Application/Permissions

[thirtyaughtsix]

☞ Player Information;
Name: Ammy
Player Journal: amberspike_sama
Age: 20
Contact: PM any of my journals, please.
Other characters currently played at Ryan's Gulch: Dr. Jonathan Crane (thegreatinhibitor)
☞ Character Information;
Character Name: Irving Adenauer
Canon: Original character
Canon point: 1957, Rapture, where he has been living for the past six years.

Setting: Irving’s from the real world, as he was one of the people originally invited into Rapture. He was born and raised in New Jersey, has lived in Canada and France, and has traveled pretty extensively across Europe. He left the surface in 1951, departing from America while the country was engaged in the Korean War and entering a period of economic prosperity. This is a pretty good overview of the period of American culture he would be most familiar with.

History: Irving was born out of wedlock in Trenton, New Jersey in 1923, as Irving Wyatt Chambers. His father took the responsibility of raising him, as his mother’s frequent partying and drug use made her unfit for the task. Irving saw her only intermittently throughout his childhood, hardly enough to form any true relationship with her, and his personality was primarily influenced by his father. His father worked as an accountant at a bank, making a mediocre wage and frequently engaging in embezzlement in order to maintain his comfortable, middle-class standard of living. Irving, of course, spent his childhood ignorant of any misdeeds, and regarded his father with a great deal of respect and love, never wanting for much.

This state of affairs changed in 1929 when the bank went under. Irving’s father did odd jobs and forged checks in the names of his financially afloat acquaintances to sustain the family. Unable to keep his activities secret from Irving, he justified the forgeries as a necessary measure in hard times, and claimed they were an acceptable tactic for people that had the talent to create them. Irving, intrigued by the idea of pulling off such a trick, asked to help and ended up learning simple forgery techniques from him, soon graduating to personally cashing the checks in his father’s stead. Irving eventually took the fraud a step further, realizing that he could gain more money through a fuller impersonation. At the age of sixteen, he called the drugstore where he worked, feigned the voice of an upper manager and convinced the store manager to read off account information, which he subsequently used to drain a good portion of one of the store’s savings accounts. His confidence bolstered by that accomplishment, he tried his hand at a number of other small schemes involving manipulating people over the phone, with mainly successful results.

His first real face-to-face plot was during his first year of college, where he posed as one of his classmates, requested to drop one of their classes and walked off with a cash refund. Because he altered his appearance with temporary hair dye and secondhand clothes, he was not identified as the culprit, in spite of a subsequent investigation. He remained close to his father, requesting his assistance after he was drafted in 1943 in forging some documents to enable him to continue his education at a smaller school in Canada, thereby preventing him from seeing any action in the war. Aside from those criminal ventures, Irving’s more legitimate interests also flourished in college as he took business and engineering courses, growing particularly enamored with sales and aerospace technology.

Things took a turn for the worse after his second year, when his father—who had since gained a new job at a different bank and begun embezzling again—had his illicit activities discovered. His court costs and subsequent prison sentence ate up the funds that he had been sending to Irving to pay for his education, and Irving was forced to drop out. Irving felt personally betrayed by this, figuring that his father had become too reckless and uncaring to cover his tracks effectively. Saddled with debt, Irving sought a fresh start through what would become his most thorough crime yet.

He discovered that Laverne, a girl he had met in New Jersey and been hooking up with during the summers, had a brother by the name of Glenn Maddox who had recently returned home from the war. Maddox was confined to a veterans’ hospital with severe wounds and psychological trauma, and through spending time at Laverne’s house, Irving was able to obtain copies of Maddox’s identification paperwork. As Maddox was in his mid-twenties and had a business degree, Irving was able to not only pose as him, but to gain a well-paying sales position at General Motors.

Irving’s charm masked his lack of knowledge—which he did end up supplementing via some night courses—and his ability to befriend upper executives introduced him to high society. He was invited to numerous parties and dances and made his first trip across the Atlantic, flying over in his boss’ private plane to attend a convention in Paris. It was in Paris that he encountered a socialite named Adele, who he was immediately attracted to due to her sarcasm and wit. They ended up sleeping together and regularly corresponded after he returned to the States.

This pleasant state of affairs came to an end after three years, when Maddox passed away from pneumonia. The man’s subsequent funeral, which was conducted with full military honors and received a fair amount of local publicity, caught the attention of one of the secretaries in Irving’s department and lead to the police being contacted. Irving hastily gathered up some valuable corporate documents dealing with aircraft design and called up Adele, explaining the situation and convincing her to shelter him. With what money he was able to glean before Maddox’s accounts were frozen, he took off on a transcontinental steamer and made his way back to Paris. Thinking that he would be best served by having a European last name, he picked "Adenauer" from a newspaper he read during the trip, thinking that it sounded classy.

