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DEUS EX MACHINA PERSONNEL FORM

The Hunter
Name: Washington Becker
Nicknames: Wash
Gender: Male
Age: 24


Category Moon - Well, he's not much of a fighter, but he's been trained professionally to evaluate the condition of buildings! And his weapon is a shield. And he just wants to be the hero.

The Weapon
Name: Salcia
Nicknames: Sally
Type of Weapon: Buckler
Former species of weapon: Will-o-wisp
Gender: Female, insofar as globes of spongy glowing material have a gender


Personalities:

• Wash
  Wash is, above all else, a really normal guy. Or at least, he tries awfully hard at it. He doesn't believe in aliens, ghosts, psychics, spirits, etc. After all, why bother? The creatures seem to exist just fine regardless. He's serious, practical, and seriously practical- an all around reliable guy. Neat, punctual, and completely average. Sometimes this can bite him in the a**. He's definitely no life of the party, with his often pragmatic, debbie-downer point of view. He's a bit droll - his job is boring, he doesn't go out and drink, and he goes to church every Sunday. If his life had a floor, this monotonous routine would have carved deep grooves. He takes solace in his job and his habits. They help him forget the things he's seen, and they help him remember that he's just another brick in the wall.
  
  In his spare time, he likes to play tennis. On a date he would not go to the beach, because you can never get the sand out of your shoes. He's an Elvis man, he laughs at TV sitcoms, but secretly won't change the channel if it's stuck on daytime soaps. Hey, everyone has a weakness. He's got family, but not family ties- he loves his father but think his mother and siblings are a bit off. The girls are self proclaimed psychics, the boy a paranomal specialist, and he finds their behavior at odds with his modus operandi - deny everything. After all, good people don't see horrible things lurking in the shadows, and Wash very much wants to be good people.
  
  If asked to identify himself, before his run in with the law, he would say first that he was a father. It was as if before his son he'd never really lived, and despite dirty diapers and messy burping and 2am crying sessions, he's never looked back. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Nowadays he's doing nothing BUT looking back. The Deus Ex facility isn't kind, both physically and psychologically, and the strain often makes him wish for happier days. However, for him the past is a beacon to the future. He has to fight, to save the son he gave up not so long ago. Wash knows all about tough love, and some days it feels like his is the toughest. He dedicates himself to training, if only to distract him from the might have's and the what if's of yesterday.
  
  Despite this determination, he's having a bit of trouble adjusting. He has no military or combat experience. Hell, his weapon isn't even really a weapon so much as a very sassy fashion accessory. Wash attempts to normalize his increasingly surreal life with a limited amount of success. His lifelong practice of refusal to accept the reality of the things no one else could see is hard to give up. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will Wash's poor tattered psyche be rebuilt. It doesn't help that things seem to get stranger by the day, or that he feels like he's constantly behind. He's emotionally numb from the losses he put upon himself in what seemed like his most desperate hour. Hunter training may yet prove him wrong.
  
  
  
• Salcia
  Salcia, conversely, is much more mischevious. After all, she hails from a species best known for luring people into treacherous swamps and watching them drown. She's not an OUTRIGHT a**- she prefers to be a bit more subtle - but she loves a good practical joke. Unfortunately, she doesn't always know when to draw the line. For Wash, it's kind of like having a kid sister all over again, only his was never quite as treacherous.
  
  However, her quirky and sometimes dangerous sense of humor bring something to the party that Wash would otherwise be severely lacking. Perspective. She's accepted that what they're doing is just another facet of reality, and doesn't seek to normalize it. Oftentimes, her joshing and pestering are all in the name of getting her partner to live a little. She knows that in order to survive the days ahead he's going to have to admit a lot of things to himself, and accept them - fast. They play hardball at the facility, and she fears that if he falls to the wayside he'll never catch up again.
  
  As for his past- she doesn't understand his loss. Wisps don't have parental bonds, but she tries, in the name of teamwork, to be supportive. After all, a mopey Wash is considerably more useless than a normal one. She's the only one he feels like he can confide in, and she tries to be patient, but sometimes human problems can be so boring. Masking indifference is difficult at best, and it causes more than a few falling outs. But they have no one but each other to lean on- if asked, they'd both admit their rather touch and go relationship was a work in progress.
  
  Sally chose Wash because his need to validate leaving his son and wife was almost overwhelming - a need that, if matured properly, could propel him to a kind of greatness. He wanted to fight. He wanted to be their savior, not just a man who ran from the police and abandoned his family. And Sally wants to help him do just that, if only to be by his side in all his beastie stomping glory. Under a veneer of devious hijinks is a relatively intelligent and well meaning monster. She's no care bear, but she's not demeaning or overbearing either. She feels her partner just needs someone to lead him in the right direction, so to speak. Even if it's by badly delivered jokes or other tomfoolery.
  

