Post by banalitybob on Apr 12, 2010 13:52:48 GMT -7
THE HANDLER
NAME: Johnathan Andrew Harper
NICKNAME: Johnny, Harper, Spook, Casper
CLASSIFICATION: Incorporeal deceased human (aka a ghost or incorporeal psychic entity)
GENDER: Male
AGE & BIRTHDAY: born 4/7/1982, deceased 10/19/2008. Age 28, looks 26.
APPEARANCE:
Johnny is a strapping, athletic looking young man. He stands at 5'9”, weighs in at 151 lbs.(or would if he was alive, but his current form doesn't really have a measurable weight), and had brown hair and blue eyes. The base stats in his Bureau file aside, he has a round, youthful, honest face with a shallow profile, a strong jaw, and a roguish grin. His ears are highly placed, and his hair is shaggy and straight. Johnny's typical facial expression is one of good-natured contentment and he seems to always be moments from a smile, even at the most trying times.
His body is lean and athletically muscled, but not overly defined with light body hair. Johnny moves comfortably and gracefully, obviously used to living in his own skin (or, more accurately, ectoplasm). He has no tattoos or large identifying scars or markings. The scars he does have are typical small ones from an active childhood. As he is now dearly departed, he is incorporal (ghosts typically are) but also scentless and soundless unless he's talking.
ATTIRE:
He wears what he died in: a brown t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and an olive green hoodie. He has black boots on his feet, and that's about it.
PLAY BY: Jonas Armstrong
THE CREATION
NAME: Agent Harper
POWER LIST: Intangibility, Invisibility, Minor Telekinesis
DETAILED POWER:
Being a sort of ghost, his body is made of “psychic stuff” that doesn't interact with anything on the physical plane. As such, he can do nifty things like walk through walls and interact completely with ghosts and the stuff of the spirit realms. His voice is transmitted psychically. The flip side to this is that he can't touch or feel anything corporeal, which tends to suck while he's watching his comrades get the living tar beat out of them and he can't do anything but yell and wave his intangible arms. That is, while he's visible...
Which brings up the next point; ghosts aren't usually visible unless they manifest. Being invisible has its perks, but it can be incredibly inconvenient as well. He can physically manifest, but that requires an energy source. A candle flame, power lines, high emotions, and even body heat will do (obviously the more energy available, the more visible he appears). Ambient static electricity or sucking the heat out of the typical room allows him a slightly see through form most places, and the BPRD complexes typically have enough energy running through them that he can manifest pretty much wherever there.
His third power is also his most dependent on a present energy source. By channeling energy, Johnny can affect physical objects through a form of telekinesis. Now, this doesn't mean he can go lifting people in the air after a big lightning strike or anything. Actually, the most he can do is hit with the equivalency of a punch after a good electric arc or a bunch of people having a nice rage out. Most of the time, he's lucky to be able to push a pencil across a desk off of some good household electrical current.
THE POTENTIAL
ALIGNMENT/OCCUPATION: BPRD Agent
WEAPONS: If the Bureau had a stock of ghost weapons, he'd be able to go around armed. As is, he's unarmed.
PERSONALITY:
Johnny is a genuinely nice guy. He's friendly and charming to most anybody he meets (including the beasties that BPRD agents tend to bump into every now and again) and has a habit of treating even the most casual of his acquaintances as good friends. He's definitely the kind of guy who asks why the 20 foot tall rampaging monster is so upset first and shoot later kind of guy. Johnny is loyal, hardworking, and tends to be one of those guys who takes the weight of the world from other's shoulders without any hope of it getting taken off of his. He has a good set of down home values—stands up for those that need standing up for, chews with his mouth closed, doesn't go out partying all the time, and holds doors for the ladies. That all being said, Johnny isn't the brightest kid ever. He's not dumb, but he wasn't one of those kinds who got academic scholarships (or even a whole lot of “A”s in high school). Johnny is perfectly competent in the general thinking under pressure that BPRD agents have to do as a part of their job, but even then, he's more of the sort of guy who works best when someone is telling him what to do next. Start spouting philosophy or try to get him to make a difficult decision, and he'll be up a very uncomfortable creek without a paddle. He's an action oriented person, wholeheartedly subscribing to the “if you can't do something smart, do something right” school of thought.
