Player SectionSteam Name: Frolie
Age: Fourteen, Fifteen in Early October.
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 SectionAuthorization(s):- Ambidexterity (Equal Strength in both hands)
- Eidetic Recollection (Photographic Memory)
- Exceptional Mathematical Intelligence
- Extensive Knowledge & Collection of Computer Technologies
- Remarkable Understanding of Combine Technologies
- Climbing & Physical Obstacle Agility (More or Less Parkour / Freerunning)
Name: Layla 'Razors' Blackburn
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Affiliation: None
Write a detailed in-canon back-story how your character obtained these authorizations. Spoiler for Hiden:
Yep, another auth app from me. I recently obtained a bit of a bad reputation due to an authorization I wrote a short while ago. Many administrators and other players considered it to be Over-Powered, and so it was nerfed down some, and later accepted. What I've written here in this spoiler box is not only a formal apology to any of those who think I've caused wrong, but also a plea for open-mindedness; while you may not approve of a single action I've caused in the immediate past, please don't let that totally sway your opinions on this authorization.
Now, about the Back Story: I had been meaning to flesh out Layla's skill-set for some time, but after her first authorization was accepted, I didn't quite know how to do it. After being struck with a rather vicious cold last Friday, I set about finding a way. This character's first authorization was written from the perspective of a journalist, and Layla's Caseworker. If you'd like to read that first, the link is below:
http://www.catalyst-gaming.net/index.php?topic=18412.msg133684#msg133684Anyway, due to the character's secretive and paranoid nature, there's a lot the people don't know about her. This authorization is written from her perspective, allowing you to learn about all of her work before and after the 7-Hour-War, and begins shortly after she dropped out of high-school at 16. It was much longer, but I cut it down to just what was necessary to explain how the character obtained the skills and traits. You'll have to forgive me if it feels a little choppy. I've got nothing else to say, so I hope you enjoy what I've written- I promise it's not as long as my last one.
(Concerns details on generality of the character, and brief mentions of skillsets)
Layla Blackburn, daughter to Merriam Blackburn, was a mental-medicine fascination. No direct diagnosis was ever made for her, but there had been dozens of claims and approximations; Low Latent Inhibition, Autism, Paranoid Schizophrenia, Mental Retardation, Bipolar Disorder, Savantism… nothing was ever made clear. The most likely reason for that was her refusal to cooperate. She’d sit in stubborn silence, ignoring teachers and doctors alike. She never made friends, and failed every class she ever took in the time she attended public school. The majority of those who were aware of her assumed she was either psychotic, or mentally challenged. But inside her head, and in her own time, Layla was a literal genius.
She was a skilled mathematician, a gifted computer hacker and programmer, a talented electrical and mechanical engineer, and in the future, the would be one of the most knowledgeable living human beings on the subject of Combine Technology.
Layla's Apartment in Seattle(Concerns Details on Computer Skills)
Layla was sitting at her computer, the same place she'd been all night. It was nearly two in the morning, and she hadn't slept in two days. She was running soft-ware updates on a variety of the programs on her main computer. The computer itself was a glorious testament to diligent work and thousands of dollars. Two computer towers shared a single Twenty-Seven inch Monitor. Collectively, it had 128 gigabytes of Ram, supported by two military-grade MSi mother boards. In terms of storage space, each computer tower had an internal single terabyte hard-drive, and was also connected by USB to two other external hard-drives, each of which stored three terabytes.
Besides her primary computer, she also had a back-up laptop, which she utilized while working outside of her apartment, as well as a myriad of micro-controllers and circuit converters. The contents of the room she sat in was worth more than half the tenants in the apartment building make inside of a year, and had been what had gotten her into the building in the first place. Using the resources available to her, she had created an entirely false identity, beneath which the apartment was registered to.
Computers had gone almost hand in hand with skills Layla already had, but for some reason, she felt much more secretive about it than her other interests. She hadn't much thought about the practical use of computers until she was about fourteen. By then, her interests in electrical engineering had already been piqued, and she had begun to hone down on that skill, but she temporarily set it aside to pursue her new interest.
She had started with what she knew; the guts. Computer hardware was much like a more finely-tuned, much more complex version of electrical engineering, so she applied what she already knew on a more microscopic level. She hadn't turned on her first computer a single time before she pried it open and studied what made it work. Within a week, she had a rudimentary understanding of how the majority of the parts worked. She had gone to a nearby library and taken out some books concerning the topic, and then, displeased with the content of said books, went to a more comprehensive library a ways further into the city, and took out more books there.
