itsananimalthing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
itsananimalthing) wrote2014-06-30 09:46 pm
itsananimalthing) wrote2014-06-30 09:46 pm
Entry tags:
Synodiporia: Application
P L A Y E R;
NAME: Gail
AGE: 32
PLAYER JOURNAL:itsananimalthing
TIMEZONE: PST
CONTACT: PM itsananimalthing
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Neeshka
C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Richard B. Riddick
CANON: Chronicles of Riddick
POINT IN CANON: After the end of Riddick. I am only using movie canon, from the extended versions of the films, not video games.
AGE: Mid to late 30s
APPEARANCE:
Riddick is well-muscled and obviously tough. He has a closely-shaved head, an equally clean-shaven face, thin brows, and a broad nose and wide mouth that looks like it might smile as easily as frown. More often than not, he wears a pair of darkly tinted goggles over his eyes, protecting his eyes from the light. When the goggles are removed, it shows that his eyes have no visible pupil, but have a strongly reflective quality, like a cat's. He carries at least one weapon at all times, usually a couple knives, and dresses casually but in a way that won't interfere with his movement, with the one constant being that he favors sturdy boots.
In expression and outward appearance, Riddick has a hint of military bearing and a demeanor waffling with jaunty irreverence and an angry desire to see others brought as low as he has been brought, though he usually settles on a deadpan that gives little away, particularly with those goggles on. They protect his eyes from light, but they also help give him a more intimidating look (not that he really needs it) and keep his expression more opaque under the best of circumstances.
Riddick doesn’t talk much, particularly with the people in charge, but when he does he has a deep, gravely voice and, should he actually laugh, it sounds more like a growling bark than a laugh. He’s got a filthy mouth, and a tendency to mock people, particularly when they seem afraid of him.
CANON HISTORY:
> Wiki
Riddick was born on the planet Furya in the space-faring age. All he knows about his parentage was that someone-- he presumes his mother or father, though later events prove that it was an aspiring Necromonger warlord-- tried to strangle him with his own umbilical cord and tossed him in a dumpster, presuming him dead or assuming he would be, eventually. Somehow, he survived.
Not much is known about Riddick from between that point, and the point where he escapes from Butcher Bay, a triple-max security prison. What is known is that he had military training, teaching him how to use a variety of weapons, and pilot training, quite likely from the military, as well. He killed a few people-- whether inside or outside that military, he doesn't say. And he got thrown into a "no-daylight slam", a prison where he was told he would never see sunlight again, where he had a "surgical shine job" done on his eyes, allowing him to see in the dark but making him sensitive to light. He escaped from that prison and has been in a few more since then, enough that he knows the prison system well enough to comment on the amenities of any one mentioned. The most recent of those was Butcher Bay.
With mercs-- mercenary bounty hunters-- on his tail, he was finally captured by one named William Johns, who took the "ghost lanes", or commercial shipping tracks where people are shipped in cryo-sleep like cargo, to bring him back, posing as a law official. The commercial spaceship crash-landed on a desert planet called Hades and Riddick escaped, at least temporarily. He was given his freedom in exchange for helping the survivors escape the planet when they learned that it was inhabited by hungry, night-dwelling monsters-- and that "night" was finally upon them, after twenty-two years of sunlight from the three-sun system.
Riddick got them out... but only with encouragement from the docking officer and only remaining crewman, Carolyn Fry. The group of survivors was whittled down by monsters and in one case Riddick himself-- when the merc Johns suggested using the one child in the band, Jack, as bait to keep the monsters off their back, Riddick wounded him and left him as the "bait" instead-- to a Muslim imam or priest, Fry, Jack, and Riddick himself. Seeing no way to get them all across the last stretch of darkness when it started to rain and destroyed their light, Riddick sealed them in a cave behind a rock and left for the escape shuttle, himself. Fry followed him and, after having a change of heart herself, convinced him to go back for them, as well, almost entirely through her strength of will and desire to see him help.
Only Riddick, the imam, and Jack actually escaped the planet. Riddick was attacked while saving the others, and Fry died going back for him. He made sure to kill as many of the monsters with the igniting engines of the escape shuttle, before they left.
