eudio application

[disbands]

(tw violence, war, abduction/pressgang, natural illness and implied mild body horror)

PLAYER INFORMATION

NAME: Chinatown
AGE: 30
CONTACT: pyg
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Joseph "That" Kavinsky (The Raven Cycle)

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Barclay Odell
CANON: Original (created by dishonests along with much background, theme, named NPCs, etc., used with permission)
AGE: 24
CANON POINT: Betrayed by the British Royal Navy that he had betrayed his childhood best friend to! Amid blood and chaos, he makes a deal to again get his life back. You'd think he'dve learned his lesson by now. Lucky for him, Eudio representatives are more trustworthy than pirate hunters.

BACKGROUND: 1692: Barclay was born in Bristol, in South West England. His parents died a few years thereafter. An accident took his father and disease his mother. Having no extended family that would claim him, he stayed at an under-funded orphanage. He beat a few fevers and the worst crimes that found children in his demographic. If you asked him, he couldn't say whether he fled the orphanage or was turned out. Both, neither. There were too many mouths and his transition out was slow until it got very sudden. As a street child, Barclay made a competent thief and accepted odd jobs, with sense enough to check out at the first spine tingle of untenable danger. He figured quite quickly how to make for himself a place in the hierarchy of homeless children. It was not a pleasant life, but biology was on his side-- sharp eyes, iron gut, and his teeth held up under the abuse.

When he turned thirteen, he met Cassidy Hawking at the docks. The docks were a bad place to be, per Cassidy's mother and any other sensible adult. However, for reckless preteens, that's what made it good.

Cassidy was obviously a child of slightly better means: he was throwing stale biscuit to pigeons. Barclay solicited the boy to see if he couldn't get bits of biscuit into his mouth instead. What could have been a short-lived and demeaning exchange that filled Barclay's stomach but take from his pride turned out different. Cass was excited about his sure-footed and funny friend.

They immediately set off to be fast friends, taking advantage of their mismatched social statuses. They ran a series of short cons, exploiting the greed of shopkeepers and tradesmen, fooling them into paying for junk, stolen goods, and stray cats. They shared sweets and Cassidy's leftover dinner, climbed what should not be climbed and took what you think any kid ought to have these days. Cassidy taught him reading and writing, and Barclay showed him how to float, swim and hide treasures behind a loose brick beside the bakery on William Street. Cassidy practiced braids on Barclay to later to put in his sister Magdalene's hair. Barclay practiced poems on Cassidy pretending they would eventually be for anybody besides him. By the time he turned fifteen, Barclay was a little bit in love with his friend. He didn't worry about what that meant; he was only fifteen.

1707: The pressgang took Barclay in June, just after sundown. He and Cassidy were running on the docks, when suddenly the group of careworn Naval men appeared upon the both of them. The pursuit was short-- the boys were taken by surprise and greatly outnumbered. They fought hard-- together at first, making good use of the found objects and lamp oil some idiot left out. Barclay freed Cassidy with a particularly ungentlemanly maneuver, but when Cassidy moved to return the favor, he saw a half-dozen reinforcements coming out of the tavern just behind his companion. He fled. Barclay found himself completely alone. It probably would have turned out badly for him, but the Queen's war on Spain needed bodies-- and they the pay that came with it-- more than they wanted revenge.

Barclay got papers. The officers were surprised that he could read them, but it didn't much matter that he could; the terms were a foregone conclusion. He was soon thereafter a recruit on a ship of the Royal British Navy, running line and swabbing deck. Somehow, the food was worse and the living harder.

1710: A little before he turned seventeen, he learned to fire a gun into the bodies of enemy officers and they gave him a uniform. The food was better. By then, he'd burned off the worst of his resentment, having the limited attention span of a teenager. He found very real excitement in coming into new ports, excelling at new skills, and a mostly-innocuous pleasure at surprising some of the higher-born comrades with his insights into their books and letters. It's not that he forgot what they had done to him, and it's certainly not that he had forgotten the circumstances of his childhood, the other boy in it. But he was older now.

Barclay had begun to think about the future, that he might even have one, outside of shoveling nightsoil or hauling coal. He might even have a future where he could buy new boots and borrow books, because he would look like the sort of person you would sell and loan to. He thought he might go back to Bristol. All that required, he realized, was to make good account of himself at war-- for which he was paid. He could put up with many doubts, nightmares, insults, and instances of fear vomit, if it promised a better tomorrow.

He did.

On his way to junior petty officer, Barclay killed a lot of Spaniards. And when his blue-coat friends were dying for England wanted to die sooner, the physician turned away so he would kill them as well.

When he came back to Bristol, he might have been nervous, but that seemed ridiculous. He turned up at the big, fine Hawking house in his blue coat, realizing that the walls and the garden no longer looked so big or fine anymore; partly because he had grown up, and partly because he had seen more. Cassidy was gone but his mother and sister Magdalene were there. They did not speak of the boy who had left with his father for an ugly life of crime. Innoculated from disappointment by his shitty life, however, Barclay soon came to appreciate both the Hawking women's dire socioeconomic situation and Magadalene's loveliness. He took up with her, refraining from comment when she put a braid in his hair. With her mother's ginger approval, they were engaged to be married.

