Application for babylonwood
I’m just looking for a woman who knows how to roll the dice
And who doesn't give one good god-damn ‘bout where the cards may fall.
The Player
User Name/Nick: Jae
User LJ: babylonmods
AIM/IM: booglyboo145
E-mail: anjelsword [at] gmail [dot] com
Other Characters: Neal Caffrey
The Character
Character Name: Karrin Murphy
Character Journal: whateverthemess
Canon: The Dresden Files (books)
Age: Around 35
From When?: RIGHT BEFORE that massive spoiler that happens at the end of Changes. You know which one I mean. :|
Abilities/Powers: Marksman, 9th dan Aikido master, weapons collector, can forge her own bullets and presumably has some skill with metalwork. She’s also a former Chicago PD lieutenant, bumped back to sergeant and then SPOILERSSSS. Other than that, quite human.
Power Limitations: N/A
Inventory
• one pair of skinny jeans
• one pair of low-heeled, silver-stud belted black leather ankle boots
• purple and black denim corset top
• black leather blazer
• one pair dangly onyx earrings
• onyx-bead choker
• silver bangle bracelets (five total)
• hip holster and fully-loaded .40 Glock 22 (ten rounds)
• wallet containing: Illinois driver’s license, around a hundred bucks in small/midsize bills, two credit cards, and a handful of receipts
Personality:
Loyal and absolutely fierce when it comes to the protection of her city and her people. She’s less loyal to the law than she is to Chicago and its residents; she’s broken laws when she knows that staying within them means more people will die, and she’s bent, belabored and fractured the truth to get the resources and arrests or convictions she needs. Her relationship with the Chicago PD is tumultuous at best-she has very little respect for her superiors, and functions within the system only to keep her job and financial support for her department.
She’s passionate; her stubbornness and ferocious loyalty are both clear examples of this. She exhausts herself with it at times, refusing to give up on promises made or perceived debts owed despite the possibility that she won’t be able to fulfill them on her own. She’s loving, creating attachments with people even when she’s clearly stated that she has no interest (see her relationship with the mercenary Kincaid, whom she confesses to Harry she loves despite hooking up with him for the sex and a relationship with little commitment). She’s also-for all that she would NEVER admit it-a very maternal creature. She cares about and for people; she’s been doing it her entire life. Her career is based around taking care of others and protecting the innocent. She can’t help it: she’s a caretaker, and part of a caretaking family-even though she tends to keep them out of her professional life as much as humanly possible. It’s her way of protecting them. She took on a lot of responsibility when her father killed himself, even though it wasn’t required of her. She grew up trying to take care of everyone and then went into a career where she does the same, in which she became a leader. Another form caretaking, in a way. She almost never expects anything in return (again, see Kincaid), investing a lot more in things than she might get out of them.
When she hits critical mass in terms of emotional trauma, she goes cold. If she gets betrayed, she does the same. It takes a lot to crack back into her shell-in some ways she’s as passionate about closing herself off emotionally as she is about everything else. She’s also stubborn as hell. If she invests herself in you, be prepared to make room for her in your life, regardless of how you might feel on the subject. She’s intrusive, nosy, and occasionally overbearing, going cop on people without meaning to. Call her on it and she might back off. Maybe. Unless she thinks you’re doing something stupid. In which case she’ll probably just change tactics. She dislikes bullies, and she doesn't stand by in any given situation when there's an opportunity for her to do something about it--even when it makes things worse. That’s one of her flaws as well as one of her more endearing characteristics.
She’s an honorable person, firmly rooted in the spirit of the law, and has a clear moral compass. She’s a tarnished hero, maybe, her blacks and whites made a lot more gray by her time working with Dresden, but she still has nigh-unshakeable faith in people as a potential force for good-it’s a position she clings to in defiance of most contrary evidence. In more recent books she's not so much less guarded as more comfortable with herself as a player in the supernatural field. She has a confidence that she didn't in the earlier books due to both experience and knowledge, and while that doesn't make her more trusting, it does drive her to interact more with people on an interpersonal basis.
Trust is one of her major hang-ups. There are very, very few people in her life that she truly has personal faith in. Yes, she has faith in the concept of humanity, and when she does believe in you it’s unshakable--but earning her trust is a very difficult thing to do, and until you give her good reason to, she’s not going to open up. She’s private, keeping her issues to herself and only sharing personal problems with her nearest and dearest--Harry being the primary example, though there’s some evidence that in earlier books she shared conversations with Thomas regarding her relationship with Harry and the emotions attached to it. Her reaction to broken trust is violent and immediate; she’ll shut you down and shut you out, and probably look for an excuse to punch you while she’s at it.
She harbors a private fear of going insane, probably a result of her father’s influence in her life and his reputation as being a druggie/madman thanks to the things he saw. One of her exes accused her of being delusional, and Murphy’s never quite forgotten or forgiven that. She’s also extremely sensitive to being thought of as a weak link in any chain. While she knows and has come to terms with the fact that she’s not (and never will be) as powerful as Harry, and can’t deal with the supernatural on the same level he can, she still refuses to be a burden on anyone. It gets to the point where she might look at a helping hand (in any situation, not just supernatural conflicts) and see an insinuation that she’s weak or can’t take care of a problem herself. Being defenseless is probably one of her worst nightmares; being defenseless while her friends need her tops the list of Worst Possible Outcomes. She hates giving up on anything--perhaps a residual effect of what her father killing himself when she was young--and is tenacious in any and every project she tackles, pounding herself into getting it done or getting it right no matter the difficulty. Failure is unacceptable. She demands the same high quality of the people around her, which aggravates many and makes her plenty of enemies--at the same time, those who deliver are the ones who have helped her without fail throughout the series, and they’re as loyal to her as she is to them.