After that, an encounter or two with mercs on the way, and a lot more killing to get away from those mercs, Riddick got the priest and Jack safely to Helion Prime and New Mecca-- and then he left. As he told Fry, he didn't think he knew how to rejoin humanity again, and he didn't want to have to keep killing just to keep his freedom-- plus, he didn't want Jack following his ways, as she seemed perfectly willing and eager to do. Without him, he reasoned, she would settle down again. He was wrong. She escaped the imam and shipped out with mercs, herself, in an attempt to find him or, failing that, emulate him.
Five years passed while he hid on the planet U.V. 6 in self-imposed exile. A ship of mercs found him there in response to a bounty put out by the imam himself, trying to bring him back to fight an invading fleet of Necromongers, a space-faring religious group who worshiped death and would convert or kill anyone they came across in the name of the Underverse and their “holy half-dead” Lord Marshal. Riddick defeated the mercs, stole their ship, and flew it back to Helion Prime to confront the priest about the bounty.
Riddick was uninterested in fighting, but when the Necromongers attacked the planet and killed the imam, he did stop by their conversion gathering with the intent of exacting a little revenge and learning a little about the enemy. They brought him inside the ship to subject him to the telepathic quasi-dead to try and figure out who he was. The Lord Marshal had a suspicion that Riddick was from Furya, which the quasi-dead confirmed, but only just before Riddick broke free and escaped, right into the hands of the merc he’d escaped before. The Lord Marshal, rattled as he had once been told his death would come at the hands of a Furyan warrior, sent his general Vaako in pursuit, in an attempt to finish the job he’d started with a massacre on Furya when Riddick was just an infant.
The mercs, while debating where to take him for the lessened bounty now that the one on Helion Prime was no longer in effect, decided on the underground prison Crematoria-- with a little encouragement from Riddick himself, since the imam had told him that’s where Jack had been locked away after her run with the mercs. He made use of a shooting match between the mercs and prison guards to escape with several of the convicts there, a grown up Jack included. After a harrowing run across the planet’s surface, and a battle with Necromongers at the end, he emitted a burst of energy that leveled the remaining warriors, but was left for dead after that and Jack was taken away by the Necromongers, having little other choice.
Recovering from the blast after the last remaining Necromonger dragged him out of the planet’s heated surface, Riddick made his way back to the Helion system, tracking the Necromongers and his only remaining friend, and slipped aboard the Lord Marshal’s ship to confront him and find Jack. Between him and an ill-timed coup attempt by Commander Vaako, Riddick killed the Lord Marshal and, in the Necromonger way, he kept what he killed, taking over as the new Lord Marshal. Jack, unfortunately, didn’t make it through the battle.
His stay with the Necromongers didn’t last all that long: it was enjoyable, but he didn’t care about their mission, and in the end, after multiple assassination attempts that got closer and closer to hitting home, Riddick had Vaako send him off the flagship to find Furya, a planet where only Vaako knew how to find. The Necromonger who was assigned to take him there, however, had other ideas, and left him to die on a desert planet with no name. Riddick managed to survive there for anywhere from six months to two years, it isn’t clear, while regaining his “animal side” and making friends with one of the local jackals.
When the rainy season hit and with it came the water-dwelling venomous predators native to the planet, Riddick summoned a couple of merc ships by broadcasting his face on the distress beacon of a merc waystation. One of them carried Johns-- William John’s father-- who happened to have a bit more of a moral center than his son and who wound up helping Riddick off the planet after the convict had his back during one of the battles in the cat-and-mouse game Riddick played with the merc crews. He flew back to the Necromonger fleet in search of Vaako and “home”, only to find Vaako had gone into the Underverse… and if he wanted to find Furya, he had to go and get him out.
And from the portal into the Underverse, instead he stepped into Liminal Space. He’s been one of the Travelers for several Jaunts, now, and while he hasn’t exactly accepted his fate, he’s at least not actively fighting against every whim of the Trumps anymore. He’s biding his time, learning what he can, and seeing who counts as a potential ally.
