Downplay
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| I'm going to need a spark capacitor, a length of rope, and six cans of strawberry whip. | |
| Downplay | |
| Player: @Talen Lee | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Defender |
| Security Level: | Talos Clearance |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Dorn Willem Prary |
| Known Aliases: | Willem, Will, DP[1] |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 23 |
| Height: | 5'4" |
| Weight: | 115 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Green |
| Hair Color: | Blonde |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American Citizen |
| Occupation: | Engineer |
| Place of Birth: | Mumbai, India (then, Bombay) |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Annoyed |
| Known Relatives: | Confidential |
| Known Powers | |
| Confidential | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Confidential | |
| Equipment | |
| Confidential | |
| No additional information available. | |
- Miguel: You worry too much.
- Tulio: No, I worry exactly the right amount.
- - The Road To El Dorado
Contents |
Character
Downplay is serious and short; he's short in his manners, he's brisk and he doesn't tend to have a lot of time to beat around the bush. He's also physically short - quite a normal height back where he grew up, he's used to associating with the giants of the Paragon landscape, heights that make him feel very self conscious and small by comparison. Coupled with his babyfaced good looks and his serious manner, it's so easy for others to not take him seriously.
In turn, Downplay scowlingly tries to get on with his job. He takes everything he does seriously, too seriously - only Saxon has a worse reputation for taking time off. With a serious look and an exasperated sigh, he sees every technical failing in the Sun Tzu as his fault, every weapon produced and round released as his problem, and when someone turns up with a mangled bit of hardware, he starts complaining about their lack of respect for his hardware even as he fixes it. Chronically grouchy and serious, he really seems an odd opposite to his partner Arslan.
Past Achievments
Downplay is a serious young man who has been raised in a constant environment where he never had to achieve anything, but wanted to anyway. The son of a wealthy engineer and a talented artist, it came as no surprise that he demonstrated a gift for problem-solving from an early age. Thanks to his father contracting out to the developing technological zeitgeist of the Indian government, he never wanted for money or experiences - he went through good schools and quickly legged through a private schooling program that eschewed standardised testing in favour of specific, tailored education. Going from tutor to tutor, Downplay completed all his schooling four years early, having a voracious appetite for learning. Moving on from mathematics and physics to engineering, a study he found himself adoring, he moved into his father's garage. Some boys, at the age of sixteen, longed to be bought a car that worked. Downplay's father bought him a broken one, and the pair spent the evenings and afternoons of the months together repairing it - with Downplay's father serving as assistant to his son's sense of mechanical exploration.
It was this environment that led to Downplay's thrill at the idea of excellence for its own sake, to a love of making things that work. Too much time being seen as his mother's son growing up (due to his sheltered environment) had given him a strong appreciation for things of functional purpose rather than an aesthetic one. It was to him almost a footnote then to push his designs and his repairwork to its limit. Selected by the Commonwealth Securities Council as a consultant on an up-and-coming mechatronic design, Downplay quickly found himself consulting on a number of military projects in his late teens - usually remotely, as meeting the short little genius wasn't something that inspired confidence.
When Downplay's father died in the first wave of Rikti invasions, he was shattered by it emotionally - the loss of his mother within a few short months of complications from her injuries compounded it. He found himself called in before the CSC to discuss a new project - the actual difficult in creating and designing a vessel that at the time, he only knew as the Sun Tzu.
Powers
Downplay's personal rig involves the application of a number of distant satellites utilising a variety of highly-careful and carefully calibrated energy emitters. Through careful triangulation of multiple different long-range waves - usually oriented around a single device he determines as an 'anchor' for computer coordinates - he can generate matter-influencing energy fields[2]. These fields alter local gravity slightly, diminish the integrity of metals and other armours, and surprisingly, manages all this without lasting effects on biological tissue[3].
To back this up, he uses a howler system, a head-mounted sonoluminous energy wave projector, a system that makes short predicated bursts of sound waves. Without actual impact, he creates pressure waves that both disorient targets and that can further damage armours and protective systems. Through the use of these power systems, Downplay approaches every combat as taking an unassailable and impervious object and steadily making it less and less impervious until it crumbles.
Metatext
RP Notes
- Downplay is an engineer. He's a specialist in that field - in the field, he can whip you up something ugly that'll work, then move on to something else. He's a short-term problem fixer. He's not a bomb-squad manager, however, or anything more ornate - he can't necessarily take a helicopter down by shooting its gas tank.
- Downplay is also short. He protests he's normal, and other people are tall, but even by normal standards, he is short.
- Downplay's accent is very heavily Americanised, even after years of living in Bombay - he sounds more like a New Englander. This was part of a conscious effort to not sound like he's from India.
- Downplay speaks a truly remarkable number of languages - a necessity from his upbringing in now-Mumbai, where over five major languages are spoken.
Themes
Downplay was made to play very deliberately into a particular anime stereotype - that of the short, crabby, serious young man who is also pretty enough that it's hard to take him all that seriously. Downplay is supposed to be extremely adorable even as he tries to shove you away while he focuses on some task or other, and he's supposed to be overcompensating for his fear of being perceived as unmanly.
Downplay's core theme, with that in mind, is seriousness. He's too serious. Sometimes, that's just serious enough - and he certainly has to balance Arslan, who does a wonderful job of eschewing responsibility. Yet, there needs to be some time to relax, some time to focus on other things than his work - and needs to be able to put down the books and actually relax.
Trivia
- Downplay at level 24, has Field Crafter.
- Downplay got his first piece of invention salvage at level 22.
- Downplay and Arslan have duod all the AVs they've been able to find so far.
References
- ↑ He really, really hates it when people call him this.
- ↑ All typified by a bright green glow. This glow is in fact entirely unnecessary for the execution of the emitters - it's something Downplay instituted into the devices to ensure that people can see what he's doing.
- ↑ Downplay has noted that his worst enemy would be a completely naked biological threat.
