Judis "The Gremlin" (JustinG)

Sade · Rogue Joined: 23 Jul 2009 Posts: 63

For the steampunk RP...
and many more, I hope!

I apologise for the length of this post. I have no idea why I bother to write something so bad so long...
I guess I was bored.

Judis "The Gremlin"

Approximate Length of Physical Existence: Twenty or so years.
Label Applied to Him Given Configuration of Genitalia: Male
Species of Origin: Weasel/Canine
Measured Dimension of Vertical Extents: 5' 1"
Basic Hue of His Visual Organs: Grey
Tint of Protenacious Growths That Are Somewhat Prevalent Across the Entire Personage's Body and Are Immediately Noticeable: Dark Brown

External Appearance to One Who Might Simply Be Looking at Him for Some Rather Random Reason and Observing Quite Objectively:

Apparently being a mix between a canine and a weasel, Judis needs a little bit of description. His ears are much longer than a normal weasel's would be, and are almost like a long dog's. They aren't very floppy, as ears go, considering their length. His limbs are a little longer, or perhaps... animalistic?... than what another's fur's might be. But just a little. His tail is easily imagined - a wolf's that isn't so very thin, i.e., combined with that of a weasel.

He has no distinction of coloration - his body is entirely one color, naturally. Artificially, though, he is not one color. While he was living with the tribe, he was chosen to become a shaman. They tatooed him with the distinguishing marks of one who has a connection with the spirit world, but he was taken from the tribe about six months before they were to fully initiate him.

There are normally none visible, except the very beginings of some on his wrists and a triple stripe on one ear. It's probable that the reason he is so particular about clothing is because of these tattoos. It's also probably that he somehow disguised or recolored whatever tattoos were on his face.

A Description of His Character and Personality in Some Amount of Depth (and Width):

It's hard to accurately say whether or not Judis has a mental illness. He's not dangerous, but people don't really like to be around him for long periods of time, as he can grate quite easily on weak nerves.

Probably the single most annoying fact about him is that he talks to himself quite a lot. He does not believe there is anyone inside his heard and there is not another personality in his mind. He simply talks to himself.

But in case you were thinking he's sane or simply eccentric, there is another facet of his mind to look at: the fact that he either hallucinates or has a connection to the spirit world. Enough has been said.

Judis has... quite the mind for detail. He simply HAS to understand how things work or why this happened or why they said that or what they're actually thinking. As such, he is very paranoid and frustrated. If he doesn't understand something that seems in the least bit important, he will obsess over attempting to understand it, at the cost of almost everything else. He's almost always confused about something.

He doesn't like showing more skin than he has to, and is quite the misanthrope and agoraphobe.

His Exceedingly Unlikely and Intentionally Ludicrous (and hopefully droll) Utterly Unimaginative Biographical Summation Which is Also Extraordinarily and Egregiously Lengthy:

Judis's very lineage is completely unknown to him or anyone else. He has attempted to investigate it, starting with the famous families, and then, upon finding nothing, searching through the less and less wealthy families until he felt sure that if his family did exist somewhere, he didn't want to meet them.

He knows about his past, though, quite well.

Two gentlemen, an old rodent and a slightly younger (but still aged) weasel, left the practically newborn Judis in a Domish orphanage. They didn't leave him on the doorstep, but actually introduced themselves and his "legal guardians" and made sure everything was in order before they left him, only giving the orphanage one piece of information - his name. Judis' odd genetics, of course, lead to quite a few interesting ideas about where he came from, but none have really been proved or disproved. They range from saying him to be the product of an international scandal to the an incarnation of an ancient hero. Or... the unfortunate result of the butcher's meddlings down the street.

Judis was adopted by a rather well to do rabbit couple after ten or so months of being raised in the orphanage. The lagomorphs that adopted him were... rather well to do is an understatement... they were exceedingly well off, as they owned a very profitable shipping and mining company in the Territory (recently becoming involved in archaeology and excavation for the Domus National Museum, raking in even more money). Given this rather stable family, two years passed pleasurably for Judis. Not that he could really remember anything of them, him being so young.