Adele was rooming in an apartment with her family friend Remy Delacroix, who had begun dealing information to members of the Resistance during the war and continued the business amidst growing Soviet-American tensions. Remy’s network of contacts made it possible for Irving to sell the design specs for a high price. A Soviet businessman, Pavel Toporov, caught wind of Irving’s work and was impressed enough by his masquerade as Maddox to hire him as an industrial spy, paying him to steal corporate secrets from a number of prominent defense companies. Irving ultimately gained enough of Toporov’s trust to act as a salesman on his behalf, sealing smuggled arms deals with Russian and East German clients. Irving conducted this business under various false identities, making his way onto ICPC (currently Interpol) records as Emanuel Geissler, and experiencing a few run-ins with French and German police. Though he was taken into questioning more than once, he was never personally arrested.

He did, however, have numerous brushes with danger due to the company he kept. His risk-taking lifestyle caught up with him in Marseille, when the French police, inadvertently tipped off by one of Toporov’s less cautious clients, burst into a party where he, Adele, Toporov and a fair number of other criminal figures were relaxing after facilitating the transfer of a large shipment of explosives. The scene quickly turned into a firefight, and by the end of the chaos, Toporov and Adele were badly wounded and Irving had been shot in the shoulder. Toporov recovered, but was captured and extradited to the Soviet Union. Adele, on the other hand, slipped into a coma with no indication of ever returning to consciousness.

Irving did not wait for her to die. Distraught by her state and realizing—contrary to his efforts to remain more or less unattached—that he had fallen for her, he sought to escape his circumstances as he had so many times before. He went on the run again, seeking refuge from some of his more obscure contacts and rarely staying in one place too long. It was during a stint back in the States, working at a department store beneath the name Avery Walsh, that he received his invitation from Andrew Ryan. Relieved by the idea of fully cutting ties with his past, Irving accepted it at once.

Over the past six years, Irving’s carved out a successful life for himself in Rapture. After living in Plaza Hedone for a few years after his arrival, he saved up enough to rent an apartment in Mercury Suites, and has been taking up residence there since. He works by day as a plasmid salesman for Fontaine Futuristics, a position that he enjoys for the associated opportunity to meet people and affect a look of respectability, and is heavily involved in selling smuggled goods on the side. The latter activity has resulted in him being regarded with some suspicion by the police, but he’s managed to keep any solid evidence from surfacing that might result in him being incarcerated.

Personality: If asked to describe himself, depending on the setting and company, Irving’s the sort of man who’s apt to say one of many different things. 'Salesman,' perhaps. Or 'entrepreneur.' Or, if he’s in the mood to joke around, anything from 'surgeon' to 'private investigator' to 'professional banjo player.'

Truthfully, he’s a highly successful white-collar criminal that’s lived his entire life on the fringes of the law, slipping in and out of whatever roles happen to suit his purposes.

Irving’s primary talent is his ability to win the trust of others. He doesn’t look shady—rather, he’s the very portrait of charming and witty, an easygoing conversationalist and dedicated listener. Years of experience have made him virtually fearless in social situations, feigning nervousness and embarrassment more often than he experiences them, chatting coolly with timid society women and hardened murderers alike. He’s decently perceptive and has a great memory, as well as a highly creative imagination, capable of drawing up elaborate explanations and backstories. He is, of course, an excellent liar.

It’s rare for him to tell the whole truth about anything. He knows the power even the smallest bits of information can have in the right hands, and thus feels far more comfortable spinning the facts of a situation in his favor through omission, embellishment, or outright invention. While he does enjoy seeing what fallacies he can pass off, that daring is tempered by the practical aspiration to not make enemies, a concern whose importance his now-arthritic shoulder serves as a frequent reminder of. He’s careful to leave people with a smidgen of doubt at the most, a suspicion or two that invites intrigue more than anger, while keeping an eye on potential escape routes should someone end up turning against him.

He has a certain degree of paranoia, one that compels him to hold on to his options. He revels in his diverse identities and financial pursuits because that is what freedom means to him—not being trapped by any particular set of circumstances. He’s experienced being poor, being injured, being on the lam with the law breathing down his neck, and in those times has always sought another face to wear, a means to start fresh. He maintains an odd balance between his genuine love of forming social connections and his desire to never be in too deep, wanting to have meaningful relationships while wanting to avoid the agony associated with terminating them. His romantic life is predominately physical for this reason, composed of intermittent flings with very little actual emotional intimacy. He’s in no way above using his attractive qualities to manipulate others, but as far as his life outside of work is concerned, he tends to make his preference for casual sex clear.

