Heya, Ally! That was a beautifully written application and we can’t wait to see what you do with Pablo. Super excited to be RPing with you again!
Please make sure to follow everyone on our masterlist, our gossip blog and our lore/sideplot blog. Follow the tags for announcements, starters, follows & unfollows, as well as events. Also, make sure that your submit is activated for OOC chat link purposes.
OOC Info.
Name: Ally
Age: 18
Preferred Pronoun: she / her
Timezone: EST
Activity Scale (1-10): 7, I will likely be able to check daily but I go to school full time and have a job so sometimes time is tight. As much as I want to, I won’t always be able to provide daily replies.
IC Info.
Character Name: Pablo Perez
Sexuality: Homosexual
Your reason for choosing this character: His troubled past is compelling and I’m interested to see where it takes him as it unravels in the future. I also think his connections have great potential.
Your interpretation of the character: A mature, stoic, and deeply faithful man thanks to his past. However, he’s probably not braced for what lies ahead of him.
Sample Paragraph:
The July night is hot when Pablo starts awake, the breath in his chest feeling like it is clenched by a determined fist. Sweat rolls its way down his shoulders and neck, budding on his temples. He’s shocked into immobility for a brief moment, still and quiet after jerking into consciousness. He can feel the quivering in his fingers, the too-empty space on his wrist reminding him of what he’s lost. What he’s lost. His jaw clenches at that, the visions of his nightmare teasing at the corners of his thoughts, tireless in their constant pursuit. With a sharp head shake, he rises, breaking the paralysis that wakefulness had forced upon him. Dark eyes dart to the clock beside his bed, a crease of frustration forming between them as he takes in the glowing red numbers. 5:12. At least half an hour until sunrise.
Knowing the routine by now, Pablo makes no attempts at returning to sleep. His steps are quick as he paves a route through his apartment, quickly flicking on each light switch on his way through, allowing for no pockets of darkness. His eyes rake briefly over a wall of photos as a floorboard creaks under his weight, and his thoughts wander to the store below his apartment, dark other than one hall light, the door triple-locked and checked four times. He pauses to adjust a crooked photo, unable to help the small quirk of his lips as he looks at the photo of his smiling mother. Not one to dwell, Pablo moves forward, pushing through a curtain into his kitchen, flicking on the light.
The clock ticks almost obnoxiously above the old, whirring refrigerator, reminding him that the moon still holds residence in the sky, at least for now; the night was cloudy, the moon a mere haze through his window. His coffee burns as he swallows it but Pablo merely blinks, clearing his throat once but otherwise not disturbing the silence. The stairs down to the store groan under his weight, and rather than hitting the light switches one at a time, he swipes them upwards in a nearly hasty movement, illuminating the time-worn shelves of the general store. Pablo stands in place for a moment, observing the store he’s grown so familiar with. Once he’s reassured that nothing is out of place, he makes his way to his true destination.
The room is small, a closet off of the large back room of the store. It’s a fine size, though, for an altar. After illuminating the tall white candle before him, Pablo takes to his knees, slowly crossing himself before he begins to speak:
“¡Oh glorioso San Benito, modelo sublime de todas las virtudes, vasija pura de la gracia de Dios! Miradme, humildemente arrodillado a tus pies. Imploro tu amoroso corazón para orar por mí ante el trono de Dios. A ti recurro en todos los peligros que me rodean diariamente.”
And so that is how the morning begins: with a man quietly praying for protection as the sun rises above him.
Welcome Hillary! We are happy that you are joining us in Soulstream. Isaac is definitely a great addition to the RP (and our first Tuner OC!) We are excited to see how being a deaf Tuner would be played, and how his plot will progress. Please make sure to follow everyone on our masterlist and our gossip blog. Follow the tags for announcements, starters, follows & unfollows, as well as events. Also, make sure that your submit is activated for OOC chat link purposes.
OOC Info.
