lizardskeptical

[lizardskeptical]

NAME: Daniel Martin

((In-Game Handle: LizardSkeptic))

ALIASES: Dan

BIRTHDATE: September 12, 1986

FACTION: Dragon

TWITTER HANDLE: @LizardSkeptical

KNOWN ASSOCIATES: Daniel plays things close to the chest. We know he’s interacted amicably with several other agents via Twitter, but nothing stands out as significant. As a former Kingsmouth Police Department deputy, Sheriff Helen Bannerman was his boss. We also know that he’s accepted payment recently from Orochi Group under the authority of its Kusanagi Initiative, headed by D’ante Lewis. Possible that he knows other former residents of Kingsmouth, notably siblings Vimes and Mckenzie Thatcher.

KNOWN ANIMOSITIES: Daniel is hard to read. Besides one public spat with Seok Dae-hyun and the Free Judges, he hasn’t shown any true animosities recently. An older spat involved Orochi Group during its bid to buy Wabanaki land on Solomon Island. Daniel was among those in the tribe who opposed the land deal and he moved to Bangor, Maine soon after to join the Bangor Police Department. Obviously, that didn’t last.

EARLY LIFE: Daniel Martin is a member of the Wabanaki of Solomon Island. Community records indicate that as a child he was very intelligent, with a natural talent for magic. His parents were divorced when he was still in elementary school, and his father gained primary custody. Against the wishes of his mother, a practitioner of traditional Wabanaki magic, Daniel’s father enrolled him at Innsmouth Academy, where he excelled. Wabanaki records indicate that Daniel actively participated in tribal events and classes in tribal history and culture. Very soon after the polarizing decision by the Wabanaki to accept Orochi’s offer to buy tribal land, Daniel, who had been being courted by the Templars, swore off magic and moved to Bangor, where he joined the police department. Daniel didn’t return to Kingsmouth until late 2009, when he accepted a job offer with the Kingsmouth Police Department. Daniel became a K9 officer in 2011, and he was paired with a German Shepherd puppy named Vlad. Daniel was also married in 2011, to elementary school teacher and childhood sweetheart Faith Brewster. The two moved into a house on Poe Cove and, as of the time of the initial fog incident, had been expecting their first child.

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ANIMA INFUSION: Details are sparse, but from what I’ve been able to gather, Daniel Martin and his (now deceased) wife, Faith, were at their home in Kingsmouth when the fog came. Faith walked into the sea and Daniel didn’t. When she came back along with the other undead, she found Daniel in their home, in the nursery they’d been designing for their first child, passed out drunk. Vlad came to his handler’s rescue, and when Daniel woke up, it was to the sight of his wife wounded beyond the ability to move and both he and Vlad completely unharmed. When agents started arriving on Solomon Island via Agartha, the Dragon recruited Daniel.

ANIMA INFUSION SIDE EFFECTS: Despite having sworn off magic in his late teens, a few things stand out, both from his school records and from current events:

He appears to have a bond with his K9 partner, a bicolor German Shepherd named Vlad. Vlad has been seen entering Agartha and fighting Filth-infected individuals with no visible ill effects. Daniel and Vlad have been seen working together as if the dog was an extension of Daniel. Witnesses interviewed reported several times seeing Daniel react to stimulus that Vlad was watching but he was not. Suspected by more than one direct witness that Daniel and Vlad, despite both being separate beings, are considered a single entity by the bees, since both have been observed healing at the same rate and experiencing fatigue at the same time.

The rest is, sadly, out of date. We know from Innsmouth records that Daniel’s ability with psychic-related disciplines was excellent and might account for some of his ability with Vlad. At the time of his graduation, he was a budding touch clairvoyant. He was also able to see the auras of others and sense strong emotion. Records indicate possible limited success with psychic projection.

CURRENT REMIT: The Dragon has been making use of Daniel’s police experience, and he is often assigned tasks that require a fair bit of investigation, often also making use of Vlad’s tracking abilities. Also due to his police training, he is usually on the front lines of more militarized assignments, and Daniel has a track record of preferring to minimize both casualties and mundane witnesses to secret world happenings.

EXTRACURRICULARS: Daniel has been documented accepting payment from the Orochi Group’s Kusanagi Initiative for aiding their activities in New England.

