The Database

[DocTachyon]

:Name: Walter Baucher

:Age: 28

:DOB: March 3rd

:Appearance:


Walter is wheelchair bound due to a slight defect in his brain, and looks like an ex-hippie, in the way that he probably had some beef with authority at some point or another that has since been abandoned. His appearance gives off an almost ex-hippie vibe, despite never having any interest in flowers or cannabis. He wears almost exclusively Hawaiian shirts, mostly because they’re comfortable, and they piss his adopted son off. He keeps his long blond hair tied into a ponytail as he can’t be assed to cut it, as well as maintaining a thin line of stubble. He wears a pair of marginally dirty spectacles that look to be at least ten years old. His hands are lightly tobacco stained from rolling his own cigarettes, and he often smells faintly of the smoke. The most succinct way to describe his appearance in general would be ‘Perpetual Hangover’.

:Race:
Conduit

:Powers:
High level electrokinetic, ala Cole MacGrath.

:Power Level: Tier 1

:Power Abilities:
Walter’s electrokinetic abilities are extremely powerful, bordering on the level of Cole McGrath’s. However, at best, he can only manifest these abilities in the form of a quick, harmless static shock. All the energy that would otherwise be used to make him a devastatingly powerful electric conduit is instead devoted to keeping a rapidly growing, malignant brain cancer at bay. This devotion of power renders him unable to use his abilities in any significant fashion, even if he willed himself to. However, his abilities and the cancer are now at a perfect stalemate, the cancer is almost frozen in its advancement.

:Skills:
-Master Hacker
-Information Gathering Skills
-Tough negotiator
-Very good vocal command, able to hide emotions, and to some degree, impersonate others - in the right environment, anyway.
-Does a tobacco addiction count as a skill?

:Equipment:
-A wheelchair
-Laptop complete with a full communications suite, crammed full of as much powerful hardware as would fit - plus a few dozen terabytes worth of storage.
-A Desktop resides at his home, which easily dwarfs his Laptop in terms of power.
-He keeps a Pistol on hand for sticky situations, but he hasn’t had to use it - yet. He has a single mag of corrupted shard bullets, just in case.
-Makes a handy profit through the stock market. He’s not rich, but he has enough money that he can freely use some to grease some uncooperative people’s wheels.

:Personality:
Walter generally comes off as a laid back guy, if you don’t pay attention to what he’s actually saying. His physical mannerisms indicate a defeated man who has run out of shits to give, living day to day by chain smoking and browsing Reddit. In reality, Walter is deeply in tune with the city - it’s major happenings, anyways. He makes it a point to stay consistently up to date with any news, especially that regarding power plays and other moves made by the factions vying for control of the city. He plays it off as nothing more than an intellectual challenge and an interest - but in reality, he believes that as a conduit, he has a target on his back. His hacks and attempts to gather information are deterrents for anyone that might consider screwing with him or his son. He knows that some of the information he holds has the potential to turn the tides on conflicts, practically on a whim, but he’s extremely cagey with it, only saving it for his personal use. This refusal to use information to help people is a point of contention between himself and Randall. He tries to appear as though he has everything under control, but at any given moment, he has the soul crushing feeling that the city is falling apart in his hands, and he can’t do anything to stop it. His sense of humor is extremely dry, and he often finds himself going out of his way to get rises out of people - the fact that he does so irritates him. He’s insecure about his relationship with his son, and puts up a barrier of cynical jokes and preoccupation. With others, Walter tends to be quiet, but tries to speak powerfully and succinctly when he deems it necessary, typically to ruthlessly remind someone that he isn’t just shit on their heel. He finds himself in fear a large majority of the time, fear of what might happen to him, to Randall. He finds moments of joy in positive interactions with his son, and in doing what he loves, hacking. With most people he appears to be a badass hardline negotiator, but to the people he finds himself forced to service he often appears as almost a pushover.

