traumatizing: (pic#2003764)
terrance ward || trauma ([personal profile] traumatizing) wrote2012-05-17 08:54 pm
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[OOC] [community profile] singularityrpg application

Player Information
Your Nickname: Frank
OOC Journal: [personal profile] supercilious
Under 18? Nope
Email/IM: Email: simmichan [@] gmail [.] com || AIM: BluePeterLadyboy
Characters Played at Singularity: None thusfar

Character Information
Name: Terrance Ward
Name of Canon: Marvel 616
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: Avengers: The Initiative || a wee bit about Trauma
Canon Point: After issue 30 of Avengers: The Initiative; when he's found out the nature of his origins and decides he needs to leave and ~find himself~.

Setting:
Trauma comes from Marvel's 616 universe which, put simply, is basically just modern Earth with superheroes. By and large their politics, celebrities, general level of technology and so on are the same of ours. Of course, with a buttload of super geniuses around, a lot of defence technology is far more advanced than anything we'll see in the real world. (Like that time Reed Richards and Tony Stark made a prison in another dimension, for instance.)

Superhumans have been around for a hell of a long time, though over the last 70 years or so they've either been popping up more frequently, or have just been getting a hell of a lot more publicity. They come from all over the place, the most well known being mutants, who gain powers via activation of their X-gene. Beyond that there's super soldiers (like Captain America) who got their powers intentionally, or people who get powered up through all manner of accidents. (Cosmic rays, lab accidents, getting bitten by some kind of scienced up animal, to name but a few.) Not to mention magic, aliens (like the Skrulls and the Kree,) and sometimes Gods like Ares and Thor show up too, because why not. Hell, Trauma's own dad happens to be a demon.

Thanks to the varying gradient of morality, people can't always be relied on to be responsible with their powers, and because of this there's a whole lot of bad guys running around with all sorts of powers. From less threatening types who just like to rob banks and kill people, and World Domination with a Side of Vengeance types like Doctor Doom and Norman Osborn. They exist in a sort of recursive chicken and egg situation with superheroes, who have taken the safety of Earth upon their shoulders with varying amounts of success. There's as many heroes as you can shake a stick at, teams and people working solo like Spider-Man, or the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four. Not to mention the occasional alien invasion. It's kind of become par for the course to expect some kind of alien threat every few years or so at this point.

The most well known, and probably respected team is The Avengers. A team that's existed in varying forms since the 60s (probably. it's hard to be sure with the way Marvel retcons and rewrites things.) They operate out of and are mostly concerned with things that happen in the US, because for some reason most things seem to happen in or near New York.

Now, as I mentioned, heroes operate with varying degrees of success, and for this reason I must introduce you to the New Warriors. The New Warriors were a team of young heroes who were offered a contract for a reality show. The idea was that they could inspire hope with visual evidence of the fact that there were heroes out there doing whatever, and you didn't have to rely on the big names for help. The truth of the matter was, however, that the team was young, largely untrained and appropriate risk management went sort of out the window when the cameras started rolling. This combined with the fact that they hadn't been informed of the power boost that a particular villain had recently had lead to an explosion in a school that killed 612 civilians (including 60 children,) and all of the New Warriors who were involved, except for Speedball.

This is the final straw in growing tensions towards superhumans, as they cause large amounts of property damage, cost lives, and it's impossible to hold them accountable for their actions owing to the fact that the nature of superheroes means the vast majority of their identities aren't known to anyone except a few other heroes. Because of this, the Superhuman Registration Act is brought in, asking anyone with superhuman abilities to register with the government and be trained in the use of their powers. This in turn leads to division within the community; the two sides being lead by Iron Man who wholly endorses registration and Captain America, who strongly opposes it. The two sides war with eachother until Cap turns himself in, feeling that they've lost sight of their goals.

Once the act is able to go ahead, the Initiative is built. They start with an initial facility in Stamford, at the site of the aforementioned incident with the New Warriors, where registered superhumans are brought in to be trained into heroes. The Initiative is, of course, fraught with problems. Such as the death of a student who had no place being there in the first place and the fact that a large number of the students who were drafted in have no desire to be heroes and are being made into things they aren't. (Cloud 9, for instance, who effectively becomes a killer when all she wanted was to be able to fly. Or Trauma, who is put on the Shadow Initiative and expected to be a weapon, when he wants nothing to do with his powers.) But ultimately it keeps on churning out teams and opens up the 50 State Initiative, which puts Initiative teams and facilities in every state.

Later on, it kind of turns out that this was a bit of a bad idea, as the Initiative was teaming with Skrull sleeper agents in both the faculty and students. Not to mention in government and in superhero teams that were given legitimacy by the registration act. (Spider-Woman and Mockingbird turn out to be Skrulls for instance, which is a huge blow to the Avengers.) This all comes to a head in a war which is ultimately won by the Thunderbolts, and allows Norman Osborn to displace Tony Stark as the head of SHIELD and take over the Initiative.

