Post by Dorian on Mar 20, 2010 2:48:29 GMT -5
We Are Legion. We Are Forever.
-CLASSIFIED FILE-
Vital Statistics
Full Name: Michael Riordan
Aliases and Nicknames: Dorian (current preferred name), The Father, Michael Rearden, Daniel Richards (alias).
Date of Birth: July 29, 1973
Current Age: 36 (appears in his early-to-mid twenties unless something's horribly wrong)
Current Year: 2003
Universe: Octane
Alliance: Evil, though he doesn't consider himself evil.
Species: Gifted Human
Sub-Species: Psychic
Powers and Abilities:
//PSYCHIC// abilities
Note: Telepathy and psychometry are his core abilities, but they are very advanced from being practiced thoroughly over a long period of time. All other powers have stemmed from these.
+Psychometry+
(also referred to as Touch Telepathy) The ability to obtain information about an object or a person through physical contact. He can focus and absorb very specific information if he has an idea of what he’s looking for.
+Telepathy+
The ability to transfer thoughts, emotions, and images with others. He can read the general emotional and mental state of someone in his vicinity, and can pick up more specific things from physical contact with the person or something they’ve touched. If someone trusts him or he’s allowed access to someone’s mind by the other party, it’s very easy for him to manipulate that person’s thoughts and perception unless it happens to be another psychically inclined creature.
+Hypnosis+
He is able to manipulate people through hypnosis. This is not something that happens quickly. He has to actually verbally guide someone through the hypnotism process, which takes several minutes. Once he hypnotizes someone once, he maintains a psychic hold over that person that allows him to manipulate him or her through telepathy. If he hypnotizes a person several times with regularity over a length of time, it’s possible for him to acquire a complete hold on his or her mind, effectively brainwashing that person.
+Empathy+
The ability to feel the emotions of another as if they are his own. He is able to feel what another person is feeling and use that to relate to him or her. He has to either have access to someone’s mind or have physical contact with a person to do this.
+Blood Psychometry+
By tasting someone’s blood, he can gain insight into their psyche and their history. How this happens varies depending on each person. Sometimes he sees visions of key events from their past, other times he learns the history of a particular place or person of significance. By feeding his own blood to someone, he can create a psychic link to that person, which allows him easy access to his or her mind. But, if this person is psychically inclined, his mind is open to him or her as well.
//PHYSICAL// assets
Note: These are a direct result of the rituals he performs, and only apply when he is at his prime. If he is unable to complete the rituals he requires, these assets fade quickly and take a long time to build back up.
+Accelerated Healing+
He heals more quickly than a regular person. Minor cuts and bruises usually heal within 24 hours while things like broken bones take a few weeks. He can perform a ritual to heal another person, but he rarely has the desire to go to the trouble.
+Durability+
He is virtually indestructible. This does not mean he can’t be injured. Anything that harms a normal human being harms him, but he does bounce back very quickly from things normal people don’t bounce back from.
+Youthful Appearance+
Michael perfected his blood-letting ritual around the age of 25 and was able to perform it consistently over a long period of time. The process has virtually stopped his aging process, and if he continues performing his ritual regularly he will not physically age.
Physical Appearance
Height: 5’ 10”
Weight/Build: Athletic
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Attire:
Dorian's wardrobe is simple, but trendy. He keeps up with the latest styles, but he's subtle about it. He's not looking to be a fashion icon. His clothing consists largely of dark and neutral colors, and nothing about his ensemble ever jumps out and calls attention to itself. He likes to blend in. However, anyone with an eye for fashion who took a close look at his outfit at any given time would probably notice it was stylish and expensive.
Distinguishing Traits:
He has various runes and symbols tattooed throughout his body, but most of them are easily hidden and wouldn't be noticeable unless you saw him shirtless. The few exceptions are
subtle tattoos on his knuckles that look similar to the dots you see on dice. There is also an infinity symbol at the base of his neck just above his shoulder blades that is sometimes visible, depending on the neckline of his shirt. His most notable tattoo is a large pheonix surrounded by an ouroboros that takes up the majority of his back.
Relationships
Blood Ties: Noreen Riordan (mother - deceased); Jillian Embry (aunt - estranged); Robert Embry (uncle - estranged); Amanda Embry, Rob Embry, Joshua Embry (cousins - estranged)
Love Life: No notable relationships.
