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"Just one call I have to answer
Just one case I can't refuse
This time there's no second chance or
Backup waiting if I lose."
The PlayerUser Name/Nick: Chris
User LJ: kawaiispinel
AIM/IM: KawaiiSpinel42
E-mail: whatineverhad@gmail.com
Other Characters: Gabriel/The Trickster
The Character
Character Name: Desmond Damien Descant
Series: Original Character (Descantverse)
Age: Roughly 4000, looks about 35.
From When?: Pre-canon.
Abilities/Powers: Des is immortal, meaning he can’t die. Period. Absolutely nothing can kill him permanently. A fatal wound will make him appear dead for a period up to ten minutes, but he’ll revive soon after. Beyond that, he’s skilled with a number of weapons, including, knives, shotguns, revolvers, and crossbows, making him a decent hunter. He’s also a skilled lockpick and pickpocket, both he uses, more or less, as a gimmick to get information. He also has a near-encylopedic knowledge of the supernatural and great deductive reasoning skills. The only languages he speaks fluently, besides English, are Latin and Enochian, because he sucks at remembering languages and those are the only two he needs to speak to do his job.
Power Limitations: N/A
Inventory
♠ One black leather jacket, well-worn.
♠ One plain black t-shirt.
♠ One pair of faded blue jeans.
♠ One pair of heavy duty black boots.
♠ One iron ring on a silver chain, worn as a necklace.
♠ One crossbow with six darts, iron-tipped.
♠ One Colt .45 revolver.
♠ One case of bullets.
♠ One bowie knife.
♠ One worn leather wallet, containing a PI license, a driver’s license, some spare cash, and a few business cards.
♠ A set of car keys to a 1968 Corvette.
Personality: At first glance, Des is a snarky bastard with enough knowledge of the supernatural to put himself ahead of most people in his field. He's a study in contradictions- charismatic when he wants to be, but a right bastard half the time. A man driven by a need to solve mysteries and motivated by greed, but who won't turn away a person who needs his help. An honorable man who wouldn't want to be called a hero, but a man who will show no mercy in a bad situation and feel no remorse for it. He saves people who need saving, he kills those who deserve it, and no one can honestly tell you whether he's more good or evil. He straddles the line and has for four thousand years.
He defaults to a snarky, flippant attitude, constantly quipping one-liners and acting utterly nonchalant abouteverything. He appears incapable of taking anything seriously until the situation has become extreme and then he starts to show his darker, more driven side, and even then, the snark doesn’t leave. Even in an extreme situation, Des will never drop his sarcastic streak. People have tortured him and he’s laughed in their face about it. He’s almost impossible to break- he’s been living for four thousand years and it’s made him colder. However, he’s extremely tempermental- piss him off and he’s likely to knock your teeth out, hurt one of his friends and he’ll go out of his way to make sure you pay for it.
He’s a melting pot of different styles- mixing big city film noir detective, with slick New Orleans con man, on top of tough street kid, and the fact that he doesn’t appear to belong anywhere. He’s a square shaped peg trying to fit in a round hole. He’s stopped trying to blend in, because he knows he has no particular place in the mortal world and he refuses to accept that he’s chosen for bigger things on the supernatural side of things. He is on absolutely no one’s side but his own and he chooses his battles and who he fights against- if you deserve to be hunted down and brought to justice, then Des will make sure it gets done. He doesn’t believe in being a Champion for any particular group and the fact that people have tried to pigeonhole him as one irritates him more than anything.
He has an obsessive personality- once he gets focused on something, he cannot let it go. He’s like a dog with a bone and he will gnaw on it, until his teeth crack trying to get to the marrow. It’s a huge fatal flaw, one that people have exploited. He’s incapable of giving up halfway and once he’s involved in something, he has to see it through to end, even if it’s to the detriment of the people around him. For someone who loves so strongly, it always goes back to Ceirdowyn’s curse- Des is ultimately selfish. Even when he doesn’t mean to, he puts his needs first, before he puts the needs of anyone else. His merciless side has been cultivated by the fact that he’s felt like he needed to kill these bastards for his own piece of mind. As much as he hates to admit it, he has let people down a lot because of his stubborn refusal to listen to reason.