1713: But the war ended. By then, Barclay had made good account of himself, but for all of his skill and cleverness and luck and soundness of limb, his humble origins had counted against him. He and thousands of others were discharged from the Navy. Those who survived the cut, the higher-ranking officers who had played cards and quoted poetry with him pretended they did not know him anymore. Barclay counted himself lucky enough, though. He'd learned a little sailmaking and other skills. He thought he had more experience than most. Barclay gave up Magdalene's hand with some regret, and real fear that he no longer felt for himself. He went to find work with the merchant ships.

Unfortunately, the hard reality was that men like Barclay were a dime a dozen, or at least a dime for an even ten. He was locked in a futile competition with his peers, on who could survive impossibly long voyages for impossibly little pay, inadequate gear, weird shits and old men's pain, poorly repaired ships. Slowly, the wear took on his back, his toenails, even on his teeth. He lost a molar, and that symbolized something to him. Barclay realized that civilized society had dealt him worse after worse hand, and this was not a game he could win. It had been rigged from the beginning and no amount of skill would get him winnings, or even the amount of his original investment. He bought passage aboard a ship headed to the West Indies and turned pirate.

The work-- the killing, the sailing-- wasn't so different from the Navy. Less polite about what it was, was all. It did not sit well with him, the women and the children, but he was inured to that in only three months, maybe four. After all, he too had been a child of Britain once too. At first, the pirates laughed at him for his gentlemanly airs, but that went away in two months. Probably less.

1714: He did not know he hated Cassidy until he learned that the Hawking boy was fucking pirate king, or near enough. The circumstances of this revelation were separately troublesome. Thanks to a series of fatal tactical errors by his pirate captain, Barclay had been captured by Naval pirate hunters. He was spared along with the First Mate to which he was assistant. Naturally, they made him an offer he could not refuse: help them catch this Cassidy and receive a Royal pardon, or go to the gallows following a farcical trial (they left out the word "farcical"). All he had to do was kill a king, or near enough. Barclay had quite had it with monarchs of all shapes and themes, anyway.

Barclay took the deal. He pretended a great escape, along with a convincing pirate crew that was similarly paid to turncoat on their kind-- and to watch one another too. In 1715, he found Cassidy and set the trap. It was easy, quick. Painless. Cassidy went willingly when they had his crew by the neck. At least, it was easy until the British Royal Navy turned on Barclay, too.

PERSONALITY: At this point, Barclay is dead inside. He experiences happiness only briefly, and generally when he isn't thinking about anything. He doesn't experience a lot of sadness or regret either, and generally avoids thinking too much as numbness is preferable to negativity. Barclay is vaguely aware that not everyone feels this way, but the developmental pathway of his oddity is so obvious, even to him, and was quite commonplace to varying degrees in the other men he had fought alongside. As a result, he doesn't see a lot of point in trying to fight with or question it. If you were normal after war, the way he sees it, it wouldn't be war. If you were happy families after youth in an impoverished orphanage, you were not an orphan. Social welfare and justice wil be news to him-- life was hard for "everybody" when and where he comes from.

Day-to-day, he does a pretty good job talking and joking around; making light is a good defense mechanism. He tends to betray himself with a little needless sarcasm here or there, or an exaggerated startle reaction. However, he was a thief and a con artist as a child, and then a bureaucratic mountaineer as he aged up, and it's not that difficult for him to put on faces or to discern others. He may not have the finesse of a dedicated seductress, telepath, or the concerning antihero from House of Cards, but he has a fine basic set of skills. He's not incapable of sympathy for others, or even an occasional moment feeling sorry for himself. However, he's more likely than not to expect everybody involved to rub some dirt in it and continue the pointless slog of existence. I've become so numb, I can't feel you there, become so tired, etc., etc. it's very Linkin Park.

As with most people who've faced serious deprivation, he'll start out a little tight-fisted and low-key paranoid. However, he'll loosen up pretty quick, walking the walk and talking the talk before he genuinely feels it. Generosity, curiosity, and kindness are things that have atrophied for him, but haven't been entirely amputated. He has always been a very resilient person, which relates to the fact he's become quite an asshole.
INCENTIVE: Barclay wants to have his life straightened out, after the Navy betrays him following his betrayal of Cassidy. He is asking for a ticket back to Bristol, with money and some humble prospects for a late grave.
FIT: Given the comparatively conservative society of his time, Barclay was pretty open-minded and forward-thinking for his time. He was sexually active and enjoyed the physical companionship of others, despite being vastly and increasingly emotionally unavailable through his time. Although he might be a bit deer in headlights with some of the sights and offerings of Eudio, he will learn!! he's good at learning.
CONSENT: Despite his lengthy history of murder, trickery, and betrayal, Barclay completely recognizes that his actions violated the consent of others. He honestly believed they were necessary at the time and simply part of the dog-eat-dog he lived in. Given his incentive, he is easily motivated to leave such activities behind.
SAMPLES: TDM link to network thread with Rafa, as well as a prose thread with Cass!

ANYTHING ELSE? No powers! However, he'll want to bring along his dress blues, sword, flintlock pistol, several knives, a rowboat with oars, compass, map, a few books, and some very good rum.