personal notes:
Sep. 24th, 2012 10:12 amview of events as derived by the evidence uncovered by Karkat Vantas. Keep and eye out for further evidence, and keep building the narrative until a coherent view of events is found.
Language on documents suggests the scientists are working for a government or political entity named "Fasest". Seems to have hostile neighbors that are ramping up military action.
The scientists seem to have created the lamufao. see "Lamufao is the coral installed". The scientists note surprise that the 'natives' have begun to worship the coral. More suggestions that the city and coral were created here by the scientists, and these are observations of the background population.
Gasses are listed on that sheet. 23% sors, and others. Is this oxygen? what are we breathing? too bad a mass spectrometer is going to be a bit scarse down here. Fuck. Need to figure out what the hell this place is. the barrier is listed as 300 x 10^19 Hz. If that's electromagnetic, it's gamma radiation. too bad the people in charge seem too smart to give us a nuclear physicist. If we could do something with the barrier, we might be able to get a message out... to somewhere. Maybe we could learn what the atmo is like outside, if the scientists are as human as they seem, or if this is all some alien bullshit abduction thing.
Note the curses. The sheet lists 21 curses, with measured values of some sort. The SFC archive I've recovered suggested that there have not been that many... need to check dates with Vantas and see if the curses on this sheet had already happened, or haven't happened yet. May be a smoking gun, showing the scientists preparing curses ahead of time. this could be a schedule, not measured data.
take control of the barrier, hold their whole experiment hostage until we get some answers
take control of the mechanism that sends and pulls people. Send home those that want out. Kepp those that have bad things waiting for them.
If i can do this, I can save her.
The scientist seem to be running the curses as experiments on us. They probably control who stays and who goes. Might be a bad idea to cause too much trouble. Might take some measures...
Language on documents suggests the scientists are working for a government or political entity named "Fasest". Seems to have hostile neighbors that are ramping up military action.
The scientists seem to have created the lamufao. see "Lamufao is the coral installed". The scientists note surprise that the 'natives' have begun to worship the coral. More suggestions that the city and coral were created here by the scientists, and these are observations of the background population.
Gasses are listed on that sheet. 23% sors, and others. Is this oxygen? what are we breathing? too bad a mass spectrometer is going to be a bit scarse down here. Fuck. Need to figure out what the hell this place is. the barrier is listed as 300 x 10^19 Hz. If that's electromagnetic, it's gamma radiation. too bad the people in charge seem too smart to give us a nuclear physicist. If we could do something with the barrier, we might be able to get a message out... to somewhere. Maybe we could learn what the atmo is like outside, if the scientists are as human as they seem, or if this is all some alien bullshit abduction thing.
Note the curses. The sheet lists 21 curses, with measured values of some sort. The SFC archive I've recovered suggested that there have not been that many... need to check dates with Vantas and see if the curses on this sheet had already happened, or haven't happened yet. May be a smoking gun, showing the scientists preparing curses ahead of time. this could be a schedule, not measured data.
take control of the barrier, hold their whole experiment hostage until we get some answers
take control of the mechanism that sends and pulls people. Send home those that want out. Kepp those that have bad things waiting for them.
If i can do this, I can save her.
The scientist seem to be running the curses as experiments on us. They probably control who stays and who goes. Might be a bad idea to cause too much trouble. Might take some measures...
martyr draft
Sep. 24th, 2012 10:11 amA few weeks ago, One of our fellow forighners was murdered. While violence isn't uncommon here, this was different than the occasional homocides that are the inevitable result of bringing together powerful and often unstable individuals from so many worlds and packing them in a force field city like so many sardines. This was a different sort of death, a different kind of murder, one that happens more often that most might think, thanks to how discrete it is. It's not like there was a body or crime scene here in the city to help call attention to it. The removal of the evidence was the act itself.
The troll known as Signless was sent back to his home world of Alternia on August 21, along with his friend Psiionic and their fellow troll, Marquise Mindfang.
Conflaiting their return with murder might seem a bit overdramatic. People go home all the time. Sometimes they come back. That's a part of what makes this sort of killing so hard to notice: you have to know all the facts to see what's really going on. So here, let uncle Spider pull you out of your self absorbed ignorance.
I got to meet with Signless back in July for an interview. I did what investigation I could at the time before meeting, but there wasn't much to go on. I'd heard he was a religious leader of sorts. A jesus-like figure in Alternian culture. That's enough to get me interested, but usually I'm in the business of exposing such types as liars and frauds, using the inherent stupidity of people to earn themselves a little petty power or mortal wealth. I've seen a lot of religious leaders. This meeting was the first time I saw one that actually gave a shit.
Signless was a bit underwhelming at first. Short, quiet, and fairly reserved. He was thoughtful, and attentive, waiting to hear my questions fully rather than launching into some sort of pitch to sell his philosophy. We each finished our first order of tea well before we talked about anything beyond his life and upbrining, and it was only at my insistence that we covered the topic at all. Even after a few months here I wasn't ready for someone so sincere. He was humble enough that my own prodigious ego was diminshed through simple proximity.
Troll culture is interesting, but not altogether alien from my own perspective. There are elements there reminicent of dozens of past human societies, from the Spartans of Greece to the Mongol tribes of the 13th century. A small bit of background in this culture is neccesary to fully appreciate the story of the Signless.
Alternian society is essentially a warrior culture. Weak or abnormal children are culled, and the strong are allowed to live. A caste system called the hemospectrum dictates the roles of individuals, based on the color of the blood. The lowest casts are essentially slaves, and each caste serves the ones above it to their own detriment. The Signless was born with a genetic abnormallity that gave him bright red blood, a sort that might be familiar to a love of the mammals reading this. This unique color amongst trolls meant that he had no caste at all; he was destined to be discarded, culled to remove him from the genetic line. He could not have recieved a normal lusus, the creatures that normally raise troll young. Even if he were not found out and culled, he had no chance of surviving the harse environment of Alternia alone.
His survival to adulthood is due to the actions of another Troll. She raised him as if she were his lusus. Their culture should have killed her for failing to kill him. They would have killed her for subverting the normal order by raising a child herself. They would have killed her for abandoning her role dictated by her blood. Raised by a woman like that, it's no big surprise that Signless would become a rather unusual example of his species. In a culture where kindness is a weakness that results in punishment and death, he was the lone troll to be brought up embracing philanthropy.
It was this sense of kindness that led quite naturally to his critisizms of the social order. I'm sure that every one of you has some example in your world's history of oppression, and if you all collected your braincells together it shouldn't be hard for you to scrape together the half a thought it takes to predict what happens next.
Signless is a very effective speaker, and in a world where the lower castes outnumber the upper by a significant margin, he had no lack of sypathetic ears. His words formed the basis of a subversive movement, half revolution, half religion, one the proposed the equality of all trolls. The Psiionic became one of his closest supporters. The Disciple's title came from her dedication to his teachings, and to him. As the numbers grew, so did their visibilty.
