Hieronymus Crow | OC | Not Reserved
Monday, 7 April 2014 14:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adventumdesiderioP L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Sheridan
OOC Journal: AdventumDesiderio
Under 18? If yes, what is your age? No.
Email + IM: republicofverja@gmail.com
Characters Played at Ataraxion: None.
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Hieronymus Crow
Canon: Original - Same as http://dogbane.dreamwidth.org/
Original or Alternate Universe: N/A
Canon Point: N/A
Setting: See -> http://dogbane.dreamwidth.org/520.html
History:
The first trade Crow ever made was for its brand new body. Not, that is, that the body itself was new. It was old, in fact - over two-decades old - but not well-kept. Ravaged by deleterious and fairly indiscriminate drug use, the body had lived under the sway of an overriding desire for something else- something which could not be found in the in the vast, anarchic Free Enterprise Zone that stretched outside the high-walled Incorporated Emirates Alexandria Cultural and Recreational District. So Crow, who has an eye for bargains, swept down and cut his body's owner a deal. An answer to his prayers, in exchange for that ill-used body. Like all the best deals, it seemed advantageous to both sides. As his first worshipper - his high priest and avatar - his body's previous owner received the greatest boon of all- the bliss of desire-less and undisturbed sleep. And ever since then, Crow has been the one looking out from behind those eyes.
Unlike the body's previous owner, Crow had wordly ambitions. He cleaned himself up, haggling for what he needed to make himself look half-way respectable and half-way healthy. He worked first as a street vendor - his wares always caught people's eye. In the burrows of the FEZ, in spite of all the desperation, desire was alive and well. It was a good place to be selling things peopled wanted, because even if they stopped needing anything - even while in the most dire need - they still always wanted, and then wanted more. In time Crow's collection of bartered objects and collaterals made him into a de facto pawnbroker, so he negotiated for the space to set up shop. He was robbed with fair regularity, but he inevitably managed to arrange deals with his robbers, turning setback into opportunity. Eventually, when asked to pay protection by local organized crime, Crow actively negotiated an amiable contract, seizing on this as his chance to build contacts with the explicitly criminal world.
Eventually this led him into the tangled thicket of the true black market, the undercurrents that ran beneath the walls, connecting the gleaming affluence of the C&R District to the seething poverty of the FEZ. All the things people wanted without needing - drugs, illicit bioforms, stolen goods - all of it flowed across the most fortified borders. Alexandria in particular, there at the bleeding edge of the Mediterranean, held a thriving trade in art and artifacts, authentic souvenirs for the ultra-rich who came to the to satisfy their Ptolemaic fantasies; the ruin of civilization had made the remnants of what once was very coveted.
If Crow had qualms, he did not display them. He readily ransacked and sold off relics of every shape and size, style and dynasty. There is some chance he simply saw it as a way of dealing with the competition. These days more and more people had been turning up with peculiar gifts and strong ties to the old world- the world the Crow had come from, the world Crow knew about but with which he had so far remained assiduously uninvolved. Crow's cult was not an explicit cult, not a cult of communion or incantation. His communion was act of exchange, his incantation variants on the simple phrase: 'so, what do you want?' He was skilled at passing as an exceptional facilitator, his legerdemain appreciated as merely mundane.
Personality:
Crow isn't a person, it's a spirit, a being both sub- and superhuman. In its natural state, it has no morals with which it can feel conflicted- its morality is the code of its very being, a lived ethics that might not, however, always appear particularly ethical. Crow pursues its own interests by making itself useful to others, employing its powers in their service and gaining sustenance from the ritual of exchange itself. It does not aim to build a cult so much as a network, not a temple as much as a market.
However, inhabiting a body results in certain side-effects- things like persistence of phenomenal experience, a continuous and linear time, pesky stuff like memory, all things to which a disembodied spiritual entity such as itself doesn't usually find itself limited. Living like a human, living as a human, entails a certain becoming human, and so a personality has formed around Crow in a calcification of caricature. When he's not being carefully watchful, he is usually relentlessly amiable, effusive in groups and intent one on one. In the latter case he often attempts to draw his interlocutor into a sense of conspiracy. He thrives on a sense of facilitation, and his relation to his quaerant's wishes is complexly vicarious.