CANON PERSONALITY:
Riddick is not a kind, compassionate person. He is not a hero. He is not even very nice. What he is, is out for himself and maybe anyone else who can keep up with him, if they earn his respect. Sometimes people will care about him, and he might even seem to return the favor, but if anyone becomes a liability he has no qualms about cutting them loose-- and if anyone betrays him, he also has no qualms about exacting revenge. He does not trust easily, as one might expect from a man who began life in a dumpster, tossed aside as presumed dead. Somehow, he survived, and he learned that no one, not even family, is to be trusted. He is still careful even if he puts a little trust in someone. After at least a decade bouncing from prison to prison, there are few, if any, he would call friend, and he honestly prefers it that way. It makes things less complicated, not having anyone besides himself to worry about.
Still, despite it all, Riddick is occasionally capable of kindness, compassion, heroism, or even being a little nice now and then. There is about Riddick something almost old-fashioned. When he's not being mocked or attacked, he comes across as a tiny bit chivalrous, with a nod to honor when it doesn't cause him too much trouble, a healthy hatred for people who kill out of greed rather than need, a love of freedom, and a respect for the rights of others... in his own fashion, anyway. It isn't enough to make him go out of his way to help anyone he doesn't feel deserves it, and it certainly isn't enough to make him put up with someone putting him in danger when he could be saving his own skin, but he does have the capacity and sometimes the motivation. He has never been particularly vicious or gratuitous in his violence, keeping it to what he deems necessary-- which is, admittedly, more than what some people might deem necessary-- and he is capable of working with people, as long as they respect him and aren't a threat to him. He makes a point of not hurting the harmless, and will sometimes go out of his way to protect them. Sometimes.
Riddick takes attitude from no one, taking refuge in sarcasm and rather enjoying scaring people. On the whole he's used to being spit on by the more "respectable" members of society, even while they're afraid of him. Whenever he has a goal in mind-- which, really, is most of the time-- Riddik is dedicated and disciplined, and as patient as he needs to be to get what he wants, with the strength of will to subdue wild animals and resist the soul-stealing abilities of the Lord Marshal. Fear isn’t something he gives in to, ever, and he certainly doesn’t let pain stop him, either: he underwent a dangerous surgical procedure to receive his eyeshine, after all, and routinely dislocates parts of his body during battle or to escape tight situations.
Innocence is about the only thing Riddick has a soft spot for, particularly in children and animals, and he’ll go out of his way to protect that if he can. That was how he wound up caught, in the end, when he escaped his latest prison: he stopped to make sure some kids were all right, and the mercenary on his tail caught him. He might even have learned his lesson after that, trying to leave Jack behind with the others on Hades, except that didn’t even wind up happening. The determination of the crashed ship’s docking pilot, Carolyn Fry, changed his mind. He respects a “strong survival instinct”, as he calls it, but what he really meant was that he respects her determination and her focus and her change of heart regarding being willing to die for others. He could have just killed her and left-- he even turned the tables on her and had her ready for the killing strike-- but that she was so devoted to the last of the ship’s passengers made all the difference. That, he can respect.
In the end, really, all Riddick really craves is to be left alone, and free-- freedom is his most precious goal, and one he would be willing to work with enemies for, if he had to, right down to the merc he despised who had captured him in return for being let go. But as for rejoining society, he's too used to killing, too used to living with no one else to care about, to want to have to take up civilization again, and really, he's okay with that. But as trouble seems to follow him everywhere he goes, he hasn't had much luck with getting what he wants or keeping from killing people.
POINT OF DEPARTURE:
Veteran Traveler. Riddick has been around since the Moebius jaunt, on which he started out as an infiltrator and wound up killed somewhere in the middle and reverting to investigator-- and readily killing anyone they thought needed stopped, with the exception of anyone he considered a child. He missed the Spark entirely, stuck in a dungeon layer of Liminal Space, and coming out to the Belljar wasn’t even a relief, because he kept expecting more torture coming at him, meaning he could never relax. He never gave up on trying to get out, and get free, the only thing that mattered to him. That was when he learned Sensory Livestreaming, rather to the telepathic network’s disgruntlement, seeing as he can’t share his vision in a manner that’s easily parsed by others.
The next two Jaunts he spent Infiltrating, in Ace of Spaces as one of the hired guards for one of the mob bosses, and in Dolorosa as a gryphon knight. Coming out of both of those events in a row of having his own self subsumed, he’s at least somewhat settled into the idea that he’s not leaving this band of Travelers behind any time soon, and he’s ready to start making the best of it. That doesn’t mean he’s not still looking for an out… but at least he’s not avoiding his fellow Travelers, or actively trying to thwart whatever problems are set before them. He might even try to help.