Again, it doesn't take much to predict what would happen next.
Totalitarians maintain their power by removing any threats to that power. Signless and his inner circle were captured and tried for the heresy of suggesting that you didn't always need to be a dick to each other.
He was sentenced to be tortured with hot irons, and then put to death.
But he got a little reprieve. A delay of sentence. Not from his worlds joke of a court system, but by getting dragged here, to a city under the ocean. He lived here for a few months, parted from the pain and suffering that waited from him in his world. He made new friends, and was reunited with the love of his life. His time here was a blessing, for himself and those he met. That time was a gift. But before you go and think of that as a nice ending for a good man, something extra before his utterly unfair and undeserved end, remember the evidence we've seen. When people go back, they forget everything that happened here. His gift was taken away completely. We can remember his time here, but he has died with no memory of it.
Think on what awaits you when you go home. Is it just to pick up your life that you left off? Or are you facing a firing squad, a few hours of agony followed by the sweet release of death?
From what has been found so far, the coral is not making any sort of descisions here. It was found by or possibly created by the scientists, and they're the ones in control. They claim to be studying the coral, but evidence has been found that practically screams that the whole point of this place is to run experiments on us. One doesn't creat an experiment where your subjects can be taken away randomly. One doesn't allow new subjects to be introduced without any control. Even if they can't control who arrives and when they leave, you canbe sure that they are closer to figuring that out than anybody, and so far they haven't been sharing their results.
Maybe my characterization of them is wrong though. They claim to be merely studying the coral. If that was the case, why all the secrets? If they gave to tugs of a dead dog's dick about the Truth then they would share what they fucking know. If they read this and feel slighted by my accusations, then I'd welcome them coming in and proving me wrong. I'd find it more likely that they would do what any tyrant does when someone starts leveling valid accusations their way.
The troll known as Signless was sent back to his home world of Alternia on August 21, along with his friend Psiionic and their fellow troll, Marquise Mindfang.
Conflaiting their return with murder might seem a bit overdramatic. People go home all the time. Sometimes they come back. That's a part of what makes this sort of killing so hard to notice: you have to know all the facts to see what's really going on. So here, let uncle Spider pull you out of your self absorbed ignorance.
I got to meet with Signless back in July for an interview. I did what investigation I could at the time before meeting, but there wasn't much to go on. I'd heard he was a religious leader of sorts. A jesus-like figure in Alternian culture. That's enough to get me interested, but usually I'm in the business of exposing such types as liars and frauds, using the inherent stupidity of people to earn themselves a little petty power or mortal wealth. I've seen a lot of religious leaders. This meeting was the first time I saw one that actually gave a shit.
Signless was a bit underwhelming at first. Short, quiet, and fairly reserved. He was thoughtful, and attentive, waiting to hear my questions fully rather than launching into some sort of pitch to sell his philosophy. We each finished our first order of tea well before we talked about anything beyond his life and upbrining, and it was only at my insistence that we covered the topic at all. Even after a few months here I wasn't ready for someone so sincere. He was humble enough that my own prodigious ego was diminshed through simple proximity.
Troll culture is interesting, but not altogether alien from my own perspective. There are elements there reminicent of dozens of past human societies, from the Spartans of Greece to the Mongol tribes of the 13th century. A small bit of background in this culture is neccesary to fully appreciate the story of the Signless.
Alternian society is essentially a warrior culture. Weak or abnormal children are culled, and the strong are allowed to live. A caste system called the hemospectrum dictates the roles of individuals, based on the color of the blood. The lowest casts are essentially slaves, and each caste serves the ones above it to their own detriment. The Signless was born with a genetic abnormallity that gave him bright red blood, a sort that might be familiar to a love of the mammals reading this. This unique color amongst trolls meant that he had no caste at all; he was destined to be discarded, culled to remove him from the genetic line. He could not have recieved a normal lusus, the creatures that normally raise troll young. Even if he were not found out and culled, he had no chance of surviving the harse environment of Alternia alone.
His survival to adulthood is due to the actions of another Troll. She raised him as if she were his lusus. Their culture should have killed her for failing to kill him. They would have killed her for subverting the normal order by raising a child herself. They would have killed her for abandoning her role dictated by her blood. Raised by a woman like that, it's no big surprise that Signless would become a rather unusual example of his species. In a culture where kindness is a weakness that results in punishment and death, he was the lone troll to be brought up embracing philanthropy.
It was this sense of kindness that led quite naturally to his critisizms of the social order. I'm sure that every one of you has some example in your world's history of oppression, and if you all collected your braincells together it shouldn't be hard for you to scrape together the half a thought it takes to predict what happens next.
Signless is a very effective speaker, and in a world where the lower castes outnumber the upper by a significant margin, he had no lack of sypathetic ears. His words formed the basis of a subversive movement, half revolution, half religion, one the proposed the equality of all trolls. The Psiionic became one of his closest supporters. The Disciple's title came from her dedication to his teachings, and to him. As the numbers grew, so did their visibilty.
Again, it doesn't take much to predict what would happen next.
Totalitarians maintain their power by removing any threats to that power. Signless and his inner circle were captured and tried for the heresy of suggesting that you didn't always need to be a dick to each other.
He was sentenced to be tortured with hot irons, and then put to death.
But he got a little reprieve. A delay of sentence. Not from his worlds joke of a court system, but by getting dragged here, to a city under the ocean. He lived here for a few months, parted from the pain and suffering that waited from him in his world. He made new friends, and was reunited with the love of his life. His time here was a blessing, for himself and those he met. That time was a gift. But before you go and think of that as a nice ending for a good man, something extra before his utterly unfair and undeserved end, remember the evidence we've seen. When people go back, they forget everything that happened here. His gift was taken away completely. We can remember his time here, but he has died with no memory of it.
Think on what awaits you when you go home. Is it just to pick up your life that you left off? Or are you facing a firing squad, a few hours of agony followed by the sweet release of death?
From what has been found so far, the coral is not making any sort of descisions here. It was found by or possibly created by the scientists, and they're the ones in control. They claim to be studying the coral, but evidence has been found that practically screams that the whole point of this place is to run experiments on us. One doesn't creat an experiment where your subjects can be taken away randomly. One doesn't allow new subjects to be introduced without any control. Even if they can't control who arrives and when they leave, you canbe sure that they are closer to figuring that out than anybody, and so far they haven't been sharing their results.
Maybe my characterization of them is wrong though. They claim to be merely studying the coral. If that was the case, why all the secrets? If they gave to tugs of a dead dog's dick about the Truth then they would share what they fucking know. If they read this and feel slighted by my accusations, then I'd welcome them coming in and proving me wrong. I'd find it more likely that they would do what any tyrant does when someone starts leveling valid accusations their way.
