Jack Half-A-Prayer

Out of Character Information
Name: Hedge
Username: (if applicable) tsunderrorism
Are you over the age of eighteen? y
Current characters in Baedal: -

In Character Information
Basics
Character Name: Jack Half-A-Prayer
Username: clawtheelite
Fandom: The Bas Lag Novels
Played By: NA
Icon: Link to an icon you would like to see used on the character sheet. Otherwise, default icons will be used.

Canon Character Section
Physical Description: Jack's true appearance is obscured, in more than one sense of the term. His natural hair, eye, even skin color are not known, since he certainly disguises himself, wearing different colored hair, wigs, etc. What is known are the common factors of all his appearances.
Jack is around 5''8, and of average build, with lithe musculature. There's a grizzled appearanc to him that no disguise can cover up. If he doesn't bother to shave, he very quickly develops a five o clock shadow. There are scars in several places on his body. He favors baggy, concealing clothes such as robes or jumpsuits. This is to help disguise his most distinguishing feature: Starting at mid bicep, Jack's arm is replaced with a large mantis claw. It's big and serrated, capable of doing you harm and shows it. Jack wears a disguising garment, puts the claw in a cast or folds it up and pretends to be an amputee to avoid attracting attention.
Sexuality: There are no canon examples of Jack's sexuality. I choose to play him as bisexual. However sexuality plays very little role in his life, save where he clashes with homophobic elements in his own movement.
History: As Jack's early life is not listed in canon, that part of this section will be my own interpretation.
Headcanon section: Jack grew up in the slums of Lichford, in New Crobuzon. He had a different name then, but it's unimportant now. For the purposes of this section, we'll call him Jack.

As his parents worked long hours doing the lowliest sort of work, he was unsupervised for most of the day. Though his parents were intense xenophobes, Jack had friends among the newly arrived xenian immigrants in the adjoining slums of The Spatters. Stealing out to his friend's shacks (and sure to recieve a beating if caught), he would hear the adult Garuda remniscing about the anarcho-communist society they'd left behind to try and find their fortune in New Crobuzon. These ideas would take seed in his mind, forgotten until he was an adult. As he grew older, he made more human friends, forgetting his Garuda pals, as was proper for even the lowliest of human boys. Poor humans tended to be even more bigoted against xenians than their richer cousins, having nothing else to differentiate them except for species.

Boy's gangs in that part of the city were everywhere, often serving as raw recruitment material for the bigger criminals in Dogg Fen. Naturally he fell in with one. An ambitious boy, he was soon the top of his gang after laying a tripline for the ostensible leader and savaging him with a cobblestone. Rather than work for one of the big players, however, he decided to go into business for himself. As the gang matured, they went into full time robbery and drug dealing, (buying product from Mr Motley and strongarm selling it mostly). It wasn't long before they were feared, as one slight could set them off into terrible violence. Jack at this time fancied himself the top predator in his little ecosystem, remembering an ecological chart from the few months total schooling he had. He was caught by the militia at the height of his hubris, attempting to rob a church. In the ensuing shootout, several members of Jack's gang and the priest were killed.

Jack was arrested. Trial was swift. He was sent to prison, where another prisoner, a reporter for the seditious newspaper Runagate Rampant radicalized him. His friend also went quickly to trial and was never seen again, though Jack would never forget him. Sent to the punishment factory, Jack's arm was removed, and a huge mantis claw grafted in its place. At that time, lying in his cell, he befriended a guard, a bored, discontented man (the POV character of Jack in the Looking For Jake collection). Jack escaped, with his new friend's secret help, and faded back into the New Crobuzon underworld. When the heat on him had died down, he began comitting crimes again.

These crimes were not like his previous ones though. He didn't kill for money or power. He kept only enough to keep himself going. And he always left documentation, manifestoes, at the scene. By the time people began labeling his crimes, giving them names like those of stories, as if he were Jabber himself, Jack knew something had changed. He was no longer his old self. He was now Jack Half A Prayer, the city's savior, legend, hero, anathema. People began rallying to him. Soon the size of his network of fellow fReemade was dwarfed by the number of people who supported him.

He began studying thaumaturgy in earnest and stealing experimental weapons from the city. Crowds gathered at each heist, cheering him on until the militia silenced them.

The Nightmare Plague was a potent distraction from his own adventures, so at first he dismissed it as a mere propaganda ploy, a thing the Militia was using against him. Yet when it began taking both city councilmen and his own comrades, leaving those men and women drooling husks with no minds, he knew he'd have to act. In the end he ended up assisting the brilliant renegade scientist Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin in a daring plan to kill the Slake Moths causing the phenomenom through a kind of overfeeding.

Most recently, Jack has offered a position in his gang to a disgraced Geruda, Too Too Abstract Individual Not To Be Respected Yagharek, which he was surprised to find the bird-man turned down.



Powers: Jack's most obvious difference from the human norm is the enormous claw replacing one of his arms. It is a very potent weapon at close range, taking a head clean off the neck with the right placement. The end can also be used to stab with. It's also useful for climbing, cutting fences, etc.
Jack is trained in basic thaumaturgy. [thaumaturgy he knows]
Talents/Abilities:: Jack is a potent combatant, with knowledge of both melee and ranged combat. He appears to be very agile, having been described as leaping from rooftops.