ABILITIES:
> Strength/Endurance: Time and again, Riddick has shown to have more natural, and naturally honed, skills than most of humanity. He's stronger, he's faster, he has more endurance, and he has a higher pain tolerance. More than once, he has popped his own joints out of place with only a grunt or two of pain to get out of a tough spot, and then popped them right back in again, and he can easily heft his own impressive weight with one arm.
> Fighting: With presumed military training and his innate physical capabilities, Riddick is a superb fighter, particularly hand to hand or with a blade, his preferred forms of combat. He is handy with anything he can get his hands on, though, including most guns and even polearms... or metal teacups.
> Intelligence: He is highly intelligent and highly observant, able to piece correct conclusions, accurate predictions, and intricate plans together from very little information. He is an excellent judge of character and even manages to be good at math-- he accurately estimated the depth of a prison entrance shaft by counting the support beams in the tunnel and adding up the distance. There is rarely a time when his brain is not working on something.
> Willpower: Riddik has such a strength of will that he managed to resist having his soul taken by an astral-powered Necromonger lord, and caused actual damage to the quasi-dead trying to read his mind and energies. It gives him powerful resistance to mind-control abilities, and can result in pain for those trying to delve into his memories without his permission. The telepathic network is something of an anomaly, in that accessing it doesn’t bring up his defenses, but he sends absolutely nothing across that he doesn’t mean to.
> Survival Skills: Riddick has been shown to survive with very little or even absolutely no technological help on multiple planets, making his own tools, finding his own food and clean water, and handling environmental and animal threats with relative ease. He’s more likely than most to get by no matter what the circumstances he’s dropped into, and can get what he needs from any environment.
> Night Vision: Due to a surgical procedure done on his eyes, Riddick can see perfectly in zero and near-zero light conditions, with a variant on heat-based and motion-based vision. The down-side to this is he can hardly see at all in bright light conditions-- it blinds him and causes him actual pain-- so he wears dark-tinted goggles whenever out in normal lighting.
> "Wrath": The ghost of the Furyan Shirah gives him the ability to "explode" with a wave of sonic, gravitational, or perhaps empathic energy (it is not explained what exactly it is, aside from "the anger of an entire race") that batters and knocks enemies off their feet. This ability wipes him out, as well, for a time. He has no control over it, and it may well only come upon him when in the presence of dire enemies of the Furyan race. If I ever plan to use this ability, it would be with mod permission and probably as part of a major plot of some sort. Otherwise, it will be dormant.
ACQUIRED SKILLS:
> Sensory Livestreaming: Fairly early on in his Jaunts, Riddick learned how to expand his telepathic abilities to include sight and sound. This may or may not actually be useful to others, given his unique sense of sight can be difficult to parse by other people. Still, those who get used to it can get a lot of information from him that way.
> Questing Sense: Picked up on Dolorosa while under the guise of a gryphon knight, Riddick can sense when he might be needed somewhere, to help a friend or ally, or just to learn something interesting. It can only be used once in an IC week.
> Mythobiology: Also while in Dolorosa, Riddick learned a lot about magical creatures, to augment his knowledge of creatures in his own futuristic universe. He’s always been good with animals, and this is just an extension of that.
> Psychic Protection: While on the Ivory Tower jaunt, Riddick learned to protect his mind from other people on the network-- and a little more from people outside it.
> Psychic Healing: After a longer liminal space period than usual, Riddick gained the ability to repair mental trauma that other travelers have suffered. Ironic, given he's more used to causing trauma....
> Nautical Skills: Spending several weeks (and an imagined lifetime) as first mate of an ocean-bound vessel, Riddick now knows how to handle, navigate, and generally take care of your typical sea ship.
INVENTORY;
> Two curved blades with accompanying back-sheathes.
> Dark tinted goggles.
> His clothes, including steel-toed army boots and fingerless gloves, a dark tank top, and cargo pants with plenty of pockets, in which he keeps small weapons, food stashes, and the rare memento.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
Nope.
S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
> Exid Void: Discussing what a cheeseburger is and if it tastes better than dog.
