Difference between revisions of "Don Rhodes"
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{{WIP}} | {{WIP}} | ||
== OOC Notes == | == OOC Notes == | ||
+ | *Don's SWL incarnation is almost entirely salvaged from an NPC from an old private event. He's thus the walking consequences from the finale of that storyline. | ||
+ | **Dig deeper and you might even find out what those consequences are! Get your highlighters out and have a grand old time. | ||
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+ | *It goes without saying that I'm not an awful person despite the character I play. I can be occasionally acerbic and confrontational about really dumb (''dumb'') stuff when I'm not roleplaying, but I'm not above apologies or toning it down when things get serious - and '''never''' will bad IC vibes leak into my OOC stuff while I'm roleplaying. I'm a writer first, after all! | ||
+ | **If you're businesslike about any grievances, I'll be businesslike. If you're calm, I'm usually calm, etc, but I'd like to think that's not necessary! However, Don can get heavy and abrasive out of nowhere so it's necessary to clarify this and communicate when things bother you. | ||
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+ | *I have a habit of writing too much about Don and moving entire pieces out of his SWLRP profile (which you should investigate if you haven't) since they're too long and uninformative. Some of these pieces can be found on the Black Watchmen's email servers in-universe. (wink) | ||
== From the internal email servers of the Black Watchmen: == | == From the internal email servers of the Black Watchmen: == | ||
+ | <div class="spoiler mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> | ||
+ | '''Memo rerouted from the Illuminati''' | ||
+ | <div class="mw-collapsible-content"> | ||
+ | <font face=Verdana>The man you're asking for is like a unicorn. Enigmatic, a smidge self-explanatory. Our agents typically overlook him after a while. But don't be fooled, he's the one snake hidden in the bushes. | ||
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+ | Or an anomaly if you wish to dispense with analogies. Put bluntly, we don't know what to make of him. We know he's <u>not one of our's</u>. He doesn't fall under The Dragon, the Templars, even the Illuminati. | ||
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+ | We have files on him that could generously be considered outdated and contrarian - in the best case, a fuck up. Worst case, a <u>major</u> glitch. Potentially as bad as when history unwrote the real Helena Blavatsky from reality for a weekend. | ||
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+ | But don't get us wrong. We have our eye everywhere and it will be a cold day in Hell when we're caught unaware on our own turf. While there are still discrepancies, we can fill you in on what we know - namely that: | ||
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+ | *Physically, Don Rhodes has gone from out-of-shape college burn-out to carrying himself like a proper licensed killer. With enough focus and liberal use of nootropics, he might even one day pass as an Olympian track-and-fielder. One thing that hasn't changed is his shitty hand-eye coordination. | ||
+ | *Psychologically, I'd hazard a guess and say about the same trend as above as far as we know; burn-out to sudden sociopath, narcissism glued in-between. Possible hidden depths, very specific triggers. Still volatile, but approachable for our purposes. | ||
+ | *Some of our older files frame this guy as harmless, unambitious, and hardly lucid. One of those socially-stilted blogger-types, you know, the kind that could easily be discredited as a delusional schizophrenic if he ever crossed any lines? Except Due Dilligence shows an inexplicable lack of present or prior internet activity. (So where did the fucking observation come from?) | ||
+ | *It bears repeating that he's not home-grown as far as we know. No real explanation for his skill-set and when we need a dispensable killer, the headline usually goes: college wimp with no prior symptoms loses it, rampages and then regains lucidity - instant regret followed by either criminal litigation or suicide. | ||
+ | *He is not one of our's, as previously mentioned. He was actually once accountable to The Dragon, a sleeper agent whose programming was minimal in both scale and duration. He was decommissioned unsuccessfully after the End of Days fiasco in 2012. | ||
+ | |||
+ | (We know his decommissioning was botched because he eventually gained cognizance of his programming and whacked a small camp of The Dragon's sleepyheads in ''Bolivia''. Whole different story, whole different department.) | ||
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+ | *Rhode's botched decomissioning does not actually account for the drastic change in his personality nor the sudden shift in his potential. More on that later. | ||
+ | *Intel snatched from The Dragon clues us in that the greens picked him to be their stooge-for-a-day because he <u>was</u> naturally compliant, led a dead-end life, and had no aptitude for anything that couldn't be trained for or implanted. | ||
+ | *The Dragon did not intend to utilize Don Rhodes as an agent, thus they threw out all investment. Didn't even give him a mental resistance regimen, which contributed to the aforementioned hiccup that spiraled out of control in Bolivia. | ||
+ | |||
+ | You see, mistakes in deprogramming have a way of unraveling even the hardiest of psyches, full stop. None of this half-measure shit that we're seeing with Don - we'd be looking at a less coherent Jeffrey Dahmer and not narcissistic John Wick. | ||
+ | |||
+ | *Despite all of the above, this 'new' Don Rhodes not only flaunts a greatly-expanded set of knowledge and skills, he retains autonomy and sanity on a level equal to our own field agents. This is a problem that just doesn't add up. | ||
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+ | '''Our conclusion''' is that ''somebody else'' picked him up and reprogrammed him up to the nines. Our bet is on Orochi or the Phoenicians, maybe even the Council of Venice seeing how often and how vigorously they ''don't'' learn from their own mistakes or the mistakes of others. It may be that Don's just the product of another cluster-fuck between the three. | ||
+ | |||