Permissions
May. 28th, 2012 09:23 amSpider Jerusalem, professional curmudgeon and part time maniac. In situations that he feels warrant physical violence (and he can be quite liberal with the qualifications of such a situation), Spider fights dirty. There's no honor, there's no rules. When he fights, he's a complete bastard, because that's what works. He won't kill unless his own life is on the line, but he may maim if that seems like the best way to win the fight quickly.
Also, he has a gun that makes you shit yourself.
People who are polite, smart, and nonviolent probably have nothing at all to fear from him. Rudeness, stupidity, and physical threats will be punished severely, sometimes with force, often just with carefully crafted words of destruction. The journalist's task is to punish the wicked, aiming your meat gun of journalism and preparing to tear apart those who so richly deserve it.
This is all far too pretentious for a permissions post. Let's get down to business.
Can my character:
- Cause minor injuries to yours? Minor scrapes, bruises, and the like from kicks or punches.
- Cause serious injuries to yours? Broken bones, gouged eyes, cigarette and lighter burns, repeated bludgeoning with The Chair Leg Of Truth, etc. Stuff that might not heal right even with the coral's assistance.
- Cause major, irreparable harm to yours? Dismemberment, blinding, theft of organs, other things that most doctors would have no hope of fixing, ...castration... (Spider once knocked out a cop that was shaking down a brothel for protection money. The officer woke up on a rickshaw being carted north, wearing a dress and lipstick, and his genitals had been surgically removed.)
- Kill your character? Spider has admitted that he has killed 16 people in his life, all but one in self defense.
sigh...
- Make your character shit themselves? Spider owns a homemade Bowel Disruptor, a gun that does exactly what it sounds like. Settings include watery, loose, and prolapse. It is non-lethal (unless modified with a fourth setting, "fatal intestinal trauma"), and it leaves no signature. It's use cannot be traced (though honestly, when someone explosively shits their pants it's hard to not blame the guy with the illegal bowel disruptor. Because it is an effective nonlethal tool for taking someone out of a fight, or just punishing them outright, Spider may use this weapon quite a bit. I've decided that it has become a little unreliable due to the salt water dip of arriving in Vatheon. If I ever have him use it on a character, I'll leave the results up in the air. Feel free to dodge the blast, or claim the weapon shorts out with a fizzle, or some other effect.
- Anything else that I may not have thought of or that would apply specifically for your character?
Also, he has a gun that makes you shit yourself.
People who are polite, smart, and nonviolent probably have nothing at all to fear from him. Rudeness, stupidity, and physical threats will be punished severely, sometimes with force, often just with carefully crafted words of destruction. The journalist's task is to punish the wicked, aiming your meat gun of journalism and preparing to tear apart those who so richly deserve it.
This is all far too pretentious for a permissions post. Let's get down to business.
Can my character:
- Cause minor injuries to yours? Minor scrapes, bruises, and the like from kicks or punches.
- Cause serious injuries to yours? Broken bones, gouged eyes, cigarette and lighter burns, repeated bludgeoning with The Chair Leg Of Truth, etc. Stuff that might not heal right even with the coral's assistance.
- Cause major, irreparable harm to yours? Dismemberment, blinding, theft of organs, other things that most doctors would have no hope of fixing, ...castration... (Spider once knocked out a cop that was shaking down a brothel for protection money. The officer woke up on a rickshaw being carted north, wearing a dress and lipstick, and his genitals had been surgically removed.)
- Kill your character? Spider has admitted that he has killed 16 people in his life, all but one in self defense.
sigh...
- Make your character shit themselves? Spider owns a homemade Bowel Disruptor, a gun that does exactly what it sounds like. Settings include watery, loose, and prolapse. It is non-lethal (unless modified with a fourth setting, "fatal intestinal trauma"), and it leaves no signature. It's use cannot be traced (though honestly, when someone explosively shits their pants it's hard to not blame the guy with the illegal bowel disruptor. Because it is an effective nonlethal tool for taking someone out of a fight, or just punishing them outright, Spider may use this weapon quite a bit. I've decided that it has become a little unreliable due to the salt water dip of arriving in Vatheon. If I ever have him use it on a character, I'll leave the results up in the air. Feel free to dodge the blast, or claim the weapon shorts out with a fizzle, or some other effect.
- Anything else that I may not have thought of or that would apply specifically for your character?
It Could Be Worse 00
May. 11th, 2012 11:19 pm This Entry is a tentative example of writing for Spider Jerusalem. If accepted into Vatheon, something fairly similar to this would likely be the first issue of a semi-weekly article, currently given the prototype name of "It Could Be Worse". Spider will continue to write if there at all seems to be an audience for it, and even more so if that audience seems to hate him. His goal in writing is to make people think, to get them out of their little shells, and to ask the hard questions. That, or he writes to punish the wicked. Either one really. I plan on keeping his text for his articles formatted as it appears here, in courier, black, and "big". Note, the default stylings of the journal means that it may still appear differently in a community post.
My name is Spider Jerusalem, and I am a Journalist. I write articles for a living. I write about the things that make us, society as a whole, great. I write about the things that make us pathetic and disgusting and worthless.
I write about The Truth.
Last week I was born again.
Not in a religious sense, fuck no. I landed in a strange world, wet, cold and naked. Nothing from the place I came from mattered beyond how it shaped me to enter this one.
The mammals out there in the audience know what I'm talking about.
So here I am, taken from my home in The City, and dropped here in the land where nothing matters. None of the rather serious shit I was dealing with back home has any affect here. None of the banal bullshit going on here will ever have an effect when I go home.
A brand new life.
And what a new life this is! Every need provided for! No hunger, no homelessness, and with a touch of the coral, no disease. We are told that we are effectively immortal here, that we will be brought back less than a week after our death! Is this not liberating? With all worldly needs taken care of, with even death a fear of the past, who can deny the fact that we are free to spend out lives in pursuit of whatever art or entertainment we could want? What an astounding new freedom to live a life solely dedicated to what you want to do without need to work mindlessly to afford menial, petty, mortal things.
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." Sure. This seems like freedom, like paradise. Quite the gilded cage we're in.
Just what will happen if any of you produce offspring in this world-disconnected?
My name is Spider Jerusalem, and I am a Journalist. I write articles for a living. I write about the things that make us, society as a whole, great. I write about the things that make us pathetic and disgusting and worthless.
I write about The Truth.
Last week I was born again.
Not in a religious sense, fuck no. I landed in a strange world, wet, cold and naked. Nothing from the place I came from mattered beyond how it shaped me to enter this one.
The mammals out there in the audience know what I'm talking about.
So here I am, taken from my home in The City, and dropped here in the land where nothing matters. None of the rather serious shit I was dealing with back home has any affect here. None of the banal bullshit going on here will ever have an effect when I go home.
A brand new life.