Why did your human character choose to become a Hunter? Have you ever met someone who, only moments after laying eyes on, you know you'd die for? Wash has. It goes by the name of Daniel, and not too long ago it was still shitting in it's own pants. The knowledge that monsters ARE real, coupled with a rather unfortunate series of events resulting in a police investigation with him as the prime suspect, weighed upon him greatly. Wash decided to dedicate his life to making the world a better place for his boucing baby boy, with a side of NOT going to jail for a crime he didn't commit. (See history)

Weapon Ability (USING THE D&D WILL O WISP THAT IS AN AIR ELEMENTAL ABBERATION)
Once charged, Wash's seemingly innocent buckler Sally can vomit up a beam of lightning. Or he wishes. At the moment, it's more like static electricity and less like LIGHTNING BOLT LIGHTNING BOLT.

History

In a sleepy neighborhood on the western bank of the Mississippi river lived a small family with a big reputation. The Beckers were quite well known locally - the kind of notoriety that is the nightmare of any school-age youngster looking to make his or her mark in the world. They were unusual. Strange. Funny in the head, some would say. Mrs. Becker was a sitting-room psychic - a fancy way of saying stay at home mom, as far as her husband was concerned - and held weekly seances at various locations around town with her exclusive club for the occult. Mr. Becker, some said, dabbled in the stuff himself. Pure rubbish, he would retort, but he kept black chickens. Everyone knew what that meant.

Their first child arrived on a nondescript day in October. They named him Washington Henry Becker, after his grandfather and father, and couldn't be prouder. As with most children, he was kept out of the 'family business' - he had toys, a swing set that was only second hand. To the dismay of the neighbors, he was everything a normal boy should be - rambunctious and full of trouble. If he had a few odd habits, neither of his parents seemed to notice. After all, boys will be boys. So maybe he blocked his closet off with a chair before bed every night. Once or twice he dug out his daddy's toolset and nailed the sock drawer shut, until they finally got him a brand new dresser. Wash had said the old one talked to him at night, said horrible things. His father told him next time to put a sock in it.

Then, at the tender age of five, something terrible happened. His mother had twins. They didn't have time for his shenanigans anymore, with the new babies- they hardly noticed when he duct-taped all the cabinets in his room and started keeping his clothes neat and tidy on a chair in the corner. Or when he sawed the legs off his bed so that things couldn't hide under it. His dad WAS a bit upset when he took a spare bag of cement out of the garage and tried to seal his closet, but chalked it up to him vying for attention, and promptly signed him up for kindergarten. Thus began the rest of Wash's life.

School was rough, at first, as his parent's reputation had him answering for more than a few things that he didn't do. However, he soon learned the ropes. He hunkered down and acted normal. He didn't draw attention to himself, and the novelty soon wore off- especially after his younger brother and sister got enrolled. At first, he felt a kind of kinship with them- for it became obvious rather quickly that they too Saw Things. It was much easier to stare into the beady eyes of shadows lurking in the corners of the predawn chicken yard when you had two someones holding your hand.

The glamor quickly wore off. Soon they were just siblings - little better than tiny gremlins that broke his toys and stole away his parents. Worse still, they indulged the monsters. It in fact turned out to be what a young Wash considered the only positive thing about them - titles of freak or taunts about his mother being some kind of voodoo queen were quickly redirected to the pair who swore they saw ghosts lurking in the classroom. Problem was, Wash saw them too.

But Wash was normal. He ignored the cold sweats, the feelings of something other biding it's time just beneath the surface of reality. High school went by in a daze. He got a part time job on the weekends, while the twins went to their grandmother's or to occult society meetings. His sister Deborah had a knack for Tarot reading, whilst Daniel began recording EVPs and investigating paranormal phenomena on the net. The neighbors were finally satisfied - HERE were the weirdos that made them feel good about the labelling and the namecalling.

And then it was over. Wash graduated well enough to earn a scholarship to Xavier University, his father's alma mater, and left home. He would miss his father - all those rumors about the chickens were just so much hogwash - but his mother and the others... Well. Relieved was probably the best word for it. Despite his excitement on the potential separation he quickly found city life to be incredibly daunting. No one seemed to care about his small town reputation, but then, no one seemed to care about him at all.

And he was still Other. He wasn't a New Orleanian, and he didn't really understand what that meant. But that was okay. It was nice to be tossed aside in the scurf of the metropolis. It was a kind of exile that he soon overcame, and he enjoyed the ebb and flow so much that after completeing an associate's degree he started interning to become a home inspector. If he seemed uncomfortable in attics, or particularly old homes (of which there were dozens) no one questioned him. He could only secretly count his lucky stars the city didn't have basements.

