way of material resources, and certainly not enough to secure passage across the entire country with any sort of punctuality. Alan saw this not so much as an obstacle as an opportunity, and thus took the "long way around" to Pilot Ridge. For twenty years, Alan took rides when he got them, walked when he didn't, and rafted down the stream of fate to the shore of Hammel. It was during this time that Alan was able to get his first prolonged stretch of lack of exposure to the world at large. Walking through the barren roads of the forgotten byways of the country, Alan was confronted by the company of himself, as he still thinks maybe he knew he would. Why else didn't he just hitch a ride down to LAX and flit his way onto an eastbound plane? He's glad he didn't--this way, he was forced to think about what he, himself, wanted to accomplish at the Institute, and figure out how to train himself into being able to give it. Alan applied as a power trainer at the institute only after utterly convincing himself that he'd be a good one.
Roleplay Example
Metaphysics!
The word was enrapturing, almost delicious in its wild promise. Just imagine: reality, in all its beautiful and cosmic and and and forever enthralling forever-beauty, envisioned by the thinkers of our age in their august esteem...! He vaulted across the Persian rug (liberally stained with coffee, ink, fertilizer, battery acid), narrowly dodging furnishings, in a mad dash for the computer in the study down the hall.
But here is a teapot, whose time for consumption is almost nigh, it having been placed upon a stove so very long ago that Alan can feel the raw potential for steam building in its small ceramic body. Water molecules shake, jump, vibrate faster, harder, leaping out of the tyranny of bondage to their peers to explore the great unknown yonder of the gaseous phase...
Alan snatches the teapot off the stove mere jiffies before its siren-like whistle can disturb the afternoon nap of the little old lady next door, which would cause a row lasting approximately fifteen minutes and, of course, a waste of perfectly good heat.
But metaphysics!
What About You?
[/blockquote]
Name: I'm Stav, and I'm new. How y'all doing.
Age: 19.
Experience: Nope. I've tried my hand at this sort of thing for about, oh, two weeks at a time.
How Did You Find Us? I live near some people who talk about you all incessantly. It sounded like a good time.
Ready To Play? You tell me.