And what a new life this is! Every need provided for! No hunger, no homelessness, and with a touch of the coral, no disease. We are told that we are effectively immortal here, that we will be brought back less than a week after our death! Is this not liberating? With all worldly needs taken care of, with even death a fear of the past, who can deny the fact that we are free to spend out lives in pursuit of whatever art or entertainment we could want? What an astounding new freedom to live a life solely dedicated to what you want to do without need to work mindlessly to afford menial, petty, mortal things.
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." Sure. This seems like freedom, like paradise. Quite the gilded cage we're in.
Just what will happen if any of you produce offspring in this world-disconnected?
Vatheon Application
Apr. 28th, 2012 03:57 pm[ Player Name ] : Hiddenkrypt / Travis / Rav-t
[ Personal DW ] :![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sylphauxiliatrix
[ Age ] : 27
[ Timezone ] : PST (GMT-8)
[ Other Characters ] : Kanaya Maryam
[ Character's Name ] : Spider Django Heraclitus Jerusalem
[ Character's Age ] : Unknown, presumed mid 30's
[ Series ] : TRANSMETROPOLITAN
[ Canon Point ] : End of Issue #18, shortly following his conversation with Kristen at Rita Severn's Grave.
[ History ] :
To start off, the world of Transmetropolitan is a cyberpunk dystopia, a future world where half the eastern seaboard of the United States has grown so overpopulated that the whole area is just called "The City". It's an over the top exaggeration of the worst faults of consumer culture gone rampant and given a hundred years or so to stew. Imagine Futurama's New New York, if Matt Groening teamed up with Alan Moore and Jhonen Vasquez and a hint of Frank Miller.
This is the world Spider lived in as a child, and where he lives and works during a majority of the comic.
Spider's past is covered spottily in the canon. Almost everything we know about his childhood is apocryphal, told from Spider's friends or from the man himself, and there may be elements of hyperbole mixed in. We know that he comes from a poor background, the son of a municipal bus driver. His mother reportedly cooked lizards for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each and every day. He learned to fight and shoot guns at school, though he claims that back in his day they had to make their own guns, to keep the teachers from having an unfair advantage. Given what we know about the setting of Transmetropolitan, this isn't actually that absurd.
He grew up to become a journalist. He served as war correspondent at times, and wrote about a variety of topics. He covered the "war of the verbals" between France and England. At the time his writing had become influential enough that the French government attempted multiple times to have him assassinated (It's likely that the English also tried to have him killed. Spider is very good at making enemies.)
Later, he began reporting on the upcoming election in America, focusing a great deal of his efforts on a candadite that he dubbed "The Beast", a nickname that stuck in the public mind. Despite exposing the Beast's illegal and unethical practices, spider failed to prevent his election. Spider's first article after this was the word "fuck" written 8000 times. Jerusalem wrote a book about the whole election. This book made him incredibly popular, and he obtained celebrity status. Spider fled the city and his fame, hiding in a home in the Appalachian mountains for five years.
From here on out this history is nothing but major spoilers for the first 18 issues.
The comics of Transmetropolitan start when spider's publisher finds his home, demanding the other two books Jerusalem was contracted to write. After five years of solitude, Spider returns to the City. He meets Royce, an old friend of his who has become an editor for "The Word", a news operation. Royce gives him a job, a weekly op-ed column which Spider immediately titles "I Hate It Here".
Spider finds himself standing on a building in the Angels 8 district, above a riot. His first article for the new column is written there, the words being sent to his editor live. His editor sells the rights to several other networks, broadcasting his writing around the world as he types it. As the only journalist able to get within several blocks of the chaos, his is the only coverage anybody cares about. And Spider writes what he does best: The Truth.
The new column is an instant hit. His next several articles focus on social issues that the public mostly tries to ignore. His popularity and biting scorn for the indifference of the masses actually has an impact on the world around him. He uses journalism to improve the world by exposing its dirtiest secrets. For a short while he continues his work with nothing too important. Assault and battery of the President of the United States, forcing his assistant to watch her ex-boyfriend kill himself so he can be reborn as a colony of robots... You know, typical things. But this sort of peace and happiness doesn't last forever. Because THIS... is an election year.
Royce finally gets Spider to cave in and start covering the election. The incumbent President (which Spider assaulted a few weeks prior) wins his party's nomination without contest as expected. The party in opposition, however, is trying to decide between Gary "The Smiler" Callahan, an obviously fake family values and apple pie type of senator, and Bob Heller, the "America is for Americans" Fascist.
Spider knows that Heller would be little better than the incumbent "Beast". However, he discovers some truly reprehensible things about Senator Callahan. He knows that The Smiler is the lesser of two evils, and the one best positioned to take on the incumbent president. Spider also is impressed with Rita Severn, The Smiler's political director. She seems like an actually decent human being, a rare creature in politics that is both smart and stable. She and Spider hit it off quite well during one of their interviews, and there's a hint of a developing romance there. But his feelings for Rita do not stay his hand when it comes to the secrets of her employer.
Jerusalem damages the campaigns of both Heller and Callahan by doing what he does best: Spreading the Truth. In the end he is swayed by the fact that Rita is the one person in all of this that is working to better the world. Spider writes a column that backhandedly suggests Callahan as the better choice while condemning his vile secrets, and The Smiler wins the candidacy. However, Jerusalem becomes convinced that Heller threw the race, making a deal with The Smiler. At this point he launches a fact digging expedition, discovering the full nature of the deal Heller made. Spider finds the truth. Hard evidence that there was a deal made, and the insane terms of that deal. He knows this is going to hurt Rita, but the world must have the Truth, no matter what the cost. After Spider's big reveal, the new presidential candidate's popularity is a mere 18% out of the gate. Rita however, is still seen as the best thing about his campaign, with polls showing her at a 92% rating amongst voters. She is chosen to handle the damage control for the Callahan campaign.
Spider watches her on live television as she starts to speak. He watches as she is assassinated, her brains splattering the cameras.
Spider meets up with an old friend of his while visiting Rita's grave. Kristen is his drug dealer, and a former political director herself. She tells Spider that Rita did her job well. Her death did just what the Smiler wanted it to do. Callahan's polling rides the sympathy vote up to 78%. Spider goes home and begins to plot on how to take down Senator Gary "The Smiler" Callahan.
And that's the point where he is taken away from everything, drenched in saltwater, and dumped in the plaza.
[ Personality ] :
Spider Jerusalem is a multilayered and incredibly complex character. His actions are erratic at best, and his prodigious drug use only complicates attempts to look into the deeper motivations of his mind. For a start, I'd like to look at two of the real world figures most easily identified as inspiration for Spider (The character is often considered a tribute to both of these men). The first is "Doctor" Hunter S. Thompson, the other is H.L. Menckin.