History:
The daughter of a ‘black cat’ cop--an investigator of paranormal events--who killed himself when Karrin was eleven, she’s had a love-hate relationship with the Chicago PD for almost her entire life. She married during high school and immediately ended the relationship when she entered the police academy. Her second marriage ended on bad terms as well; her husband left her, believing her to be insane (or at least unbalanced), and took up a relationship with her little sister.
She met Harry Dresden while still a beat cop in the bad neighborhoods of Chicago, witnessing him killing a troll and even saving him from the same. During the course of this encounter she said “I really have lost it”, insinuating that her relationship with her second husband was already on the rocks at that point. She fought her way up through the ranks, tooth and claw, to become a lieutenant; her attainment of the rank was accompanied by a slap in the face from the bureaucrats she’s offended over the years as she was put in charge of Special Investigations, the unit formed to handle the refuse cases and paranormal occurrences no one wanted to admit existed. Unlike her predecessors, she took the job seriously, finagling funding for her people and even hiring Dresden on as a consultant, sometimes out of her own pocket.
After a wibbly-wobbly time incident during a case--during which she went into the Nevernever with Harry, the kingdom of the fairies, to rescue a friend’s daughter--she was kicked back to sergeant for disappearing without permission or reason for 24 hours. Her partner was made head of SI, and while he respects Murphy and it hasn’t caused real trouble as far as the running of SI was concerned, the demotion was a serious blow. She harbors some resentment for it, as much toward Harry as her superiors, though she wouldn’t admit it; whenever she catches herself seething over it, she tries to remind herself of what they accomplished on the other side.
She serves as back-up for Harry with increasing regularity throughout the series as he gradually gives in to her insistence to be in on whatever cases he’s working, especially if they might involve bystanders in her jurisdiction. The last two before she shows up on the barge, however, she’s brought in because Harry needs people he can trust; during Small Favor, she’s presented with the chance to wield one of the Holy Swords of the Knights of the Cross-she turns it down, her duty to Chicago and its people winning out over what possession of the sword would require.
When a Council member--one of Harry’s former antagonists--shows up in Chicago in Turn Coat seeking help from the wizard to clear his name in a murder, Murphy falls into the position of backup yet again, helping him wring information out of a hit man and tracking phone calls made by the Council member’s enemies to bases overseas. It’s in Changes that shit hits the fan. Harry has a kid. Said kid has been kidnapped. Murphy will be damned if she’s going to let Harry take care of this one alone--triply so since the child’s mother never told Harry he was a dad.
After Harry’s office is blown up by vampires, Murphy tips him off that the FBI will soon be knocking on his door, risking what’s left of her career to keep him out of prison. And it’s not the last time she does so through the course of the book--continuous surreptitious visits, tips, and discussions dance the fine line between friendship and legality as the target on Harry’s back glows steadily brighter while he closes in on his kid. A confrontation at the FBI building in downtown Chicago splits Murphy and Harry up, Murphy helping her friend Agent Tilly and the brownnosing IA officer Rudolph escape. She’s part of Harry’s vampire hit-squad that meets him at St. Mary of the Angels, where he asks her to temporarily take up Fidelacchius, the sword of faith, for the sake of his daughter. On those terms she agrees, and once the rest of the team has their weaponry readied, they head out to face the vampires that’ve taken Harry’s child.
There are a lot of them. An army of them, in fact. What starts as a duel ends as a bloodbath, and Murphy finds herself the tool of an angel that delivers a promise of destruction to the vampires. She slaughters her way through dozens of the monsters, even taking out a Lord of Outer Night--one of the thirteen oldest and most powerful Red Court vampires. As she and her comrade-in-arms Sanya fight on, Dresden goes to rescue his daughter--and does, at the cost of her mother’s life, but with that death every last vampire of the Red Court dies as well. So it’s over. More or less. But the deals Harry made in order to get the power he needed to end the fight mean he’s going to be slave to a half-mad faerie queen, and Murphy is off the police force with early retirement and a half-pension. In one of their last moments together, Harry asks Murphy to spend the night with him. She agrees, and heads home to clean up and dress up to make Harry’s last night as a free man one hell of a good one.
And then the Wood snatches her up and drops her in the middle of nowhere. Fucking Wood.
First Person Sample:
I know you can’t hear me, so this doesn’t really matter. And maybe that’s why I’m saying it now instead of saying it before. Or ever.
…This is ridiculous. Talking to a headstone--and the annoying thing about it is that of all the times you could have died… And no, I’m not talking about our--night. I mean what it says. ‘He died doing the right thing’. Jesus, that’s irony at its worst. …You’d probably think it was funny.
Harry…
I don’t know if I can do this without you.
…I know I will, but I don’t…
You made me believe I could do it.
I just wish.
I just wish I knew how to believe it on my own.
And I'm not going to be cheesy and say what doesn't need saying. Because. You know. And saying it now doesn't really matter anyway.
Prose Sample:
Lazy link is lazy.
Special Notes: N/A