Character Info/Most of his App

[parroted]

[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Jack Pherson
SERIES: DC Comics, Wildstorm – Ex Machina
CHRONOLOGY: Just pre-death!
CLASS: supervillain?/nemesis, animal rights extremist

BACKGROUND:
Ex Machina is very much set in world very much like the real one, especially including real political figures, pop culture, events, etc etc. It is a somewhat parallel universe, especially after the events of the series start taking place (the protagonist prevents the fall of the second World Trade Center tower, for example – though that’s after Pherson’s time). There are no superheroes - except one.

New York: October 18th, 1999. An engineer called Mitchell Hundred was called in to investigate a strange light coming from the foundations of Brooklyn Bridge. There he found a strange alien-like machine that exploded and gave him the power to talk to machines, and a Mysterious Task. A little while after that, Hundred, helped along with his friends Bradbury and Kremlin, started operating as a (kind of a failure) superhero known as the Great Machine.

Fast forward to March 4th, 2001, on the Manhattan Bridge where Mitchell pulls a protester off the top of the bridge. When the press confront him, he uses his ability to talk to machines (his Voice) to "kill the broadcast" - and then it's revealed that a man called Jack Pherson was there with a recording device. Pherson called a woman called Holly, to report in that he managed to get a recording of the Great Machine's Voice.

Jack Pherson was a sound technician who worked on terrible straight-to-dvd movies. His implied girlfriend or friend with evident benefits, Holly, convinced him to get a recording of the Great Machine's Voice in order to attempt to replicate his powers and get loads of dough.

So Pherson gets this recording of Mitchell saying "kill the broadcast" and goes over and over it in his studio, trying to dissect the Great Machines supposed “voice”. Then Holly arrives... in an irish walking coat which is basically a goofy cloak and it never DOES explain why she was wearing that. Anyway, she and Pherson talk about the recording and the Great Machine and how it's not working. But the problem comes with Pherson's parrot. See, Pherson brought his parrot to work (to change channels? Some bullshit reason anyway) and when the parrot starts repeating, "Kill the broadcast! Kill the broadcast!" it triggers something in Pherson. His nose and ears start bleeding. While the Great Machine's eyes glow green allowing him to speak to machines, Pherson's eyes glow violet and he can speak to animals.

Including Holly's lice.

It's unseen how or when he kills Holly (possibly death-by-lice), but it was probably then. The powers completely and utterly mess him up. He becomes obsessed with animals whose voices he can hear, as well as the Great Machine. He starts trying to get the Great Machine's attention - and finally gets it about a week or so later when he brings a bunch of chimpanzees to Washington Square Park. Mitchell turns up, to find Pherson wearing the weird goofy cloak with a parrot on his shoulder, surrounded by the chimps.

They start talking, with the Great Machine insisting that he has to return the chimps - but Pherson starts talking about all the damage New York and people have done to the animals. Eventually explaining that he got all this information from the oral histories of animals themselves. Mitchell assumes he's insane. Pherson hints at the Mysterious Source of their powers, and then gets a bunch of birds to attack the Great Machine. Mitchell flies away on his jetpack, but y'know, BIRDS, and ends up crash landing and confused in front of Kremlin and Bradbury. They call him by his real name - and it turns out that Pherson had sent the parrot after him, who repeated everything they said.

Also, it turns out Pherson was living in a cave with Holly's dead body. Ew.

So Pherson got his powers in early March, and between that time and early May he starts harassing Hundred as well as attacking people with animals. Essentially, he became the Great Machine's arch-nemesis. "Battles" between the two of them went on, including such confrontations as:
- Raiding St. John the Divine with a bunch of dogs and sheep and and a camel and well, biblical animals and things and confronting Bradbury before Kremlin knocked him out with a bat and Mitch dragged him away
- Some sort of incident involving students trying to sacrifice a chicken before the Great Machine turned up to rescue them from Pherson - who sent a fucking gorilla (as well as somehow hacking into Mitch's radio)
- Bringing a bunch of cats to contact the police Commissioner, Angotti, in charge of the Great Machine's case, claiming that the enemy of her enemy is her friend - before being hauled off, giggling, by a very irritable Mitch with his jetpack
- Attacked the Great Machine with bees (my god) after he destroyed their apiary on top of a building - Mitch shot him, smoked the bees and dragged them both into a rooftop pool
- Allowed/asked/persuaded a white tiger to maul the three or so people who kept it in their house. Mitch turned up and shot him with a tranq gun, but not before Pherson hinted at Mysterious Other Worlds and ordered the tiger to eat him

It implies there were many more battles and conversations and things between them (for example - a 72 hour "terror spree" and filling Mitch's apartment with cockroaches) but most of it is unseen.

May 8th, 2001. A couple of months after Pherson turned up. Pherson released all the animals in the Bronx Zoo, sending them after the Great Machine. Mitch escaped alive, however, and when Pherson heard he started to make his move. He left the cave he was living in, running into a police officer on a horse and then using the man's gun to kill him. He then went to Manhattan's Shelter for Animal Care and took the veterinarians there hostage, before contacting Mitchell.

