The Wretched Rite - Round Three - DSRS Darwin

The Wretched Rite - Round Three - DSRS Darwin
#27
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today!
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.

Username: Agent1022

Name: Charlie

Gender: Male

Race: Human, but at the same time multiversal constant. Destined to wander across realities and universes, leading to his title: The Eternal Wanderer.

Color: #693993

Weapons/Abilities: Physically, Charlie isn’t a particularly strong or smart person. But what he is is adaptable, and a survivor. He has many many lifetimes’ worth of not dying and he doesn’t plan on starting now: at one point in his journeys he wandered into the realm of an evil overlord and forced to compete in a series of kill-or-be-killed war games, covering an entire planet.

He won.

And then he escaped on a rocket ship towed by his modified bus/truck/everything.

Which brings us to the büjs. At some point it was an old rusty red truck, but since then his wanderings have adapted it to its purpose. Over its lifetime it has been nearly any motorized vehicle imaginable, thanks to Charlie’s tinkerings and adaptation, often taking on roles bordering on the narratively convenient rather than the realistic. That was, of course, in situations with massive resources on hand, so don’t expect miracles this time. The büjs has been described in legend as an ever-changing fount of potentiality and adaptation: In essence, the symbol of Charlie himself. Similarly, it is usually the büjs that takes Charlie to a new place to wander.

When Charlie was taken along with the büjs, it was in the form of a red convertible pickup truck lightly modified for travelling in the snows of a theocratic Siberian States. In the back seat and the bed are various items, among them several plastic canisters of kerosene, a box of maps, some changes of clothes and two sawn-off shotguns. The rest of them are just odds and ends, little bits and pieces left over from mechanical hobbying and metalwork.

Charlie does not like killing people or other sentient beings, but if they post a clear and present danger serious enough, there is a lot of exceedingly efficient and lethal talent in that man. Add that to the fact that whatever is thrown at him he’s likely to have seen similar situations before, and you have one surviving Wanderer.

Description: Charlie is a man whose origins are shrouded in mystery. He looks to be in his fifties, with his brown hair stranded with gray, his straggly beard salt-and-pepper. He has consistently looked to be in his fifties in every single sighting, stories spanning time, space and universes themselves. Legend has it that if he is not immortal, he is definitely very long-lived. It is said that for every role in the universe that can be filled, they are, and often arbitrarily by forces unknown. Charlie fills the role of the Eternal Wanderer, a being that is fated never to settle but instead to constantly move on randomly, blundering into histories and universes in a life that is, essentially, a cross section of everything there has ever been. Despite this and the immortal agelessness it endows, Charlie is still very much a human. He has his strengths and his flaws, primarily his adaptability and incredible stubbornness, respectively. As noted, he would very much prefer to avoid confrontation, and is particularly disapproving of people who seek it out. He speaks with something of a unique accent, with something predominantly Southern about it (lots of planets have a South!) – the only clue to his original existence. He generally wears brown since it makes him less noticeable: at the time of his taking he was wearing a brown woolen sweater over a garment that might once have been a white shirt, and some thick brown trousers.

Biography: In the center of the Holy Siberian States of the planet Earth, where there used to be a vast wilderness, there now stood cities and buildings. In the deep winter, however, these cities slumbered, their lights extinguished until spring warmed the wastes again. Here and there, dots of light flickered like glowing pinpricks in a vast white tablecloth of ice and snow.

In a small house on the edge of the city, smoke rose from the chimney and the merry flicker of a fireplace shone out the windows. Outside, tire tracks in the snow led behind the house, and the tracks of a slightly shuffing gait came from behind the house to the front door. Both sets of tracks were in the process of being obliterated by the falling flakes and blowing wind.

Inside, two old men sat at an old oak table in front of the fireplace and sipped Earl Grey tea from mismatched mugs. One wore a worn brown woolen sweater over a garment of indeterminable age, status and color, and a pair of equally worn brown thick trousers. The other wore a kind of off-white bathrobe. Though old, the two of them were old in very different ways. One of them had seen a large portion of the multiverse in his travels. The other had seen all the portions, and it was he who was speaking now.

“The Eternal Wanderer strode his way from time to time and place to place for millennia, always being in the right time and the right place to do the right thing. Many times it was to act. Many more times it was simply to watch.”

“Ah don’t think he woulda been in the right place and the right time ALL the time.”

“He was. No matter where or when he wandered, the world would need him. When he stepped from his Fount in the desert of the Dome, when he led the second charge at the Battle of the Somme, when he disembarked and built a ship in a floating sky-”

“But Mistah Prophet, he can’ have been welcomed everywhere. No way he was wanted no matter where he went.”

“Legends may dull your sight and memory, but my own remains clear. His presence was always required. When he-”

“He was always needed. If he was wanted for anythin’, it was for some questionin’.”

“…there was a time when he drove out of a landless sky and found a cold, bitter land. Perhaps then, he was not wanted.”

The brown-wearing man looked out of the window. Through the whirling blades of snow, the shape of a vehicle and the color of red was still visible.

“Ah know when ah’m not wanted, Mistah Prophet, an’ the büjs is gettin’ buried. Thanks for the tea.”

“Take care. And hold on to that kerosene, Charlie. You won’t be burning any Holy Government buildings today.”

“Ah hope you’re right, Mistah Prophet.”

“Please. Call me ‘The’.”

Charlie strode out of the Prophet’s house, and climbed into the büjs. He started the engine with a clutter and a sputter, and drove away through the snow.

And then büjs, wanderer, and about six cubic meters of snow disappeared.

“Ah crap.”

Question: “Ya know that lower back pain ya get after a coupla thousand years?
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Messages In This Thread
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by btp - 07-04-2011, 04:36 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-04-2011, 04:43 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-04-2011, 04:58 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by btp - 07-04-2011, 05:03 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-04-2011, 06:18 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-04-2011, 06:44 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-05-2011, 01:57 AM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-05-2011, 04:02 AM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-05-2011, 03:16 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-05-2011, 04:18 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by btp - 07-05-2011, 04:40 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-05-2011, 09:02 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by AgentBlue - 07-06-2011, 03:26 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by btp - 07-07-2011, 02:46 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Pre-Round - by btp - 07-09-2011, 04:37 AM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Pre-Round - by btp - 07-10-2011, 01:27 PM
Re: The Wretched Rite - Sign up today! - by GBCE - 07-18-2011, 04:02 AM