Hunter S. Thompson is the founder of Gonzo Journalism, a style of subjective journalism focusing heavily on first person accounting of events. The Gonzo style is plainly evident in the writings of Spider in canon. His sneering grin, constant cigarette smoking, love of weaponry and exotic drugs all are hallmarks of both Thompson and Spider. Spider's profanity, high energy motions, and fearless ability to offend anyone, any time, are all derived from Hunter. They share in a dedication to The Truth. To Spider, the actual course of events, the literal truth is paramount. When he discovered a shocking secret behind one presidential candidate, his only course of action was to tell the truth, as loudly as possible. He did so, even though it would hurt the career of a close friend, even though it would give the opponent a leg up in the election, even though that opponent would be far worse for the country. Hunter shares this desire for veracity. His book (and the subsequent movie) "Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas" was based on real events, but fictionalized to a great degree. Thompson once remarked that he regretted the book and movie that made him famous as the worst journalism he had ever done. It was not faithful to The Truth, being heavily edited for clarity, storytelling, and certain political points. Gonzo Journalism prefers as a rule that it's writings focus on stream of consciousness, with little editing to preserve the truth of the moment. This wasn't entirely possible with Fear and Loathing; one entire section was reconstructed from tapes found after Thompson returned from his trip. The written notes for the book of that portion were complete gibberish. Spider's first article for "The Word", covering the angels 8 riot, was presented in a raw form. Spider was the only journalist able to cover what was actually happening, as the cops were keeping the other news services away. He set his typewriter (really a laptop that's styled like a typewriter) to send the article to his editor live, as he was typing it. This is also the moment that gave me the name for this journal. In his later writings in the canon, he doesn't shy away from a little polish, making sure that his words are carefully prepared to affect his target audience. But he knew that it was most important then, as the only reporter who was there to see what was really happening.
H.L. Mencken is one of the most famous journalists and satirists of the first half of the 20th century. He was well known for vitriolic diatribes, mostly commonly about stupidity. He famously attended and reported on the Scopes Evolution trial, coining the name "Scopes Monkey Trial". As Scopes was fighting his inevitable guilty verdict of teaching evolution in a school, Mencken set to work, attacking the prosecutor and the people of the county in attendance as morons, peasants, and hillbillies. His articles are considered to have swayed public opinion on Evolution, causing it to be accepted into the public consciousness and school curriculums country wide. Spider knows well the power of the press, likely from studying Mencken's work. His articles have a profound effect on the world, and while he knows he can't make anything happen, he can bring the truth to the masses, and get into their heads. Knowing this power, he chooses to focus his articles where they might do some good: stories about the forgotten and lost members of society, stories that expose the evil of corporations and politicians, and stories that remind society of what it has forgotten. And when it comes time to punish wrongdoing, well... He once caused 6 Czech politicians to commit suicide with nothing more than a phone call. One issue of the comic featured two different assassination attempts from people whose lives he had ruined with the truth.
Spider refers to Journalism as a gun, one with a single bullet. Aim it right and you can blow a kneecap off the world.
In his world, filled with sinners and scum, he uses the truth and his journalism to fight what he sees as the worst aspects of his society. Lacking a direct target for his wrath (say, a company illegally using children to smuggle human organs or something), Spider focuses on shaking people out of their complacency. His city is filled with hidden places, where the poor have been swept under the rug, hidden away and ignored. Jerusalem practically delights in pointing a spotlight on such places, holding the public's collective face in their mess so they can't look away.
Through all of this though, Spider Jerusalem is a reflection of his environment. In a setting with less vapid Idiocracy-styled masses, less scheming politicians, and lest insanity, he won't have cause to be as bad as he gets in his city. Vatheon, for all its strangeness, will be like a vacation to him. It remains to be seen just how well he'll be able to cope with a mundane setting like this (note, Vatheon is pretty tame relative to The City of Transmetropolitan.)
Royce remarked that he believes that Spider needs to be hated in order to function. It's more accurate to say that he needs to not be loved. When his book on the election of the beast became a hit, he found that, due to his celebrity status, he could not work as a journalist. He couldn't get to the truth, not with every person around him knowing exactly who he was. When he's not a cultural icon, he can do what he does best: observe. He can get the truth with his eyes and ears, and he can write. "Laying out the guts of the world", as he has said. "Treating life as an autopsy", as his assistant replied. Spider puts up a face that drives most sane people to hate him, and half the time that's exactly what he wants. He has trouble letting people get close to him. Considering that his ex wife has cryogenically frozen herself with express orders to do not thaw until he's dead (and she's set up some plans to accelerate that process), that he's driven off one assistant in canon with his antics, and another assistant credit him with ruining her life, well... the aftermath of his abrasive treatment of others is fairly apparent. But he's not always a jerk. In one issue he writes about a homeless girl named Mary, one of the many that the system has abandoned. She's a revival, a person frozen in the 90's or so and brain damaged when they brought her back to life. The city as a whole ignores their existence, providing a group home for them and some donated clothing out of some sense of shame for not doing anything more. During the day they are pushed out on the streets, left to fend for themselves. Spider found Mary babbling alone in an alleyway, and he took the time to listen to her story when nobody else would. He helps her as he can, making her life a bit more comfortable. He does use her as the center of an article, but where another might try it as an exploitative act of shock-journalism, Spider does this to make a change. To instill enough shame in his readers that maybe they'll actually try and help with the problems they normally ignore. At his core, Spider is a compassionate man. In his city it's not a face he shows often. I have a feeling that side of him will come out a bit more in a place like Vatheon, where there won't be too much suffering or evil for him to confront.
Speaking of suffering and evil, Jerusalem's favorite prey is politicians. This doesn't mean that he'll get bored in the relatively politician free bubble under the sea, however. A majority of the articles that Hunter S. Thompson wrote in his life were actually about Football. Spider prefers what real life news would call "human interest stories", journalism about life. If Spider can't find anything more important to write about, he'll cover current events in Vatheon. While he shines best when exposing evil plots or writing to instill a shameful form of motivation in a populace that doesn't care anymore, he would really prefer things to be more boring. Wouldn't it be great if there wasn't anything more newsworthy than the latest gossip?
[ Strengths/Weaknesses ] :
Spider is well trained in a variety of lethal and non lethal weapons. He can more than hold his own in a fist fight, and is a pretty decent shot. However, fighting is not his primary talent. He is the "mad super genius", able to predict and outsmart opponents yet held back by his neuroses and addictions. He is a skilled wordsmith, gifted with the power to instill shame in whole populations with one well placed article.
Being from the future, Spider has a variety of beneficial genetic enhancements called "traits". This has rendered him immune to cancer, drug addiction, and most diseases. Traits are biological, but can be more interesting than mere health upgrades. His "phone trait" is a biologically built telecom system in his skull, allowing audio communication with most standard networks using nothing more than a part of his body.
Spider's trademark glasses include a high resolution camera with zoom and a large amount of memory to store images. The camera can be silently activated by triggering certain muscle groups, and are programmed to automatically start taking a series of photos if Spider's movements and nerve impulses match the profile for an assault.