:Faction:
Information Broker who holds a tense relationship with most factions

:Biography:
Walter was born to two ex-Hippies in the back of a van somewhere in the Nevada desert. They were, of course, perplexed that their new baby’s legs wouldn’t work.
After a few long, emotionally draining weeks in the Hospital, the Doctors informed Walter’s parents that their child would never walk. There was a defect in his brain that would prevent the bio electricity and chemicals that the brain runs on from communicating with the region of the brain that controls leg movement. This same defect would probably lead to brain cancer at some time between age eighteen to twenty. Due to the nature and location of this defect, the cancer would be largely untreatable, and all they’d really be able to do is give him chemo to help him squeeze a few more years out of life. His parents scraped together what little money they had to move the family to Empire City, where the eventual chemo treatments would be the cheapest, and so, Walter would spend his formative years crammed into a one bedroom apartment with his parents.
As a young boy he was fairly unremarkable, but he did grow up in a tough neighborhood due to the lacking economic situation his his family. Being unable to physically defend himself from bullies, thieves, and other scum, and so he developed a sharp wit and a sharper attitude. He would wear the formerly insensitive and cruel nickname "Wheels" as a badge of honor. As his intelligence blossomed and he grew more adept at cutting down any adversaries that would cross his path, and they grew to be almost boring to deal with. An intellectual challenge at best, not something meaningful. He eventually entered conflict with both his parents and teachers, a more valuable pursuit. To his mind, he had a short time to live - why should he be spending it in school, being talked down to like a child, learning things he'd never grow old enough to apply? A sentiment which, a little more than a decade ago, his parents would've agreed with. They saw value for Walter in an education that they'd never had a chance at, and felt obligated to make him take it.
At this point in his life, Walter held very little value in virtually anything in his life, because he was caught up in its ephemeral nature. They couldn't exactly punish him, whether it be by grounding him or taking away his possessions, because anything they'd do, Walter would simply accept as the trimming of fat from his life, a life that he was entirely as fat. They instead went the opposite direction and enrolled him in everything they could afford, in an effort to try to help him find something of meaning to him.
Being practically tied to a wheeled metal chair, there was little available to him, but still, his parents tried. Walter's life at this point mostly consisted of botched painting classes and uniquely terrible renditions of classical music on an assortment of instruments. He probably would have continued this way until the grim reaper came knocking, but his parents stretched their budget and put him in a Computer Programming class at the local community center. He was initially as jaded and cynical about it was he was about everything else, but the more he learned the more value he saw in it. Inherently, the lines of code he input into a computer weren't ephemeral. Paintings could be destroyed, sheet music could be lost and the notes never heard again. Even he could simply expire at any time due to the unfortunate circumstances of his birth. But a program was forever, ever living, ever changing. Even if the original computer was destroyed, or the original host, the code would live through the network. Even if it was forever iterated upon, even if eventually it would be made obsolete, it would still exist. And so in programming, Walter found meaning.
As he grew more and more, approaching his estimated time of death, Walter's knowledge grew. He learned as much as he could about the slowly growing computer industry. Coding, file architecture, hardware, and interworkings of processors, everything that he could. He sought an application, some life's work that would help the burning desire he had to use his code for something. He eventually dedicated his efforts to protesting the Bush's response to the 9/11 terror attacks as a young adult. He went to college on a scholarship to study computer science, and spent a large amount of his time rallying what of the internet that he could against the Bush administration's actions. It was at this time Walter truly learned about hacking. He used it enough to garner the attention of a few White Hat hackers who shut his shit down very quickly. Since the laws weren't very developed at the time regarding hacking and computers, Walter got off with a slap on the wrist and a reasonably sized fine - but it was the first time someone had ever truly beaten him. Sure, he'd lost at things before. The occasional trivia game at school, not being selected for the Valedictorian, and certainly his loss at the working pair of legs lottery, but nothing like this. Something targeted, something that screamed "We're better than you".
