Player Section
Steam Name: Frolie
Age: 14
How long have you been Roleplaying? (can be any game): About 4 years now, around the time Fallout 3 and Oblivion were coming out.
How long have you been playing Serious GMod RP?: About a year and a half, starting with HL2RP.
Character Section
Authorization(s):
Advanced Firearm Skills
Advanced Hand-to-Hand skills
Extreme finesse in electrical and mechanical engineering, as well as a rudimentary kit of tools
Name: Layla 'Razors' Blackburn
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Affiliation: None
Write a detailed in-canon back-story how your character obtained these authorizations.
I’m a big fan of trying shit in different ways, so I thought I’d attempt a different perspective on an auth app backstory. In the spirit of that idea, I decided a neat way to do it would be to do it all dialogue, through an audio interview. Here’s a bit of a backdrop: A patrol officer named Paul Bolan was murdered in his home, shot twice in the head with a semi-automatic pistol. Blackburn’s prints were peppered all over the apartment, and although she has no motive for the murder, she’s the primary suspect in the investigation due to her disturbing history, but hasn’t yet been apprehended by the police.
Booker: Alright, let’s begin. I’m interviewing David Griffin, the lawyer and caseworker of alleged murderer Layla Blackburn. David, you’ve stated repeatedly that you’ll be as open as possible about Ms. Blackburn’s history, so, give me a brief rundown of the family.
David: I’ve been Layla’s caseworker since she was 15 and a family friend since her birth. She has a mother, Merriam, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage five years ago, and a brother, Silas, who’s five years older than Layla.
Booker: Whoa, wait. I need details, especially on the mother, and dad. Readers eat this shit up.
David: The mother meant well, but couldn’t handle children. She had dementia, and Social Services took away Silas and Layla when he was 7 and she was 5. Dad was never really in the picture.
Booker: No information on the dad?
David: None. Merriam was exceptionally private about her private affairs.
Booker: How’d you know the family anyway?
David: Originally we were neighbors. One day the kid Silas came to my door crying. He said he fell off his bike, or something. I’m not sure; it was a long time ago. Anyway, I bandaged up his skinned knee and brought him back to Merriam’s apartment. To thank me, she had me stay over for dinner that night. We’d been fairly close ever since.
Booker: First impressions on the mother?
David: Oh… odd, I guess. Her house was an absolute mess. The city would’ve torn the apartment down if they could have seen the inside of it. She had strange habits. I remember she made me wash my hands in ammonia the first time I came into her apartment. But besides the fact that she was a total nut, Silas seemed happy, and Layla seemed happy… enough.
Booker: Yeah, about Layla. Give me some background from… let’s say birth until she was 5.
David: Quiet. She rarely said a word unless she had to. For a young kid, she was really smart. I taught her how to play chess when she was four. She seemed to really like that…
Booker: You’re getting off topic. No signs of violence during this time?
David: None.
Booker: Well… there’s nothing of significance there then. Social Services took the kids away, so they went to you?
David: Unfortunately no. I’m not actually part of the family, nor was I listed legally as a guardian. They went into foster care.
Booker: Anything notable there?
David: Well, the system isn’t perfect. Layla and Silas were split, and she went in and out of different homes, varying from good to bad until she was 12, and wound up with a particularly bad one.
Booker: What do you mean? She was abused?
David: Likely in more ways than one.
Booker: How did that situation end?
David: Badly. Layla injured him, very badly, and after an 8 month stay under the foster father’s care, she was admitted to a children’s psychiatric clinic.
Booker: Wait, wait. I need details, this is pretty big.
David: Fine. A police investigation concluded that Layla dumped a bucket of gasoline on him while he slept, and set him on fire. He was admitted to the ICU, and his injuries eventually healed.
[Momentary Silence]
Booker: How long was she in the unit…?
David: A total of ten months. Social Services later re-evaluated her, and made found her a permanent installment with a good home. However, the evident damage was already done.
Booker: Permanent installment with the Hemmingway couple, right? Jordan and Shawn?
David: Yeah. By that point, I was following Layla and Silas pretty closely, and making sure the agency was treating them right. I called in a few favors, and was approved for guardianship over Layla. Without the approval of Jordan and Shawn, that probably would have never happened. Silas was already 18 by that point, so it wasn’t necessary on his part.
Booker: How did Layla fit in with a regular life?
David: Like I said, the damage was done, and apparently, she wanted anything but a regular life. She got in fights all the time, until eventually she got kicked out of the public school. Jordan and Shawn managed to enroll her in a private school for children of Layla’s… caliber. She didn’t really fit in too well there either.
Booker: She doesn’t seems to fit in anywhere.
David: She never really did. Anyway, between Jordan, Shawn, and me, we were pretty worried about her. Her grades were bad, she was in fights all the time, and she was almost never at home-
Booker: Wait, if she didn’t have any friends, then where was she going?
David: We never found out. We assumed she was squatting at some abandoned place or another. We were worried sick the first few times she dropped off the grid like this, but as that sort of activity picked up, we began to realize it was just something we were going to have to accept.