Spider is a habitual drug user, enjoying a variety of chemicals from common modern
drugs to exotic future narcotics and unusual biological agents such as chimpanzee pituitary glands. The drugs give him a variety of effects, though he prefers stimulants so he can continue working. Royce, his editor, once found him hooked up to a machine that was reinflating his veins. Spider was injecting heroin between his toes as every other vein had already collapsed. This though was Jerusalem at his worst, after a book he wrote made him famous and he found himself unable to find the Truth. Even at his best he will use drugs recreationally, or sometimes to, in his own words "Holmes-like, keep my interest in the world alive".
[ Other Important Facts ] :
On arrival to this world, Spider will have the following- (1) Pair of "Air Jesus" Sports shoes (Walk on water, or walls, or air, the first all terrain sports shoe! May not work as well as advertised) - (1) Illegal Bowel Disruptor (causes a target to shit themselves. settings include "loose", "watery", and "Prolapse". Salt water from his entry into Vatheon may have damaged it, use will be left up to character permissions) - (1) Pair of Iconic Shades (As described above), (1) "Typewriter", a laptop like device mostly used for writing, capable of connecting to many wireless networks.
Note, he will not arrive with any other clothing.
Spider Jerusalem is a maniac. He has a dedication to the truth, no matter what the cost, no matter who it hurts. If brought into Vatheon, he will probably get some mileage out of the death mechanics there. He will probably be killed by other players at some point. He will overdose on drugs. He might kill himself, if there might be a story in it. This could provide an opportunity for this game. How often have people really tested the limits of the locals? "Think of this -- would you disrespect a statue of Buddha perhaps, in real life?" I would not. But Spider? He will chop off the head of a Buddha and shit in the hole, while screaming blasphemes at anyone in the area. That is, is he feels particularly offended by one of the monks... or if he feels cause to punish them and their religion, or if he thinks it might make an interesting story for the article...
I'm not saying that he'll do something like that to the coral, but it's not entirely impossible. He will try to discover anything he can about the conditions of his imprisonment here, and he won't give a single fuck over who he offends or what they might do to him for trying to look too deep into it. He will pry and dig until he has the truth, and he will spread the facts as loudly as he can. Has anybody tried assaulting the scientists in a while? He might. Has anybody tried to force answers out of the locals with a cruel combination of information gathering techniques? He might.
His drug habits suggest that the nostalgia nook may soon be host to a dealer of quite strange chemical and biological agents.
[ Sample ] :
"It Could Be Worse", a prototype for the first article in a series that spider will begin a short while after finding himself in Vatheon, should you accept this application.
Some bakerstreet threads from the recent "Support Group Meme"
- Swearing support group
- Politicians support group
[ Questions? Comments? Concerns? ] :
Spider owns a cat. A filthy mongrel that views the world as things to fuck, eat, or piss on. Usually a combination of the three, in varying orders. Spider rescued her off the streets, feeding her back to a semblance of health. I decided NOT to bring her into the game with him. I might want to bring her in with a canon update later, if that's ok, but for now I'd rather not introduce that little monstrous element into the local ecosystem.
Seriously, I'm probably going to annoy the shit out of you mods with questions. Spider will want to know anything and everything, and from what I've heard, the locals won't exactly be forthcoming with answers. It looks to me like most of the characters in the game are annoyed but content with that. Spider won't let it sit at that; he's going to dig. There's a good chance I'll ask about aspects of the game you haven't necessarily ever needed to flesh out. It won't take long for Spider to think of the other foreigners here as a bunch of complacent stooges, and he will not be satisfied with the 'official' story. Some characters feel that they're better off here, but there's cracks in that plan, openings that Spider will exploit. I hope my sample "It could be worse" article does a good job of showing one such crack that hopefully will make people think a little more about the problems inherent in living in a place where you can be taken away at any moment, your body changed back to what it was when you were first stolen from your home reality.
[ Personal DW ] :
sylphauxiliatrix[ Age ] : 27
[ Timezone ] : PST (GMT-8)
[ Other Characters ] : Kanaya Maryam
[ Character's Name ] : Spider Django Heraclitus Jerusalem
[ Character's Age ] : Unknown, presumed mid 30's
[ Series ] : TRANSMETROPOLITAN
[ Canon Point ] : End of Issue #18, shortly following his conversation with Kristen at Rita Severn's Grave.
[ History ] :
To start off, the world of Transmetropolitan is a cyberpunk dystopia, a future world where half the eastern seaboard of the United States has grown so overpopulated that the whole area is just called "The City". It's an over the top exaggeration of the worst faults of consumer culture gone rampant and given a hundred years or so to stew. Imagine Futurama's New New York, if Matt Groening teamed up with Alan Moore and Jhonen Vasquez and a hint of Frank Miller.
This is the world Spider lived in as a child, and where he lives and works during a majority of the comic.
Spider's past is covered spottily in the canon. Almost everything we know about his childhood is apocryphal, told from Spider's friends or from the man himself, and there may be elements of hyperbole mixed in. We know that he comes from a poor background, the son of a municipal bus driver. His mother reportedly cooked lizards for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each and every day. He learned to fight and shoot guns at school, though he claims that back in his day they had to make their own guns, to keep the teachers from having an unfair advantage. Given what we know about the setting of Transmetropolitan, this isn't actually that absurd.
He grew up to become a journalist. He served as war correspondent at times, and wrote about a variety of topics. He covered the "war of the verbals" between France and England. At the time his writing had become influential enough that the French government attempted multiple times to have him assassinated (It's likely that the English also tried to have him killed. Spider is very good at making enemies.)
Later, he began reporting on the upcoming election in America, focusing a great deal of his efforts on a candadite that he dubbed "The Beast", a nickname that stuck in the public mind. Despite exposing the Beast's illegal and unethical practices, spider failed to prevent his election. Spider's first article after this was the word "fuck" written 8000 times. Jerusalem wrote a book about the whole election. This book made him incredibly popular, and he obtained celebrity status. Spider fled the city and his fame, hiding in a home in the Appalachian mountains for five years.
From here on out this history is nothing but major spoilers for the first 18 issues.
The comics of Transmetropolitan start when spider's publisher finds his home, demanding the other two books Jerusalem was contracted to write. After five years of solitude, Spider returns to the City. He meets Royce, an old friend of his who has become an editor for "The Word", a news operation. Royce gives him a job, a weekly op-ed column which Spider immediately titles "I Hate It Here".
Spider finds himself standing on a building in the Angels 8 district, above a riot. His first article for the new column is written there, the words being sent to his editor live. His editor sells the rights to several other networks, broadcasting his writing around the world as he types it. As the only journalist able to get within several blocks of the chaos, his is the only coverage anybody cares about. And Spider writes what he does best: The Truth.
The new column is an instant hit. His next several articles focus on social issues that the public mostly tries to ignore. His popularity and biting scorn for the indifference of the masses actually has an impact on the world around him. He uses journalism to improve the world by exposing its dirtiest secrets. For a short while he continues his work with nothing too important. Assault and battery of the President of the United States, forcing his assistant to watch her ex-boyfriend kill himself so he can be reborn as a colony of robots... You know, typical things. But this sort of peace and happiness doesn't last forever. Because THIS... is an election year.