Then, the husband died mysteriously when he was away on business with his company in the Territory - or was killed, as the common sentiment was - leaving his family - his wife and very young Judis - alone in the world. As soon as was possible the widow, Judis along with her, left to take care of his business in the Territory and unravel whatever circumstances surrounded his death. A certain feline investigator, quite famous at the time, was consulted in the matter, but advised only that the widow should travel to the territory and report back to him with whatever she found of interest in that forsaken part of the world, as he was busy up north with some trouble with a Domish spectre.

So, the lagomorph engaged one of her company airships to ferry her across to the Territory on its next scheduled flight, which was a routine cargo delivery. She, of course, brought little Judis along on the journey, as she did not wish to go to the trouble of hiring a nanny, as she had no idea how long this certain trip was going to take. She was hoping it would be only a swift trip with a stop of only a week or so in the Territory.

The trip over the ocean was quite the peaceful one. No one w having just left the coast behind it, an internal explosion that could be described as a "massively catastrophic conflagration of some sort" rocked the ship's midsection, weakening its structure to the point where it broke in two pieces after descending several hundred feet after the first explosion.

Judis was, of course, one of the only survivors. The explanation for this extraordinary stroke of luck can be explained by the fact that he was in the crew quarters at the time of the explosion, breakage of the ship, and impact of said aircraft into the jungle canopy.

In keeping with the extraordinary and rather unimaginative events of this story, it is now quite obvious what happened next to young Judis: he was raised by the natives of this land, the skinned avians, and adopted as more or less a member of their tribe.

Judis survived quite nicely and was taken in by the natives of this land. He became an accepted member of their tribe and never knew of a life anywhere else, except, of course, in his dream and memories he most obviously had of his past life and his adopted parents.

Perhaps the tribe accept him so well was because they thought he might be a shaman, as he was... peculiar, you could say... disturbed would work better though. But that doesn't really matter very much. They thought he was actually going to develop into a shaman for the tribe - it's not uncommon for foreigners or crazies to have that position bestowed onto him for that sake.

One fine rainy day in the jungle, Judis was out hunting or whatever it is that uncivilized natives do on fine rainy days in the jungle. He came upon prey, of course, and given what prey always does, it did it. In other words, ladies and gentlefurs, it ran. Judis, of course, chased it down and was about to kill it when a gun was fired, killing it in a much more effective yet brutal (but infinitely more satisfyingly bloody) way.

The aforementioned firearm was in possession of a group of explorers and archaeologists. It was obviously a strange thing for them to come across such a species in the jungle, so they brought him back to their camp with them, guessing what had happened, to some extent.

They were out looking for some ancient ruins of some significance, they managed to communicate to Judis in the native language. Judis knew where the ruins were - a place where there weren't any animals to hunt.

But, he took them there anyways - there wasn't a curse over the place, anyways, and he was a shaman, so that wouldn't mean anything much to him. They were delighted and set to work excavating the ruins, bringing in machines and equipment. They kept Judis around - by pleading and imploring him to stay, and even by threatening him as he became more and more wary of them. He deciphered what the old carvings meant for them, and did everything a native guide would do. Airships came and went, shipping things in and shipping things out for more. Vehicles made paths through the forest, and more and more furs came to the ruins. They needed Judis less and less and simply kept him there, for whatever purpose, he didn't even know.

After many months of the excavation, everything packed up rather quickly following the final and biggest airship cargo shipment out of the temple and the jungle. Judis thought that they'd finally let him go, but he was wrong. They simply took him with them back to the mainland, thrown in some corner of the airship during the flight.

Once the "explorers" (more like despoilers) reached the mainland, they stuck him in a dark warehouse for a day or so, him having no idea what the devil might be going on.