Friends and Acquaintances: None.
Enemies: None that he knows of.
Group Affiliations: Independant
Personality
Describe:
Dorian is, essentially, a chameleon. He is observant and extremely intuitive. It's common for him to study and get to know people for a while, using observation and his psychic abilities. He will be quiet and polite until he gathers all the information he needs, and then he'll adopt whatever persona he feels is appropriate. He is always putting on some kind of front, and there are very few people who catch a glimpse of his true personality, and those who do rarely live to talk about it.
Having practiced pretending to be something he's not for virtually his entire life, Dorian is a master of deception and a skilled actor. He can keep up a persona for a considerable amount of time as well as switch in and out of personas instantaneously. The people he surrounds himself with know only what he wants them to know about him, and he doesn't like it when people know more about him than he's intended to let on. If he feels someone knows too much about him, he will do one of two things: kill them, or bring them into his inner circle.
He can find out a broad range of information about a person with time and patience, and he will use every piece of information he can to his advantage. Dorian is extremely manipulative and will bend a person's will to meet his needs when possible.
At the core, Dorian is a desperately lonely man seeking love and acceptance. He has trouble forming bonds with other people, yet he craves these connections and it frustrates him that he can't make them easily. So, he tries to connect with people in other ways, using manipulation and his abilities.
Dorian doesn't handle rejection well. Although he may seem easily approachable, patient, and understanding, if he feels he's being rejected, he can become quite cruel. He is intrigued by most people and he can and will hold a conversation with anyone as long as there is something about them that interests him. However, if Michael takes an interest in someone it’s not usually a good thing for that person. If he decides he wants someone to be a part of his life, it’s difficult to sway him on that and he will go to extreme measures to make that person a part of his "family" (often doing things like killing or harming people he or she cares about).
Although he can seem violent or cruel, Dorian has a high respect for life and does not feel he kills recklessly or without purpose. He tries to make the deaths of others as comfortable as possible, however if a person is resistant or disrespectful, he becomes cold and frustrated and loses his restraint. If he feels someone has wronged him somehow, there's no telling what he'll do. When he feels attacked, attacking back is justified to him - no matter how over-zealous he may be.
Michael has an intense fear of death, which is what motivates and drives a lot of his actions and his ways of thinking. He very much lives in the moment, and sees life as a party. He does what makes him happy in any given moment without reflecting on it much. When faced with the threat of death, Michael becomes violent and reckless. He will do anything he has to in order to preserve his own life and any loyalty he has to anyone or anything will evaporate.
Likes:
- Life
- People
- Music
- Partying
- Women
Dislikes:
- Death
- Being disrespected
- Being alone
- Being lied to
- Thieves
“Fatal Flaw”: His fear of death will get him every time. It is directly responsible for the belief system he's created for himself, and it is the driving motivation behind everything he does.
History
Michael Riordon was born on July 29, 1973 in Dublin, Ireland. His mother, Noreen, was only sixteen years old when she gave birth to him, and she didn’t know who his father was. She was a high school dropout and a drug addict. She tried to raise Michael, but her addiction to cocaine and heroin along with her promiscuous lifestyle made for a virtually nonexistent home for a child. As a baby and young boy, Michael was often left with strangers or brought to seedy, dangerous areas where his mother went to score.
Once he started going to school, Michael excelled in academics, but he was a quiet, anti-social boy, seeming disinterested in interacting with the other children. This concerned his Kindergarten teacher, who met with his mother several times over the course of the school year. Ultimately, she became concerned enough with Michael’s well being that she contacted the authorities, who began investigating Doreen and her home. When Doreen was deemed unfit, Michael was temporarily placed in foster care before being sent to the United States to live with a distant aunt and uncle in Idaho.
The spelling of his last name was changed to Rearden because his aunt and uncle thought it would be “less conspicuous” and more “Americanized.” It was a small step they hoped would help him blend in better. Michael’s name was the least of his problems, however, and although he continued to excel in school, he wasn’t connecting easily to his aunt and uncle or his cousins. As he got older, Michael began to make friends, but he never got too attached to any of them. They were more casual acquaintances than true friends. Simultaneously, his aunt, uncle, and cousins distanced themselves further from him. He had a tendency to know things without having to be told, which after a while made his family wary of him. He was able to pick up information from his environment in a way he thought was normal until people started reacting strangely to his deep insights when he was a child. Then he discovered he was different and tried to keep that a secret. However, this made it difficult for him to get close to other people, since he never really felt he could be himself and be accepted.