For all that he seeks a position of intimate knowledge and reliance, however, he remains determinedly aloof about himself, in great part because there is so very little to tell. For all that he's human, all too human- his divinity might be his greatest weakness. As his borrowed body testifies, he is nothing without people, and not being a person him- (in truth, it-)self, he is thus wholly reliant on others for affirmation of his being.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
The Crow is a good old-fashioned pagan deity, one that works in concrete ways, taking concrete offerings. A personable kind of spirit, its power is chiefly involved in procuring whatever a quaerant desires- in essence, the granting of wishes. However, even the mightiest divinity is bound by certain rules, if only because the rules constitute the very game they set out to play.
As a splinter of Desire, Crow has the capacity to locate, procure or otherwise produce almost any object, assuming it a.) is being asked formally by a quaerant (this can be either through proper ritual request, contract or even just a hand-shake) b.) the quaerant truly wants the thing they request (rather than simply needing it) and c.) the quaerant can proffer some kind of payment, significant to the quaerant themselves. Crow's power is thus delimited only to personal interactions with others (it cannot conjure things for itself) and only under the possibility of barter (no freebies - everything has its price). If it should so happen that the desired thing is in someone else's possession, then Crow is permitted to barter with the object's owner in similar terms, i.e. he may offer the owner something they want in exchange for the object the initial quaerant desires, but only in order to facilitate the final transaction.
There is no technical limitation on precisely what the Crow can acquire, though the Tranquility's interference would likely prevent the production of anything too dangerous or too large for the ship itself. Otherwise, it is bound only by the possibilities (and interpretations) of desire. There is, however, a catch; the conjured object requires mental energy in order to materially persist. Unless actively sustained by desire - unless thought of, cared for and used - the object inevitably breaks or becomes 'lost'.
Inventory:
[1] wide-brimmed hat
[1] long biege raincoat
[1] grey linen suit
[1] set underclothes
[1] pair patent leather shoes
[1] stun gun with charge sufficient for [100] uses
[1] thermo-lite never-die mini-torch (lasts a lifetime!*)
[1] golden pocket watch with retro wind-mechanism
[1] jeweler's glass
[1] carved ivory opium pipe
[1] bulb of opium latex containing [25] doses
[1] copy of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
*calculated using average Terran lifespan (35 years)
Appearance:
Crow appears as a dark-haired androgyne with olive-toned skin, dark eyes and stubbornly indeterminate ethnicity. A corvidine nose, long and sharp, juts out over a wide, expressive mouth which harbors large teeth. One eye is daubed with khol which rings it, wings it and then forms an arrow down the cheek. A narrow frame disappears into its clothing where it does not jut out at angles.
Age: Physically, 45 years. Spiritually, much older.
AU Clarification: N/A
Log Sample:
"No- transportation isn't the issue. We can get the whole temple to Mars, as long as your people can put it back together."
Crow is on the line with a client. The client is unhappy. Like all Crow's clients, he wants something. He wants it as soon as possible. This is true of any urgent desire- a desire so great it overrides need. Crow imagines that the client is sleepless over this, fretful for every moment the prescribed patch of his extraplanetary estate remains barren.
"That's not the problem- the thing isn't the problem. I worked out the thing with my guy."
Crow thought about that piece of Karnak, perched on edge of the Elysium Planitia. What would that do- what would that mean? Would the gods of that old place choke on its thin air? A feeling in his body's chest- a tightness that feels like the start of a laugh. He takes a long draw of hookah smoke, letting the nicotine tingle compete out the feeling. He exhales just as his client pauses for breath.
"It's just part of how my business works Mr." he then says his client's name, which for strictly defensive legal reasons we cannot disclose, "We have a one in, one out policy. I can get you Karnak. But I'll need an item from your collection- something of yours in exchange."
Bluster. Fluster. Incomprehension. An implication - no, an outright assertion - that he's paying enough already as it is. This is why Crow keeps the video feed off - not for the sake of concealing his identity, which anyhow is manufactured in the first place - so that he can smile discreetly, a mad jackal smile that displays a regiment of large white teeth. Still, his voice approximates sympathy.
"I understand, really I do. But money can't get you everything you want."
Comms Sample:
[ At first the audio speaks alone, a disembodied voice that carries more than a dash of barker's patter. ]
Aeons and angels, germs and gentle-beings...
[ When the video feed snaps on, there's no face - instead there's a row of objects, swooping towards the screen in the smooth motion of a camera flyby.]
