Haunted Sample PC

Name: Darryl Hannigan
Player: Alcar (Sample NPC)

Summary: Drifter with strange talents he doesn't understand looking for the meaning in his life.

Description: Darryl is a tall, lithe man in his late twenties in excellent shape with African-black skin and black eyes and hair. He is NOT a basketball player, and is wearing jeans, a sweater, a jean jacket, sneakers, and gloves.

Personality: Darryl is a normal, regular person trying to cope with a gift he doesn't understand.

Trigger Event(s): The deaths of a lover and a friend later changed his life in mundane ways. Later, seeing signs and having visions when he touched people.

Obsession: Being the best that he can be (Parkour)

Wound Points: 50

STIMULI
Rage: People who do drugs.
Fear: Being trapped in one place (broken bones)
Noble:

STATS
Body: 60 (lithe)
Speed: 50 (quick)
Mind: 50 (college schooling)
Soul: 70 (observant)

SKILLS
Body:
*Parkour*: 60% [Obsession]
Beat The Shit Out Of Nasty People: 35%

Speed:
Dodge: 25%
Driving: 10% [Only got a license recently]
Initiative: 40%
Knives and their friends: 30%

Mind:
General Education: 20%
Notice: 25%
Conceal: 15%
Map places: 35%

Soul:
Charm: 15%
Lying: 15%
See Signs: 20%
Psychometry: 50%

Map places is a mental aid in Parkour, helping him figure out the quickest way to get from A to B. It also helps ensure he seldom gets lost anywhere, and is useful in getting a "feel" for a place.
See Signs: This ability is passive, working only when the GM feels like having it happen. It basically is "signs" that Darryl sees, often real signs or paper headlines that change. The effect IS visible to others, if they look, but most people seldom do, and the sign isn't for them, anyway. The source of them is unknown, but they act as guides and hunches, directing Darryl places or giving him hints. He doesn't always get them, of course, and sometimes the signs are just a feeling: keep moving, you haven't found what you're looking for yet. (This, of course, would be more useful if he knew WHAT he was looking for.)
Psychometry: Darryl gets visions of things when he touches them. It doesn't always happen with objects, and almost always with people. Generally he only gets one a day from one person, and from things - well, it depends. If his car is low on gas and needs a tune-up, it could give quite a few. He's slowly coming to terms with the idea that cars and the like are as alive as people, but isn't sure what it all means, if anything.

INVENTORY
- A long volkswagon with a big trunk and, when the back seat folds down, enough room for two (or even the) people to sleep in it quite comfortably. Fake wood paneling, all of that. It's from the early 90s :)
- Clothing, duffel bag of more clothing, credit cards.
- A nice nest egg (at least $80K) in the bank. He works odd jobs for people as he goes to pay for gas and basic expenses.

BACKGROUND

Darryl had a very normal, boring childhood as far as such things go. He had loving parents, an adopted sister he got along with rather well, and some friends. Sure, he was chubby, but he didn't let what people say bother him (he seldom has) and life was pretty much normal. Then came high school, and girls who didn't like the geeky kids who played computer games and looked like they avoided sunlight as a plague. He was 15 when he decided he was tired of being himself and decided to become someone else.

The next year was hell, but he survived. His grades nose-dived, but he ran, did track, played in sports, and confused the hell out of his old friends and family. He got a girlfriend, began to do better in school again, and then one night three years later he went to her place to find she'd OD'd. He never did find out on what Karen had took, or why. He knew she had some problems with her family, but he'd been waiting for her to open up about them herself. Instead she'd opened her wrists and then her mind.

The doctors had tried to comfort him at the hospital, saying she'd at least bound her wrists, probably changed her mind, but with the drugs and blood loss hadn't been able to call 911. He listened, he heard: it didn't matter. Sometime during that night, he left his old life behind as well. He waited a week for the funeral, saying all the right things to all the right questions. Graduation was in one week; he left the next day, unable to stay any longer.

He found refuge on the east coast, in New York City, reasoning that if California was Heaven, NYC had to be hell. It was just his bad luck that the mayor had gone on a "clean up the streets spree", but some parts of the city never listened, and he ended up in them, trying to understand why Karen had destroyed herself, why people did that, and what kind of lives they led. he ended up in a gang, and a leader eventually since he never did drugs and rarely drank. He was death on anyone who did drugs, once literally, but even though he was somewhere near the bottom, he knew there was no way he could fall far enough for it to matter, for him to understand.