Name: Hillary
Age: 25
Preferred Pronoun: she/her
Timezone: EST
Tumblr Contact Info: persephoning.tumblr.com
Activity Scale (1-10): (please add an explanation) 6/10, as I’m a working adult and sometimes the muse just isn’t there.
IC Info. Original Character
Character Name: Isaac Morgenstern
Age: 30
Character Type: Tuner
True Name: “Panacea”
FC: Bob Morley
Sexuality: Pansexual
Date & Place of Birth: February 1st, 1987
Occupation: Medical Researcher
Family:
Sarah Morgenstern (adoptive mother)
Tania D’Angelo (adoptive mother)
Connections: I spoke at length with Admin Rhi about a close friendship between Isaac and Miguel Soto, but whether or not that would/should be on his bio is up to her entirely.
Background:
What he would want to make clear (in the conversation he never has, in the explanation that he dreads giving) is that he always has the consent of the people that he takes on as vessels once his latest has started to buckle under the wear and tear of his abilities. Isaac is an old Tuner, he has long since lost count of the years that he has existed, but he remembers the people who have given him their lives to use as his own, even if their names have melted into memory and he only has tiny fragments of the lives of the oldest left. He has their consent and often their sympathy, as he has never taken on a vessel without befriending them first, and it is, in his experience, quite difficult to say no to someone you consider a friend when they’re explaining to you the many ways in which they are dying. What clinches it is that he has always worked in the medical field one way or another, and he has always taken vessels who do the same, counting on the camraderie of the battlefield, the hospital, or the clinic to bind them further.
It makes things easier, both on them when the time comes for him to reveal his gifts and make his case, and on himself, when he has time to reflect on the number of lives he has taken over in his time. Isaac Morgenstern is one such life, a pre-med student at a local university that he befriended ten years ago when his last vessel was fading from overuse. There are some among his kind who prefer to take from the restless or from those who had been seeking to end their lives, but Panacea convinced Isaac on three fronts: curiosity, generosity of spirit, and guilt of the highest order. In truth, he might have lied to the boy a little. He had no way of knowing if the transfer of Isaac’s body to his soul would reverse his deafness, and so it was lucky that that boy had no way of knowing otherwise once the deed was done and the Name was merged with himself. Isaac has done far more healing and twice as much good since then as he could have as a plain mortal, and it is that fact that he clings to when their own guilt starts to nag at them. True, he had misused his vessel that last time and burned their energy too far and too fast, but the lives that he had saved by doing so, they were worth something, weren’t they?
On the whole, he tries not to think about it at all. He keeps his adoptive mothers at a comfortable distance, with occasional uncomfortable phone calls to bridge the thousands of miles that he has put between them since taking over his life ten years ago. It was easier to be around them when he was freshly reborn, when Isaac’s memories reigned supreme in this vessel’s mind, but those days have long gone by now. He thought it best to leave after graduation, to dart across the country and create a new Isaac in a new place, with just enough of a veneer of the old to please the women who gave him access to the boy’s trust fund. The people of Port Ashborne know a different Isaac to that of the people who knew him in his younger years, but there are enough similiarities between the Tuner and the man that he could pass if he were so unlucky as to bump into an old school friend or distant relative. That isn’t too difficult, but communicating with spirits?
That was exceptionally difficult to finagle after centuries of being able to hear and speak to them at will. There were a lot of very frustrated souls in the beginning, quite a few thrown objects and scrawled messages on the floor of his dorm room in Sharpie when he tried to ignore them for a time. Since then he’s learned to adapt, there are whiteboards left all over his apartment for their use and his, as well as a tablet computer that he carries around to help him communicate with the less dead members of society. He isn’t as fast as he used to be, as far as his Tuner duties to the Soulstream go, but his healing ability continues unimpeded. After all, you don’t need to hear or speak to a person to see that they’re injured, even though he doesn’t actively seek out mortals to heal anymore. This too shall pass, this vessel too shall decay and be worn down by the demands of his ability, but until then, he’s satisfied with where and whom he is for right now.