THIRD PERSON:
> Test drive in the Moebius jaunt
> If that isn’t long enough (only 7 comments so far), here’s a PSL from the world of The Games with him: his “escape” from his captors
NAME: Gail
AGE: 32
PLAYER JOURNAL:
itsananimalthingTIMEZONE: PST
CONTACT: PM itsananimalthing
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Neeshka
C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Richard B. Riddick
CANON: Chronicles of Riddick
POINT IN CANON: After the end of Riddick. I am only using movie canon, from the extended versions of the films, not video games.
AGE: Mid to late 30s
APPEARANCE:
Riddick is well-muscled and obviously tough. He has a closely-shaved head, an equally clean-shaven face, thin brows, and a broad nose and wide mouth that looks like it might smile as easily as frown. More often than not, he wears a pair of darkly tinted goggles over his eyes, protecting his eyes from the light. When the goggles are removed, it shows that his eyes have no visible pupil, but have a strongly reflective quality, like a cat's. He carries at least one weapon at all times, usually a couple knives, and dresses casually but in a way that won't interfere with his movement, with the one constant being that he favors sturdy boots.
In expression and outward appearance, Riddick has a hint of military bearing and a demeanor waffling with jaunty irreverence and an angry desire to see others brought as low as he has been brought, though he usually settles on a deadpan that gives little away, particularly with those goggles on. They protect his eyes from light, but they also help give him a more intimidating look (not that he really needs it) and keep his expression more opaque under the best of circumstances.
Riddick doesn’t talk much, particularly with the people in charge, but when he does he has a deep, gravely voice and, should he actually laugh, it sounds more like a growling bark than a laugh. He’s got a filthy mouth, and a tendency to mock people, particularly when they seem afraid of him.
CANON HISTORY:
> Wiki
Riddick was born on the planet Furya in the space-faring age. All he knows about his parentage was that someone-- he presumes his mother or father, though later events prove that it was an aspiring Necromonger warlord-- tried to strangle him with his own umbilical cord and tossed him in a dumpster, presuming him dead or assuming he would be, eventually. Somehow, he survived.
Not much is known about Riddick from between that point, and the point where he escapes from Butcher Bay, a triple-max security prison. What is known is that he had military training, teaching him how to use a variety of weapons, and pilot training, quite likely from the military, as well. He killed a few people-- whether inside or outside that military, he doesn't say. And he got thrown into a "no-daylight slam", a prison where he was told he would never see sunlight again, where he had a "surgical shine job" done on his eyes, allowing him to see in the dark but making him sensitive to light. He escaped from that prison and has been in a few more since then, enough that he knows the prison system well enough to comment on the amenities of any one mentioned. The most recent of those was Butcher Bay.
With mercs-- mercenary bounty hunters-- on his tail, he was finally captured by one named William Johns, who took the "ghost lanes", or commercial shipping tracks where people are shipped in cryo-sleep like cargo, to bring him back, posing as a law official. The commercial spaceship crash-landed on a desert planet called Hades and Riddick escaped, at least temporarily. He was given his freedom in exchange for helping the survivors escape the planet when they learned that it was inhabited by hungry, night-dwelling monsters-- and that "night" was finally upon them, after twenty-two years of sunlight from the three-sun system.
Riddick got them out... but only with encouragement from the docking officer and only remaining crewman, Carolyn Fry. The group of survivors was whittled down by monsters and in one case Riddick himself-- when the merc Johns suggested using the one child in the band, Jack, as bait to keep the monsters off their back, Riddick wounded him and left him as the "bait" instead-- to a Muslim imam or priest, Fry, Jack, and Riddick himself. Seeing no way to get them all across the last stretch of darkness when it started to rain and destroyed their light, Riddick sealed them in a cave behind a rock and left for the escape shuttle, himself. Fry followed him and, after having a change of heart herself, convinced him to go back for them, as well, almost entirely through her strength of will and desire to see him help.
Only Riddick, the imam, and Jack actually escaped the planet. Riddick was attacked while saving the others, and Fry died going back for him. He made sure to kill as many of the monsters with the igniting engines of the escape shuttle, before they left.