When Mitch arrived, he found Pherson there with a gun to a vet's head, surrounded by dogs feasting on the police officer's corpse. Yum. Mitch and Pherson talk - Pherson insisting that animals are the innocent ones, that putting dogs to sleep is murder, and Mitch insisting that humans are more important than animals or machines.

Pherson ordered the dogs to rip out Mitch's throat. But Mitch had recorded him saying that and played it backwards on a loop, causing the dogs to go after Pherson. Mitch rescued the vets, leaving the recording device on a gas canister. Pherson, extremely injured by attacking dogs, tried to shoot the recording - and hit the gas instead, blowing himself and all the dogs up.

For the record, I’m pulling him from just before his death, just as Mitch starts to play the reverse recording and the dogs turn to attack him.

BUT BASICALLY HE DIED.

His story wasn't quite over however, as some information later in the series reveals a bit about him. Mitchell dreamt of Pherson many times - one time in particular had undead-Pherson mention this thing called the spectrum, and hinted they were the "harbingers" for their creators. Pherson had always mysteriously referred to knowing a bit more about why they had their powers than Mitch did, so I'm just going to explain that briefly.

A brane, a type of probe, from an alternate universe was sent to Mitch and Pherson's, giving Mitch his powers. It's really complicated and confusing, but Mitch was supposed to lead the spectrum - people with powers that would weaken New York/Earth and set the stage for an invasion. Mitch was the green, meant to use his powers over machines to get rid of the weapon. Pherson was the violet, meant to raise the animals ("beasts of burden") up against humanity. There's also white (people) and red (plants), but they're unimportant. Mitch was supposed to work with the invaders and bring them in, but he never knew why he had his powers and what he was supposed to do - but he still actively worked against the invaders. Kind of. The other complicated bit is that the Creators, the invaders, disguised themselves under a guise of religious imagery (Pherson says at one point that he knew the "angles of the angels"). While Pherson evidently didn't know the whole story behind it, he had more info than Mitch did (although probably what the invaders WANTED him to think).

Him and Mitch were supposed to work together, but instead they fought in a really loser-y superhero vs arch nemesis sort of way, and to be honest Pherson seemed to care more about the animals than about their Mysterious Origins. AND THEN HE DIED. SO YEAH.


PERSONALITY:

Before Jack Pherson got his powers he was a bit of a douche, really. Jack was going to replicate superpowers with Holly to try to get rich. And a little bit of a nerd, I mean, he kept his parrot in his studio because he heard that African Grey Parrots could mimic pitches no one else could so he wanted it to match a tv remote so it could change channels. Yeah.

The second he got his powers, his personality took an immediate u-turn. Those crappy straight-to-dvds he made fun of when he worked on them? He started talking in a campy way and acting like a supervillain from them. Holly, his girlfriend/friend-with-benefits who he had just been completely cool with? Suddenly her life was unimportant. The somewhat-crude but down-to-earth know-it-all became a mysterious, priest-like know-it-all.

Pherson values animal life above everything else. Whether that’s mammals, insects, reptiles or birds, he views them all as his friends and the innocents he needs to protect. He does not value human life at all. Humans, in his eyes, totally screwed up the ecosystem and treat animals with cruelty and disrespect. Killing a chicken is murder to him. He’ll murder and harm people that mistreat animals – and his preferred method is to use the animals themselves to do it. Think if you added a bit of homicidal and a dash of supervillain to PETA.

That being said, if a person has no particular animal-harming grievances, he can be perfectly pleasant to them. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say smooth and courteous. Holly might have been at the wrong place at the wrong time – Pherson treated her corpse with a degree of respect and friendliness. Well, okay, he claimed he had a bet with her. He didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by the fact she was deceased however. His grasp on reality and common social graces isn’t the best. But the point is that he can at least seem plesant enough, sort of.

Towards Mitchell Hundred and his friends, Pherson was a bit more harsh. A bit condescending to Mitch’s friends, but mostly distrust and a bit of a dick. Mitch himself, however, was Pherson’s “brother” (both in the linked due to powers thing and in the religious connotation sense of “brother”). Pherson would at turns try to get Mitch to work with him, stating that their paths were intertwined – but there was also an anger there at Mitch’s denial of destiny and treatment of animals that inevitably had them at each other’s throats.

With animals he’s friendly, affectionate and polite, but also commanding – he tends to treat them like followers and tools. In a way he’s almost like the priest of animals (religious imagery ahoy) – at one point he calls the animals his “flock”, in the same way a minster would to the people at his church (although that also could have been because Pherson was attacking a church at the time). If the animal kingdom were a religion, he’d be a bit of a religious fanatic.

