A family history for those in David's new 'verse
David is replacing his uncle Phillip, who was the team's psychic before him. David's family on his mother's side is a very long, almost entirely unbroken line of psychics, who for many generations have been assisting the government by acting as liaisons between the human and paranormal worlds. Phillip was the latest to get the job, and chose to work more directly by working for the task force.
Phillip had a fairly useless power: He could predict the time and circumstances of anyone's death, but was unable to change the deaths he foresaw. He mostly used this as encouragement when people weren't going to die for a long time, to tell them things would get better. His use to the team was less in his power and more in his knowledge, because he knew centuries of paranormal history, and his daughter, a medium, could tell him even more.
As a person, Phillip was fairly down-to-earth and sensible, traits that he needed while raising three psychic kids. He was friendly, a good guy all around. While he acknowledged that his power was fairly useless in a practical sense, he didn't see it as a hindrance in any way. The family has made a great effort to ensure that all gifts, no matter how trivial, are indeed seen as gifts. He passed that on to his children.
As for his children, Lea is a medium and is in a nursing home for serious depression. (Yes, this is a thing that can happen.) Howie is friendly but didn't want to follow in the family business, and Rick is a dick who's been deep into illegal gambling since he was sixteen. All three were thus scratched off the list of potential successors when Phillip was murdered. David is the only other adult psychic in the family, and he was considered as reckless as Richard until an upgrade in his power and ties to another more powerful Agency made him more valuable than he was a liability.
Final note: Phillip didn't tell anyone when he was going to die, and his death was made to look like a mugging so that no one would look into it.
Phillip had a fairly useless power: He could predict the time and circumstances of anyone's death, but was unable to change the deaths he foresaw. He mostly used this as encouragement when people weren't going to die for a long time, to tell them things would get better. His use to the team was less in his power and more in his knowledge, because he knew centuries of paranormal history, and his daughter, a medium, could tell him even more.
As a person, Phillip was fairly down-to-earth and sensible, traits that he needed while raising three psychic kids. He was friendly, a good guy all around. While he acknowledged that his power was fairly useless in a practical sense, he didn't see it as a hindrance in any way. The family has made a great effort to ensure that all gifts, no matter how trivial, are indeed seen as gifts. He passed that on to his children.
As for his children, Lea is a medium and is in a nursing home for serious depression. (Yes, this is a thing that can happen.) Howie is friendly but didn't want to follow in the family business, and Rick is a dick who's been deep into illegal gambling since he was sixteen. All three were thus scratched off the list of potential successors when Phillip was murdered. David is the only other adult psychic in the family, and he was considered as reckless as Richard until an upgrade in his power and ties to another more powerful Agency made him more valuable than he was a liability.
Final note: Phillip didn't tell anyone when he was going to die, and his death was made to look like a mugging so that no one would look into it.