Even before death, Johnny was devoted to the BPRD. For one, it let him see things that normal people only dreamed about. Secondly, it let him be a hero and save people, and thirdly, he honestly felt comfortable in the abnormal quasi military atmosphere in the BPRD. It was home, and he loved (and ostensibly still loves) every minute of his job. He's fearless—at least seemingly so—and tends to confront even insurmountable odds with a tenacity and enjoyment that has caused many of his compatriots to doubt his sanity. Now that he's dead, he figures that nothing else can really happen to him, and is just that much more reckless. The problem is that now he's less effective at doing his old job, and this is a constant source of frustration for Johnny. The past two years have helped him adjust to his new state, but the novelty of it has worn off. Where once he was a completely happy go lucky guy, he's been found brooding more than once lately. Frustration has been building, but so far he's been able to transfer it to constructive pursuits such as figuring out how to actually move things with his mind. Still, his psych reports lately have started predicting a breakdown (or meltdown) if he can't make a breakthrough on either moving on or exercising drastically more control over the physical world. He was a man of actions before he went Casper, and now he can't be. Another personality trait that has become more obvious now that he's dead is his stubbornness. Before, he could be quite bullheaded, but he could be reasoned with. Now, once he sets his mind to something, he'll most likely end up doing it. Or at least trying to.
SKILLS: While most of his skills are physically based (and thus not overly applicable anymore due to...lack of a physical body), he still can practice them on ghostly things. He's been trained (like all BPRD agents) in gun usage, basic hand to hand combat, and combat tactics, and he'd had a little extra training on top from the police academy. He's a pretty good outdoors-man too, and has gone on his share of hunting and camping trips in his day.
STRENGTHS: Johnny's a hard worker and a kind guy who has a way of making people trust him—which they should because he's a pretty honest chap too. He is (or was) physically fit and pretty speedy and well coordinated.
WEAKNESSES: He's not the brightest guy, nor overly quick on the uptake, and he tends to bite off more than he can chew and is incredibly stubborn. He also tends to get frustrated easily. Any chance of him interacting physically with the surrounding world is nearly negated by the fact that he's incorporeal all of the time. He also needs a power supply to absorb so that he can be seen at all and use his telekinesis. This doesn't leave the power supply intact. Rooms get cold as he absorbs the heat from them, lights flicker as he absorbs household current, and people tend to start calming down as he feeds on emotional energy. Once the power source disappears, he's invisible and completely unable to move anything in the real world.
THE STORY
HISTORY:
Johnny was born into a small, rural, Ohio family who lived just outside the town of Belleville . His father, Andrew Harper, was a factory worker, his mother, Anne, stayed at home, and he and his younger sister, Liza, were pretty good, active kids. Their house was far enough out of town to have a good size plot of woods, complete with a creek, but close enough for the bus ride to school to be bearable. Johnny grew up pretty much outdoors, running through the woods and fields around his house with his dog, Bester (called that because he was “bester” than other man's best friends) and occasionally a friend or two. The neighbors (over a mile away) had a couple boys around his age. Frankie was a year older and Danny a year younger, but the three of them were best pals—the running term in the Harper household was “thick as thieves.”
Once he was old enough for school, Johnny's parents sent him to the local public school. He did averagely in his academics, getting high enough grades to not stand out and still keep his parents happy but not high enough to put him on any sort of academic fast track. He was a sociable kid and made friends quickly, firmly cementing a place as one of “the cool kids” from an early age. His parents got him involved with sports, realizing that he needed some sort of constructive outlet for his energy. While he wasn't tall enough to do amazingly at basketball, nor big enough for football, he found a suitable sport in soccer, playing it all the way through high school. While he wasn't one of the most popular kids in school, he hung out with them, and was generally viewed as part of the athletic kid clique.