He's a skilled leader, not just on the organizational side of things but in that he has a personality that's magnetic and makes people want to follow him. This is augmented by an instinct for where propaganda (by deed) is most effective.

Personality: Jack is a man who has almost entirely subsumed himself into his own myth. Think of Batman: Bruce Wayne becomes him when he puts the mask on, and then he is something bigger, more potent, more forceful than any human can be. The difference between them is that Jack never takes the mask off. The trauma of his remaking remade his personality in such a way as to subsume his former drives into the personality of JAck Half A Prayer.

And who is Jack Half A Prayer? He's articulate, cunning and magnetic. People love him and respect him because he actually seems to care about their daily struggles. People respect him because he does something about it. He's a kind of an archetypal repository for all the repressed hopes of lower class New Crobuzon.

This is the kind of role that would break most men, and it sometimes comes close to breaking him. Buried under the Jack persona is a very human man with wants, needs and feelings that have nothing to do with the good of the city. But he's also aware of how many people rely on him and finds himself unable to vent to anyone the frustrations of being a rebel messiah, save a very small circle of trusted confidantes.

He expresses several quirks in his private life that aren't noticeable to his public though. Jack is a lover of wordplay. Learning to read at more than the most basic level in prison opened up a new world for him and he's never quite lost that sense of wonder. He loves wordplay, tending to speak in sentences as labyrinthine as the back alleys of New Crobuzon themselves, with an odd mixture of upper class loquaciosness and lower class slang.

Jack's a bit of a thrill seeker. If his current lifestye didn't supply him with plenty, he'd probably find some other way to do dangerous things. Part of what attracted him to the gangster lifestyle he led before becoming Jack was the heart-racing thrill of it. When in a situation that satisfies this danger-craving he smiles wide, becomes almost unsettlingly manic.

At his nicest, Jack pities those who are bigoted towards others, remembering his parents' own prejudices. On bad days, he treets them with icy contempt, going out of his way to make sure they are hurt in his operations.

Conversely and in contrast to the man he was before he became Jack, he's actually quite quick to forgive slights directed at him personally. Perhaps he simply can't afford to hold a personal grudge or perhaps it's part of his almost monklike devotion to his cause.




Object: When a character arrives in Baedal, something useful or significant from home is brought along with them. The object must be no larger than a refrigerator and cannot be sentient.
Reason for playing: Why have you chosen this particular character? Tell us about what you would like to do with the character in Baedal, and what your expectations for gameplay are. This will help us ascertain whether the game will meet your needs, as well as telling us what sort of character arcs and plots you might be looking for in RP.
Gods: Which of the gods of Baedal is most likely to take an interest in your character and why?


Writing Samples
Players may choose to write three of the four writing samples. Additionally, for two of the three samples applicants may substitute links to previously written roleplaying threads of no less than eight substantial replies. We reserve the right to ask for an additional sample if more information is required.

First-Person Network Post: An example of a post your character might make on the communication Networks in Baedal. This section can be short, and may involve video or audio narration in brackets or prose.
First-Person Journal Post: A few sentences written by the character, something they intend only for themselves to read. A look into how they think of themselves and how they are when no one is looking.

Third-Person Arrival Post: A post describing your character's arrival in Baedal. At least two paragraphs.
Third-Person Action Post: A prose post describing your character in an emotionally fraught or heated situation. It can be sexual, violent, or just frightening; regardless, it must be adult in nature. At least two paragraphs.

Misc
Other: If you have any questions or comments on your character or application, those can go here.

Mun information

Name Hedgehogey
Birth date 07/12/84
Contact taoofcrime@aol.com, fightingbishie
Other Characters Tadayasu Sawaki (brewsyourface)

Character information

Name Jack Half-a-Prayer
Fandom Perdido Street Station/The Bas Lag novels
Age Unknown. Appears mid thirties
Gender M
Appearance Jack's true appearance is obscured in a haze of his own creation. His natural hair, eye, even skin color are not known, since he certainly disguises himself. What is known are the common factors of all his appearances.
Jack is around 5''8, and of average build, with lithe musculature. There's a grizzled appearanc to him that no disguise can cover up. If he doesn't bother to shave, he very quickly develops a five o clock shadow. There are scars in several places on his body. He favors baggy, concealing clothes such as robes or jumpsuits. This is to help disguise his most distinguishing feature: Starting at mid bicep, Jack's arm is replaced with a large mantis claw. It's big and serrated, capable of doing you harm and shows it. Jack wears a disguising garment, puts the claw in a cast or folds it up and pretends to be an amputee to avoid attracting attention.