Booker: Huh… alright, so what were you saying?
David: Sorry? Oh, that’s right. We were trying to figure out what she was interested in, so we could show people how brilliant she actually was, instead of how stupid she seemed. After doing some poking and prodding, and trying a few different things, we got her into auto-body and engineering shop electives. She seemed to have a real knack for that sort of stuff. After we got her into that, things were going good for a while. She spent more time at Jordan and Shawn’s house, even if most of it was spent in the basement building some contraption or fixing something, and her grades even picked up a little.
Booker: You said ‘For a little while’. What happened?
David: Well, eventually she fell into a respective group. Her being one of the most troubled kids I’ve ever experienced, it figures she fit in better with people of equal repute. They got her into all kinds of crazy shit; fight clubs, guns, drugs-
Booker: Guns? Drugs? Jesus Christ…
David: The fight club thing was the worst of all. She’d come home sometimes bruised and bloodied to fuck all. Well, at least for the first few weeks. I guess she must’ve gotten better at fighting.
Booker: Details on the drugs and guns. That’s what I’m interested in.
David: Right. We knew she was taking some illegal prescription drugs, and at one point even ketamine. During a routine search of her room, Shawn found a handgun. She would give no explanation, but the serial number was filed off, so we were assuming it was purchased illegally.
Booker: This keeps getting better…
David: Of course, we wanted to take her illicit activities and turn them into something lucrative. We tried to get her into boxing, which she took for a few weeks then got kicked out, for putting the teacher in the hospital I might add. We even tried to cautiously twist her interest in firearms with range practice, but we pulled her from that because she beat up someone who pissed her off at the range.
Booker: How old is she by this point?
David: She was 16. She dropped out of high school the same year, and took all her engineering crap with her. It seemed as though she dropped off the face of the earth. We didn’t hear from her again, until 8 months later.
Booker: The armed robbery, I assume?
David: Yep. Her and some friend or another held up a 7-11 with a shotgun and a pistol. Police officers apprehended them 5 blocks away. We did everything we could to push for leniency in court, but her appearance and attitude didn’t really appeal to the jurors. She was tried as an adult, and sentenced to 5 years in a minimum security prison. But, you know all this already.
Booker: Well, it’s nice hearing your perspective on it anyway.
David: Well, we visited her in prison. Apparently her fighting experience paid off, because her attitude wasn’t too attractive to other prisoners. We managed to console her enough to get her out in 3 years on parole, due to ‘good behavior’. I could tell she hated that.
Booker: Right, she was 21 when she was released. Then what?
David: We did our best to get her on the straight and narrow, and we were somewhat successful. She got a job at an auto-body shop, and moved in with her brother Silas. She went cold turkey on the drugs, and stopped seeing her old friends. We convinced her to quit the fight club thing, and we instead got her into some weird Israeli self-defense class at the local gym. We couldn’t shake her gun thing though. Between the range, the gym, and her job, she was too occupied to cause much trouble.
Booker: And then…?
David: Well, you know the rest. Silas said he saw her with one of her guns, and said he saw her leave the house one night with it. Then this cop turns up dead, and her prints are all over. It’s safe to assume what you think happened.
Booker: But what do you think happened?
[Momentary Silence]
David: I don’t know. I pray she’s innocent, but I can’t be positive what she’s capable of. I thought that Jordan, Shawn, Silas, and I had changed her, but there are some things you just can’t beat. I can’t help but begin to believe she’s guilty…
[Another silence]
Booker: I think we’ve covered everything. Thanks for your contribution David.
[The tape clicks off]
What will these authorizations give your character in regards to perks or defects?
Perks
Advanced Firearm Skills
- Greater probability of striking an intended target
Advanced Hand-to-Hand Skills
- Upper hand in melee combat situations
Extreme finesse in electrical & mechanical engineering, as well as a rudimentary kit of tools
- Knowledge required to create electrical and mechanical utensils from scavenged materials
- Knowledge required to repair, refurbish, or modify prewar mechanical or electrical utensils
Defects
Advanced Firearm Skills
- Skills and experience coupled with Razors' personality could cause her to be bullheaded in dangerous situations
- Ability to strike an intended target would be critically impaired by injury or feelings towards said target
Advanced Hand-to-Hand skills
- Skills and experience coupled with Razors' personality could cause her to be bullheaded in dangerous situations
Extreme finesse in electrical and mechanical engineering, as well as a rudimentary kit of tools
- Any built utensils would take a long time to construct (and would require further auth apps)
- Any built utensils would require maintenance on a constant basis
- To build/modify/refurbish/repair any utensil, more materials would need to be scavenged or purchased
What do you plan to do with these perks/defects?
I hope to add to my characters personality and back-story by backing her up with these sets of skills. I also hope to apply a unique sort of character using these authorizations, which will hopefully lead to further RP. Also, passive RP is a lot more fun when you're actually doing something to which your character is applied to, in this case, engineering.
Will anyone else need these auths? (If so, list OOC and IC name(s))
No one else will need these auths.
Which server does this apply for?
Outlands
Extra Notes (optional):
Garry's Mod
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