Application: In The Night

[worthallthis]

PLAYER INFO

Player Name: Gail
Player Contact: cacopheny @ plurk

Character(s) In-Game: None

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes, currently going by the Soldier, the Asset, or “Soldat” (soldier in Russian)
Age: Late 20s, early 30s in appearance and general maturity (discounting brainwashing), 98 counting all the time he spent with HYDRA (like 75% in cryofreeze)
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe; Captain America: The Winter Soldier



World Description:
The modern world, only with superheroes. Most of the super-ness is grounded in science (except for the whole Doctor Strange stuff, anyway), but it’s a very fantastical science, with super-soldier serum, gamma radiation turning people into giant green rage-monsters, and aliens who look like Norse gods. There are spaceships, genetically modified raccoon people, mysterious alien metals that are nearly indestructible, nanotech suits of armor, and electrified chairs that can wipe your memory and personality away (temporarily, anyway).


History:
MCU wiki, only applicable through the second paragraph, canon point being from the fight on the helicarrier with Steve.


CRAU: NA


Death: Rather than diving into the Potomac to save Captain America, shrapnel from the helicarrier to impales him through the chest. Hard for even a super-serum to help him recover from that one.


What are your plans for this character in-game? My goal is pretty straight-forward: take a brainwashed assassin with no memories who doesn’t think of himself as a person, and teach him how to be human again. I’m aware he’s a huge mess of issues, but I want to tackle those in a respectful manner, and I definitely plan for him to start getting memories back slowly, and in the context of whatever CR he makes in the game. I’m really interested in seeing what will become of him outside of a canon setting, in a game where he might not have canon friends to nudge him in particular directions.


What aspects of this game and/or its setting are you most interested in having this character engage with? Because the Winter Soldier comes from such a nasty background and has so many potential awful issues to work through, putting him in a horror-survival game seems a lot more appropriate than putting him in a regular jamjar. I’m fond of games with meta-plot and defined goals to work towards, and games with a cooperative aspect to them. Plus, one of my dearest friends invited me to the game, and I’m dying to play with her again.


How does your character generally get along with other people? At the moment, he has no real experience with interacting with people beyond taking orders from them and killing them, but on the whole he’ll react well to being treated kindly, once he gets over his confusion about it. There is a core of him that is capable of being kind, helpful, loyal, and even charming… but that is something he generally tries to bury. His interactions for at least a few months will focus mostly on taking direction and trying to learn how to be a person by watching the people who currently exist in the game. He will also likely react with violence to things like being startled, frightened, or threatened, and he usually has at least half a dozen weapons on his person at any given time, so… fun times.


What is your character's mental state upon entering the game? Angry, confused, a little lost, and more than a little panicked. He just had something of a brain-reset where his mission to kill Captain America flipped on its head, and before he could do anything about it, he died, and didn’t come back in a lab or in cryofreeze but in this weird boat with this weird lantern. He’s pissed off and scared and has no idea what to do with himself.


Skills/Abilities:
* Super-soldier serum, the evil version: Not quite the kind that was given to Captain America, but rather one that’s gone through some variations and remixes due to lack of resources, creative thinking, and indifference to the suffering of the subject. This increases his metabolism to the point where he heals from damage in about half the time of an unenhanced human; he has increased strength, speed, and stamina; his memory has improved to the point of being nearly edetic; he has slightly enhanced senses of sight and hearing; and he can no longer get drunk. That last one is not necessarily a benefit.
* Advanced training: Bucky Barnes’s trained skillset includes basic army training and advanced sniper training, as well as an understanding of guerilla tactics and some mechanical expertise. The Winter Soldier’s skillset is much broader, including advanced hand-to-hand techniques, proficiency with firearms and close-combat weapons of an incredibly wide variety (knives are his favorite), fluency in multiple languages, enhanced bodily control and flexibility, subterfuge, stealth, and standard mission skills such as looking after the basic necessities, obtaining supplies, and seeking out intel. He has crazy-high pain tolerance, too.
* Tactical Flexibility: As long as he has a mission or some sort or orders to follow, he can be pretty creative and flexible in how to succeed in that mission. He doesn’t need to be told the exact steps to do something, even if it’s something as complicated as “kill someone with no witnesses” or “sneak into a heavily fortified base to reach your target”; he can work it out on his own, and not always the way someone else might have anticipated. In less mission-oriented terms, he’s smart, just constrained by his training. Also, that was the only way he was allowed to show assertiveness as the Soldier: if someone is categorized as “back-up”, or they really look like they need protecting, he can absolutely tell them what to do.
* Pre-War skills: Some simple mechanics, for fixing up old-timey machinery, and mending. He’s really good at patching up clothes, and actually not terrible at patching up flesh either. He spent time both working on construction and on the docks, so is at least passingly familiar with building things and ships.