Additional Information:
When stressed or sleepless (though most often both), Isaac has a habit of getting up in the wee hours of the morning to bake or cook, often in the sort of quantities that even his chest freezer can’t handle. He feels that it helps him untangle problems, for there is comfort to be found in the completion of that task. It’s also something that doesn’t really require him to think, and so the rhythmic nature of cooking can help him force a solution out of his mind. It helps him bond with his coworkers as well, being a constant source of free lasagna or brownies.
Since he isn’t actually practicing medicine this time around, Isaac finds that he spends more time than usual working with spirits of the dead and guiding them back to the Soulstream. That’s more difficult these days, but he found that learning how to jump those hurdles improved his ability to communicate with the living as well. Isaac himself could passably lip read and knew ASL before he became a Tuner, though it’s far easier to type or write. He carries a tablet with him always for this purpose.
Personality:
In truth, Isaac isn’t all that sure anymore where his True self, his Tuner self, and the personality of his vessel ends. By nature he is kind and gentle, but he can also be harshly pragmatic and selfish when needs must. He will burn the lives of his vessels down faster than average to heal those who need it, but he also will actively target those he befriends in order to find a proper vessel for the time when his own starts to fail. The continuation of his work, of his healing and his shepherding of the souls of the dead back to the Stream, that is far more important to him than the autonomy of most any other mortal. (Whether or not this is a fear of the void, the death that would come if he didn’t so carefully plan out his future vessels, remains to be seen.) If the situation requires it, he has no problem with using guilt and his keen observation skills to manipulate someone to get his way.
Skills:
Like his true name implies, Isaac can heal almost any wound from the minor to the grievous by touch and focus alone, but there are limitations. He can’t heal his own vessel, and the healing he does is wholly dependant on the energy of that vessel. If he’s careful and doesn’t use more energy than his vessel could possibly take in by eating or sleeping in one day, he doesn’t damage their bodies, but that is an art that he has yet to master. As it stands now, he tends to use his vessels up far earlier than others of his kind and thus shortens their lifespans with every person he heals. His rationale is that his healing is in fact a thousand times more effective than any healing that those healthcare workers that are his preferred vessels could have managed themselves, and that with the hours that the average healthcare worker puts in every week, he’s only increasing the pace at which they wear themselves down. Or so he tells himself.
Isaac Morgenstern was of average build when he became a Tuner, but like many Tuners, he’s stronger than average and has better reflexes, sharper senses (except hearing of course). However, he doesn’t heal as quickly as some of them do. Faster than a mortal, but not as fast as some, which he thinks might just have something to do with the machinery of his ability. Not the worst thing in the world.
Since the vast majority of his past selves have worked in medicine or healing, Isaac is exceptionally skilled at his chosen profession, and would be more obviously so to others if he still practiced face to face. This vessel’s limitations have made that rather impossible though, and though that is somewhat disappointing, it does mean that he isn’t using his healing as much as he used to.
Sample Paragraph:
He could have borne the rattling of the dishes, the occasional angry message scrawled on the kitchen counter in ketchup as he tried to grapple with the ghost that had invited itself into his new apartment, but waking up at three in the morning because it had decided to turn on all the taps in his bathroom to the point that there was an inch of water on the floor was a tad too far. Isaac had left notes, he had encouraged the ghostly young woman to use the large rolling whiteboard in the living room to tell him what it was that was keeping them here on Earth, but this one had refused to follow his directions at every turn. That and the bill he received from the plumber later on made it clear that he had to take some more drastic measures to ferry this soul back to the Stream. At the Target later that day he bought groceries, fresh dry erase markers, and of all things, a Ouija board. They could yell all they liked (and he knew they were yelling, the vibrations were unmistakable even if that was all he could pick up on), but if they lost him his security deposit, he was going to be pissed.
