Full name & known aliases: Dolus Mendacius
Faction: Pontius.
Occupation: Cybersecurity specialist
Age: 28
Gender & pronouns: Nonbinary, they/he
Faceclaim: Justice Smith
Can be seen: Hacking Pontius’s P.A. system to blast pop music, brainstorming penetration-themed jokes, coding in his room, sneaking into the AI laboratories after hours, pitching ideas to Poseidon, leaving his parents voicemails.
Influence ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Charisma ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Protection ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Information ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Experience ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
He always believed himself too big, too important for the little island he grew up on. His talent would be wasted, he was certain, if he grew up to take over his parents’ fishery. Over the years, their neighbors left for the cities as Pontius claimed their land for development or were driven out by flooding that Dolus’s parents swore was purposeful - and yet the Mendacius family stayed, standing resolute against forces larger than themselves. Stuck in the past, if you listen to Dolus. Meanwhile, Dolus was fixated on the future. And the future was not on this little island. It was out there, on Pontius.
Of course, Dolus had no real say in where he lived - children rarely do. So he stayed on the island with his parents. He helped them with the family business and he took a boat to the public school on a larger island nearby and, somewhere along the way, he decided that if he couldn’t go to the future, he would bring the future to him. Naturally, when he was twelve, he stole one of his school’s laptops.
It was old and half-broken already. Looking back, Dolus might describe it as something that belonged in the junkyard rather than a school. Really, he was doing them a favor by taking it. But it was his connection to the world beyond the Aegean Archipelago. After Pontius, it was his second love.
He spent long nights hiding in his bedroom closet on his computer, so as not to be found out by his parents. There, he discovered a whole new existence. He met people who understood him better than his own family ever could. Through them, he learned about hacking. He found the very concept thrilling. Immediately, he set to learning how to program. His friends called him a prodigy. His parents, who eventually figured out where all his extra money was coming from, called him a criminal, certain to get them all in trouble. Neither description was wrong, but Dolus certainly preferred one over the other.
Pontius wasn’t a job. If asked, he might say it was activism, trying to stick it to the big guy. Really, he just wanted to prove that he could. He was twenty when he hacked into the ship’s navigational system, bringing the entire thing to a halt - one that was fixed within the hour, but a breach nonetheless. I can’t be sure what Dolus expected to happen, but Poseidon offering a job offer certainly hadn’t been among his predictions. He seized the opportunity to escape his home. In the process, he broke his parents’ hearts. The price of progress, or so he tells himself.
So Dolus went to Pontius, and he never looked back. Through the eight years he’s worked there, he’s climbed the ranks - from one of many pentesters to one of the ship’s most respected cybersecurity specialists, catching hackers and keeping the ship running smoothly. And now that he’s achieved everything he’s ever dreamed of, he finds himself wanting more. Simply advancing within the ranks of cybersecurity wouldn’t be enough for him. He looks at Poseidon and craves the power and respect that he has, the ability to shape the world in his own image. Slowly, idolatry has morphed into something with a bitter tinge. While Pontius was once the goal in itself, the shining ship on the horizon, he sees it now as little more than a stepping stone to a throne.
Familial Connections: None (for now)
Professional connections: Poseidon (employer, total nerd (honorific)), Circe (superior, bitterly jealous of her position), Hermes (co-worker, great hacker when he wants to be), Aphrodite (fun to be around), Hephaestus (total nerd (derogatory), fun to mess with), Patroclus (easy to bully), Scylla (fascinating work, sensitive about being hacked).
Social connections: Theseus & Mino (helped them on a job once, cool dudes), Dion (has the coolest products), Zeus (caught them hacking Rheseq once, scary dude), Alecto (a strangely familiar face).
ORIGINAL CHARACTER WRITTEN BY ROWAN.