He does derive a good portion of his self-esteem from others’ perceptions of him, in spite of himself. He likes being liked and thought of as useful, as well as the sense of power that comes from being regarded with some surprise and consternation. He has few qualms about playing dirty when things get tough, but he isn’t purely a survivalist—he holds himself to standards of courtesy and style that rise beyond sheer pragmatism. It’s entirely possible for him to adopt a disguise and spend a fair amount of time seducing a secretary to sneak into a business even if holding a gun to her head would work just as well, simply because he finds the latter method too crude. He expended a lot of effort to keep himself from becoming stuck in the lower reaches of society, and he’d like to think himself above frequently having to resort to sheer violence and intimidation.

Aside from his appreciation of civility, however, Irving’s value system is mainly derived from capitalist principles. When it comes down to it, he places his own well-being over that of others, and tends to expect others to do the same in regards to him. He doesn’t think of people as inherently good or evil, and while he distinguishes himself from those not as socially talented, he is remarkably accepting and forgiving, recognizing that everyone has the capacity to do some nasty things under duress. Besides, he thinks, conditions are always shifting, and in his love of flexibility he has to be prepared to befriend tomorrow someone that might have wronged him today. To him, it’s not the most outspoken and overbearing that end up the most successful, but those who can change with the times, taking the most lucrative opportunities that happen to be available. It’s through this that he breaks with Andrew Ryan’s ideals, justifying his involvement in smuggling and thinking of most other lawbreakers as simply working to improve their situations in a less than socially acceptable manner. In spite of the economic freedom present in Rapture, Irving still feels the need to be involved in illegal endeavors, partly because of the potential profits and partly because he’s just so good at that sort of work—he appreciates the inherent challenge and thrill.

Irving is always pushing his own boundaries. He’s been hurt enough times to not be quite as audacious as he used to be, but he has enough experience and faith in himself to want to go further, to see if he can get away with a little more. He’s an eager and eclectic learner who savors the idea of heightening his skills, a socialite who loves encountering new personalities, and a businessman determined to exploit the opportunities he’s found.

And should his endeavors not mesh with the philosophy of some of Rapture’s elites, well. What they don’t know can’t bother them.

Abilities: - Irving has two plasmids: Houdini, which projects a cloud of reflective particles from his skin, enabling him to become nearly invisible, and Parasitic Healing, which equips his keratinocytes with the means of digesting some of the cells of whoever he happens to be touching, absorbing energy-laden molecules that boost his immune response. The latter plasmid has the added advantage of inhibiting many nociceptors, resulting in a numbing sensation that temporarily relieves his arthritis without the need for drugs.
- Irving is very, very socially savvy—he’s good at coming up with lies on the spot and expressing them flawlessly, as well as subtly persuading or extracting information from people. He can slip into a party full of individuals he barely knows, mingle without a hint of awkwardness and pick up enough details to construct an identity that gives him a perfectly legitimate reason to be there. He’s talented at altering his posture, gestures and other aspects of his appearance to be convincing, and can mimic a variety of different voices and accents. And as someone who’s spent so much time fooling others, he can be singularly difficult to fool—though whether he’ll call someone out as a liar or play along is another matter entirely.
- He has some technical interest in things like engines, firearms and radio. He’s thus pretty handy and a fairly accurate shot with a gun. He can also hack the Rapture hotline to a degree, enough that he can listen in on others’ conversations from time to time.

How did your character arrive in Rapture? He came of his own volition after being invited. Rapture was one of many transitions he’s made to escape some bad circumstances—with Adele hospitalized and himself struggling to reestablish himself, he welcomed a change of venue.

Network sample: [Irving’s never been a huge fan of broadcasting on the network—he knows from his own dabbling with his EZWave’s components that it’s anything but secure—but it’s high time that he started really bonding with some of the newcomers. Some of the ones he hasn’t yet spoken to could prove useful contacts in the future, after all. Or be attractive and female. The latter is an especially pleasant possibility.

He’s seated in an armchair in the foyer of the Adonis Resort, wearing a dark blue three-piece suit with the jacket hanging open. His posture is entirely casual and his smile bright, unafraid to face the camera eye with his charm turned up.]

Hi, everyone. So how have you new people been settling in? Had any bizarre experiences? I know there were a few things that shocked me after I first arrived, like the first time I saw one of the cops take down a guy with Electro Bolt. I was on my way home from the grocery store, and I swear I jumped a foot in the air and dropped my bags. It was just like a bad comedy sketch—the eggs broke open, the milk spilled everywhere, everyone started staring at me like I was off my rocker...

[He gives a pleasant laugh at the memory.] Ah, you get used to things soon enough. Even the plasmids. They seem dangerous as heck at first, especially when you look at the splicers, but those cases aren’t at all representative. I’ve seen the statistics. The way I think of it, they’re no different than any other addicts. There’s always going to be some alcoholics burning through their livers and brains while the rest of the population’s drinking casually without any trouble. So long as you don’t go overboard, you’ll be fine.