When attacked Pherson tends to defend, using the opponent’s attack against them. When attacking he lets the animals do the work. He’s very steady and calm, but when he’s angry he gets violent – but again, not physically violent so much as he makes increasingly viscous orders. He will hurt, maim and kill, directly or indirectly. For all his talk, he’s willing to sacrifice both animals and people to get what he wants.

Pherson IS kinda a know-it-all, I mentioned that early. He talks a lot! He was apparently told through “oral histories” from the animals all about themselves and the city (and also people – he doesn’t seem to care so much for people’s privacy). He knows a ton about animals, and he isn’t all that bad at technology either (he did hack mr. talks-to-machines’ radio, although notably he’s a decade behind). He thinks he knows best and his views are very rigid – nobody will ever be able to convince him that animals aren’t as important as he thinks they are. He still remembers his life before, all that knowledge didn’t go away. He just has different concerns now.

He swears a bunch, though not as much as Mitch does, and Pherson speaks in a casual way that still has traces of corny to it, with bold confident statements and cute wordplay. He also hasn’t completely lost his sense of humour, although he tends to be more amused than laugh-out-loud. But overall he talks like a normal person, when he’s not making vague mysterious statements to Mitch.

In the city he’ll probably wander around homeless and hurt anybody that hurts animals and harass a few people. Working within the law is definitely not for him. He has creatures to protect, and will not let anyone get in his way.

POWER:
Canon power baby!

Talks to Animals
Exactly how it sounds! This includes all animals, including bugs, birds, reptiles, mammals and fish. Pherson can hear them in his head. He can also talk to them. He uses his Voice, causing his eyes to glow violet and his words to sound a bit different. When he uses his Voice he can give specific orders to animals and can basically control them. Well, they’re inclined to follow his orders so it’s more like he’s very persuasive. (Also of note – his powers work similarly to Mitch, and one time a gun lied to Mitch so it could also be possible that animals can still lie to Pherson)

As a note, with animal-based imports (ie people who are animals, can turn into animals) his powers are a bit wonky and definitely on the persuasive side of controlling, all the way up to not working at all. It is entirely up to the player’s discretion and plotting, and I will of course be putting up a permission post for it. As another note, I’ll probably also include a bit about PCs who have pets and how much Pherson can talk/control those in the permissions post too.

[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[ The video turns on, and there’s a scruffy sort of man with dark curly hair in a hood and cape, with a grey African parrot on his shoulder and a large daddy longlegs perched on his forefinger, which he holds up near his eyes to properly look at it. ]

This is one of a species called harvestmen, otherwise known as daddy longlegs. They’re not spiders. Spiders have clear distinction between their body sections, weave webs, have venom. If you killed a daddy longlegs, thinking it was a spider, how many of you would feel sorry for your mistake?

Even if was one, it’s not like it’ll rise again. No matter what type of arachnid you kill, they’re not imports. They won’t come back. Their death-cries go unheard.

[ He lowers his finger to his shoulder. ] YOU CAN GO NOW, HARVEST MAN. [ It climbs off his finger onto his shoulder and scurries down his coat. ]

You “heroes” fret over all sorts of murders except the ones that involve beings you don’t care about.

I’d say you should start.

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

The towers were gone.

The City was different from New York City, though very much similar. Pigeons flocked around Jack Pherson as he walked the streets, and he listened to the stories they told, the routes they knew, the people who fed them, and what they had witnessed and stories that they had passed on for the past few years.

He had missed the twin towers getting hit by months, and then years. The pigeons weren’t really old enough to have witnessed it themselves, but he listened to them talk about it anyway. About that, and other things. Apparently last year they had risen up along with the rats against the humans under the command of a metal man. It sounded like something Pherson would do, but they were so ruffled he didn’t tell them that.

It wasn’t his city, but this City was just as cruel to animals as the one he knew. They were the forgotten, the unheard – but he could hear them. He couldn’t stop hearing them.

They were everywhere.
Just listening for birds, just in Central Park even – there were almost two hundred species. Normally, that was. When strange poisonous water-holes weren’t suddenly appearing, as a chatty blue jay informed him. A strange moving disease took over the plants in Central Park for a time, apparently the cause of some strange green lady – Pherson informed the terrified squirrels that if he saw her he would make sure she would be punished.

They were his – the ones to command and the ones to respect. All creatures in this City, the birds, beasts, rodents, insects – they were under his wing. They were his pride, his flock, his school, his murder.

One bit of information didn’t come from the pigeons at Pherson’s feet or the butterfly fluttering past his ear. No, that came from a newspaper stand, where a picture of the mayor was plastered. Hundred. Mitchell Hundred was here. The man behind the Great Machine was a politician.

Well, well, brother. In the hours since they had last spoken, he had evidently jumped up in the food chain. Pherson smiled at the newspaper. Now there was finally a competing predator.

FINAL NOTES:
On him when he's imported are:
- 1 goofy cloak Irish walking coat
- 1 set of goofy clothing
- 1 African grey parrot (no particular powers, it's just his parrot, they're bros)
- 1 gun (only a couple of bullets left)