When the doors finally opened, there was an old rat there. By the looks of him, he looked rather learned. He simply looked Judis over curiously and then spoke in the native tongue - "I'm not going to hurt you. Come with me." Judis, of course, followed him, out of the warehouse, to a waiting vehicle.

The rat - an inventor and professor, actually - took Judis to his workshop and put him to work quickly, not being cruel but still using him for what he needed to get done. At first Judis was of little use, being an unschooled savage, but the inventor quickly taught the mongrel what he needed to know, first the Edwinian language, and then everything else, and continued teaching him as they worked. He seemed quite concerned about Judis, even though the mongrel was little better than a slave of some sort - or maybe he was a slave, he didn't know. But despite this, Judis naturally picked up an immense amount of mechanical knowledge while working on the rat's contraptions and projects.

The inventor never told Judis his entire name, and Judis never knew if what he called the inventor - Norman - was even his real name. They led a sequestered and lonely existence in the workshop, but Judis was fine with it.

Judis became aware that the inventor was doing something more than simple engineering with metal, steam, electricity, and chemicals. He would spend hours pouring over old books, he would work with some sort of stones - experimenting with placing them into boilers and all sorts of contraptions. Chemistry was also a particular fascination of his.

Visitors would walk up to the inventor's door at the darkest hours of the night, and the inventor would talk with them for hours, discussing things in very furtive tones, sometimes glancing out the windows, sometimes not daring to, sometimes whispering so quietly that it seemed impossible that they could hear each other.

Around a two and a half years after Judis was brought home by the inventor, the inventor started becoming more and more secretive, obsessing over his work and shutting out almost everything else. (More so than usual.) There were more and more visitors, and the inventor started shipping out his equipment at that point in time, with those visitors in the dead of night. Judis was allowed to help with the crates that were loaded into vehicles. They were heavy, and he knew there was machinery in them as the loading went on. Judis didn't really know anything more, as he couldn't do more than guess while carrying the boxes.

And then there came a time when the lab was almost completely bare, save for a few hundred sheets of paper and one or two books that the inventor scribbled in almost maniacally. When he wasn't doing that, he was staring at the ceiling or pacing. He was quite on edge, and so was Judis. The mongrel had no idea what was happening to his life which had seemed somewhat stable in recent months.

...
It was a cold night some time part of the way through March.
...
It was raining rather heavily...
...The inventor had been smoking and pacing almost the entire night, apparently utterly on edge. Judis had considerable trouble falling asleep, but eventually did, despite his feeling that something big was going to happen soon.
...He woke up very suddenly much later - as the door shut, leaving him in a dark room. The inventor was gone - or was going, as a vehicle's lights were just moving away, outside the window. Judis jumped up and dashed outside, but he was too slow and literally chased the vehicle through the city, running down streets and alleys or clambering over rooftops, in an attempt to keep up with the vehicle. As he'd been raised with the natives, he'd always had their uncanny agility, though he wasn't Avian as they were.

It stopped at the air docks, quickly letting the inventor and three others off. They swiftly climbed up the gangway even as the airship itself was leaving the ground. Judis was in enough time to grab onto one of the mooring ropes that hung from the dirigible. As it was raised into the ship, he was able to climb onto the ship and use his uncanny agility to get inside it.

When he got inside the ship, though, some crewmembers soon found him, and brought him to the inventor. He seemed troubled, but no angry to see Judis. Then, a quick and tidy doublecross ensued in which a needle was stuck into the unsuspecting Judis' unsuspecting neck. He quickly faded from consciousness, utterly bewildered and confused.

He never really got over that confusion.

++++++++++

He woke up in the care of a doctor of the Kahunian Military, who informed him that they had found him out in the desert a few leagues from a small town after spotting a low-flying airship in that vicinity.

Soon enough, the doctor had to release Judis from his care, and Judis had no idea what he was going to do with his life. As he was somewhat lost, an officer he had met suddenly offered the mongrel a place to stay, in his house. Judis, obviously, agreed to it.