Royce finally gets Spider to cave in and start covering the election. The incumbent President (which Spider assaulted a few weeks prior) wins his party's nomination without contest as expected. The party in opposition, however, is trying to decide between Gary "The Smiler" Callahan, an obviously fake family values and apple pie type of senator, and Bob Heller, the "America is for Americans" Fascist.
Spider knows that Heller would be little better than the incumbent "Beast". However, he discovers some truly reprehensible things about Senator Callahan. He knows that The Smiler is the lesser of two evils, and the one best positioned to take on the incumbent president. Spider also is impressed with Rita Severn, The Smiler's political director. She seems like an actually decent human being, a rare creature in politics that is both smart and stable. She and Spider hit it off quite well during one of their interviews, and there's a hint of a developing romance there. But his feelings for Rita do not stay his hand when it comes to the secrets of her employer.
Jerusalem damages the campaigns of both Heller and Callahan by doing what he does best: Spreading the Truth. In the end he is swayed by the fact that Rita is the one person in all of this that is working to better the world. Spider writes a column that backhandedly suggests Callahan as the better choice while condemning his vile secrets, and The Smiler wins the candidacy. However, Jerusalem becomes convinced that Heller threw the race, making a deal with The Smiler. At this point he launches a fact digging expedition, discovering the full nature of the deal Heller made. Spider finds the truth. Hard evidence that there was a deal made, and the insane terms of that deal. He knows this is going to hurt Rita, but the world must have the Truth, no matter what the cost. After Spider's big reveal, the new presidential candidate's popularity is a mere 18% out of the gate. Rita however, is still seen as the best thing about his campaign, with polls showing her at a 92% rating amongst voters. She is chosen to handle the damage control for the Callahan campaign.
Spider watches her on live television as she starts to speak. He watches as she is assassinated, her brains splattering the cameras.
Spider meets up with an old friend of his while visiting Rita's grave. Kristen is his drug dealer, and a former political director herself. She tells Spider that Rita did her job well. Her death did just what the Smiler wanted it to do. Callahan's polling rides the sympathy vote up to 78%. Spider goes home and begins to plot on how to take down Senator Gary "The Smiler" Callahan.
And that's the point where he is taken away from everything, drenched in saltwater, and dumped in the plaza.
[ Personality ] :
Spider Jerusalem is a multilayered and incredibly complex character. His actions are erratic at best, and his prodigious drug use only complicates attempts to look into the deeper motivations of his mind. For a start, I'd like to look at two of the real world figures most easily identified as inspiration for Spider (The character is often considered a tribute to both of these men). The first is "Doctor" Hunter S. Thompson, the other is H.L. Menckin.
Hunter S. Thompson is the founder of Gonzo Journalism, a style of subjective journalism focusing heavily on first person accounting of events. The Gonzo style is plainly evident in the writings of Spider in canon. His sneering grin, constant cigarette smoking, love of weaponry and exotic drugs all are hallmarks of both Thompson and Spider. Spider's profanity, high energy motions, and fearless ability to offend anyone, any time, are all derived from Hunter. They share in a dedication to The Truth. To Spider, the actual course of events, the literal truth is paramount. When he discovered a shocking secret behind one presidential candidate, his only course of action was to tell the truth, as loudly as possible. He did so, even though it would hurt the career of a close friend, even though it would give the opponent a leg up in the election, even though that opponent would be far worse for the country. Hunter shares this desire for veracity. His book (and the subsequent movie) "Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas" was based on real events, but fictionalized to a great degree. Thompson once remarked that he regretted the book and movie that made him famous as the worst journalism he had ever done. It was not faithful to The Truth, being heavily edited for clarity, storytelling, and certain political points. Gonzo Journalism prefers as a rule that it's writings focus on stream of consciousness, with little editing to preserve the truth of the moment. This wasn't entirely possible with Fear and Loathing; one entire section was reconstructed from tapes found after Thompson returned from his trip. The written notes for the book of that portion were complete gibberish. Spider's first article for "The Word", covering the angels 8 riot, was presented in a raw form. Spider was the only journalist able to cover what was actually happening, as the cops were keeping the other news services away. He set his typewriter (really a laptop that's styled like a typewriter) to send the article to his editor live, as he was typing it. This is also the moment that gave me the name for this journal. In his later writings in the canon, he doesn't shy away from a little polish, making sure that his words are carefully prepared to affect his target audience. But he knew that it was most important then, as the only reporter who was there to see what was really happening.
H.L. Mencken is one of the most famous journalists and satirists of the first half of the 20th century. He was well known for vitriolic diatribes, mostly commonly about stupidity. He famously attended and reported on the Scopes Evolution trial, coining the name "Scopes Monkey Trial". As Scopes was fighting his inevitable guilty verdict of teaching evolution in a school, Mencken set to work, attacking the prosecutor and the people of the county in attendance as morons, peasants, and hillbillies. His articles are considered to have swayed public opinion on Evolution, causing it to be accepted into the public consciousness and school curriculums country wide. Spider knows well the power of the press, likely from studying Mencken's work. His articles have a profound effect on the world, and while he knows he can't make anything happen, he can bring the truth to the masses, and get into their heads. Knowing this power, he chooses to focus his articles where they might do some good: stories about the forgotten and lost members of society, stories that expose the evil of corporations and politicians, and stories that remind society of what it has forgotten. And when it comes time to punish wrongdoing, well... He once caused 6 Czech politicians to commit suicide with nothing more than a phone call. One issue of the comic featured two different assassination attempts from people whose lives he had ruined with the truth.
Spider refers to Journalism as a gun, one with a single bullet. Aim it right and you can blow a kneecap off the world.
In his world, filled with sinners and scum, he uses the truth and his journalism to fight what he sees as the worst aspects of his society. Lacking a direct target for his wrath (say, a company illegally using children to smuggle human organs or something), Spider focuses on shaking people out of their complacency. His city is filled with hidden places, where the poor have been swept under the rug, hidden away and ignored. Jerusalem practically delights in pointing a spotlight on such places, holding the public's collective face in their mess so they can't look away.
Through all of this though, Spider Jerusalem is a reflection of his environment. In a setting with less vapid Idiocracy-styled masses, less scheming politicians, and lest insanity, he won't have cause to be as bad as he gets in his city. Vatheon, for all its strangeness, will be like a vacation to him. It remains to be seen just how well he'll be able to cope with a mundane setting like this (note, Vatheon is pretty tame relative to The City of Transmetropolitan.)