After three weeks of tireless study and precise coordination, she knew just about everything there was to know about the hardware of her own computer. She reassembled it the same night she felt she had an exact familiarity with the machine, and finally learned how it worked from the outside. She found the software aspect of computers considerably more frustrating than the hardware, which in turn made her more perseverant in understanding it. It took more months of studying and reading books to achieve what she thought was required of her. She knew hexadecimal binary in its entirety, completely by memory, after three weeks of study. She was writing her own code shortly after, and creating rudimentary programs. Originally, she had intended to somehow tie in the skills she learned her to skills she already had, but after almost an entire year of cut-throat study, little to no sleep, and thousands of dollars frivolously spent modifying and experimenting, she had let herself flow into an entirely different tangent of ideas and curiosities.
There was never such thing as a safe hobby for her. Everything was either pursued obsessively, or not pursued at all. On paper, she was a psychopathic high-school dropout, even considered retarded by a few doctors and specialists. But she lived a secret life of hidden genius, only known by those close to her, which was a very limited crowd. She was about 60% to 80% sure that she possessed a photographic memory, but she was never one to make a self-diagnosis of any kind (she barely trusted any diagnosis; her relationship with doctors was never that great).
She eventually shut the monitor of her computer off, figuring it was best for her health if she got some sleep. She let the software updates continue as she wondered down the hall into her bedroom, and read for a while before shutting the light off. She lay awake for little more than 30 seconds before she fell deeply into sleep.
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Washington Correction Facility for Women (Concerns Details on Ambidexterity, Math Skills, and Eidetic Memory)
Layla had managed to settle into her cell in her new home in the past 4 months. She was lucky she had only been caught for armed robbery, and nothing else. Nonetheless, any time in prison was unfortunate. She'd always had a mostly hands-off approach towards crime, but she had been desperate for money, and hadn't had a job in months.
As far as prison went, this wasn't too horrible. It was a highly regarded institution that Layla's caseworker had to negotiate to get her into, due to her, quote 'fragile mental condition'. He knew she hated titles like that, but he was just doing as necessary. The accommodations of her cell were good enough; in fact, it even had a computer. Of course, it had a firewall, which when confronted with Layla's skill-set, didn't stay up long.
Of all the time the time Layla spent in prison, she spent the majority of it in the library. At her adoptive parents’ request, as well as those of her brother and her caseworker, she applied for, and easily passed her GED. Her traits as a reader and researcher were unparalleled in comparison to other inmates. Several notable traits were discovered of her, the easiest of which to notice was her ambidexterity. Layla was aware of this attribute, but never really understood what made it such a peculiarity, much less cared. It was frequently observed that she would begin writing with one hand, and continue with another. Occasionally she would even write with both at once. Whether this was something she acquired naturally, or if she worked at it consciously was irrelevant.
Several months into her stay in the penitentiary, it was observed, not just by the acting librarian, but by numerous different on-duty guards and even the warden herself, that Layla had an unfounded memory. Everything that she read or noted was seemingly cataloged mentally, and could be recalled with little to no hesitation for thought. She also had the unparalleled gift of numbers. She could do entire math equations in her head, the kinds that even experienced mathematicians had to write out on paper, or do on a calculator. It was obvious that Layla was very gifted, but her unusual mental status made her difficult to understand.
The warden consulted Layla with a proposition; if she took both an IQ test, and an Eidetic memory test, then she could apply as a ‘mentally reinvigorated inmate’, and a special deal could be cut to lower her sentence, not to mention lift her variable title as mentally retarded. It was clear that the warden believed that her time in the penitentiary had allowed her to focus on education, and thus, made the system work. That’s why the program for mental re-invigoration was created in the first place.
Of course, given her distaste for authority and general stubbornness, she disregarded the warden’s claims, ignoring her entirely. In turn, the warden called Layla’s caseworker, who visited Layla at the Correction Facility, and begged her to take the deal. After three more days of weighing the pro’s and con’s in Layla’s eccentric thought-process, she finally agreed. After taking the test at 17, her IQ was revealed to be at 148, well above average. Her skill in mathematics was truly amazing, nearing the level of Savant. The results of the Eidetic Memory test confirmed the suspicions of her family members; Layla did indeed possess a Photographic Memory. As Layla’s initial sentence was set at three years (due to relentless testimony, not to mention her being a minor), the deal would guarantee her release within the month, on the condition that she take residency with her adoptive parents. Layla was released from the penitentiary two weeks after her tests.