After that, an encounter or two with mercs on the way, and a lot more killing to get away from those mercs, Riddick got the priest and Jack safely to Helion Prime and New Mecca-- and then he left. As he told Fry, he didn't think he knew how to rejoin humanity again, and he didn't want to have to keep killing just to keep his freedom-- plus, he didn't want Jack following his ways, as she seemed perfectly willing and eager to do. Without him, he reasoned, she would settle down again. He was wrong. She escaped the imam and shipped out with mercs, herself, in an attempt to find him or, failing that, emulate him.
Five years passed while he hid on the planet U.V. 6 in self-imposed exile. A ship of mercs found him there in response to a bounty put out by the imam himself, trying to bring him back to fight an invading fleet of Necromongers, a space-faring religious group who worshiped death and would convert or kill anyone they came across in the name of the Underverse and their “holy half-dead” Lord Marshal. Riddick defeated the mercs, stole their ship, and flew it back to Helion Prime to confront the priest about the bounty.
Riddick was uninterested in fighting, but when the Necromongers attacked the planet and killed the imam, he did stop by their conversion gathering with the intent of exacting a little revenge and learning a little about the enemy. They brought him inside the ship to subject him to the telepathic quasi-dead to try and figure out who he was. The Lord Marshal had a suspicion that Riddick was from Furya, which the quasi-dead confirmed, but only just before Riddick broke free and escaped, right into the hands of the merc he’d escaped before. The Lord Marshal, rattled as he had once been told his death would come at the hands of a Furyan warrior, sent his general Vaako in pursuit, in an attempt to finish the job he’d started with a massacre on Furya when Riddick was just an infant.
The mercs, while debating where to take him for the lessened bounty now that the one on Helion Prime was no longer in effect, decided on the underground prison Crematoria-- with a little encouragement from Riddick himself, since the imam had told him that’s where Jack had been locked away after her run with the mercs. He made use of a shooting match between the mercs and prison guards to escape with several of the convicts there, a grown up Jack included. After a harrowing run across the planet’s surface, and a battle with Necromongers at the end, he emitted a burst of energy that leveled the remaining warriors, but was left for dead after that and Jack was taken away by the Necromongers, having little other choice.
Recovering from the blast after the last remaining Necromonger dragged him out of the planet’s heated surface, Riddick made his way back to the Helion system, tracking the Necromongers and his only remaining friend, and slipped aboard the Lord Marshal’s ship to confront him and find Jack. Between him and an ill-timed coup attempt by Commander Vaako, Riddick killed the Lord Marshal and, in the Necromonger way, he kept what he killed, taking over as the new Lord Marshal. Jack, unfortunately, didn’t make it through the battle.
His stay with the Necromongers didn’t last all that long: it was enjoyable, but he didn’t care about their mission, and in the end, after multiple assassination attempts that got closer and closer to hitting home, Riddick had Vaako send him off the flagship to find Furya, a planet where only Vaako knew how to find. The Necromonger who was assigned to take him there, however, had other ideas, and left him to die on a desert planet with no name. Riddick managed to survive there for anywhere from six months to two years, it isn’t clear, while regaining his “animal side” and making friends with one of the local jackals.
When the rainy season hit and with it came the water-dwelling venomous predators native to the planet, Riddick summoned a couple of merc ships by broadcasting his face on the distress beacon of a merc waystation. One of them carried Johns-- William John’s father-- who happened to have a bit more of a moral center than his son and who wound up helping Riddick off the planet after the convict had his back during one of the battles in the cat-and-mouse game Riddick played with the merc crews. He flew back to the Necromonger fleet in search of Vaako and “home”, only to find Vaako had gone into the Underverse… and if he wanted to find Furya, he had to go and get him out.
And from the portal into the Underverse, instead he stepped into Liminal Space. He’s been one of the Travelers for several Jaunts, now, and while he hasn’t exactly accepted his fate, he’s at least not actively fighting against every whim of the Trumps anymore. He’s biding his time, learning what he can, and seeing who counts as a potential ally.
CANON PERSONALITY:
Riddick is not a kind, compassionate person. He is not a hero. He is not even very nice. What he is, is out for himself and maybe anyone else who can keep up with him, if they earn his respect. Sometimes people will care about him, and he might even seem to return the favor, but if anyone becomes a liability he has no qualms about cutting them loose-- and if anyone betrays him, he also has no qualms about exacting revenge. He does not trust easily, as one might expect from a man who began life in a dumpster, tossed aside as presumed dead. Somehow, he survived, and he learned that no one, not even family, is to be trusted. He is still careful even if he puts a little trust in someone. After at least a decade bouncing from prison to prison, there are few, if any, he would call friend, and he honestly prefers it that way. It makes things less complicated, not having anyone besides himself to worry about.