I have some exciting specials tonight.
Your Name: Sheridan
OOC Journal: AdventumDesiderio
Under 18? If yes, what is your age? No.
Email + IM: republicofverja@gmail.com
Characters Played at Ataraxion: None.
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Hieronymus Crow
Canon: Original - Same as http://dogbane.dreamwidth.org/
Original or Alternate Universe: N/A
Canon Point: N/A
Setting: See -> http://dogbane.dreamwidth.org/520.html
History:
The first trade Crow ever made was for its brand new body. Not, that is, that the body itself was new. It was old, in fact - over two-decades old - but not well-kept. Ravaged by deleterious and fairly indiscriminate drug use, the body had lived under the sway of an overriding desire for something else- something which could not be found in the in the vast, anarchic Free Enterprise Zone that stretched outside the high-walled Incorporated Emirates Alexandria Cultural and Recreational District. So Crow, who has an eye for bargains, swept down and cut his body's owner a deal. An answer to his prayers, in exchange for that ill-used body. Like all the best deals, it seemed advantageous to both sides. As his first worshipper - his high priest and avatar - his body's previous owner received the greatest boon of all- the bliss of desire-less and undisturbed sleep. And ever since then, Crow has been the one looking out from behind those eyes.
Unlike the body's previous owner, Crow had wordly ambitions. He cleaned himself up, haggling for what he needed to make himself look half-way respectable and half-way healthy. He worked first as a street vendor - his wares always caught people's eye. In the burrows of the FEZ, in spite of all the desperation, desire was alive and well. It was a good place to be selling things peopled wanted, because even if they stopped needing anything - even while in the most dire need - they still always wanted, and then wanted more. In time Crow's collection of bartered objects and collaterals made him into a de facto pawnbroker, so he negotiated for the space to set up shop. He was robbed with fair regularity, but he inevitably managed to arrange deals with his robbers, turning setback into opportunity. Eventually, when asked to pay protection by local organized crime, Crow actively negotiated an amiable contract, seizing on this as his chance to build contacts with the explicitly criminal world.
Eventually this led him into the tangled thicket of the true black market, the undercurrents that ran beneath the walls, connecting the gleaming affluence of the C&R District to the seething poverty of the FEZ. All the things people wanted without needing - drugs, illicit bioforms, stolen goods - all of it flowed across the most fortified borders. Alexandria in particular, there at the bleeding edge of the Mediterranean, held a thriving trade in art and artifacts, authentic souvenirs for the ultra-rich who came to the to satisfy their Ptolemaic fantasies; the ruin of civilization had made the remnants of what once was very coveted.
If Crow had qualms, he did not display them. He readily ransacked and sold off relics of every shape and size, style and dynasty. There is some chance he simply saw it as a way of dealing with the competition. These days more and more people had been turning up with peculiar gifts and strong ties to the old world- the world the Crow had come from, the world Crow knew about but with which he had so far remained assiduously uninvolved. Crow's cult was not an explicit cult, not a cult of communion or incantation. His communion was act of exchange, his incantation variants on the simple phrase: 'so, what do you want?' He was skilled at passing as an exceptional facilitator, his legerdemain appreciated as merely mundane.
Personality:
Crow isn't a person, it's a spirit, a being both sub- and superhuman. In its natural state, it has no morals with which it can feel conflicted- its morality is the code of its very being, a lived ethics that might not, however, always appear particularly ethical. Crow pursues its own interests by making itself useful to others, employing its powers in their service and gaining sustenance from the ritual of exchange itself. It does not aim to build a cult so much as a network, not a temple as much as a market.
However, inhabiting a body results in certain side-effects- things like persistence of phenomenal experience, a continuous and linear time, pesky stuff like memory, all things to which a disembodied spiritual entity such as itself doesn't usually find itself limited. Living like a human, living as a human, entails a certain becoming human, and so a personality has formed around Crow in a calcification of caricature. When he's not being carefully watchful, he is usually relentlessly amiable, effusive in groups and intent one on one. In the latter case he often attempts to draw his interlocutor into a sense of conspiracy. He thrives on a sense of facilitation, and his relation to his quaerant's wishes is complexly vicarious.
