Siren's Pull Character Info

[freeholding]

Player Information

Name: Lucy
Age: 22
AIM Gtalk SN: LuciaZephyr
email: luciazephyr@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes.
Currently Played Characters: none
Conditional: Activity Check Link: n/a
Conditional: Official Reserve Link: n/a

Character Information

General
Canon Source: The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
Canon Format: Book series
Character's Name: John Marcone, AKA: Gentleman Johnny, Baron Marcone, "criminal scumbag".
Character's Age: Never explicitly stated, but likely around mid-forties.

What form will your character's NV take? A non-descript mobile phone, similar to the Blackberry he had back home in Chicago, but without any obvious brand markings.

Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:

John's a vanilla mortal from a world full of wizards and fallen angels and faeries. He is the self-made prince of Chicago, both the mundane criminal side and the supernatural territory, which is officially his Barony. He has clawed his way to the top through a portfolio of cultivated talents.

Natural leadership ability: His exact background is unknown, but Marcone rules over Chicago with an iron fist and keeps such rigorous control over his own people as well as the city's visitors that no one actually wants to overthrow him. He favors order to chaos (leave him alone in a messy room and he'd likely find himself tidying up) and inspires loyalty easily in his people. In White Night, he's shown leading a strike team with undeniable grace and calm.

Combat skill: Marcone is familiar with various types of firearms and when headed for battle, suits up in a manner not unlike a SWAT agent. He compensates for having no inherent magical power with commissioned tokens and talismans, and sometimes just wins out against the bigger fish in the pond through sheer firepower. For example, sawing a nigh-invulnerable fallen angel in half with a Kalashnikov. Also, he favors throwing knives and keeps several hidden on his person and has bull's-eye accuracy even when tied up, hanging upside down, in the middle of the night.

Self-determination: Marcone's defining characteristic, to be elaborated on below. Marcone has an unnerving amount of control over himself and his reactions, to a point that seems inhuman. Nothing rattles him, and he has very, very few tells. If you think you've detected something hidden in his expression, it's probably because he wanted you to.

Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them?

A hugely important aspect of Marcone's personality is that he is vanilla mortal. Giving him an ability that betrays that would frankly ruin the point of the character. Instead, I'd like to give him the power of anonymity. When he wants to be hidden, it becomes hard for someone's eyes to focus on him. When he's quietly making a getaway, people forget to check on him for an extra minute. Everything he wears becomes part of a costume: his finely-tailored suit is enough to get him in the door at posh establishments. A non-descript jacket makes him fade out of perception everywhere else. He can make the anonymity stronger with a little focus (becoming able to evade police or security guards), but it only applies to him, and it's never unbreachable.

Weapons:

Marcone has several knives hidden on his person, tucked away in such obscure spots, a trained FBI agent couldn't locate them all. In a custom ankle holster, he carries a pistol, which he does have a permit for. The silencer is somewhat less legal in his home state of Illinois.

History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: No full run-down exists anywhere, so I wrote one up here. Apologies for length.

Point in Canon: Post-Small Favor and Even Hand.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: n/a

Character Personality:

So there once was a boy who lost faith in everything but his city and decided to become a monster to save everyone else the trouble.

That is the short version.

John Marcone is a self-made prince with money green eyes and a tiger's smile. He is defined by one thing above all else: self-determination. There is a story being told in the city of Chicago, and he saw the part that was missing from the narrative, and he stepped up to fill it. When Chicago needed a polite, neat monster to quiet her crime and guide her through rough waters, Marcone decided to fill that space. He loved his city so much, he cut off the parts of him that did not fit his chosen task and was content.

Marcone is the head of the Chicago Outfit. He operates in such a way that even the Chicago PD is reluctant to remove him from power. He controls crime with an iron fist, ruthlessly eradicating any competition and imposes his own order on the city. That order happens to involve rules like 'no children are to be preyed on or sold to' and 'keep collateral damage to a minimum.' Anyone who doesn't follow his rules doesn't survive long in the city.

He is extremely efficient and very deadly, both in the power he wields and in his capacity for personal violence. He's capable of amassing resources quickly, applying them where they most need to be, and if it comes down to needing one more gunhand, he is certainly able.

Marcone is very enterprising, and since his introduction in the books has steadily grown in influence until managing to become the only vanilla mortal to sign onto the Unseelie Accords (see History). This makes him among the most powerful humans in the world, and he wears it well.

To his view, crime will always exist and people will always be scrambling for power they shouldn't have. It is best to be the top dog because he's the most magnanimous about it. Better him than someone with less scruples.

That's the surface of the character. That's the role he plays. That is the catch though: Gentleman Johnny, head of the mob and Baron of Chicago, is a role to play. And John plays it well enough no one thinks there is anything else underneath.