Still, despite it all, Riddick is occasionally capable of kindness, compassion, heroism, or even being a little nice now and then. There is about Riddick something almost old-fashioned. When he's not being mocked or attacked, he comes across as a tiny bit chivalrous, with a nod to honor when it doesn't cause him too much trouble, a healthy hatred for people who kill out of greed rather than need, a love of freedom, and a respect for the rights of others... in his own fashion, anyway. It isn't enough to make him go out of his way to help anyone he doesn't feel deserves it, and it certainly isn't enough to make him put up with someone putting him in danger when he could be saving his own skin, but he does have the capacity and sometimes the motivation. He has never been particularly vicious or gratuitous in his violence, keeping it to what he deems necessary-- which is, admittedly, more than what some people might deem necessary-- and he is capable of working with people, as long as they respect him and aren't a threat to him. He makes a point of not hurting the harmless, and will sometimes go out of his way to protect them. Sometimes.
Riddick takes attitude from no one, taking refuge in sarcasm and rather enjoying scaring people. On the whole he's used to being spit on by the more "respectable" members of society, even while they're afraid of him. Whenever he has a goal in mind-- which, really, is most of the time-- Riddik is dedicated and disciplined, and as patient as he needs to be to get what he wants, with the strength of will to subdue wild animals and resist the soul-stealing abilities of the Lord Marshal. Fear isn’t something he gives in to, ever, and he certainly doesn’t let pain stop him, either: he underwent a dangerous surgical procedure to receive his eyeshine, after all, and routinely dislocates parts of his body during battle or to escape tight situations.
Innocence is about the only thing Riddick has a soft spot for, particularly in children and animals, and he’ll go out of his way to protect that if he can. That was how he wound up caught, in the end, when he escaped his latest prison: he stopped to make sure some kids were all right, and the mercenary on his tail caught him. He might even have learned his lesson after that, trying to leave Jack behind with the others on Hades, except that didn’t even wind up happening. The determination of the crashed ship’s docking pilot, Carolyn Fry, changed his mind. He respects a “strong survival instinct”, as he calls it, but what he really meant was that he respects her determination and her focus and her change of heart regarding being willing to die for others. He could have just killed her and left-- he even turned the tables on her and had her ready for the killing strike-- but that she was so devoted to the last of the ship’s passengers made all the difference. That, he can respect.
In the end, really, all Riddick really craves is to be left alone, and free-- freedom is his most precious goal, and one he would be willing to work with enemies for, if he had to, right down to the merc he despised who had captured him in return for being let go. But as for rejoining society, he's too used to killing, too used to living with no one else to care about, to want to have to take up civilization again, and really, he's okay with that. But as trouble seems to follow him everywhere he goes, he hasn't had much luck with getting what he wants or keeping from killing people.
POINT OF DEPARTURE:
Veteran Traveler. Riddick has been around since the Moebius jaunt, on which he started out as an infiltrator and wound up killed somewhere in the middle and reverting to investigator-- and readily killing anyone they thought needed stopped, with the exception of anyone he considered a child. He missed the Spark entirely, stuck in a dungeon layer of Liminal Space, and coming out to the Belljar wasn’t even a relief, because he kept expecting more torture coming at him, meaning he could never relax. He never gave up on trying to get out, and get free, the only thing that mattered to him. That was when he learned Sensory Livestreaming, rather to the telepathic network’s disgruntlement, seeing as he can’t share his vision in a manner that’s easily parsed by others.
The next two Jaunts he spent Infiltrating, in Ace of Spaces as one of the hired guards for one of the mob bosses, and in Dolorosa as a gryphon knight. Coming out of both of those events in a row of having his own self subsumed, he’s at least somewhat settled into the idea that he’s not leaving this band of Travelers behind any time soon, and he’s ready to start making the best of it. That doesn’t mean he’s not still looking for an out… but at least he’s not avoiding his fellow Travelers, or actively trying to thwart whatever problems are set before them. He might even try to help.