Flaws/Weaknesses:
* Physical weaknesses include needing to eat a whole damn lot because of his increased metabolism (half-again a standard human’s general intake, more than that if he’s exerting himself); the metal arm being susceptible to electricity, filling with water, advanced program hacks, and some blunt force damage that will require he let someone help him to fix, plus requiring regular maintenance; and the metal arm being actually really heavy and fixed directly to his skeleton. It continually damages the muscles and tissues in his back and shoulder whenever he uses it to do more than wave, requiring his super-soldier serum staying active for healing (translating to needing to eat even more) and constant low-level pain.
* Personality flaws from Bucky before the Soldier included vanity, overconfidence, a tendency to hide problems rather than talk about them, and a near-pathological obsession with keeping one Steven Grant Rogers safe. Flaws from after being turned into the Soldier include reliance on violence, inability to make decisions regarding the self, a severe lack of social skills, and a whole bucket of psychological issues catalogued below.
* Psychological weaknesses include an intense phobia of anything medical that he doesn’t do to himself (he can stitch himself up, but nobody else can come anywhere near him with a needle or scalpel or IV), and only slightly less prominent phobias of being confined, being restrained, and being forced into a reclining position while seated. He has severe PTSD from the war before his transformation into the fist of HYDRA, from the process to turn him into the said fist of HYDRA, and from his years as an assassin. As he regains his memories, he’ll have regular flashbacks triggered by various stimuli that may result in temporary catatonia, violence, and/or believing he is in another time and place and acting accordingly. He’s not fond of being touched, either, and can’t handle anything being put on his head. Finally, if anyone recites the correct passcodes, it’s possible to trigger the HYDRA programming again and erase, at least temporarily, whatever progress he’s made in self-actualization.
* Social weaknesses include dealing with anyone who looks like previous handlers or particularly important mission targets (this can include anybody who wants in on such a thing, really), people from his past as Bucky (like Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, or the Howling Commandos), and a big fat Steven Grant Rogers if he ever shows up in-game. Also, there’s the fact that he doesn’t know how to actually ask for stuff or interact with people when he’s not killing them or they’re not telling him what to do.


Personality:
James Buchanan Barnes, usually called Bucky, was a friendly young man, good with people to the point of being charming. His sense of humor leaned to the sarcastic side, but he was as quick with a compliment as snark, and he had an optimistic view of the future, fascinated with science fiction and new breakthroughs in actual science. The most important person in his life was Steve Rogers, a boy one year younger with a list of health problems as long as his arm. Bucky was protective of Steve, even over-protective, and often wound up rescuing Steve from fights he couldn’t win. They both grew up poor and he spent his adolescence and young adulthood in the Great Depression. Accordingly, he hated waste, always needing to mend and re-use and scrounge than buy new, and put up with a terrible tenement apartment first with his family and later on with Steve just to save up for things like medicine, food, and the occasional trip to Coney Island. It helped teach him patience, as did sitting up with Steve during bouts of illness. Above all, he was loyal to a fault and felt things deeply, from wonder to anger to love.

Then Bucky was drafted, sent to training, and into World War II. Sergeant Barnes was a different person than the Bucky from Brooklyn. He was more guarded and less friendly, but his confidence and patience translated into innate leadership skills and extra training as a sniper, which was its own kind of torment, given it resulted in direct, immediate killing of other people. After his capture and torture at Azzano, he grew even more withdrawn, using his former cocky, sarcastic demeanor as a shield against anyone seeing just how off he felt. He still felt everything deeply, and after Azzano what he was feeling was wrong. He still had Steve-- albeit a Steve who didn’t seem to need him like he used to-- and he was still steadfastly loyal even to this new Steve, turning down an honorable medical discharge in order to watch Steve’s back. His over-protective streak grew from just Steve to include the entirety of the Howling Commandos, as Steve’s second in command and the sniper watching above them all.

Then Bucky fell from the train and was captured by HYDRA again. The Winter Soldier, also called the Asset, came from what they did to him, and he again was different person. Implacable, ruthless, calculating, endlessly patient, highly skilled... and literally stripped of the ability to choose beyond the parameters of his mission. He no longer thought of himself as a person, just a pair of hands attached to triggers, knives, and a set of orders. If left out of cryo too long, or left too long between personality wipes, he was susceptible to flashes of memory, spurts of defiance, and moments of compassion, but even those were severely punished. The protective streak remains, but guardedly, and the patience, and the desire to be useful.

There will be a fourth person, starting to emerge now that the Soldier has died and thus escaped the constant threat of getting his brains scrambled, but just what that person will be like is hard to say.


Items:
* Tactical vest: The leather and kevlar vest he wore over his practical canvas clothing for missions, surprisingly undamaged despite the memory of being skewered through it. It has a shit-ton of pockets, hooks, loops, and attachments for carrying weapons and supplies. So do the rest of his clothes.
* Weapons: The Winter Soldier has a lot of them hidden around his person. Three guns, nine knives, four grenades (gonna have to save those for something really important), and a couple garotte wires. In a few of his various pockets there are a couple clips of spare ammo for the three guns, plus shells for a rifle he no longer has.

SAMPLES

Log Sample: Bakerstreet, chats with a weird, green wolf

Network Sample: Test drive meme thread