+ | But. The hitch in that suspicion is that the whole thing is way more trouble than it's worth and we would have dug up ''something in the way of answers by now'' if they were stupid enough to try anyway. | ||
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+ | Fact is, we find the "infodump" angle exceedingly unlikely. You just can't stuff huge volumes of instruction into somebody's conscious mind all at once, it's a huge time and R&D sink with a colossal paper trail and a Pyrrhic-ly slim chance of success. Trust us, we've tried and we got over it quickly, that's why we still use ''sleeper agents, implants and drugs'' if we want super expendable foot-soldiers that can operate outside of the test-chambers. | ||
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+ | Besides the bragging rights, why bother with any of that when we can just use Google? ''(FYI: The success rate of 'brute-force cognitive training' is way below 1%. Globally.)'' | ||
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+ | We digress, our point is that there are a <u>'''few very concerning reasons'''</u> to keep wasting our attention and memo-space on this guy - namely: | ||
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+ | *We don't know when or how, but Don Rhode's raw occult metrics have grown to rival that of anima-infused infantry, themselves second only to the average Bee by dint of fancy clothes. This is a clear departure from anything we have on file for him. | ||
+ | *Don's previously negligible aptitude for empathic abilities has now manifested as wild technopathy. Which has been used with 'Home Alone'-grade creativity, let's say. (Now, when we say 'negligible', we mean '1 in 3 people have this level of aptitude' - it's common enough that your local Psychic Hotline can nail the diagnosis with 80% accuracy.) | ||
+ | *Signs point to an increase in overall stamina and flexibility in line with the exponential scaling of several occult parameters. In other words, we've seen this guy raw-fuck Newtonian physics just by asking reality nicely. We get it, RE: no hand-eye coordination, RE: no clue where it's all coming from. | ||
+ | *On that note, we played around with the idea that late-stage Darwinism took a rare pity on him via Bee. No such case - in fact, he seems to be persona non grata anywhere close to Agartha. We can only guess as to what that means. | ||
+ | **He hasn't been dismantled on sight by any Agarthan drones or seen suffering from any unusual signs from just being around the gateways - only TSA in the form of a wall of bees. | ||
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+ | You can imagine our frustration. He obviously shows no sign of infection by the Filth, hasn't sold his soul to Hell, isn't rocking any implants (cybernetic or arcane), and we'd commit genocide to get our hands on a psychic infodump that doesn't render our acquisitions into drooling messes, but we have nothing that points to the existence of such a project. | ||
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+ | So what's up? We're obviously missing ''something'' even after several rounds of observation. Which has forced us to start officially 'encouraging' as many armchair investigators and 'volunteers' as possible to tail Don Rhodes in their 'free time'. | ||
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+ | Even though this includes you, we like to think of all of our hires as competent and self-reliant at all times. | ||
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+ | '''Thus, here are some common sense guidelines for you to follow:''' | ||
+ | *DO engage Rhodes on non-hostile grounds when you encounter him. | ||
+ | **Do NOT incite a hostile situation. We need organic footage, not a Michael Bay sitch with our investments blown or picked out as kill-on-sight by whoever owns his leash. | ||
+ | **Do NOT clue him into the fact that you are one of our's or that he is being observed. If it's obvious or inevitable, spin it into a personal project and not a corporate mandate. | ||
+ | **Do NOT approach him if you value your cybernetics above your life. Or if they are what keep you alive in the first place. | ||
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+ | *DO get into his good graces. Like, if he's Phoenician, it pays to have a merc open to us. He apparently likes a good macchiato. | ||
+ | **Do NOT get attached. Seriously, you are not in a chick flick or a romance novel; if he doesn't somehow kill you after you bang, we will. | ||
+ | **Do NOT believe anything he says at face value. We'll tell you what to believe and what not to believe. Yes, even if he tells you that he prefers getting it on with guys - you would not believe the incidents. See bullet above. | ||
+ | **Do NOT involve yourself in his business without prior authorization, keep it on acquiantance-level as we compile data. We are literally in no hurry to meet the doggy's masters. | ||
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+ | *DO keep in touch. With us, not him - see bullet above. We want eye-witness reports, uncompromised footage, occult telemetry, the whole shabang that you can get away with in casual weekend wear. | ||
+ | **Do NOT compromise yourself or go out of your way to dig dirt on this guy. We've tried, it's confusing, obnoxious, and lethal for reasons that are on a need-to-know basis. | ||
+ | **Do NOT fabricate or fluff-up your reports out of fear that your career, i.e. your life, is on the chopping block. That will put it there, and 'impressing us' with 'groundbreaking' information is not cause to unflag you for termination anyway. Cite, cite, cite. | ||
+ | **Do NOT pester us with minutiae on his comings or goings. We have a dedicated team for that now and you're not getting yourself any favors for playing off as diligent. | ||
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+ | Keep to this plan and you'll be golden. I'm sure we'll get something out of your effort, so just keep forwarding your thoughts up the chain and we'll get back to you. | ||
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+ | Also, it goes without saying that there will not be another public update on the matter of Don Rhodes. Assume that all new information is on a need-to-know basis and that that basis applies to you and only you. Yes, we're encouraging redundancy here. Don't wait up.</font> | ||
+ | [[File:Illuminati Symbol.png|200px|center|Don't believe everything you see.]] | ||
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