ABILITIES:
> Strength/Endurance: Time and again, Riddick has shown to have more natural, and naturally honed, skills than most of humanity. He's stronger, he's faster, he has more endurance, and he has a higher pain tolerance. More than once, he has popped his own joints out of place with only a grunt or two of pain to get out of a tough spot, and then popped them right back in again, and he can easily heft his own impressive weight with one arm.
> Fighting: With presumed military training and his innate physical capabilities, Riddick is a superb fighter, particularly hand to hand or with a blade, his preferred forms of combat. He is handy with anything he can get his hands on, though, including most guns and even polearms... or metal teacups.
> Intelligence: He is highly intelligent and highly observant, able to piece correct conclusions, accurate predictions, and intricate plans together from very little information. He is an excellent judge of character and even manages to be good at math-- he accurately estimated the depth of a prison entrance shaft by counting the support beams in the tunnel and adding up the distance. There is rarely a time when his brain is not working on something.
> Willpower: Riddik has such a strength of will that he managed to resist having his soul taken by an astral-powered Necromonger lord, and caused actual damage to the quasi-dead trying to read his mind and energies. It gives him powerful resistance to mind-control abilities, and can result in pain for those trying to delve into his memories without his permission. The telepathic network is something of an anomaly, in that accessing it doesn’t bring up his defenses, but he sends absolutely nothing across that he doesn’t mean to.
> Survival Skills: Riddick has been shown to survive with very little or even absolutely no technological help on multiple planets, making his own tools, finding his own food and clean water, and handling environmental and animal threats with relative ease. He’s more likely than most to get by no matter what the circumstances he’s dropped into, and can get what he needs from any environment.
> Night Vision: Due to a surgical procedure done on his eyes, Riddick can see perfectly in zero and near-zero light conditions, with a variant on heat-based and motion-based vision. The down-side to this is he can hardly see at all in bright light conditions-- it blinds him and causes him actual pain-- so he wears dark-tinted goggles whenever out in normal lighting.
> "Wrath": The ghost of the Furyan Shirah gives him the ability to "explode" with a wave of sonic, gravitational, or perhaps empathic energy (it is not explained what exactly it is, aside from "the anger of an entire race") that batters and knocks enemies off their feet. This ability wipes him out, as well, for a time. He has no control over it, and it may well only come upon him when in the presence of dire enemies of the Furyan race. If I ever plan to use this ability, it would be with mod permission and probably as part of a major plot of some sort. Otherwise, it will be dormant.
ACQUIRED SKILLS:
> Sensory Livestreaming: Fairly early on in his Jaunts, Riddick learned how to expand his telepathic abilities to include sight and sound. This may or may not actually be useful to others, given his unique sense of sight can be difficult to parse by other people. Still, those who get used to it can get a lot of information from him that way.
> Questing Sense: Picked up on Dolorosa while under the guise of a gryphon knight, Riddick can sense when he might be needed somewhere, to help a friend or ally, or just to learn something interesting. It can only be used once in an IC week.
> Mythobiology: Also while in Dolorosa, Riddick learned a lot about magical creatures, to augment his knowledge of creatures in his own futuristic universe. He’s always been good with animals, and this is just an extension of that.
> Psychic Protection: While on the Ivory Tower jaunt, Riddick learned to protect his mind from other people on the network-- and a little more from people outside it.
> Psychic Healing: After a longer liminal space period than usual, Riddick gained the ability to repair mental trauma that other travelers have suffered. Ironic, given he's more used to causing trauma....
> Nautical Skills: Spending several weeks (and an imagined lifetime) as first mate of an ocean-bound vessel, Riddick now knows how to handle, navigate, and generally take care of your typical sea ship.
INVENTORY;
> Two curved blades with accompanying back-sheathes.
> Dark tinted goggles.
> His clothes, including steel-toed army boots and fingerless gloves, a dark tank top, and cargo pants with plenty of pockets, in which he keeps small weapons, food stashes, and the rare memento.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
Nope.
S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
> Exid Void: Discussing what a cheeseburger is and if it tastes better than dog.
THIRD PERSON:
> Test drive in the Moebius jaunt
> If that isn’t long enough (only 7 comments so far), here’s a PSL from the world of The Games with him: his “escape” from his captors