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City 27(Concerns Details on Combine Tech and Freerunning)
City Twenty-Seven was a cesspool of shit and crime. The ghetto districts flourished more than civilized districts, and combine patrols and sweeps occurred through said districts on a routine basis. And this, of all places, was where Layla was to live.
It’s not as though she weren’t used to crummy neighborhoods. She spent most of her time with her biological mother inside a terrible household. But terrible neighborhoods of full of terrible people, the most concerning to her of which were thieves. And now more than ever, people wanted the things she had.
Layla still had the majority of her computers and engineering equipment. When the war began, she had been at her parent’s house, in her room, where she usually was. Her adoptive parents were out of the state at the time, going to the funeral of a close relative (Layla was very asocial and rude, so it was no surprise that she was not asked to join them). When her life was in danger, she set her strange priorities first; save everything she could. Amassed in four large bags were the majority of what was important to her; tools, computer towers, computer parts, laptops, cameras, and a myriad of other things. She took these things, and drove her car as far into the country as she could, dodging every peril in her path to get to safety.
She cowered in the country for weeks before taking an infamous sea-trade route out of America and into Russia, the home of City 27. Once she was there, she burrowed into a tall building, mostly out of reach of thieves and wary eyes, and settled in to soak up information.
A new interest had arisen. The combine sported technology unlike Layla had ever seen. It confused and enthralled her all at once, and she was desperate to get her hands on just one fragment to examine. But that chance didn’t come for a long, long time. All she could do was watch and wait.
But watching from one place was yielding no results. She was ridiculously paranoid about traveling on the streets, and thus stuck to roof level. Day in and day out, she’d cautiously stalk the combine from the rooftops, watching their every move. Over week and weeks of this routine, she could dart around the city on the roof faster than most could on the ground. Through trial and error, she slowly got better at climbing and running; to land on the balls of her feet to absorb the impact, to roll to relieve pressure from her legs, when to go under and when to go over. Her small size was a great asset in her new ‘sport’ she could move fast and crawl low. But she never intended to pick up the skill, it was simply inadvertently acquired during her pursuits of seizing combine technology.
Amidst her search from the rooftops, she at last came upon what she wanted. Some kind of scanner had been downed in the back alley of one of the streets. Immediate structural damage would lead her to believe someone had beat at it some a hard object, which caused something inside it to malfunction and thus, lose power. She took it back to her hideout, no easy feat what with a hulking 80 pound robot carcass in her arms.
The technology used by the universal union was an adaptation of earth technology, and otherworldly technology. Having already had a familiarity with how some of it worked, she used that knowledge to fill in the blanks. She slaved for weeks, carefully dissecting and examining every bit of the scanner, soaking up whatever knowledge she could. It eventually became such an obsession that she went to a local district narcotics dealer, and purchased a powerful amphetamine; powerful enough to keep her awake for consecutive days studying the mobile camera.
After four months of research, with little to no sleep, and minimum pausing to eat or drink, Layla felt she had absorbed everything the machine was willing to offer her. But a camera was hardly enough to satisfy her lust for knowledge. She went out again in search of more technology, this time with less patience.
Layla would attack low level patrol officers, and steal their equipment. She’d steal anything she felt was worth her prying eyes from anyone available, and added it all to her growing stockpile of things to study. At the end of two more months, she had attacked a total of twelve different patrol officers, two of whom were killed in said attacks. She’d stolen dozens of separate pieces of tech from GRID units, and had taken cameras off walls. As her intelligence grew, her scope for technologies did too. Eventually she could go so far as to use her computers to cause mass-malfunctions, then collect the resulting damaged materials. Her presence in the city became more and more of an outrage to patrol officers, but her illusiveness made her capture difficult. Eventually special divisions were assigned the project of rooting her out and capturing her.
It didn’t take long for Layla to catch wind of the project. On a unit’s PDA, there was a picture of her. This alone was too much for her. Her paranoid nature told her to pack what she could, and leave immediately. She filled dozens of crates and bags with the contents of her hideout, and moved it out of the city, before moving herself as well. And not a moment too soon; units had found her drug contact, and interrogated him until he gave up what he knew about Layla. It didn’t take long for the units to use this information to find her hideout, but it took to long to find Layla herself. She’d already left the city, and was going west into Romania, a suitable 20 city jurisdictions away.
