I think I used to have a voice

Player's Name: KaOS

Characters Played Here: Jim Hopper

Character: Barry Berkman

Series/Canon: BARRY

From When? towards the end of season 1; for the purposes of the game, in the shoot-out at the stash house one of the Chechens gets in a lucky shot and takes him out before he can leave; he fluxes in right after that.

Previous Game(s): no CRAU

World Description: n/a

History: There's not really much known about Barry's life pre-military so far. It's safe to assume he enlisted in the Marines right out of high school, and we know he did two combat tours. The first one's when he got his first confirmed kill, with another two on its heels, impressive because of the distance and because it was his first more than anything else. He told his acting class it was a terrible experience, that it shook him and he felt guilty and cried over it, but it's not the truth. His unit congratulated him and made it sound like something great. An achievement, something to be proud of, so it made him feel good instead. It was something he was good at, it made him an asset. Part of the team.

So he helped fight the Good Fight. Killed the Bad Guys, and worse yet he was really good at it. It fanned something dark in him, some impulse that had been lurking his whole life but had never really been given much of a voice, but it was useful, channeled into something good, so he let it exist, and nobody said much about it. War changes people, but it wasn't the kind that made him dangerous, they figured.

Right up until the end of his second tour, anyway.

His closest friend in his unit was shot by an insurgent, while they were shooting the shit with the locals, trying to get intel for the next mission. It wasn't fatal, ultimately, but it was plenty to pull out that darker place. He tried to stop the bleeding first, but a flash of movement in the doorway of one of the buildings caught his attention, and anger took over. Cold and deliberate, he went in after the movement and eliminated the target, except it wasn't the guy. Just some local in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the actual shooter had been up on a roof the whole time, something he would have known if he'd been thinking straight. But he wasn't, because he thought his friend was bleeding out on the sand and the only thought in his head was revenge. Eliminating the target.

He spent a few months in the psych unit at a military hospital in Germany after that, only saved from a dishonorable discharge by a family friend he'd known his whole life who got the incident swept under the rug and brought him home.

Not that he ever left, not really. Since then he's essentially been in stasis; the first few months after he got back were spent rudderless, quickly descending into a depressed funk with the one thing he was good at removed. He'd done well enough in school but he'd never gone to college. He'd screwed up his military career, so there wasn't much for him there, Fuches' connections the only reason he could still use it as an asset, and he was pretty sure he couldn't face going home the family psycho.

Fuches let him stew in it for about as long as he could stand, then swooped in to pick up the pieces when he was most vulnerable. Told him there was an alternative, a way to use his skills to do good in the world. Got in his head, exploited his loneliness and directionless feeling to shape him into his own personal weapon instead. A hired killer who'd kill anybody for a price, fed a steady diet of assurances that they were Bad People. It went on for a few years, until the shiny edges started to wear off. Until the guilt and self-loathing started to set in and the deaths on his conscience started to weigh. Because they weren't always bad people, sometimes they were just regular people who had gotten on the wrong side of bad people.

Which was how he ended up in LA, with grand hopes of being an actor. Of doing something Better with his life and leaving his old life behind.

and so the show starts

Does your character have any close ties to existing canon characters? nobody that's in the game yet!

Why do you think your character would work in this setting? Barry will have fluxed in from the point of death in his own canon. He'll come in with a shiny new scar right over his heart and a couple more on his chest but otherwise whole, and upon initial arrival he will be covered in blood and extremely Confused. Once he settles in a little more, however, he'll be a pretty good fit; his entire canon arc so far deals with whether or not it's possible to change, to start over, and throwing him in New Dodge will give him exactly that opportunity. No Fuches to manipulate him into his old ways, no cops to run from, no mobs to try to outmaneuver, only a fresh start. Nobody who knows him or what he's done, who he is, he will be free to actually start over, which he will latch onto greedily about as soon as he realizes and settle into trying to Fit In.

How do you plan to expand their CR? Barry's kind of a wallflower at baseline, but he desperately wants human connections and friends and generally to Belong. He'll get a job about as soon as he can and try to make friends in his strange awkward way, and can easily be dragged along or intimidated into other social engagements by whatever friends he does make.

What will your character do for work? he's been in the military, he's been a hitman, he's been a (really bad) actor, he's worked in a clothing store. he'll find something, and honestly probably be happy whatever it is.

Does your character have special powers or abilities? Nothing especially superhuman, he's bog-standard human to start. That being said, he's a trained Marine who's kept up with his training since getting discharged and is touted as one of the best contract killers in the business. He's been shown to be able to shoot a man at 700 yards with deadly accuracy and take out multiple targets efficiently with minimal effort and extreme precision. He's good at improvising, and tactics, and more than accomplished at disguising his kills to cover his tracks, either by disposing of or concealing the evidence or making the hit look like it was done by somebody else to tell a narrative that will keep the cops from looking his way.

...granted, his job is about the only thing he's really, truly, sincerely good at, but hey. Everybody's got to have their Thing.

Inventory: a tattered black backpack containing: 1 change of clothes, a few scripts, some powerbars, 2 burner phones, and 2 full clips for a handgun. on his person he comes with: a bloodstained outfit (jeans, boots, henley, and a sweatshirt, all black) with a couple bullet holes in the shirts, a handgun with no bullets in the clip, and a wallet containing his actual license, a fake license, a couple fake credit cards, and $20.

Samples:

Third-Person Sample:

test drive linkage!

First-Person Sample:

in which Barry talks to a robot on an interdimensional prison ship