So he left that, when he was 22, and enrolled in some cheap-ass college courses to become an assistant gym teacher at the less savoury schools in the city. It was there that he met Kelly, who was the other assistant gym teacher. She was big into parkour, and street fighting, and used to be a guy (a fact she told him when, one night while drunk, he asked if she'd like to get to know him better: he'd sobered up really fast). They got along well as friends and she introduced him to the sport. He turned out to be really good at it, a natural even, and won the local city competition the next year.

He and Kelly moved in two years later, just as friends. They scrimped and saved for more courses, to try and become real gym teachers, and though money was tight, life was good. Darryl was even thinking about calling home, since he couldn't stay "trapped in the local parkour scene for long," as Kelly put it. He waited, unsure what to say, until six months ago he was walking down the street on the way home from school and the local movie theatre sign changed into "Don't Call Home Yet". Darryl thought it was just a freak occurrence, until signs continued to "speak" to him, words in the paper moving. Sometimes other people saw them, sometimes not; the message was always for him.

[The day of "the signs" day is the exact day Karen died. This is just a coincidence, of course.]

He thought he must be going mad, but managed to start ignoring them, even though sometimes it was hard. Then one evening he came back from work, went to take a plate from Kelly, and their hands touched. And he saw into Kelly's soul. Images, thoughts, knowledge. He knew the cancer she was dying of, and the terrible fear of dying alone she had. He'd blurted out "You have cancer?" in surprised, and she'd been shocked, confused. He'd tried to explain, failing, and left the room, unable to deal with her fear.

She died two months later, after they'd come to terms with - well, It. He was wearing gloves, and the only person who came. There were no signs, but there was also nothing holding him to the city anymore: the bureaucracy hindered his advancement (he tried not to think it was racial; but it was hard not to: the scorn of white people was an old memory). He sold the apartment and bought a volkswagon, putting the money Kelly had left him in her will into a savings account and leaving the city.

Since then, he's just wandered, never staying for long in one place, pulled hither and thither by hunches and signs, and touching things, understanding them, and doing what he can to make sense of this strange gift and the world as it now is to him. He's wondering if it's time to go home now, but hadn't seen a sign telling him this yet and has no desire to go on his own. He keeps telling himself he's not afraid, and doesn't have answers for questions. He's turning 27 in three days, and wondering what his life will be like now that he's crazy ...

FAMILY

Frank Hannigan (Father, 58) - His father was a doctor, and still is. Just a GP, but it's been enough for the family to do moderately well, and they've not moved from their house, just added a pool and helped fund the local park down the road (firmly refusing to have it put in his the family name, and the donation was anonymous). He wishes he knew where his son was, and often checks obituaries of national papers, but has done nothing towards finding Darryl, figuring his son will come home when he wants to, and holding to that.

Mary Hannigan (Mother, 56) - Mary loves her sons. Darryl's room hadn't been changed since he left it, and a part of her died when he left as he did. Oh, she knows he has his reasons, but even so - it's been almost 10 years, and she's afraid he's died, or something worse has happened, and doesn't understand how things ended up as they did. She loves her other son and husband, and can go for almost a month without wondering where Darryl is sometimes, but she cries more in private than she should. She knows she should move on, that this isn't healthy, but there's a hole in her heart that nothing can fill, except answers. IN her normal life, she works as a secretary for her husband, and helps out at a local soup kitchen.

Chris Hannigan (Brother (adopted), 26) - Chris was always welcomed in the family. His childhood before he was adopted (at age 6) isn't something he ever talks about, and he loves his family, and adored his brother. He tried not to hate Darryl for running away, but part of him still does, knowing that no matter how hard he tries, he can't fill the gap in his parent's lives. He is, currently, finishing a business major at the local university and unsure what to do with his life after that.

FRIENDS

None, at present, besides the car he's named Bessie. He had a few in NYC, other teachers, some students and their parents, a few of the gang members who'd reformed, but no one he was really close to. His childhood best friend (before he got into Sports) was Harry Blackmore, who is likely a computer hacker with the NSA or something. His friends after that were some guys and girls in the track team. Many likely stayed in town, but he never kept in touch with anyone from home. (That being [Some town below Seattle], Washington].)