ACTIVITIES IN THE SECRET WAR: Daniel is often on the front lines of more militarized assignments for the Dragon, including missions against other societies. Details are hard to piece together, but we know he’s been particularly active on his native Solomon Island against the Illuminati.

MICE: As stated before, Daniel plays things close to the chest. Though he’s displayed altruistic and idealistic behavior on Twitter, we also suspect that at least some of it is feigned. His behavior in the field suggests that he is, first and foremost, practical, with a particular hatred of zombies and draug that, I feel, is at least partially due the death of his wife. The most reliable method of manipulating Daniel would be using that memory, though I caution against outright lies, as between magic and police training, Daniel is adept at seeing through deception.

[lizardskeptical]

Buzzing Bio: Daniel Martin

((It may be a day of lore-hunting talking, but I wanted to try something different and take a stab at a Buzzing-style bio for Daniel. There will be a more traditional bio later, but for now, enjoy?))

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT - initiate the emergency signal - RECEIVE - initiate the Dawn frequency - MOVE OVER FOR EMERGENCY VEHICLES - initiate the anima protocol - WARNING: GUARD DOG ON DUTY - initiate the scaled skeptic syntax - WITNESS - Daniel Martin.

Have you read the travel brochures displayed so proudly at the Mining Museum? Take in the scenic beauty of Solomon Island! Visit beautiful Kingsmouth, Maine! You know its postcard streets from postage stamps and the lurid illustrations of penny dreadfuls. That smoke isn’t a bonfire, sweetling. The rotting flesh of small town secrets carries on the breeze along with the ashes of innocent witches. Beyond the merry lights of the fall festival, cannibal hunger stalks the shadows, and the Wabanaki forget their myths. Blue lights and a shiny badge cannot protect the townsfolk from the fog.

Initiate the discord cadence.

A shaman’s son splits from the tribe over wealth and ancestral duty. Naive youth becomes headstrong adulthood. As a knight in a tin pot helm tilts at the unmoving windmill, the youth brings his ancient beliefs to the big city with him when he leaves. The badge and blue lights illuminate a child torn. When the wind blows from the east, he can still smell roasting lobster and decay.

Initiate the homesickness prerogative.

Homecoming is the bittersweet taste of fall cider sipped silently from a police department mug and the laughter of the autumn fair drowning out the screams. Of the gulls, sweetling, always the gulls and never the visitors who fall prey to the teeth in the dark or to the ever-increasing pools of black, stagnant water. WARNING! Blue lights illuminate secrets. The secrets stare back. Ancestral wards can protect a seaside home from the dark, but they cannot push back the fog. They cannot save a high school sweetheart from the sea.

Do you see it, sweetling? The empty nursery? The rotting flesh with long blond hair still moves. He doesn’t have the heart to shoot it. Empty bottles line the carpet out of her reach, silent sentinels to the siren song of the sea. An ancient pact protects him from the fog. It does not protect him from last month’s illicit brew. The alcohol can’t protect him from the blue eyes slowly rotting in their sockets as she moans with unmentionable hunger. Do not pity him, sweetling. Pity the others of his blood. Pity the ones with larger families and more to lose. Pity them because those who were taken came back. Pity them because they do not have a great furred protector to watch over them in their grief sleep.

Initiate the sole survivor lexicon.

He’s heard us before - our droning, at once the lazy heat of a summer afternoon and the cold paranoia of a midnight numbers station. He’s seen our scribbling in the sweet smoke of the campfire. He’s felt our tickling touch in the recesses of his dreams. And now we scream.

The familiar, the German Shepherd, is more than he appears. Both are now more than they appear. And like the fish inside the anemone, they need each other, sweetling. The dog who bears the great vampire hunter’s name and the man who walked into the lion’s den have been tempest tossed into the Dragon’s coils. It is cunning and not faith that keeps these butterflies aloft in the gale that has followed.

Faith died with the fog and sits moaning in a nursery looking out at the sea. Now is the time of bitterness, and memories of idealism light the scaled green dark with labyrinthine perfection.

Initiate the now. The Dragon syntax.

Daniel and Vlad will be seeing you, sweetling.