He found the officer, whose name was Shahad, though being a huge and imposing figure, quite a nice and agreeable fellow. Life was good for Judis, very good, at this point. Shahad soon found him a job at the airship docks in the city, and life was good... for a while.

When did things go wrong?
That's an easy question.

Why?
No one really knows why it happened that day,
A group of rodents appeared one day at the docks and attacked Judis, knocking him out. They grabbed his body and ran through the docks, police hot on their trail - but they managed to escape in a dirigible - one built for sky-battle. The authorities soon followed with what they had or could spare, but a few hours into the chase over the deserts, as they were catching up, the rogue dirigible suddenly veered off to one side and started descending, out of control. As the ship fell through the cloud level, it was apparent it was falling apart. Its boilers then exploded, followed by the magazine. The entire thing exploded a thousand or so feet above the ground.

And this was quite obviously Judi's doing. He survived the entire conflagration by escaping on one of the gliders the ship had for airdrops of such emergencies.

He dodged out of the authority's grasp, even though he wasn't wanted for any sort of crime. He laid low after that, becoming a part of the cloaked and quiet underworld. Evidently he had found *something* out on that airship that endangered him, or showed him what the authorities really wanted, or... something...

He, currently, is now, and has been for years, what is known with fear as "The Gremlin" - an almost ghostly saboteur with uncanny skill and the ability to get the job done.
He's known for his extreme feats of acrobatics - climbing all over dirigibles in mid-flight and surviving his systematic destruction of them, scuttling ships in the middle of the sea and telling about it, or being just mysterious and scarily skilled.

He is somewhat of an infamous legend that not many believe too readily.

Precise Amount of Instruction Given to Said Person or Knowledge Known by Said Person or a Rough Estimation as to his Approximate Level of Intellect:
He is not formally educated in any way, although he was taught to read and write by the inventor and knows machines better than most could dream of.

Current Aptitude or Profession Usually Resulting in the Acquisition of The Common Currency of The Realm:
Mercenary Saboteur Extraordinaire.

General Geographic Whereabouts or Milieu of Some Importance; His Common Locale or Current Habitation:
It varies by quite a bit.

Leisurely Pursuits or Playful Activities That Usually Result in Nothing More Than the Deprecation of Time Alotted to Said Person or the Self-Edifiction of Said Person:
Enjoys tinkering with machines and wanton destruction. Likes playing cards.

Common Mode of Vestmentation or Sartorious Habits:

Wears a dark grey duster almost constantly, with a matching flat cap. He wears an akubra when he needs to keep the sun out of his eyes. He likes to keep his body covered... or more specifically, has this "thing" with it. His pants and shirt are usually of simple quality, and rather low class. They often have a lot of pockets, (read: cargo pants) as he carries a lot of miscellaneous machine bits and small tools with him. He doesn't try to look good.

When he's trying to sabotage something, his outfit can vary. He usually wears some sort of thick fabric hood that is attached to his coat. Depending on the target, he might wear a full gasmask and bring along a backpack of explosives or some other form of helpful (to him) equipment.

Armaments or Devices Intended To Cause Injury That Are Kept in Said Person's Possession at Most Times and Can be Used to Cause Injury by Said Person:

Judis keeps two normal revolvers on his person at most times, and a special not-quite-pistol in addition. This not-quite-pistol (being longer of bore but still being quite portable) is a rather special weapon, used by a certain ring of assassins. Judis also uses a special ammunition for it, being a rather deadly armor-piercing/explosive round (Yes, you read that right - and no, I'm not explaining it) that he made himself. Even the approximate construction of this bullet is not known, as Judis keeps it a secret, as much as possible.