Some Pics: Took these in my spare time, just to give you an idea of what you're looking at
Computers in Layla's Apartment [1/3]
Computers in Layla's Apartment [2/3]
Computers in Layla's Apartment [3/3]
A Work-Table in Layla's Apartment
Layla's Hide-out in City 27
What will these authorizations give your character in regards to perks or defects?PerksAmbidexterity (Equal Strength in Both Hands)
+ Can write or draw with both hands
+ Can equally distribute weight between appendages
Exceptional Mathematical Intelligence
+ Can perform mental mathematics equations in her head
+ Can come to a conclusion on complex arithmetic much faster than average
Eidetic Recollection (Photographic Memory)
+ Will be able to remember and reconstruct insurmountable details
+ Will be able to catalog information mentally
Extensive Knowledge & Collection of Computer Technologies
+ Will be able to use knowledge and hardware to build new things
+ Will (possibly) be able to use knowledge and hardware to attack others
Remarkable Understanding of Combine Technologies
+ Will be able to analyze and utilize combine technologies
Climbing & Physical Obstacle Agility
+ Will be able to maneuver around obstacles faster than regular refugees.
Lalya's Mental Condition:
This isn't listed as an authorization, but it definitely worth mentioning. Layla's greatest flaw and greatest attribute are one in the same; perseverance. Against any and all odds, she continues to fight her own battles, sacrificing anything that stands in the way of herself and her goals. Her extreme attention to detail and quest for knowledge is an asset in analysis and research.
DefectsAmbidexterity (Equal Strength in Both Hands)
- Although a valuable attribute in research, it serves little practical purpose
Exceptional Mathematical Intelligence
- Layla's Over-Analysis can at times become over-cumbersome, resulting in mental anguish of variable levels
Eidetic Recollection
- As with her mathematical skills, over-attention to detail can at times become too much for Layla
Extensive Knowledge & Collection of Computer Technologies
- Any fruitful progress made from her hardware and knowledge would take a lot of time
- Moving the hardware would be difficult, due to it's quantity and weight
- If any of the hardware were destroyed or damaged, it would critically impair Layla's progress
Remarkable Understanding of Combine Technologies
- Despite knowing a lot about the technologies, they're still extremely confusing and intricate
- If the character were to ever be discovered modifying combine technologies, she could become a significant target.
- Any destruction or damage to hardware could critically impair progress of any project
Climbing & Physical Obstacle Agility
- No matter what level of skill, the risk of injury is always present
- Layla is a compulsive smoker who spends a lot of time inactive; staying fit would be a chore for her, but it's a necessity to stay physically able.
Layla's Mental Condition:
Like I said, Layla's perseverance is also a great flaw. Her kind of addiction to research simply isn't healthy. When it comes to the point of dangerous narcotic use to assist in her projects, then it's definitely crossing the line. The same can be said about the Obstacle Climbing Auth. A dangerous climb for even an experienced climber would be attempted by Layla without question, for whatever reason was required of her to attempt it.
What do you plan to do with these perks/defects?The majority of the authorizations asked for are mainly for increasing passive RP, and adding to one of (in my opinion) my most intriguing characters. Passive RP is a lot more fun when you're doing something that involves more than one party, and is especially fun when you're working towards a goal with one of your character's skills. Pending acceptance, my character would have skills in electrical and mechanical engineering (pre-requisite authorization), as well as combine technology and computer hardware / software. Obviously, that's a lot of honed-down professions, but certainly doesn't make the character totally rounded. In short, the character will need the assistance of other characters to assist in completing projects, no matter how rudimentary or advanced they are.
Some of the other authorizations I've asked for (Ambidexterity, Mathematics skill, Eidetic Memory) have been requested to develop my character. Given that she's very paranoid, and extremely asocial, many other characters don't have much to base their perspectives on her around. I hope that with what they observe (pending authorization), they can put together a better portrait of the character, without actually being able to interact with her.
And the Climbing & Obstacle Agility skills? Well, there's not as much to that as there was to the rest of the authorizations. It's simply a tactic of escaping harm, or getting for one place to another more quickly. It's also to give the character another notable goal; mobility. Quite recently, Layla was attacked by a crowd due to some negligent choices she had made. Consequently, she was severely beaten, almost to death, and later shot twice. Although the severity of the wounds has been toned down, she's still recovering. Given her small size, she relies on agility to get escape harm, which makes for better motivation in healing. It also adds to her constant 'Fight or Flight' tactic. She either fights with her hands or any tools made available to her, or takes off, knowing she can't face such insurmountable odds. In short, this auth should add more to her as a character.
Will anyone else need these auths? (If so, list OOC and IC name(s))No one else will require these auths, just Layla.
Which server does this apply for?Both
Extra Notes (optional):
Garry's Mod
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