Des’s inherently selfish attitude gives him the appearance of fearlessness. Mixed with the fact that he can’t die, he’s willing to throw himself into stupid situation, after stupid situation, just because he can. He’s not afraid of anything other than being caged and his entire life has been spent trying to find a loophole to beat Ceirdowyn at her own game to avoid a fate as her lapdog. He’s suicidally reckless, much to his friends’ chagrin, and will not hesitate to do the stupid thing in any situation. If it’s a dumbass move, then Des has probably chosen to go that route.
He’s not without his baggage- while he doesn’t have much in the way of WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER angst, beyond his rampant suicidal streaks and the occasional sadness he feels when loved ones pass, he’s learned to accept his fate as a constant. It makes him frustrated as hell, but he tries not to let it get him down. Most of his demons are related to the constant, gnawing fear that no matter how often he tries to subvert the norms, he’s always going to wind up being a pawn in someone’s game and it drives him crazy. The fact that he’s easily manipulated doesn’t really help this fear. He’s predictable in his emotions- he doesn’t hide anything. When he’s upset, you know it. When he’s angry, it’s there. He has no reason to hide his feelings, and he’ll dare anyone to try to use it against him. It’s been his downfall many a time, especially when people intentionally try to get a rise out of him, he’ll always rise to the bait, even if it’s with a smile and a one-liner.
And yet, despite his flaws, despite his inherent need to prove to people that he isn’t a saint, he’s a good man. He’s got a soft spot for women and young girls, especially when they’re in danger, and tends to go out of his way to be the chivalrous sort (but this doesn’t mean he’s not capable of smelling a rat for a rat when it’s clad in a short skirt). He loves his friends intensely and will go out of his way to protect them- if you hurt one of his people, he’ll hurt you back. He loves intensely, passionately, and without giving much thought to the sexual- sex is a background thing for him. Love as it is comes first. When he screws up and it hurts people he loves, he feels horrible about it.
Beyond that, he has a good sense of humor, a charming attitude when you get past the layers of sarcasm and snark, and a fun-loving streak. If you can work past the initial kneejerk reaction to him when you first meet him, he’s a good and loyal friend, even if he will frustrate the hell out of you. He can banter with the best of them, eats like a pig, treats his car like a daughter, adopts people like crazy, and is... All in all, a very complex guy.
History: Born four thousand years before the modern era (because actual dates are for hippies and people who like dated things and who does that) in what would eventually be Wales, Des was once a normal human, although most of his history and even his own name have been lost to him by a combination of fairy magic and just... The fact that he’s been alive for so long. What stands out clearest, however, was that he was the youngest son of a large family and that one day, when he was out hunting, his family was massacred. Distraught, he decided to join them by killing himself, because he was an angsty, useless being back then. Unfortunately, his hand was stayed by the Fairy Queen, herself. Ceirdowyn, as it turned out had his family slaughtered (a fact that Des doesn’t know), to provide the boy with necessary encouragement to take up the mantle of her Emissary and make her more powerful. Disgusted by his disregard for his own life- a life she had use for- she cursed him with immortality- he couldn’t die until he found something worth dying for. Figuring him selfish and preoccupied with his own needs, she thought he would never find that one thing and would eventually submit to being in her thrall.
Disgusted with his curse and wishing to frustrate Ceirdowyn into releasing him, he hid himself in a cave for three thousand years, eventually only coming out when forced out by an angel and a demon- Pagiel and Mathias. The two of them had been sent by Heaven and Hell, respectively, to win his soul, due to a betting match between God and Lucifer. Apparently, Ceirdowyn’s actions caused consequences in all the realms and she was banished to the Between and her Keep with the promise that only her Emissary could free her. Heaven and Hell were determined to make sure Des died and that his soul was claimed by one of them, rather than Ceirdowyn. Not interested in being a gambling chip or a pawn, Des tried to evade Pagiel and Mathias, only to discover that they wouldn’t be shaken. He eventually accepted them into his life and, in fact, began to enjoy their company, even going as far as to consider Mathias his best friend.
In Amsterdam in roughly 1930, he picked up the name Desmond Descant and it became his official alias. The circumstances surrounding why he picked up the name or what its significance is is unknown, but Des has admitted, albeit reluctantly, that he was somewhat high at a local hash bar when he chose it and it just stuck for years.