The rattling started again as he was finishing up with putting groceries away, and Isaac made a vague disgruntled noise as he shut the refrigerator. A friend at work had recommended an app that would take text and make it into a computerized voice, but he set the Ouija board out on the kitchen island as well. Better to be overprepared than not at all, as far as he was concerned. Something must have worked though, for not thirty seconds after he had typed ‘I know what you are, but I’m deaf, so yelling isn’t going to help either of us’, the plate that had been levitating behind him fell into the sink with a splintering crash as the girl glared at him. ‘You’re going to have to write on the board or use this stupid game to talk to me’ got him an icy breath of air on the back of his neck, but ‘You can’t move on unless you talk to me’ finally made her pick up the dry erase marker. If this worked, he was going to have to bake Minh a small bakery’s worth of stuff, but it would be worth it.
At first he was relieved to see that she was writing on the whiteboard, but then? Then he was disheartened, if not actively upset by the contents of what was written there in harsh red letters. ‘What if I don’t want to move on? What if I’m afraid?’ the ghost’s message read, and Isaac sighed as he slid off of the kitchen stool that he had been sitting on earlier. Tablet in hand, he erased what had been written before and tried to type out an answer. There honestly wasn’t a good answer to those questions, not one that he wouldn’t have to sweeten and frame as carefully as possible. ‘We all are, one way or another’ the tablet said, and then Isaac erased the message so that he could continue the conversation. Maybe a little truth would help here, and so he typed out ‘Even me’ before tapping the play button once more. ‘This isn’t your world anymore, but I can tell you about the world that is. And I can take you there, once we’re done.’ The pause that followed that statement seemed to go on forever, and for a moment Isaac thought she had been scared off by the very idea of being helped along. He was just about to drop his tablet on the counter in defeat when the ghost scrawled ‘Okay’ on the board. He could work with that, and maybe, just maybe he could get them out of here before they entirely destroyed the apartment. Maybe was good enough for now.
Hey Eva! We can’t say how much we like Jonathan (it’s a lot), we think he’s a great character! It’ll be really interesting to see how his Psychometry comes into play with the rest of the characters. Please make sure to follow everyone on our masterlist and to follow the tags for announcements, starters, follows & unfollows, as well as events. Also, make sure that your submit is activated for OOC chat link purposes. Congratulations and we can’t way to see you play him!
OOC Info
Second Character App
IC Info. Original Character
Character Name: Jonathan “John” Preston
Age: 39 years old
Character Type: Human
True Name: “Truth”
FC: Christian Bale
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Date & Place of Birth: September 2nd, 1977 / Surrey, England
Occupation: Lieutenant at Port Ashborne Police Department
Background:
Jonathan Preston never truly had a place to call home while growing up. In fact, nothing about his childhood was very common or ordinary. He lost his mother at a very early age, when Margaret Preston ended her own life losing her battle against depression. All it took was a bottle of sleeping pills and then she was gone. At three years of age something like that is quite difficult to grasp for a kid so all Alaric explained to his son was that mommy was gone. For a while the kid missed his mother, of course, but he could barely grasp the notion of his mother’s suicide. Eventually she was just a vague memory, and not one he could evoke to the present because his father never spoke of her. For quite a while it was just the two of them, moving constantly from one place to the next. Whatever houses they lived in were just transitory settlements, the schools Jonathan was enrolled in were just temporary so the boy never truly got to make any close friends. Sooner or later the time came to pack up his things once more and leave everything behind. He had no ties to a hometown, no childhood friends to remember, no particular accent to distinguish his origin. His upbringing effectively stripped the boy of any cultural and personal identity. He was just the son of a diplomat, following his father across the globe to whatever place he was sent. Alaric Preston called himself a citizen of the world because of his profession, but Jonathan saw the situation under a very different light: he didn’t belong anywhere.