Royce remarked that he believes that Spider needs to be hated in order to function. It's more accurate to say that he needs to not be loved. When his book on the election of the beast became a hit, he found that, due to his celebrity status, he could not work as a journalist. He couldn't get to the truth, not with every person around him knowing exactly who he was. When he's not a cultural icon, he can do what he does best: observe. He can get the truth with his eyes and ears, and he can write. "Laying out the guts of the world", as he has said. "Treating life as an autopsy", as his assistant replied. Spider puts up a face that drives most sane people to hate him, and half the time that's exactly what he wants. He has trouble letting people get close to him. Considering that his ex wife has cryogenically frozen herself with express orders to do not thaw until he's dead (and she's set up some plans to accelerate that process), that he's driven off one assistant in canon with his antics, and another assistant credit him with ruining her life, well... the aftermath of his abrasive treatment of others is fairly apparent. But he's not always a jerk. In one issue he writes about a homeless girl named Mary, one of the many that the system has abandoned. She's a revival, a person frozen in the 90's or so and brain damaged when they brought her back to life. The city as a whole ignores their existence, providing a group home for them and some donated clothing out of some sense of shame for not doing anything more. During the day they are pushed out on the streets, left to fend for themselves. Spider found Mary babbling alone in an alleyway, and he took the time to listen to her story when nobody else would. He helps her as he can, making her life a bit more comfortable. He does use her as the center of an article, but where another might try it as an exploitative act of shock-journalism, Spider does this to make a change. To instill enough shame in his readers that maybe they'll actually try and help with the problems they normally ignore. At his core, Spider is a compassionate man. In his city it's not a face he shows often. I have a feeling that side of him will come out a bit more in a place like Vatheon, where there won't be too much suffering or evil for him to confront.
Speaking of suffering and evil, Jerusalem's favorite prey is politicians. This doesn't mean that he'll get bored in the relatively politician free bubble under the sea, however. A majority of the articles that Hunter S. Thompson wrote in his life were actually about Football. Spider prefers what real life news would call "human interest stories", journalism about life. If Spider can't find anything more important to write about, he'll cover current events in Vatheon. While he shines best when exposing evil plots or writing to instill a shameful form of motivation in a populace that doesn't care anymore, he would really prefer things to be more boring. Wouldn't it be great if there wasn't anything more newsworthy than the latest gossip?
[ Strengths/Weaknesses ] :
Spider is well trained in a variety of lethal and non lethal weapons. He can more than hold his own in a fist fight, and is a pretty decent shot. However, fighting is not his primary talent. He is the "mad super genius", able to predict and outsmart opponents yet held back by his neuroses and addictions. He is a skilled wordsmith, gifted with the power to instill shame in whole populations with one well placed article.
Being from the future, Spider has a variety of beneficial genetic enhancements called "traits". This has rendered him immune to cancer, drug addiction, and most diseases. Traits are biological, but can be more interesting than mere health upgrades. His "phone trait" is a biologically built telecom system in his skull, allowing audio communication with most standard networks using nothing more than a part of his body.
Spider's trademark glasses include a high resolution camera with zoom and a large amount of memory to store images. The camera can be silently activated by triggering certain muscle groups, and are programmed to automatically start taking a series of photos if Spider's movements and nerve impulses match the profile for an assault.
Spider is a habitual drug user, enjoying a variety of chemicals from common modern
drugs to exotic future narcotics and unusual biological agents such as chimpanzee pituitary glands. The drugs give him a variety of effects, though he prefers stimulants so he can continue working. Royce, his editor, once found him hooked up to a machine that was reinflating his veins. Spider was injecting heroin between his toes as every other vein had already collapsed. This though was Jerusalem at his worst, after a book he wrote made him famous and he found himself unable to find the Truth. Even at his best he will use drugs recreationally, or sometimes to, in his own words "Holmes-like, keep my interest in the world alive".
[ Other Important Facts ] :
On arrival to this world, Spider will have the following- (1) Pair of "Air Jesus" Sports shoes (Walk on water, or walls, or air, the first all terrain sports shoe! May not work as well as advertised) - (1) Illegal Bowel Disruptor (causes a target to shit themselves. settings include "loose", "watery", and "Prolapse". Salt water from his entry into Vatheon may have damaged it, use will be left up to character permissions) - (1) Pair of Iconic Shades (As described above), (1) "Typewriter", a laptop like device mostly used for writing, capable of connecting to many wireless networks.
Note, he will not arrive with any other clothing.
Spider Jerusalem is a maniac. He has a dedication to the truth, no matter what the cost, no matter who it hurts. If brought into Vatheon, he will probably get some mileage out of the death mechanics there. He will probably be killed by other players at some point. He will overdose on drugs. He might kill himself, if there might be a story in it. This could provide an opportunity for this game. How often have people really tested the limits of the locals? "Think of this -- would you disrespect a statue of Buddha perhaps, in real life?" I would not. But Spider? He will chop off the head of a Buddha and shit in the hole, while screaming blasphemes at anyone in the area. That is, is he feels particularly offended by one of the monks... or if he feels cause to punish them and their religion, or if he thinks it might make an interesting story for the article...
I'm not saying that he'll do something like that to the coral, but it's not entirely impossible. He will try to discover anything he can about the conditions of his imprisonment here, and he won't give a single fuck over who he offends or what they might do to him for trying to look too deep into it. He will pry and dig until he has the truth, and he will spread the facts as loudly as he can. Has anybody tried assaulting the scientists in a while? He might. Has anybody tried to force answers out of the locals with a cruel combination of information gathering techniques? He might.
His drug habits suggest that the nostalgia nook may soon be host to a dealer of quite strange chemical and biological agents.
[ Sample ] :
"It Could Be Worse", a prototype for the first article in a series that spider will begin a short while after finding himself in Vatheon, should you accept this application.
Some bakerstreet threads from the recent "Support Group Meme"
- Swearing support group
- Politicians support group
[ Questions? Comments? Concerns? ] :
Spider owns a cat. A filthy mongrel that views the world as things to fuck, eat, or piss on. Usually a combination of the three, in varying orders. Spider rescued her off the streets, feeding her back to a semblance of health. I decided NOT to bring her into the game with him. I might want to bring her in with a canon update later, if that's ok, but for now I'd rather not introduce that little monstrous element into the local ecosystem.
Seriously, I'm probably going to annoy the shit out of you mods with questions. Spider will want to know anything and everything, and from what I've heard, the locals won't exactly be forthcoming with answers. It looks to me like most of the characters in the game are annoyed but content with that. Spider won't let it sit at that; he's going to dig. There's a good chance I'll ask about aspects of the game you haven't necessarily ever needed to flesh out. It won't take long for Spider to think of the other foreigners here as a bunch of complacent stooges, and he will not be satisfied with the 'official' story. Some characters feel that they're better off here, but there's cracks in that plan, openings that Spider will exploit. I hope my sample "It could be worse" article does a good job of showing one such crack that hopefully will make people think a little more about the problems inherent in living in a place where you can be taken away at any moment, your body changed back to what it was when you were first stolen from your home reality.