Walter decided he was above petty and going for revenge. He'd spent several years criticizing Bush for doing just that - plus a fake nuclear warhead story, anyway. He decided instead to focus his efforts on self improvement. He'd be better than the White Hats who busted him, even if they'd never know it. He stayed in Empire, honing his craft and trying to improve as a person. Despite the things he'd done with his hacks, he still felt like something was missing. Gone were his struggles with his short life, and truly, his underlying desire to live forever. He finally truly accepted his death, but in that, he needed to search for what value was left in life. It was that year that his brain cancer first appeared. After a few months that were a blur of chemo, cigarettes, and copious amounts of alcohol, he was determined to get his life in order before he expired. He kicked the alcohol, but couldn't quite kick the cigarettes. He got back into hacking - but this time, as a White Hat, doing the right thing for the right people.
But still, he felt his impact was lacking. Encryption and setting up firewalls for hapless businessmen having their first foray into the computer world was somewhat of a noble trade, but it didn't give him the drive he once felt. He wanted to really help someone before he passed on. At that time his financial situation was stable, and he decided he was ready for a child.
He adopted a boy, named Randall. He tried to be the best role model he could for the child, but struggled at it. He was a recluse with minimum social skills who had only survived up to this point through being a determined douchebag. He was himself as a failure of a father, someone who couldn't give his son the compassion that a child needs growing up. The understanding, having his first steps with him. He wanted it badly, but didn't feel as though he could have it.
When the ray-sphere blast occurred, as much as things changed, many stayed the same. Upon waking up, both he and Randall found themselves to be conduits. Himself as what appeared to be a very, very minor electrokinetic ability, and Randall with extremely odd candy-based powers. Randall was excited by their new abilities, but for once in his life, Walter truly felt fear. He was afraid of death in the abstract, but the Ray-Sphere blast opened his eyes to what terror really was. The blast made bad people have too much power. People who would come for him because he was a conduit. His son. He couldn't let that happen.
In the early weeks of the aftermath, Walter painstakingly constructed an information network. He would hack filecenters, tap into CCTV cameras, and prowl internet forums. Anything that would allow him to gather glimmers of information on other conduits. His files grew and grew, until he had a veritable library on the Conduits of Empire City. His information was more specific on some than others, sure, but he was damned proud of his achievement. To make sure he could use it to protect his son, he encrypted the data to the best of his ability. Without the password, it would take even the best code breaking bot hundreds of years to unlock his secrets. The only way to it was through him. To stay afloat in this new world, he'd trade data anonymously with the factions that seemed to have supplanted law and order in the city. Typically only tidbits, but he would still bring in enough money from his bits and pieces.
He'd hoped to never have to go any farther than that. Even the little bits he released would ruin lives. Pieces would fall into place, and another faction would steal a conduit away in the night. It was dirty business, but it had to be done. For Randall. They were lucky to have not been discovered. Until Randall got careless.
It was a stupid fluke. A quick, almost imperceptible use of his power in public. But it was enough. The Templars had their scent. Dmitri's dogs found Walter's home in days. The man himself insisted on making an appearance for the cleansing. It was rare to be able to kill two conduits at once. But Walter's purpose for the database had come to fruition. The negotiations lasted for hours. Dmitri threatening to kill him, his boy. The intimidation tactics. Walter still sometimes wakes in a cold sweat with the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils and the taste of blood in his mouth, remembering that night. But he did it.
He would reveal the location of two conduits per week to Dmitri's forces. No exceptions. Or Dmitri would return, and Randall would start losing fingers.

:Roleplay Sample:
“Knew the rollers were always ‘fuckin better…” Walter mumbled to himself. He clicked through pages of an internet forum, taking long drags off a Marlboro. Tobacco for rolling was too damn hard to get these days, anyway. It was either a pack of crap like this from the dinky 7-11 on the corner, or he’d have to wheel himself into Reaper territory and get thirty guys hocking heroin at him, when all he wants is a good goddamn smoke.
Walter’s eyes squinted to read the text from the dust covered monitor, a post about a conduit sighting somewhere in the Warren. He clicked away from it - most of the information on the site was crap anyway, but there were enough occasional gems to justify the crawl through. Still, even if this particular thing were true, the Templars’d kill the poor bastard before he even had the chance to think about selling him out. He took another long drag of the cigarette, closing his eyes and enjoying the smoke rushing into his lungs.
He breathed it out in a low sigh, and his eyes slowly turned to the clock. It was getting to be the afternoon. He couldn’t much tell time of his own accord anyhow, too many nights of alternating Red Bull and smokes had long since damaged his internal clock.
“Randall!” He yelled. “Get up. Time for work.”

[Gormakid]

Approved!