But before straying too far, his home life during his early years bears mentioning. On the surface, it appeared to be something out of a Norman Rockwell painting with a hardworking, loving, all American family with two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence (well, split rail, but...). Under the surface, it was pretty much the same, but a lot more boring. His dad didn't usually come home and toss around the old pigskin with his boy after work. He usually came home dog tired and curled up on the couch with a beer and a ballgame. His mother cooked and cleaned all day, leaving her little time for the kids. Basically, Johnny and his sister were left to their own devices. Of course, that wasn't all bad. They had fun and mostly kept out of trouble.
The same could be said for Johnny's social life as he grew up. Soccer kept him out of trouble after school, and his friends weren't bad kids overall. Sure there were one or two parties here and there, and he wasn't exactly celibate with his girlfriends, but he didn't ever get caught or do drugs. It was mostly just high spirits and youth. High school was pretty even keel with a steady string of average grades, soccer matches, popular girlfriends, and a pretty happy existence.
Upon graduation, he entered the police academy after his guidance councilor suggested that he do so. He didn't mind it. It was good activity, and the sense of doing good was pretty stimulating to Johnny. He graduated, got a job in San Antonio, Texas, moved, and settled into a new life. That is when his life took a turn for the strange. He was one of several officers who responded to a break in at a small museum and found something a bit...bigger than what they expected. The robbers were ten feet tall, jet black, and had the heads of Jackals. Bullets only made them angry, and they took down two of the responding officers before they even really realized what happened.
Luckily, the BPRD had been tracking the creatures, and their team entered the building in the nick of time. The beasties got beaten down in short order, and the “swat team” that came in tried to convince the surviving officers that they really hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary—just a couple guys hopped up on PCP. Most of the officers bought it. Johnny didn't, and looked a little deeper. Of course, he didn't find anything, but it alerted the BPRD to his presence, causing a background check, interview, and hiring.
Johnny spent the last three years of his life as a BPRD field agent, taking down nasties, rescuing artifacts, and finding out about the things that go bump in the night. Where police work had been satiating, this new line of work was actually satisfying. Johnny felt that he was actually doing good and loved his job wholeheartedly. His team joked that if he died in the line of duty, his ghost would stick around just so he could keep being an agent. Little did they know how true those words would be. The Bureau had become his life (actually, his only social life consisted of hanging out with friends from work), but he didn't mind. It was exactly where he needed to be.
Then he died.
It happened like this: He'd headed to his car in the Bureau garage after helping to secure a rather stroppy manticore they'd found in the sewers, when he heard the alarms go off inside the building. He ran back in, gun drawn, and was met head on by the escaping manticore. The sedative had worn off far faster than it should have, and the beastie had taken out a researcher on its way out. Johnny was one of two fatalities that day, and he can tell you that being chomped into and then mauled isn't a good way to go. What happened next, though, is the slightly more fantastic part. Some people say that death had taken a brief holiday. Some say that it just skipped over him (or that he was too stubborn to let a little thing like getting killed stop him). The going Bureau theory is that he was so dedicated to his work that his spirit feels that his work is unfinished. He haunted the place for a few days until he could figure out how to stop being invisible and figure out how to talk, then asked the folks in charge if they could keep him on instead of exorcising him.
So they let him try to move on by keeping on keeping on. Johnny wasn't the first incorporeal agent the Bureau had to deal with, so there was already a little to work with. Ghosts were also a widely researched phenomena, so the BPRD squints were able to classify him and tell him what he could and couldn't do rather quickly. He had training sessions with ghost whisperers and experts on how to use his...abilities, and he did all right. Not great, but all right. He was a bit too impatient and frustrated by his immediate lack of mastery to get it down pat, but after a few months cool down, he started back up with a set jaw. There haven't been leaps and bounds yet, but he's progressed slowly and steadily.
Still, he isn't the backup guy he used to be. The Bureau has sent him on several missions, recognizing his ability to be an effective scout and intel man, but he's frustrated that he can't be as helpful as he once was. Lately, he's been found more than once moping in dark corners of the offices because he can't even do simple things like fill out paperwork anymore.