He met Denise when he was getting his license renewed at the tender age of 20. She was the front desk clerk, and while it wasn't love at first sight, something passed between him and she slipped him her number on a bit of tape over his new ID card. She was pretty, a bit creole, but a lot of just... Denise. In a year he would ask her to marry him. He found he could ignore the voodoo dolls and the gris gris and the strange supersitions - it was just another side of life here, really. After a small ceremony they settled down on the western banks, removed from the hustle and bustle, in a neighborhood not unlike the one he grew up in.

He kept in touch with his family. It was mostly via his father- semi annual conversations about Daniel's new Paranormal club or Debroah's latest dire predilections in her readings. They were there for him, as best they could - his father gave him their savings as they struggled with finding a home, a car and then-

A baby. Daniel Henry Becker was born at a healthy 8 pounds, 11 ounces. His grandparents, aunt and uncle were in attendance. Wash found his place in the world, after so much time spent just trying to get by. Wash was a father. Coworkers noticed the spring in his step, the razzle in his dazzle. Something about the usually monotonously monotone man had changed. The sleepless nights, the emegency doctor visits - none of it seemed to get him down. For a time, he stopped seeing Them. Shadows held nothing but an absence of light. Utter exhaustion and burning happiness proved an antidote for his lifelong struggle.

But nothing gold can stay. One evening, he was inspecting a home in uptown when something... stirred. Ripples through reality, as if something lurked under the surface. At the corner of his eye, or in the darkening shadows, there was suddenly an eerie awareness. It had been so long, it was as if Wash had forgotten how to block it out. The entity, or whatever it was, fed off his panic. He tried to continue as normal - physically the house checked out fine. He put the toughest hurdle for last. It was his final appointment, so it was nearing dusk as he rounded the corner to face the attic.

The stairs were already slid down, the trap door eerily cavernous - deep grooves in the floorboards suggested frequent use. The elderly couple who owned the building said their grandson stayed up there. As if the thought summoned him, a small boy raced past him and clambered up the steps into - Silence. The shadows were boiling now. He could feel their eyes on him wherever he turned. With nowhere left to go but up, he catiously followed.

Empty. Save the boy's bed and belongings, there was nothing up there. Had he imagined it all? Unnerved, he rushed home, forgetting to check in with the owners- he would call them later, perhaps the next morning. Yes. He kissed his wife, tucked his boy into bed and was off to troubled dreams.

A police car waited for him outside the next morning. There was a boy gone missing on the property he'd been scheduled to inspect, and he'd not made any contact with the owners after his hasty departure. Before he knew it, he was riding with the officer to answer a few questions at the station. He wasn't under arrest- yet - but he doubted that legal forces would take kindly on a dark skinned man suspected of kidnapping a happy child of Eurpoean heritage. That wasn't his biggest problem though, and it wasn't what had kept him tossing and turning that night.

The monsters were real. The cops let him go after grilling him for a few hours- but he was too dazed to care. Weeks went by. The boy never turned up. They started asking him questions that he couldn't answer- what did he see? The boy's shoes had been found at the foot of the stairs. He'd been there. Wash had been there. It was simple math. Even Denise was becoming increasingly troubled and suspicious, and left with Daniel to stay with her parents. That was only a fraction of the much larger issue Wash faced. As the boy haunted his dreams, his facade slowly became the trusting gaze of his son. He had to protect him. From what, he didn't know. It didn't matter. No amount of gris gris could stop this from happening.

It didn't take long for him to be issued a court date. It didn't take the city police long to figure out his family couldn't afford bail. Orange had never really been Wash's color. As he awaited his trial, troubled with both his own safety and that of his family, he was visited by a stranger. A stranger that promised him the power to fight back. To save himself. To protect his son.

It even came with a uniform, quite a bit smarter looking than his usual get up. But that bit didn't interest him. Nothing gold can stay.

OPAN 4 CRITS

NEVER NOT CLICHE OTL

As for the weapon - I believe that is a PRP you do once your hunter is official - they come into the setting not having anything! So that wouldn't be much of an issue.

And as for the buckler...Not sure what you're talking about but I will totally go look it up, I'm sure it's cool though XD IT SOUNDS NEAT.

That is... a really cool idea. O v O

AND IT'S OK, I HAD TO NAG LOTS OF PEOPLE TO FIND OUT WHAT HORRIBLY LITTLE I KNOW ABOUT HUNTERS

If you go to the deus ex machina guild and read through some of the rps it helps? And don't be afraid to like, ask in the thread or whatever!

Or ask me, but I don't know much so THAT MIGHT NOT WORK OUT WELL LOLS

YEAH I TTLY AGREE

and I will respond to those tidbits later but I UPDATED HIS PROFILE A BIT TO GO BETTER WITH THE HISTORY

I wrote the profile before I finished his history loools.

Not anymoar old guy burning_eyes

Jerry: OTL