Oxford’s Dictionary of Blasphemy

PLAYER INFO

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Player Name: Maniette
• Player Contact: maniette or PM here!
• Player Age: 31
• Permissions: We ask that all players fill out a permissions form for both OOC/IC. Link it Here.

( CHARACTER INFO )

User Name/Nick: Maniette
User DW: maniette
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: maniette
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Timothy Stoker, Hunter, Doug Eiffel, Izzy Hands

Character Name: Arthur Lester
Series: Malevolent (Podcast)
Age: Uncertain, but I'm making him 29.
From When?: Part 12: The End, waking up on the Barge instead of the Dreamworld.

Warden Justification: Arthur will drag himself through Hell and back again with one arm tied behind his back and blindfolded because he learned that someone was in trouble. While his methods may skew less than moral, occasionally illegal, or sometimes even outright insane, he comes from a place of a genuine desire to help, and his heart is in the right place.

Item: A 1920's Dunhill lighter, old but well cared for; on one side is engraved the phrase "This too shall pass" - the other has a piano score, playable with one hand. The flame won't burn wardens.

Abilities/Powers: Apart from the moments where he is being forcibly hijacked by an eldritch monster John, Arthur Lester's skills remain within the realm of standard humanity. He is a private investigator of the 1930s with the physical capacity to fight, clamber, swim and row (for upwards of three hours) his way to victory. Most recently, he is also doing all of this with only one hand under his own control, and while John has offered some assistance, he is, primarily, fiercely independent, and thus he has also become extremely dexterous with his right hand, and has proven able to perform complex tasks with full competence, such as playing piano, climbing ladders, and using lockpicks.

Due to the loss of his sight (though not, distinctly, control of his eyes), he's shown some increased sensitivity in his other senses, though it's more overcompensation than anything supernatural, and he's shown to be particularly susceptible to bad smells. This has also, for better or worse, rendered him completely immune to visual-based abilities of any stripe.

As a direct result of John's extended possession while he was in a coma, he's also passively picked up a small measure of psychometry, and if Arthur should touch a recently deceased person, he automatically triggers an ability that allows him to see the last few minutes of their lives. (However, because he's still fucking blind, this will only affect anyone who currently has possession of his sight. So, mostly John.)

There's also a gentle implication in later episodes (starting from the canon point he was drawn from) that he may have some passive healing abilities, as well thanks to John's presence, though the exact limit of these is unknown, but mild.

Wardening Strategies and Philosophies: While John is going to do a lot of heavy lifting regarding Arthur's engagement with the visual aspects of the Barge, Arthur is very much his own person with his own opinions, and will be utterly engaged by the multitudes of people present on the Barge to learn about. He's going to be initially skittish of everyone as a whole, given how for the last entire week of his life everyone has been corrupted into trying to kill him, but once he understands that most people here have genuinely good intentions, or at least are willing to try, he'll warm up to people quite quickly.

Given the entire situation with John, there's undoubtedly going to be a degree of double-teaming with any inmate John gets, but Arthur's focus will be largely on a more mundane scale. He is a man of intense regrets, but he also recognises his own fault and complicity in them, and acknowledges the facts of him hurting or wronging people (even if he's not yet comfortable expanding on some specific examples of these with other people just yet). Before anything eldritch or supernatural ever happened to him, he has already harmed people irreparably, and he knows and owns this, and is perfectly happy to either help people cope with this fact, or confront them about it relentlessly.

Arthur is an extremely goals-oriented person, and the first thing he likes to try and do in literally any given situation is take stock of his resources, his accumulated information, and work out a game plan to use what he has to make tangible process towards a previously stated intent. He also knows what it means to go too far in pursuing a goal, and the extent to which justifications can mangle any genuine intent or reason behind what might have originally been a sensible or even selfless idea. He's also becoming quite an expert in what fear can do to strangle one's perspective, and would do well with someone who has a tendency to justify their heinous or amoral acts, or who deflects under pressure.

Even blind, Arthur is keenly observant and has a quick mind, and has spent long enough as a private investigator to make quick use of limited clues in order to reach reasonable deductions. However, he's also argumentative, bad at backing away from conflict and stubborn - while he wouldn't necessarily do poorly with an inmate who is equally argumentative, the fact is he is also this way with John, and having two people arguing with him at the same time would definitely cause things to escalate quickly, and Arthur isn't above saying things in the heat of the moment that will genuinely hurt his target.

Arthur might also have difficulty with inmates who require a great deal of literal observation, due to his limited inability to follow them properly, but equally with aggressively independent characters for the same reason. He's also extremely impulsive - less in the sense of spontaneously performing actions, and more thoroughly regarding his choices and choosing to do a thing anyway without considering the consequences - and prone to throwing himself into danger to the point of blatant self-sacrifice. He may well do quite well with an inmate who has a protective streak that needs a focal point.

Deal: To unlink the human world and the Dark World, so no more eldritch creatures can slip between the two.

History: Arthur @ Malevolent Wiki

Sample Network Entry: [It's difficult to tell whether the man on camera realises that he is. He isn't looking at the camera, depite the faint glow of the screen in the obvious dark of his room, and while he's not strictly old there's a weariness and severity to his features that has aged him terribly.]

John hasn't said anything for a while now. I-I don't feel the mask, nearby, and as I believe the door opening may have woken me up... I suppose he's taken his leave for a minute. It's not like he needs to sleep, we already know this about him, so I am... alone.

[There's a soft sigh, and the tablet gets lowered; it's visible on the edge of the screen that he's rubbing his face with his right hand.]

Truly, I am alone. For the first time in... God. Still a week, it feels like, not the five or perhaps even six it is in reality. It's hard to regard a month in a coma as time well spent, though... I am glad something has come out of it for him. Something better than...

...yes.

...he said he has a deal as well. I didn't ask further - given our circumstances, I want him to have the opportunity for privacy. As he does his best to offer it to me, so too is the least I can do offer the same in return. [A bit lighter:] Truthfully he seems quite eager to be here. While the transition to him having his own form has been... somewhat jarring, something about the concept of redemption, o-of helping people find meaning - he takes to it like a fish to water. And he's been quite encouraging that I ought to be able to do the same.

We spoke about what happened, before. But I don't think... no, it's. It's fine. If there's anything he's not telling me, I need only ask. I know this.

Sample RP: TDM Post!

Special Notes: John (greatoldjohn) and Arthur have explicit permission to godmod each other when in a thread together, due to their statuses as Possessor/Possessee. We'll have that in our permissions to keep it clear.