Michael graduated high school a year early in 1989 at age 16 and moved out of his aunt and uncle’s house shortly after. He gave them no warning. They just woke up one morning and he was gone. He’d brought nothing with him but a duffle bag with necessary clothing and his tooth brush. He left a cordial note thanking them for their hospitality and assuring them that he was okay, but wouldn’t be returning. He traveled on foot and, when he had to clear a large distance, took a bus or hitch hiked. That was how he began living the drifter lifestyle he became accustomed to.
Michael traveled and met new people in new places, taking odd jobs to make money. Eventually, after living out of hotel rooms, crashing on couches, and sometimes sleeping in back alleys when he couldn’t find a roof, Michael bought himself a car. This gave him a new kind of independence that wasn’t quite as desperate. He had his own transportation, and a roof, which gave him an odd sense of security. Once he had a car, he was able to take a more solid job that allowed him to make more money. He lived in the city of Cleveland, Ohio for a year and a half, working and saving money, living alternately between his car and various motel rooms. He eventually saved enough money to travel to Dublin to try to find his mother, which was something he’d wanted to do for a long time.
It wasn’t as easy to find information on his mother as he had hoped, but through using his abilities and doing good old fashioned research, he discovered his mother had died of a drug overdose several years before. Michael was devastated. His mother was the only person he’d ever felt truly loved and accepted him, despite the fact that she was less than attentive. His entire life, he had felt isolated and distant from everyone around him and he had hoped that when he found his mother, he would finally find the connection he longed for.
Michael remained in Dublin for several months, living in his car and squatting in run-down buildings, avoiding people as much as possible. Food was scarce and he became thin and unhealthy, and fell into a deep depression. He despised death, and he was dissatisfied with his life, so what did that leave?
It was during this period of time that Michael’s core belief system and morality began to take shape. He’d done research on psychic abilities throughout his teens to try to learn more about his abilities, and in his research he’d also stumbled upon quite a bit of occult practices – namely rituals and spells. He’d never tried to put them into practice, but he’d always found them fascinating – especially rituals thought to preserve youth and expand a human lifespan. He began to think deeply about life and death, and what it would mean if these rituals could actually do what they were supposed to. He became obsessed with the idea of eternal youth, and this obsession pulled him out of his depression and drove him to move forward and take action.
Michael moved back to the U.S. and became a nomad, traveling from city to city. He started practicing spell casting and rituals and found he had a natural knack for magic. Of course, it still took him quite a bit of practice to learn how to properly cast, how to use various ingredients, and learn the general do’s and don’ts of magic. He learned largely by trial and error, which had its consequences when spells went wrong and drew unwanted attention. It was a rough road, to say the least.
Once he was confident he understood the inner workings of spell casting, Michael began delving into the thing that interested him most: finding the secret to eternal youth, and immortality. He deduced that the key to all of it was blood. It was figuring out how the blood could make one immortal that was the tricky part. Michael went about discovering that the same way he’d gone about learning how to use magic: by trial and error, although he was much more careful and strategic about it this time around. Unfortunately, in order to perform rituals involving blood, he needed to acquire blood, which required human sacrifices. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that, however feeling as detached as he did from humanity gave him the ability to sacrifice people without feeling much guilt. After all, they weren’t being killed for no reason, were they?
Michael spent years snatching people off highways and lonely country roads, and he started creating false identities for himself - alternate driver's licenses, fake police badges, etc. - and using them to more subtly bait people. He found that some people were more compliant than others, and decided they were more useful to him alive than dead. Over the years, he acquired and brainwashed a large group of people he called his "family." They referred to him only as "The Father." They were a blood-harvesting cult trying to live life to the fullest and create a non-stop party. By performing his blood rituals regularly over several years, Michael was able to halt his aging process and acquire various physical assets.
However, in 2003, Michael's minions plucked the wrong girl from a lonely west-coast rest stop, and the entire "family" was wiped out by her mother, a tow-truck driver, and a well-placed bomb. Michael was blown to bits.
Or, so he thought...
Additional Information
Hometown: Dublin, Ireland
Vehicle: 1964 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible
Looks Like: Jonathan Rhys Meyers