Other Miscellanea Kept on Said Person's Person at Most Times:

His main possession, which is quite prized, is his pair of metal gauntlets. They serve multiple purposes to him and are practically indispensable. He has two grapnel hook launchers one in each gauntlet (off on the side of his arm, not top), that use a rather advanced steel micromesh in their wire construction - making said wire exceedingly strong and even somewhat elastic. (Yeah, so it's really hard to break and great for catching oneself with. Deal with it.) His gauntlets also have hooked spikes in them than are hidden, but can either be popped out of pulled out, if they catch on something. They are primarily for climbing, though they can be conceivably used in combat, although Judis would much rather use a sword or pistol.

His boots should also be noted simply because they aren't normal clunky metal-plated boots like you'd normally see around. They're tailored exactly more him, and extremely flexible. There is pair of metal shinguards that are part of them that are fairly identical to his gauntlets, save that they don't have rope gun in their sides. And yes, they have the same spike/hooks his gauntlets have.

One item that he is very proud of - he built it himself - is based off electromagnetic and clockwork technology. It is a small (four inches at its widest) sphere or oblongish metal device. It emits a single pulse that reflects off of metal with varying degrees of speed, etcetera. The device receives these waves back and transmits them into an audible sound. With practice, one can tell exactly what the metal structure inside whatever they are sounding might be. It is also very plain if there are electrical currents inside the object that is being sounded, as well as moving parts being sometimes detectable, depending on the number of soundings and speed of the moving part, ecetera.

He also carries a set of explosives with him at all times. They are about the same size as the device described above, but the have a pin that can be pulled from them to arm them. Their means of detonation is very simply receiving an electromagnetic pulse of a certain frequency from aforementioned electromagnetic device. (Said frequency is NOT the commonly used frequency.) They are each equivalent to a stick of TNT. (That's what they are, in fact. Just bundled with a special detonator.)

He also keeps a small gasmask that only protects his mouth and nose in his pocket, for obvious reasons. (This can go boom with undesirable after effects, you see.)

The last item that shall be mentioned is a metal cutting tool.
It defies any sort of description.

(Yes, sarcasm.)

Forms of Arcane Esoterical Mystic Practice or Abilities in the Realm of the Occult or Otherwise Paranormal or Parapsycological:

He doesn't use magic. His hallucinations might be some sort of manifestation of magic, or a connection with the spirit wolf, as the natives he grew up with thought.

In physical abilities, though, a few things should be mentioned.
Being raised by natives of the Territory, who are also avians, he is extremely nimble and well accustomed to heights and falling or jumping from them, as well as climbing. Some who have seen him pursuing something have said he's a demon, as he seems to defy gravity at times, almost, climbing where one could think one could climb, jumping across distances that can't be covered, and often using all fours to propel himself.

Personal Creed-Based Convictions:
Hasn't really thought about it. There's obviously a god, but that's about all he's decided.

Imbibition of Beverages Containing a Compound of Two Carbons, Five Water-Forming Atoms, an Acid-Forming Atom, and Another, Single Water-Forming Atom:
Sometimes.

Inhalation of the Cloud of Hot Particles Given Off By the Conflagration of a Specifically Prepared Cylinder of a Plant of the Genus Nicotiana:
Never. Inhalation of gas fumes, however, he quite enjoys. Seriously.

Execration of Maledictory Imprecations or Otherwise Blasphemous Linguistic Habits:
Seldom.

Oft-Quoted Sentence of Some Personal Significance:
"I love the smell of fuel in the morning." (Both because he actually does and because he also likes to rip things apart. Although they're not always gas-powered. They seldom are, in fact.)

Judis' To-Do List:
1: Find out who those two men were who delivered him to the orphanage and why.
2: Find out how his adopted father was killed and why.
3: Find out why the dirigible was sabotaged and why.
4: Find out what the explorers wanted with the ruins and what they took and why.
5: Find out who the inventor who bought him was really up to.
6: Find out what the mysterious group that the inventor seemed to work for was.
7: Find out who those rodents were who attacked him and why.

8: And something else you can't know.

Hey, if we're going steampunk, might as well go fantastic with the characters, too!

... or at least that's what I told myself...
_________________
Sade rhymes with Made