While the role demands him to be someone comfortable with wealth and conspicuous consumption, John himself came from a poor family and doesn't much care for the Gold Coast lifestyle. While the role demands him to speak in a manner most genteel and proper, you can bet it was learned from newscasters and films. The role demands a calm, unshakeable presence of character, but John's patron is fucking Odin and his city is overrun by succubi who control the porn industry and a fallen angel tried to kill him, mother of Christ.

Marcone's been playing this role for years now, and he's made it his lot in life. There are only a few things that shake him from it, usually either a wizard named Dresden or a comatose girl named Amanda. Only Harry Dresden and John's right-hand man, Nathan Hendricks, know about the John under the armor.

Under the armor, John misses when life was simpler. He misses being a James Dean wannabe with a leather jacket and a bad attitude. He misses being able to walk through Chicago and being just another face. He sometimes misses being the man, not the self-proclaimed monster.

The armor isn't perfect at all. On several occasions, John has shown himself to have (gasp!) emotions and feelings. His greatest weakness is Dresden, who has literally seen John's soul, and who uses that knowledge to knock John off his game. He can make John show mercy and can appeal to his better angels at times. And in return, John is obsessive about Dresden to a frightening degree. He completely believes that their stories are intertwined and has made extremely thorough plans to kill Dresden should a final showdown come to pass. But in a way, Dresden is the only person John trusts; when two people know each other that deeply, even if they're enemies, they have an understanding.

He's motivated by the usual gambit of emotions: selfishness, mercy, guilt. He's simply set things up in such a way he can find alternate motives for everything, thus making his actions acceptable in his mind. He's not going to help Dresden because they have years of history and trust behind him; he's going to help him because the man is more useful alive than dead. That's the sort of thing John tells himself to ignore his own crippling sentimentality.

I like to tell people that John is a ridiculous human being. Whether the facts agree with him or not, he believes he is somehow The Only One who can save his city. He's a bit of a pretentious git, but also he's a terrifying exemplar of the power of free will. While plenty of monsters want to play with humans and plenty of wizards pretend to understand humanity, John-- born with free will and the ability to determine his own true nature-- decided to become a monster.

Conditional: Personality development in previous game: n/a
Character Plans:

Complicated. Obviously his city and barony needs him and will fall apart without him. His presence is needed. But with the two factions of SP violating his deeply-held moral code, he will likely go it alone and raise up his team.

As the reality of the situation settles into him, he'll be given a strange opportunity: to stop being Gentleman Johnny. To live in a city that he has no love for and bend it to his will like he once did as a young punk. That internal struggle is what I most want to explore: the duty vs the temptation.

Appearance/PB:

John's middle-aged, athletic, and poised. He looks just as good in a suit as he does in a beat-up bomber jacket and jeans. He always looks perfectly at ease with his age and attire. Called "blandly handsome", he's nonetheless very charismatic. His defining characteristics are pale green eyes (the color of "old money" or "dead grass"), dark hair streaked heavily with pepper, and an ear that's been torn apart, an injury he wears proudly.

For icons, I tend towards non-face shots. When I need a PB, I use multiple actors, including Jim Cavizel and Gabriel Macht.

Writing Samples

First Person Sample

[000 - voice]

Let me see if I have this correct. [It is a man's voice, level and even in the sort of way you tend to only hear from people on the news. It's almost boring in its blandness. A cop would describe it as "non-descript." None of you are police, are you? Not that John has anything but respect for the boys and girls in blue, of course.]

A city isolated from the rest of the world. Persons with... shall we say extraordinary abilities are commonplace. Two groups encompassing most of the business done here.

And something called the Pull.

It's all very mysterious, I give you, and any other day, I would be willing to devote serious resources to demystifying some of these enigmas.

But for now, I have to ask: does anyone here have knowledge of the Ways? I assure you I can make it worth your while.

[A pause, as John considers leaving it at that... But no, not quite.]

Though, if I have been taken by another Accorded entity, know that this will be taken as an act of war whether I am present or not. Return me home, and we can talk restitution and forgiveness. Delay, and my generosity will fade.

[Click.]

Third Person Sample

This is no time for panic. There is no need to be anything but calm. This is no worse than waking up on Demonreach, and this time he hasn't been stripped and bound. Things could doubtlessly be worse.

Fine. One minute, here in a dusty, dank alleyway. You get one minute.

John walks out a minute later, bruises on his knuckles, poise restored.

It is a city on an island. The ports are closed and there is no flight to be found. Gard isn't answering his summons and so far he's run into no one with knowledge of the Ways.

What a strange thing, being separated from Chicago. When someone gunned for him or elected to take him out, he didn't think they'd just dump him far from home and hope he wouldn't un-strand himself.

Best get to that. Nathan can only hold down the fort for so long.

What do you have?

A ridiculously expensive tailored suit, Italian leather shoes, seven knives, one pistol, one lightly-used suppressor, silver cuff links, a series of credit cards that don't work, identification from another country, and around 300 dollars American.

What do you need?

Chicago. Answers. Protection. In that order.

John steels himself with a slow breath and sets off, a plan of action already forming in his mind.