A man of class and worldly background, it was no surprise that Alaric eventually remarried to the New York socialite Anna Marie Hardwick. They were a match made in heaven in all accounts and quickly became the high class couple that most magazines wrote about in an almost idolizing manner. His father’s travelling diminished after that which was appreciated by Jonathan, who eagerly seized the chance to finally take root somewhere. The teen struggled with his new situation, however, since having been placed in the upper echelons of society meant there was a code of conduct to follow and high standards to meet. Jonathan got used to being quiet and to never be a nuisance to his parents or anyone else during cocktail parties, or at the formal events he was taken to because of his father’s position. Being on his own became something he got used to in such instances, which wasn’t all bad, really. He became quite good at studying people, reading deeper into their body language, analyzing environments. He became rather good at picking up behavioral subtleties and developed a genuine interest for understanding why people behaved a certain way through the study of psychology. He started learning on his own, sticking his nose in every book he could get on the topics of his interest. It was around that time that a rare occurrence took place and images played out in his mind when flipping through the pages. He got glimpses of the tree that was cut down to later be turned into paper, images of the man typing on his computer the very words he was reading. He was only sixteen at the time and didn’t talk to anyone about what had happened even if similar events took place when touching other random objects. Researching into it he discovered that what he was experiencing was called Psychometry, which allowed him to gain historical memories and sensations from objects.
During high school he picked the elective class of psychology and that was when he first stumbled upon the concept of law enforcement through applied psychology. That just clicked for him. Majoring in law enforcement with a psychology minor would give him the necessary tools to actually do something useful with his knowledge, with his skills and the information his Psychometry allowed him to get. His family opposed to his career choice, which both his dad and his step-mother saw as something that was beneath ‘people like them’. He even got an ultimatum from his father not to pursue such ambitions because it would mar the family name in some way. The young man has lost almost all contact with his family since then because he went ahead to become a police officer. Amongst his colleagues he started to be called John instead of Jonathan, a change that the man embraced. A new name for a new life he was starting, for the first time entirely in his control and not depending on someone else’s agenda or meeting somebody else’s standards.
Things went quite well for him for a while, moving up the ladder because of his work. He passed through various precincts in various states, gaining better jobs and earning himself an impeccable reputation going from officer to detective and eventually earning himself a position in Port Ashborne’s Police Department as Sergeant. Through work he met Claire Beaumont, the lawyer who collaborated with John and his partner to solve a case. She was the most spirited and clever woman he had ever met and she quickly had him falling madly in love with her. Two years into a relationship they got married and welcomed a daughter soon after. Norah became his world, so much that he was willing to tear down his own marriage to keep his little girl save. Claire had always been the type of person that indulges in a glass of wine every night at dinner. Soon enough the stress at work had her drinking two glasses and everything spiraled down from there. John was willing to picture a positive outcome, to work with his wife to go through it all and overcome the problem. When Claire was arrested for driving under the influence when she went to pick up Norah from kindergarten John knew that was the last straw. There had been minor incidents in the past but endangering their own daughter wasn’t something he could simply overlook so he filed for a divorce. The custody battle turned quite hostile and deteriorated what was left of his relationship with Claire. The court usually favors the mother to keep the child, but a law enforcer with a spotless record sounded like a safer bet for Norah than an alcoholic mother so John got to keep his little girl with him. For the past two years it has been just him and Norah, with his ex-wife getting visitations on the weekends.
Additional Information:
1) Despite being English there is no trace of a British accent in the way he speaks. He lived very briefly in England and given all the moving that he and his father did while John was growing up, he never adopted what should have been his native accent. He was a neutral American accent.
2) John was appointed Lieutenant at Port Ashborne’s Police Department little over a year ago. He supervises the Homicide and Narcotics Units.
3) Besides his non-supernatural skills, John relies on his Psychometry to unveil the truth behind the cases he works on.
4) You don’t have to add this one, this is just me rambling about my baby. So his True Name is “Truth” because it made a lot of sense to me that someone who investigates homicides would have the kind of skills he’s developed (and what he’s learned through his studies of applied psychology) to be able to read others and tell whether or not they’re lying. He’s good at spotting the truth or the lies in others. Plus his work with the police involves ‘truth seeking’ to solve a case. So yeah, that was my reasoning behind his True Name :3
Connections: Idk if you guys would like me to add Wil McKay and Mike Miles? Since they work together at PAPD.