For all that he seeks a position of intimate knowledge and reliance, however, he remains determinedly aloof about himself, in great part because there is so very little to tell. For all that he's human, all too human- his divinity might be his greatest weakness. As his borrowed body testifies, he is nothing without people, and not being a person him- (in truth, it-)self, he is thus wholly reliant on others for affirmation of his being.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
The Crow is a good old-fashioned pagan deity, one that works in concrete ways, taking concrete offerings. A personable kind of spirit, its power is chiefly involved in procuring whatever a quaerant desires- in essence, the granting of wishes. However, even the mightiest divinity is bound by certain rules, if only because the rules constitute the very game they set out to play.
As a splinter of Desire, Crow has the capacity to locate, procure or otherwise produce almost any object, assuming it a.) is being asked formally by a quaerant (this can be either through proper ritual request, contract or even just a hand-shake) b.) the quaerant truly wants the thing they request (rather than simply needing it) and c.) the quaerant can proffer some kind of payment, significant to the quaerant themselves. Crow's power is thus delimited only to personal interactions with others (it cannot conjure things for itself) and only under the possibility of barter (no freebies - everything has its price). If it should so happen that the desired thing is in someone else's possession, then Crow is permitted to barter with the object's owner in similar terms, i.e. he may offer the owner something they want in exchange for the object the initial quaerant desires, but only in order to facilitate the final transaction.
There is no technical limitation on precisely what the Crow can acquire, though the Tranquility's interference would likely prevent the production of anything too dangerous or too large for the ship itself. Otherwise, it is bound only by the possibilities (and interpretations) of desire. There is, however, a catch; the conjured object requires mental energy in order to materially persist. Unless actively sustained by desire - unless thought of, cared for and used - the object inevitably breaks or becomes 'lost'.
Inventory:
[1] wide-brimmed hat
[1] long biege raincoat
[1] grey linen suit
[1] set underclothes
[1] pair patent leather shoes
[1] stun gun with charge sufficient for [100] uses
[1] thermo-lite never-die mini-torch (lasts a lifetime!*)
[1] golden pocket watch with retro wind-mechanism
[1] jeweler's glass
[1] carved ivory opium pipe
[1] bulb of opium latex containing [25] doses
[1] copy of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
*calculated using average Terran lifespan (35 years)
Appearance:
Crow appears as a dark-haired androgyne with olive-toned skin, dark eyes and stubbornly indeterminate ethnicity. A corvidine nose, long and sharp, juts out over a wide, expressive mouth which harbors large teeth. One eye is daubed with khol which rings it, wings it and then forms an arrow down the cheek. A narrow frame disappears into its clothing where it does not jut out at angles.
Age: Physically, 45 years. Spiritually, much older.
AU Clarification: N/A
Log Sample:
"No- transportation isn't the issue. We can get the whole temple to Mars, as long as your people can put it back together."
Crow is on the line with a client. The client is unhappy. Like all Crow's clients, he wants something. He wants it as soon as possible. This is true of any urgent desire- a desire so great it overrides need. Crow imagines that the client is sleepless over this, fretful for every moment the prescribed patch of his extraplanetary estate remains barren.
"That's not the problem- the thing isn't the problem. I worked out the thing with my guy."
Crow thought about that piece of Karnak, perched on edge of the Elysium Planitia. What would that do- what would that mean? Would the gods of that old place choke on its thin air? A feeling in his body's chest- a tightness that feels like the start of a laugh. He takes a long draw of hookah smoke, letting the nicotine tingle compete out the feeling. He exhales just as his client pauses for breath.
"It's just part of how my business works Mr." he then says his client's name, which for strictly defensive legal reasons we cannot disclose, "We have a one in, one out policy. I can get you Karnak. But I'll need an item from your collection- something of yours in exchange."
Bluster. Fluster. Incomprehension. An implication - no, an outright assertion - that he's paying enough already as it is. This is why Crow keeps the video feed off - not for the sake of concealing his identity, which anyhow is manufactured in the first place - so that he can smile discreetly, a mad jackal smile that displays a regiment of large white teeth. Still, his voice approximates sympathy.
"I understand, really I do. But money can't get you everything you want."
Comms Sample:
[ At first the audio speaks alone, a disembodied voice that carries more than a dash of barker's patter. ]
Aeons and angels, germs and gentle-beings...
[ When the video feed snaps on, there's no face - instead there's a row of objects, swooping towards the screen in the smooth motion of a camera flyby.]
I have some exciting specials tonight.
