//Since we're dragging this thing back outta semi-retirement, figure it ain't gonna hurt anything for me to give a little bit of an introduction to who and what Cypher is. We got a post here about why he's designed the way he is, but some things are a little outta date.
Cypher is a sinner demon, first off. He's an AU version of a muse from a wildly different show. He's the Hellaverse version of Danny Holt from the BBC's London Spy miniseries. (That's why he's got a real person - Ben Whishaw - as a faceclaim.) Danny was a guy with a real bad past who was trying to put his life back together and got dragged into the seedy underbelly of the shadow world of espionage. He's damaged. Like... real fucking deep issues. But he's trying.
Cypher's a sinner demon who died in 2021. He's a roe deer demon. He ain't based on Alastor, though. Completely unrelated, actually. His demon form's based on his daemon from a HDM-fusion 'verse we had for him on an old canon blog we ran for him. He looks largely human, though. But he's got antlers, deer ears, deer legs, a deer tail, and numbers carved around his wrists and neck. That has to do with his backstory, too.
As for abilities, he can run and jump really well and he's a walking lie detector. He can tell when anyone is lying to him. We nerfed his ability when we first made this AU, but we've decided he's not OP with it as it was originally meant. He died 'cause of a whole thing with a guy he was dating creating a lie detector that actually worked. Danny died protecting it from falling into the hands of any sorta government or intelligence agency. He was trying to do good there. And it killed him.
Cypher tried to get better in life. He ended up homeless as a teenager and got swept up into addiction and prostution. But when he was 19, he hit rock bottom and started trying to claw his way out of the pit he'd ended up in. Before the whole lie detector mess, he had a job in a warehouse and a flat he shared with a roommate. He still did drugs sometimes and he still went out and partied. He wasn't perfect, but he was trying to get his shit together.
After everything that happened to him in life, he's got walls like fucking Fort Knox. He's real fucking guarded and he can be abrasive. But underneath the prickly exterior, he's a gentle soul. He's had to build walls, 'cause if he'd let himself be soft, he would've died in his teens. And he's paranoid as fuck 'cause of everything, but especially being hunted by the global intelligence forces for the last 7 years of his life while MI6 killed him slowly and painfully.
But he takes the hotel 100% seriously. He's there 'cause he wants to improve. It started off as a safe place, 'cause he's always looking for that. But he wants to be better. All he ever wanted was to be better. The universe is just fucked up and cruel. So if he thinks he's got a shot at getting better, he'll take it.
