Prior
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| From the street, man | |
| Prior | |
| Player: @Talen Lee | |
| Origin: | Mutation |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Blaster |
| Security Level: | 28 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Christopher Starling |
| Known Aliases: | Gaius |
| Species: | Human mutant |
| Age: | 17 |
| Height: | 5'2" |
| Weight: | 120 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | White |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | US Citizen |
| Occupation: | Paroled criminal |
| Place of Birth: | King's Row, Paragon City |
| Base of Operations: | King's Row, Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Confidential |
| Known Powers | |
| Full-body Electrocytics | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Confidential | |
| Equipment | |
| Confidential | |
| No additional information available. | |
- What I'm saying is, you and me, we're from the street.
- - Kevin Smith
Contents |
Character
Young in every sense of the word, Christopher is a precocious young man who has had an unconventional upbringing. Effectively raised by the gang society of the Hollows that's more or less defined the past nine years of Paragon City's lower-class life, Christopher therefore has a whole host of skills and mores that reflect this upbringing, but has difficulty in more conventional areas. Not wanting to seem ignorant, he pushes himself away from these situations, commonly disdaining the claim that he can't do something, even if he can't[1].
On the other hand, Christopher is a skilled acrobat, knows his way around drug laboratories, knows how to smuggle and handle firearms, and well-versed in hero and gangland culture. He can't read books, but he can read tattoos and streets, and sees his way of doing things and understanding as just as legitimate as the result of a 'real' education. Boyish, slightly bratty, but ultimately goodhearted and ambitious, Christopher seeks to ascend to the top of some particular ladder, to become something important. This could be interpreted as a permutation of Short Man's Disease.
Outcast
Prior wore the name as a mark of his strength amongst the outcasts, a name he received when at the age of ten, he took the rap for four older boys in a convenience store theft that went wrong. As the youngest of the group, he was sold out by his 'friends' but nonetheless, kept from implicating them in the crime. With a black mark on his record, when he emerged from juvenile hall at the age of fourteen, he was bequeathed the title Prior by the other Outcasts.
With this distinction - of being both reliable and a prisoner - Prior quickly ascended through the Outcasts, his powers manifesting and moving forward in leaps and bounds. Quickly vaulting through the ranks of the Outcasts, despite his youth, in three short years he wound up finding himself near the very top of the tree - close to Frostfire and other heavy hitters of the Outcast set. Once there, however, he realised just how immaterial his advancement was, and started setting his sights on moving up in other hierarchies. Considering how well he could transfer across to the Family, the whole thing was somewhat interrupted by a police raid, where Prior was caught, red-handed, amongst other Outcasts.
Hero
Due to Prior's youth coupled with his highly-developed powers, a prisoner's advocacy group suggested him as a potential 'Active Parolee' program. Entrusted to work alongside an established PPD hero, Prior was therefore set to work doing the best he could. With but a short experience watching the heroes of the city - and the highest-level PPD forces repelling Etoile invasions - Prior found his entire value system spun on its head. Now, seeing a place to expand, he seeks to climb to the top of this pile - to become a full-fledged Hero Of The City.
Prior still wears his newly-minted Hero name as a mark of pride. Except now it's to show that unlike all those other cops, he's from the street.
Powers
Like other outcasts, Prior is an example of a concurrent evolution. He has the same powers that a large group of other Outcasts do - most of his skin cells have a basic electrocyte property. Using this, he can generate massive amounts of electrical current, which he can both discharge into people or use to generate a synchronised magnetic field about himself. This field has a host of purposes - it can arc off people around him, disrupting neural pathways, and it can interfere with radio signals and other precise electrical instruments.
Beyond this singular mutation, Prior has no particular powers. He can't really leverage his electrocytic powers in any fashion that isn't just a large, sparking discharge of energy.
Metatext
RP Notes
- Prior can't drink, smoke, or do drugs. He's regularly urine-and-blood tested and if there's a sign of any such things, it violates the terms of his parole.
- Prior's status as an ex-Outcast is reasonably obvious, and any heroes who had extensive time in the Hollows or dealing with David Wincott would probably know of him - though perhaps be surprised by him being so short.
- Prior has a regularly cycled beat - he started out patrolling King's Row, then moved on to work in Steel Canyon, then Talos Island. His work in hazard zones has been minimal, as his parole terms focus him on community service at its most tangible level.
- Prior has to obey police authority, but he just as much isn't about to 'relax' just because your cop character says so.
Themes And Inspirations
As someone who espouses integration into the game universe rather than hammering away at your Jedi until he fits in the setting, I occasionally looked at powersets and how enemy groups employ them. With some latitude, I found it interesting to explore how I would create - and differentiate - members of existing groups as they progressed through the city's story. Some of these ideas foundered, some took root, but the most successful one, the one I enjoy the most is touching on the story of one of the games' perpetual underdogs - the Outcasts. With fairly recreateable costumes and designs, I figured I could make an Outcast-like character, and the result of that experiment was Prior.
Personality wise, Prior has had two major personalities, one which didn't last very long, but was heavily inspired by Tōshirō Hitsugaya. The thing is, the character of Hitsugaya - and one of the elements about him I most like - is the dynamic he has with his second in command, a notoriously irresponsible, irrepressable hedonist. She serves to contrast his excessive grouchiness and seriousness, which provides the two with a constant background to their RP. In time, it became very clear to me that Rhodes did not provide this background - she was just as serious and just as redoubtable as this incarnation of Prior was. Plus, it didn't mesh well with the name - a serious young man wouldn't wear a gang title on his sleeve like that.
So during a playthrough of Psychonauts, I struck upon a precocious youth character to emulate who was neither similar to Rhodes, nor an annoying little shit. Razputin is both ambitious and impish, and he has a quick, intuitive grasp of the situations in which he finds himself. There's more to him than simply being annoying or comical for his own good, and he can both focus on important tasks and distract himself with frivolous ones. From there Prior's desire to become the Chief of Police in Paragon City came.
Trivia
- Prior was almost called 'Boss Stage' and was more of a hardcore videogame nerd.
- Prior's my first character to have both Combat Jumping (for a knockback IO) and Flight (for flying).
References
- ↑ For example, reading long words.