Under his leadership, the superhero world becomes a darker place. He forms his own Avengers, which is secretly full of villains masquerading as loved heroes (Bullseye playing the part of Hawkeye, Venom as Spider-Man, etc.) He also fills the Initiative with criminals, more interested in building an army than teaching people to use their powers responsibly, and places The Hood (a well known gang leader) and Taskmaster (a mercenary) in charge. Over the course of his leadership, several heroes defect in order to form a resistance, uninterested in serving under a man who takes violent criminals and puts them out as heroes, and puts people who have no place fighting in their mental state on the front line. (Such as Penance - formerly Speedball - who has at this point been drugged and brainwashed to the point that he can't remember anything about who he is. Trauma is tasked with keeping him under control and able to fight even though he's in desperate need of actual therapy. Or the Sentry, who is mentally unstable as they come, and Osborn mistakenly believes he can control enough to keep him on his Avengers.)

As Trauma leaves towards the end of Dark Reign, the world to him is largely still one where supes can either choose to defect and fight in a resistance, go into hiding, or be part of a system that has no interest in helping anyone who isn't Norman Osborn.


Personality:
Trauma is a pretty standoffish customer. (No word of a lie, I counted - he smiles for a grand total of three panels throughout his run in the comic and spends most of the rest of it scowling or looking impassive.) He can be perfectly amiable and even downright friendly, but he does tend to put out the good ol' fashioned "don't talk to me" signals. Even when he does somehow end up in a conversation, he tends to stay a bit tight-lipped, preferring to absorb what the other person has to say and offer his opinion if/when he feels it's necessary rather than making inane - and probably stupid - comments all over the place.

Even though he looks like your average, run-of-the-mill emo kid, he does tend towards being a fair bit more mature and intelligent than one might guess. Being shoved into the Shadow Initiative and becoming a counsellor a good few years before he should reasonably have been able to will have that effect. He carries a lot of anger and resentment around- for all sorts of things. The world, his dad, that girl who turned him down in high school, his old friends, etc. But mostly it's all aimed at himself, for not keeping better control of his powers and/or not realising he couldn't control them and decide to seek help sooner. Or even really unreasonable stuff like not managing to pre-empt their manifestation somehow.

But he has come to learn that a lot of this is either an unreasonable amount of beating himself up or that he just can't carry it all around with him all the time every day for the rest of his life (which could end up being really fucking long, canon hasn't really explained anything about his whole "not dying for realsies" thing.)

All his anger, guilt and self-loathing has kind of come full-circle during his time in the Initiative. Though he's never really gotten over what happened with his family and friends, he did learn to accept that it happened and get on with things and even wilfully uses his powers as a therapy aid rather than just trying to suppress them and hoping that they'd go away or there'd be a 'cure' like he did before. Of course, agreeing to help Osborn and Hood keep all manner of people who shouldn't have been working Initiative recruits for any number of reasons (PTSD, being criminally insane, being the Hood's cronies, to name a few reasons) able to fight in exchange for his mother's health had a pretty detrimental effect on his mental health. As evidenced by the fact that it kind of, y'know, made him a conduit for Nightmare to pass through and try to fuck shit up.

So, yeah. There's definitely a pretty heavy dose of guilt there about going against his better judgement and messing with people's heads and probably getting a good few people killed or crippled as a result.

Generally speaking, he's quite easy-going. Save for a few special people, it doesn't seem to be particularly easy to get under his skin. And even though he generally looks pretty cranky, he also seems pretty mellow most of the time. That said, his temper has proven pretty short. Trauma probably likes to think of himself as someone who'll be smart about things, but when push comes to shove he tends to go running in, fists swinging. And he won't hesitate to go all fear-Hulk on people who push the right buttons. (Threatening his family was more'n likely the core reason for the animosity between him and Hood.)

Since fear is such a massive part of his life, it's probably important to note his biggest fear - that no one will ever care about him because of what he is. He's terrified by the idea of rejection or abandonment. Feeding into this is also a horrible fear of hurting the people closest to him. I mean, he doesn't want to unintentionally fear out on anyone, but given that all the people he's was closest to when his powers kicked in got the worst of it and he hasn't seen them since. Well, it makes sense he'd be worried about it all happening again, even if his control is infinitely better than it was back then. Being able to reconcile things with Abby (and parting amiably with Penance too, if you want to think about it that way) has given him a degree of hope for the future, but these things linger.



Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
Long story short: Trauma's a boggart.

He can sense the fears of people around him and transform into them. The more intense a given fear is being felt at a given time, the easier it is for him to pick up on - to the extent that he can sense people's fears from quite a distance if they start freaking out enough. When he transforms he is pretty much exactly as the person's perception of their fear is. Like with Armory's arachnaphobia, he became a giant, grotesque spider (in a t-shirt?) The potential with a power like this is, clearly, quite big and quite dangerous, leading to Trauma having been branded an Omega Level Threat and shoved into the Shadow Initiative. (Though that said, almost every time he's tried to use his powers offensively in canon it lead to an epic beatdown-- He even died once!) It does fall short a bit, seeing as it doesn't work on anything with an inorganic conciousness and anyone who's able to face their fears can fight back effectively enough.