Personality:
John is a very task-oriented and assertive person. He has a strict personality when it comes to his work, being quick to issue orders and expecting them to be followed with no questions asked. He isn’t a totalitarian authority, however, relying on the capability of his colleagues and subordinates, open to listen and accept their opinions and suggestions. A lot of people put trust in him and his unit, it’s up to him to be the lighthouse others turn to so he can’t afford to ever falter or doubt. He understands the value of his position and how he is meant to be much more than just a competent leader which is why John can be a little hard on himself given the high-performance standards to which he subjects himself. As abstract as it may sound, he is devoted to truth and justice. Civilians benefit from both of those ideals when they are achieved, so he endeavors to make right by them when working on a case. He doesn’t like to leave room for mistakes or unresolved issues regarding his work, which is why he can become a bit obsessive when seeking the truth behind homicides. Outside of work he is slightly more laid-back and approachable, though he doesn’t really open up to others unless they have earned his trust. John rarely talks about the way of life he had before getting into law enforcement, it’s a series of old chapters that have nothing to do with the way he lives his life now. His job demands a certain amount of detachment and objectivity, which he tries to practice in order to avoid having his judgment clouded, but at the end of the day he is fully aware that it’s difficult to try and be so cold. Perhaps that’s the reason why he’s so good at his job and why he has amassed the necessary skills to perform it: it’s not just files and case numbers, he cares.
Skills:
1)His skill of Psychometry allows him to obtain historical memories or sensations from an object. By now John can control when he wants to use his ability but moments of great emotional distress can trigger it without his control. The amount of information he is able to obtain is proportional to the time he touches the object. He is capable of obtaining information from living organisms, though it is much harder, especially with people.
2) Given his work with the police, he is very skilled in the use of fire arms as well as hand to hand comabt.
3) John has a remarkable ability to read body language and microexpresions given his studies of applied psychology.
4) His worldly upbringing allowed him to pick other languages. His Spanish and French are quite good, and he is able to understand Arabic but isn’t that good at speaking it.
Sample Paragraph: TW: rape and violence
Sorry for being a lazy bum again :P
“Marcos, please” she pleaded, eyes clouded with tears as she squirmed beneath the weight of his body. “I won’t go to the police, I won’t say anything. I promise. I promise I’ll stay quie-”. Her words were cut off as his palm collided against her cheekbone. It stung, a pulsating warmth under her skin in the place where he slapped her.
The tears fell down her cheeks and she met Marcos’ eyes again, silently pleading him to stop this. It was impossible for her to find the familiar softness she used to see her boyfriend’s dark eyes. It was gone now. They were pits of coal, burning with a type of cruelty that brought the deepest, rawest kind of fear in her.
“Please, Marcos” Lourdes pleaded once more, her voice quivering with sobs she couldn’t contain any longer. “Please don’t do this”. The young man was deaf to her cries and he hit her once more, harder than the previous one.
Panic found her once more when Marcos unzipped his pants, when his hand forcefully restrained her by the wrists. Lourdes did whate she could to fight him off, to try to get him to move from crushing her body against the floor. She cried out again, painfully aware that he would get to have his way with her yet again. No matter how hard she fought him, she couldn’t stop Marcos from hitting her, from ripping her underwear off her body. She was powerless to stop him from violently getting his pleasure out of her pain and suffering.
- - -
Lou woke up with a start, a scream dying in her throat when her eyes opened. There were tears already in her eyes and they just continued to fall as she curled herself up, her arms wrapping around her knees. Her body shook, quietly sobbing. She wanted to cry out, to yell, but she did not to make any sound that could wake up her uncle.
The emotions brought by what she’d dreamed about ran free. Her only comfort was that it had been just a dream. A nightmare… This was unlike the other times she’d relieved her experience with Marcos, this wasn’t the first time her mind took her back to that event. However, it was the first time she went through it so vividly.
That experience was seared into her brain. It only made sense that her worst nightmares were crafted with the sharp edges of those memories.