In 1965, he became affiliated with Joseph Long and Harry “Tallahassee” Talbert, proprietors of the unfortunately punny “Long and Tal Investigations,” one of the first recognized paranormal investigative services in the country, located out of New Orleans. Because he had spent most of the last thousand years engrossed in the supernatural world, looking for a loophole in his curse, he’d become something of an expert- one that humans were comfortable with consulting. After helping them on a few cases. he became their official consultant. After Tal’s death in 1979, Joseph and Des became partners, eventually leading to the Tony Dalton case in 1981. Tony Dalton was a con man whose research into the occult led him to make perfect forgeries of occult artifacts. After hearing about these fakes of an infamous Fae artifact that had been lost for centuries inciting the earthbound Fae to attack innocents to look for them, Des and Joseph apprehended Tony. Joseph was killed in the process and Des came very close to risking his neck to save him, which might’ve broken his curse, but chose to save the then eighteen-year-old Tony, instead. The investigation got him thrown out of New Orleans by their local coven for interfering in their affairs. Des hasn’t been allowed back since.
After moving to Chicago, Tony became Des’s partner for a short time until 1985 when he introduced Des to Caroline Brighton at a party. Caroline offered him a well-paid job if he would travel with her to a remote area, since he was schooled in dealing with the monsters that lived in that area. As Tony had to stay behind to authenticate the item they were going to bring back, Des went with Mathias and Pagiel. After traveling deep into the Amazon rain forest and becoming extremely close to Caroline (even admitting that she was the first woman he’d fallen in love with in years), the group came upon a temple filled with the last remaining dragons. Des quickly befriended the two dragons there and learned that they were keeping watch over a score of new hatchings that would revive their race. Caroline, however, had lied the entire time about why she needed to get here and destroyed every last egg. In her escape, she poisoned the female dragon with iron, and fled into the jungle. Des came after her and rather than attack him- because she knew his secret- she shot Pagiel with a silver dart. Des in a rage shot her, but the shot was blocked by her Kevlar vest- however, the shot also caused her to lose her balance and slip off the ledge. As she tried to pull herself up, Des mercilessly and coldly pried her fingers from the side of the ledge and watched her fall to her death without remorse.
He returned to the States with a new mantle on his shoulders- people began to circulate the story and touted him as some sort of champion of fey beasts. Des, however, just ignored the stories and sank deeper into his work. He became more obsessive, more paranoid, more detail-oriented, and it would’ve led him into a cycle of bad decisions that would’ve ultimately led to serious consequences.
But the Wood got him first.
First Person Sample: Okay. I’m going to make this so fucking clear that if you look at these facts long enough, you’ll see your reflection in them.
Don’t. Trust. The. Fairies.
I don’t care how cute they are, how much they tell you about your uncle’s cousin’s nephew’s dog that died last summer and how much you wish you could run through fields of clover with him one last time, you cannot trust them. Period. If what they’re offering you is too good to be true, then it fucking is. You're dealing with creatures that can make you their bitch with a snap of their fingers. They're monsters with pretty faces and that's it.
Am I understood?
Prose Sample: He can't stop smiling.
Four thousand years and more deaths than he can count and this is how it ends- tricking the Crown Bitch of Heaven into killing a human, thus putting an end to all of her plans in one crushing instant. Hard to be on top when you've broken the one Law you've avoided breaking for years. The look on her face alone when the knife slides into his gut is absolutely priceless- horror mixed with shock mixed with divine fury, her hand never quite losing her grip on the knife, as if letting go means that this is really how it ends.
The pain is excruciating, but it barely registers. He just grits his teeth in a tight, dark smile, and leans forward, sliding the knife a little bit further home in the process, if only to whisper two words right in her face.
"I win."
Gabriel pulls away with a shriek, staggering backwards and dropping the bloodied knife and Desmond Descant stands tall for a few more moments, while everyone assembled on the eerily quiet Vegas strip just looks on in horror. Blood pools around his feet, dripping steadily from the wound, and all he can do is laugh. He beat Gabriel and Ceirdowyn in one final move and what happens next doesn't matter, because he won.
"I. Win." He shouts, his voice echoing eerily in the silence.
He crumples to the ground.
Special Notes: More information than you ever wanted to know about Des can be found here.