Besides, I wouldn’t have kept mine if they were really that unsafe. [He raises a hand and gives a little wiggle of his fingers, watching as a puff of reddish mist floats down, rendering his hand momentarily invisible. It fades back into view again like a picture coming into focus, and he smirks over at someone watching him from offscreen, waving politely to them before turning back to the camera.]

I’ve been here since Rapture’s opening, so if any of you need advice, I’m probably a good guy to ask. Of course, if you just want someone to hang out with, I’d be happy to oblige that, too. I go by Irving Adenauer. Feel free to send me a message over the network anytime.

Log sample: It’s cold down in the tunnels, bone-chillingly so. It’s easy to forget sometimes, walking through bright halls and passing amidst the heat of close-pressed bodies, about the pall of black, icy water covering the city, but here it’s apparent—enough that he can taste the salt as he turns up the collar of his overcoat, looking towards the men breaking crates with crowbars a few feet away.

It had been chance that’d brought him to this, a matter of being in the right place at the right time. He’d suspected, practically expected its existence, and he’d simply happened to be in a position to hear of it, sitting a table away from one of its frequent customers at the Central Square Bistro. After that, it’d taken a few conversations with the right people in the Drop to get himself hired into the business, and he’d found himself catering to an ever-expanding network of contacts, providing products they could find nowhere else. Just like the old days, really.

Some things are constant, he reflects, no matter where you are. Even in the most capitalist city on Earth, there are things that are and aren’t allowed. And people always want what they aren’t allowed to have.

The first crate comes open, the slats falling with a clatter to the steel walkway. Irving steps up and bends over to inspect the contents, smiling at what he sees—a stack of newspapers, sporting headlines from a few days ago. The top one is a New York Times describing tensions in Vietnam, and he makes a mental note to read it as one of the workers sets the stack aside. He likes to stay as caught up with world news as he can, even though there are so few people he can share it with, however enthralled he might be with the idea of the Soviets launching a satellite or the results of America’s hydrogen bomb tests. It makes him wonder, sometimes, about how people like Toporov and Delacroix might be doing, or even his own father, before he dismisses those idle musings as pointless.

Beneath the newspapers, there’s an assortment of records and rolls of film. Some of those rolls are likely newsreels, while some are surely movies. The genres vary, depending on the personal taste of whoever happened to pick them up—there was one shipment that was entirely Hitchcock films, while another smuggler was apparently into corny science fiction. One night when Irving and a few of his associates sat down to marathon Audrey Hepburn movies they discovered that someone had tossed a homemade film into the mix, becoming briefly captivated by the sight of a happy couple on a beach, grinning and laughing against a backdrop of rolling gray sea and pallid sky. Irving had stood motionless with his hand over the switch, staring at the woman’s shoulder-length curls, long enough that he’d begun recalling a similar set of curls made damp and dark with blood. He’d had to fetch himself a stiff drink afterwards.

The bottom of the crate is lined with books, mostly bibles. Irving thinks little of them, only calculates the price they might fetch. Some magazines are squeezed into a corner, and he reaches in to take up a small, nondescript box tucked beside them, taking off the top as one of the smugglers regards him curiously. He can guess by the shape what it might contain, and his guess proves true.

"Oh," he says, lifting out one of the cigars and holding it up to the dull light to inspect the label. "A Montecristo. Very nice."

He can feel the other smugglers’ eyes turn to him, and he smirks, crouching to check to see how many other boxes are mixed in. There’s about eight in total, enough to turn a substantial profit, and as he straightens again he tosses a cigar to each of the men, whose brows furrow in surprise.

"No arrests in the past ten months," he declares by way of explanation. "I think you deserve to celebrate."

He reaches into the pocket of his slacks to pull out his cutter and his lighter, watching the men’s faces light up as he touches the flame to the end of his own cigar and takes a drag, the smoke and satisfaction sweet on his tongue.

 
❖ OOC
Backtagging? Go right ahead. I can be slow, myself, so I'm fine with it.
Threadhopping? PM me first!
Fourthwalling? He's an OC, so this doesn't really apply.
Offensive subjects: I'm cool with pretty much anything, as is he.

❖ IC
Hugging this character? Yep! He enjoys affection--provided he doesn't suspect it's a ploy you're using to steal from him or knife him in the back--and will gladly return the embrace.
Kissing this character? Sure!
Flirting with this character? Go ahead! If you're female, trust me--he'll be flirting back.
Fighting with this character? If it's going to be intense and prolonged, I'd prefer if you asked first. Irving can defend and heal himself to a degree, but he'll be out of his league against someone with police, military, or similar experience.
Injuring this character? Open to it, but message me about anything major.
Killing this character? Message me please.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character? Message me first.
Anything else? Nope!