Post by Christian Moynahan on Jul 11, 2013 9:36:23 GMT -5
Christian Moynahan
Full Name- Christian Kiernan Moynahan
Gender- Male
Age- 33
Date of Birth- 29 December 1979
Sexual Orientation- Asexual
Location- Los Angeles, California
Celebrity Claim- Cumberbatch, Benedict
What should we call you?- Rayne
Play anyone else?- Dakari Johessman, Sparrow Akiyama, Marshall Quatrevaux, Marcus Rodgers, Fallon Daugherty, Gabriel Constant, Reggie Sawyer, Sayeva Reardon, Jordan Mercer
Have You Read the Rules?- Fat, is Behemoth. Such is he who lives up to his name.
Personality and Appearance-
There is a certain air about Christian. Part of that air can certainly be ascribed to physical stimuli - the blue-green eyes, the sharp features of his narrow face, contrasted with the dark hair and comparatively pale skin. His build is somewhat unassuming - slender, but subtly toned. A quiet voice, gentle and fluid hand gestures, and a way of phrasing his words to make anyone feel at ease but not belittled. Tall, always well-dressed in the best tailored suits and highest quality clothes, easy to spot across a room, and definitely the type of man you would cross a room to meet - friendly, charming, and always courteous. He's quite an uncommon sort, especially these days.
Yet the other part of that impressive demeanor is not quite as easily explained. He draws you in, no matter who you are. His intelligence is formidable, and at the same time, he projects a sense of empathy and camaraderie. He can hold conversations on science and technological innovation just as easily as he can commiserate with the problems of others and offer sensible solutions. He can master a room or share a one-on-one conversation with equal ease. He has every social and academic talent anyone could wish for, and balances both beautifully. It almost seems… too perfect.
It's difficult to put a finger on, hard to see past the glamours. The thing that drives Christian's empathy, the motivation behind his intellectualism, is an unparalleled, unequivocal love for all the world's curiosities. It's a never-ending search for a challenge, or an answer, an accomplishment that no one else could achieve. Pride pushes him as much as much as his prodigious thirst for knowledge. Even if he could find a satisfying end to that pursuit, he wouldn't want it; it's the means, the hunt, that fulfills him. And while he is perfectly capable of forming genuine, open relationships with others, there is very little he would not do in the interest of discovery.
As such, he actually takes a somewhat dim view of society, despite his approach to and interactions with it. He finds most people to be much too complacent. They have their circles, their little comfort zones, and they keep themselves safely within them. Christian constantly pushes himself outside of that zone. At times, he pushes others too far out of theirs as well; this has lessened since the end of his college years, but can occur on occasion. He is fully aware of where the lines are drawn - how far a person can go, how much society will except, what is immoral and what is not. He simply chooses to force those boundaries any way he can, any time he must.
Abilities/Powers/Skills-
Psionic ManipulationAs a master at controlling psionic energy - energy formed by the will and the mind - Christian has developed the capacity to not only form basic objects, but to also create elaborate psionic phenomena, based purely on his imagination and that of the people around him. As a natural facet of this ability, he can sense different forms of energy and differentiate among them, and in some cases draw energy into himself to be converted for his own use. He can sustain himself on energy alone, but he does much better by drawing in energy by normal means such as eating.
The primary and original use of this ability is to create psionic constructs. These items can include just about anything - shields, restraints, weapons, and basic tools. The items he makes are largely tangible, and can hold a certain amount of weight, that amount being dependent on several factors, primarily things like his current mental state, stress, and the amount of distracting stimuli present. As for weapons, they are not capable of physically wounding a person, such as making them bleed or breaking bones, but they can cause immense psychological damage. For example, a psionic knife might not cause a physical wound, but its victim would feel as though he had been stabbed, and would react as such, feeling pain, going to shock, and then dying. But there would be no mark on the victim’s body to indicate the manner of his death.
Christian can also create items that mimic living organisms. The most notable of these is his wing construct; he can extend a pair of psionic wings from his back, which are strong enough to allow him to glide short distances, but not to fly. He can also bend energy to create “hard-light holograms” - advanced illusions that appear to be living, breathing, and even communicating, but are actually a trick of the mind. One extreme example of this is the person of Drew Moynahan, an early manifestation of this ability, and not a person who actually exists. These phenomena, with the exception of Drew, usually last only as long as Christian wills it, which cannot be more than a couple of hours.
The final phenomenon Christian can create is that of a psionic storm. He can cause it to appear like a natural storm, with lightning and clouds and such, but in fact it works more like an electromagnetic pulse, interfering with or killing any other psionic powers in the area, with a maximum radius of three hundred yards. The effects are usually not permanent, but can be depending on the situation and the strength of the storm.
Christian does have some more mundane skills. As a way of actively keeping himself in shape, Christian regularly practices several forms of self-defense, and goes for runs every morning he can. He is also somewhat familiar with swordfighting, archery, and bojutsu, all hobbies he took up after becoming aware of his ability.