He has, thanks to Dani's tutelage, pretty much got a handle on his powers now - which is good for everyone - though they can fly out of control seeing as they don't really have an "off" switch or anything. People projecting their fears onto him can force him to transform - like in Secret Invasion, his team being worried that he was a Skrull kind of made him turn into one. And then get beaten up. That was a bad day.

Dear Mr. Ward is also immortal, thanks to his lineage. There isn't really a guideline for this, seeing as he's only died the once and he's not really keen to give it a second go. (For all he knows it may have only been a one time deal!) So there's not like... An average time between dying and waking up or anything - the first time might be the longest. Or the shortest. Though he did come back after embalming and all that, so it's a pretty darn resilient system he's got in there.

Trauma's major weaknesses come interlinked with eachother. A) he's not much of a combatant, and B) he's really not afraid to throw himself into a fight at the drop of a hat. If he feels personally threatened, or as though the safety of someone he cares about is at stake, he'll just jump right in with his fists flying. Of course, if someone happens to be fearless (such as the time he tried to fight the Hulk like an idiot,) or is able to face their worst fears head on (like Moonstar,) then they're pretty much useless.

Also the fact that his power can be triggered if other people are projecting strongly enough makes it easy to be manipulated under the right circumstances. (i.e. when the Skrull Queen subtly suggests that since Trauma is a shapeshifter he could well be a skrull himself, everyone around him becomes scared enough that he's a skrull that he can't help shifting into one.)

As far as limitations go, one could toss his immortality out the window - I highly doubt it's something that is going to affect him in a game unless he's there for 30 years or so. Given that his powers have also been shown in at least one instance to cover an entire facility, I'd definitely limit them to only working within a zone. Given that he's not great offensively and they're also an incredibly important tool for him as a counsellor, I'd prefer not to limit his powers much further than that. And obviously, any time he did feel the need to use his powers I'd have to co-ordinate with the players of any other characters involved.


Inventory: Just the clothes on his back, his wallet (which comes with his handy-dandy Registered Superhero ID,) and his now defunct cell phone.
Appearance: Trauma stands at about 5'10 with pale skin, blue eyes and black hair that is in a fixed state of bedhead. He's visibly in fairly good shape thanks to training with the Initiative and also appears to exist only within the confines of suits. (Except for a little while where he had to wear training gear instead.)
Age: He's never actually given an age in canon, but given the way the Hood speaks down to him, he's likely supposed to be unrealistically young for his job. I've always played him as being around 21.

Samples
Log Sample:
Sometimes he hung on to the hope that he could salvage things.

It was rarer these days than it had been when he'd left initially, but it was still there. Some mornings he'd wake up with this naive belief that he could go home and fix things, pick up where life had left off before his powers had kicked in and royally screwed him over.

It was hopeless now, he knew that. It wasn't as if he'd severed his ties entirely, he'd always made sure to send an address back to his dad. And Address and a number every time either changed. But he'd never heard anything back, not a word. Not even a blank birthday card when it rolled around. Not that he'd been expecting anything, but it would've been nice to know he was still remembered. Cared about. He couldn't rightly find it in himself to pin the blame on anyone else, however. How could anyone love someone who was like a walking reminder of everything they ever feared. Care about someone who scared his own mother so badly that she spent most nights strapped to a bed in a mental ward.

He sighed-- you didn't. Couldn't.

So even if it hurt - and God it hurt so, so much when he actually gave himself the chance to ever think about it - he just couldn't seem to find it in himself to blame his dad for wanting to get on with his life, pretend Terry had never existed if it made life a little easier to cope with. If that's how it needed to be, then that was how it needed to be.

There was at least the smallest part of him that hadn't given up, however. Maybe more out of habit than genuine hope for change. He still took the little bit of time, sat as his desk with a tight-lipped frown as he scrawled his new address on the back of a nondescript postcard addressed to his father.

Just in case he ever felt like changing his mind.


Network Sample:
[It can do holograms. He's been fiddling with the thing for a while, and the idea of playing with holograms is almost enough to dissipate the impending panic. (Not to mention how hard it is not to send out a post - "help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.") But the situation is more important than that, and he turns on the video.]

Uh,
hi. I'm-- [Terry. He frowns briefly, it feels weird to use his real name but it also seems wrong to use his codename in this scenario.] --Sorry, hang on.

[obvious solution = switch to text. he feels so much comfortable this way] Sorry about that. As I was saying, I'm Trauma.

If there's anyone here who's familiar with the 50 State Initiative, I'd probably really appreciate hearing from you. Not that I object to anyone who isn't, familiar faces are just reassuring.

Thanks.