Personality Jack is an enigmatic character, but a few things can be surmised about him. He is a driven man, propelled by his sense of justice. He has subsumed the entirety of his self into the persona of Half-a-Prayer the folk hero. Belonging totally to the world, there is little of him left for himself. If he has private thoughts and feelings, he writes them where noone can see.
Background In the old days, Jack was a thug. Like many in the lower city, he ran with a crew, eventually killing his way to a crude leadership. Jack fancied himself a predator, the top of his food chain. His motto was "Don't like it? Survival species, bitch." At the height of his arrogance, his crew decided to rob a well known local priest. The job was botched, however. The cops were tipped off and the monsignor was killed in the attempt. Jack was hauled off to jail, where he was brought before a judge sympathetic to a new GeneCo program: Remaking. The criminal would have a GeneSurgeon recraft their body in a way fitting the punishment. Thus the criminal was punished, the company saved money on prison housing and the 'Remade' served as a living detterent to future criminals. Befitting the person he killed and his own vision of himself as a predator, Jack had his right arm chopped off and replaced with an outsize mantis claw. Sentenced to an additional five years, Jack languished in prison. He was at his lowest ebb when he had his revelation: There was a bigger predator. GeneCo preyed on everyone. They were truly the top of the food chain.
Lying on the floor of that stinking cell, Jack realized he had a choice. He could join GeneCo and work his way up the food chain once again. Or he could reject the whole social system that forced people to prey on each other to survive.

Jack chose the latter, and a new sense of purpose filled him. He gave himself a new last name.
There was a guard at that prison who was dissatisfied with his lot in life. He found it stultifying work, and would often talk with the prisoners to entertain himself. Jack was one of those prisoners. Something clicked in him when he heard Jack talk. One day a keycard went missing, and Jack found himself escaped again, scrambling through alleys, the wounds on his arm not yet crusted over.
He would find his friend again, and from that nucleus, Jack's fReemade gang was born. Jack pursued his old criminal activities ferociously, but this time the riches would find their way into the hands of widows whose husbands had been "repossesed" or orphanages, anyplace people were poor and suffering. Jack quickly attained the status of folk hero. He made powerful allies, including the rogue geneticist Isaac Van Der Grimnebulim and the outcountry savage Yagharek. He also made powerful enemies. Like GeneCo. The manhunt took years, but eventually someone near him was bribed enough to give out his location and jack was brought back in chains. This time there would be no merciful sentence. Jack was nailed to a post in front of GeneCo HQ and systematically tortured for days, kept alive by the skills of their best doctors. On the third day, a man elbowed his way through the crowd, lept onto the platform and stabbed Jack in the heart, then lept off before anyone could react.

That was fifteen years ago.

In the meantime, "Jack" has become a term like "Comrade" among the young and rebellious. And word on the street is that he's back. But who is this new Jack Half-a-Prayer? How is that possible?

Genetics & alterations Right arm replaced with an outsize mantis claw. Originally meant to be merely symbolic, back alley enhancements have turned it into a formidable killing tool, capable of leaving gory wounds. Muscular enhancements concentrated around the legs. These work fine, but pain him when they are not being used.

Samples

First person
Public Post//Untraceable Address:

Once there was a man who believed very much in not owing others. He loved to use the debts of others against them...And he always managed to be in the right place to offer his own brand of help. He especially loved to help young women. After he'd helped them out of their financial difficulties, he would extract what he thought he was owed later.

Well, the Man-t'is has shown him what real debt means. I have carved the names of each one of the girls he took his little "entertainment" from into his skin. He is currently reccuperating in room 101 of city general hospital. If you should happen to visit him, do remind him of how much he owes me for the lesson.

Third person Silent ghosts watched from the rooftop. Their hoods covered their faces and they were wrapped up in the cool night. Down in the alley, the Baron's car was parked, shining amidst the trash. It was a beetle black bentley thing and it looked too plush for its environs.

Jack looked down on it, watching, waiting, patient. His men were positioned on the fire escapes, breathless and still but for their eyes which darted up to him when a door opened.

The Baron was a greasy looking fat man with a prominent widow's peak in a flashy pinstriped suit. He was trailed by two bodyguards, one of which held was holding the arm of a tired looking girl whose hands were cuffed behind her back. This was one of the Baron' debt girls, one that owed the company money. The Baron loved them. They were usually almost completely broken already, so wonderfully submissive...

His men breathed faster, adrenaline flushed, eager to go but Jack signalled to wait with his human hand. Only when he was sure the door in the alley was locked behind him did he signal the attack to begin.

The first of the baron's guards went down choking and sputtering in his own blood under a hail of gunfire from the men in the fire escape. The smell of his bowels unclenching added to the alley's rich mire.

Jack was next down. He lept from the edge. The robe he wore to conceal his mantis claw flew out behind him, revealing the great pincer mechanism. He hit the car roof with a crunch on his boots and dived off it, onto the second guard. They struggled in the muck a few seconds, rolling in the filth, until Jack managed to get his claw over the other man's shoulders and snapped it shut, neatly severing his neck.

From the other side of the car came pops and cursing as the Captain was disarmed with a bullet in the wrist and knee. Jack walked around the other side of the car to observe the terrified "Baron". When he recognized Jack's claw he began to wail and beg.

Jack merely grinned. "Now Baron...we're going to teach you about debt forgiveness."