Limits-Most basically, Christian cannot use this ability to create psionic blasts, fly, or boost his own physical attacks, such as making his punches stronger. The slight exception is the wing construct; on the psionic wings, he can glide very short and very low distances. In this way he can propel himself forward somewhat, just not in terms of pushing himself via pure energy. Any extra limbs he makes, primarily extra arms, will be able to grasp things and perhaps injure similarly to actual fists, but will not become skin and bone, just psionic imagery.
The objects he creates only last a certain amount of time, generally between five and ten minutes if Christian is not paying attention, but up to two hours if he is. Again with the exception of Drew (which is a phenomenon onto itself, and not one Christian created willingly or can control), anything he creates must remain within range of him or it will cease to exist.
As noted above, Christian can run on energy he obtains from other sources, but he does better if he eats like a normal person. However, if one were to separate him from all forms of energy, he would not last long, even shorter than a normal person subjected to starvation. His body has become used to near-constant access to energy, and is nearly addicted to it; without it, he goes through a very violent withdrawal.
As far as his learned skills, given the nature of his ability, it is not necessary for Christian to carry around any sort of weapon, so he certainly does not keep swords, arrows, or staves on his person (although in rare situations a small knife might not be out of the question). He does collect swords, but that is purely for display and those stay encased within his home. As for his self-defense training, he is proficient enough at them, but far from perfect, and his techniques could use some work.
Christian has one more limit, a fairly unusual one. In the National Mall incident, Christian managed to stop a bomb but suffered smoke inhalation in the process. The components of the smoke poisoned him, and his ability went into overdrive, trying to rid his body of the poisons. It failed, and instead, the poisons fused with his ability, leading Christian to suffer from burns and paresthesia when he used his ability for a while. Additionally, his body began to produce its own toxins, copied from the poisons already present, and grown from there.
Since then, his ability has largely adjusted to the presence of the toxins, but every now and then they reappear and interfere with his abilities again. He can still create normal psionic constructs, but alternatively, the constructs - which are created in his mind and manifest from there - sometimes wind up tainted with toxins. They still singe him when he uses them, so when this happens he often winds up in immense pain unexpectedly. However, it also means that a simple construct, such as a pencil or a cup, could be deadly. A weapon created under these conditions would introduce any of various poisons into the victim’s body as well. That being said, Christian is not toxic apart from his ability. His breathing, blood, body, and every other aspect of him remain perfectly normal and free of toxins. Only his energy - when his mind tells it to be - is harmful.
History-
In retrospect, Christian would describe his upbringing as "good enough." He was born into a middling family of middling income and middling social status. His entire childhood was spent in Roanoke, Virginia, with only the occasional school field trip to break the monotony. These field trips seldom went far, usually to the zoo or to nearby colleges or concert halls, but they inspired Christian, who began to learn on his own that there was a world outside the little circle his parents had made for him.
His sister, Cameron, was born when Christian was eleven years old. His curiosity about the world had been growing steadily, and even before little Cami was able to walk, he started taking her places, even if just to the convenience store or the park. Often he did this without his parents' knowledge or permission. The siblings grew close, and Cami seemed to share Christian's sense of adventure. When the time came for him to attend college, he considered attending one of the smaller schools nearby just to see her finish her own schooling, but Cami - who was seven years old at the time - assured him that he should go out and see the world, especially since many renowned colleges were offering him scholarships based on his good grades and test scores. As a bit of a compromise, Christian chose to attend Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, far away from his old neighborhood and his family but close enough to his sister.
College life was endlessly entertaining for Christian. There were new faces and new ideas everywhere. He took courses in just about everything he could, including management and accounting, although he officially graduated with a degree in engineering. While he was away, and during his visits home, Cami seemed to be keeping up well with her studies and nurturing that curiosity he had instilled in her. Having decided to pursue further education, Christian was accepted to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the best business schools in the nation. While taking time to travel around the world while finishing his studies, it took him three years to graduate, upon which time he decided to move to New York City, but had to spend a summer back in Roanoke as he made arrangements to live in that city. There, he found his fourteen-year-old sister much changed.
Contrary to his perceptions while earning his degrees, Cami had long since drifted into a very different sort of crowd, which valued popularity above all else, and where being smart was antithetical to gaining that popularity. The boys in her classes seemed to like Cami well enough, which was what she wanted, but not what Christian wanted for her. Over that summer, he became the bane of every young man in their neighborhood who tried to take Cami out or even so much as look at her half a second too long. He succeeded in scaring the boys off, severing her ties with the popular crowd, and completely destroying their own relationship.
Cami had lost all taste for learning and exploration by then, though, and her perceived treatment by her brother only soured it more. When Christian offered to take her with him to New York, she adamantly refused, and their parents took offense as well. When Christian finally moved to New York, he left a tattered and distraught family in his wake.
It was no matter. They were not good enough for him anymore. His parents had never been good enough; they had been content to sit on their asses his whole life and work menial jobs to barely support them, never seeking, never endeavoring to better themselves or improve their situation. His sister was another matter; she'd had potential, and he regretted what had transpired between them, although he did not understand just why it had happened at the time.
Christian found work in a low-level engineering position at an airline until he realized he could not support himself on those low wages in New York, as much as he loved the vibrant and ever-moving city. Yet work was difficult to come by, even with his advanced degree. He finally landed a job as a process engineer for a pharmaceutical company, which was not even the same thing, but there was the benefit in having studied so many disciplines in college. For that job he moved to Colorado. It was the farthest he had ever lived from his family, and he did not care at all. Cami was refusing to answer his letters or calls.
He spent this time largely alone. His coworkers found him pleasant and often invited him out for drinks or to parties, but even in crowds, and even while smiling and chatting and seeming to be on just the same level with them, he felt completely isolated. His ability began to manifest around the same time. There was no sudden manifestation event, just a growing awareness of himself over time. Soon he realized the changes had to do with the way his mind interacted with space and energy. On his own, he honed the ability, while taking lessons in different weapons to help him find uses for it, just in case. Otherwise he kept the ability entirely to himself.
In time, and out of boredom, he moved to Illinois to take another job in the biomedical field, during which time he learned a great deal about substances and poisons. Then, falling back to his airliner routes, he moved down to Texas and landed a mid-level job as a propulsion engineer, a job he found so challenging that he actually kept with it for a while, and found himself working his way up the ranks. Despite being incredibly young still, his energy and willingness to take the right risks pushed him up to the assistant to the chief technology officer, with high hopes that he could earn that job within the next five to seven years, if he could just stay put and stay interested long enough.
That was when Ark called.
It was said that Lucius Kilvayne could sense power. Perhaps that saying referred to abilities, or perhaps to mental prowess. Whichever the case, he and Gabriel Constant approached Christian, initially about a job regarding special projects at Ark, and rather casually asking his opinions on various topics and technologies and Specials and the like. As it turned out, they had actually been vetting him for a position as Ark's chief executive officer. Since their acquisition of Ark, the men had been planning to install a new CEO, as they both had their own corporations - and other projects - to attend to as well, and could not effectively oversee the day-to-day management of the firm.
Christian accepted, of course. And suddenly, he was living in Los Angeles, with excellent accommodations, a bigger salary than he had earned in the past eight years combined, and more toys than he would ever tire of playing with. And all while he was leading a body of intelligent, innovative workers, all as smart as him or smarter. Finally, all those years of hard work, all that boredom as a child, all that abuse from his family had finally opened to something worthwhile.
He planned to take full advantage of it.
Faction- Neutral/Ark Industries
Anything else?- Nah, I think the above novel covered everything.
Sample RP-
They were easy enough to predict after a while. Repetition was one of humanity's great fallbacks. He had always hated that. Repetition. It stank of complacency and lifelessness.
Try as he might, despite doing his best to visit different coffee shops on different days, Christian always saw them there, at the one down the street from the Jung Facility. A group of men - lawyers, he supposed, due to their briefcases. Handy for carrying stacks and stacks of papers. Not so much for carrying tablets and smartphones.
They met at that café every weekday morning, it seemed. And they stayed for at least an hour, discussing old times and cases and the latest news. Nothing ever pleased them "Did you hear how much that newfangled car sold? Ridiculous! I'm perfectly happy with my tried-and-true Expedition. If it ain't broke, as they say."
"Have you been following the news from Paris, and the demonstrations? Pah, I say. God will have His will just as He set it down for us, I tell you."
"It's about time that young woman got put away. Accident or no, those people - those - they should be kept under lock and key, just like the government used to do before that very same type killed all the sane men. God only knows what horrors Sawyer will pull next for those creeps."
Today the news was even more familiar. "My God, did you hear that those bastards who took over Ark Industries named a new CEO - a thirty-something-year-old out of Texas? Things at that place were going strangely enough as it was. All hush-hush, and now they pull this. Thank God they aren't publicly trading. They'd pull the whole market down."
"Virginia," Christian said quietly from behind them, and they all looked up or turned around; he had been so quiet that they had not heard his approach, "and they would do something to the market, certainly. But what would you have to complain about then?"
The men stared at him, both astonished and abashed. Older men, all of them; conservative dress, traditional-style briefcases, plain coffee with a bit of sugar or cream. Something welled up in Christian's throat like a wash of bile. Pity. Pity for these old men and their old, bigoted ways.
He smiled, and like a magic salve had dripped over the table, the men smiled as well. Their smiles betrayed hints of anxiety still. It was sufficient, Christian decided. For now.
"I hope you'll forgive my intrusion," he said breezily. "I'm always intrigued by discussions of new endeavors. Exceptionally so when they involve me." He tilted his head to the side slightly and chuckled; his hands, which had been folded in front of him, opened palms outward, one over the other. A subtle sign of openness and honesty. The smallest gestures made the largest impacts.
"Of course. I'd do the same in your shoes," chuckled one particularly bloated man. "Now that I've met you, I'm sure you'll do an excellent job at the helm of Ark."
I've barely said three things to you, old man, and two of those were insults. Christian chuckled and bowed his head. Humility, acceptance, supplication. "Thank you. It means a great deal from wise and perceptive gentlemen such as yourselves."
From there came introductions, and more coffee, and more discussion on the world and all that crawled upon it, and en route to his headquarters Christian decided he had never been happier to be on the way to work.
