Profile

--CHARACTER REFERENCE SHEET--

BASIC DEMOGRAPHICS

Name: Lucas Ritter

Age: 18

Gender: Male

Species: Human

Languages: Fluent in English and German, speaks primarily English.

APPEARANCE

Height: 5'6"

Weight: On the lighter side of average.

Build: A bit awkward, but physically fit. He's clearly worked hard for much of his life, but perpetually looks a bit like he's still fitting into his features, or like he grew a lot in his early teen years and never fully caught up to it.

Skin: Caucasian, lightly freckled. Mixed Irish-German.

Hair: Mousey brown, cut somewhat short and messily kept. It frizzes in humidity and has a slight reddish tint at the ends from a long-faded dye job.

Eyes: Green, flecked with brown. They light up at the prospect of a new scheme or dangerous adventure.

Other traits: He's missing the pinky on his right hand, and judging from the bags under his eyes, looks like he hasn't slept in a week. Other than that, though, he's conventionally handsome, in a sort of tries-too-hard way.

Clothes: At the time of unconsciousness, Lucas was wearing dark grey slacks, a dark navy tie, dark grey suspenders, a grey vest, and a pale blue button-up shirt with the sleeves partway rolled up, accented with a grey fedora. As far as he knows, he's exceptionally stylish.

PHYSICALITY

Demeanor: For the most part, Lucas walks fairly confidently, not a full swagger but like someone who generally knows where he's going and has proper posture. When in an unfamiliar setting or uncomfortable, though, his posture worsens, and he tends to move more quickly and shrink into himself a bit, self-consciously. This is the ultimate contributor to his demeanor--if he feels ashamed or guilty or upset, he will shrink into himself more and more, taking up nervous habits like rubbing his arms and avoiding eye contact and in general seeming like a kicked dog. When he's feeling confident, though, or putting on a performance, when people are laughing or like him or he's with friends, he livens right up, moves a bit more dramatically and showily and with poise and a silky sort of grace. In short, the more he opens up to you, the more emotionally obvious he gets.

Speech patterns: Lucas's speech varies in subtle ways depending on the situation. He has a very mixed accent--a bit of German, some Midwest American, some upper class British, some Cockney--and at times one or the other can overpower his tone. For the most part he keeps a steady British-American mix which sounds calm and cool but still relatively fancy. When he's confident or excited it slips into something far more quick and casual, a barker's tone. (Sometimes too quick, and he'll babble and confuse poor listeners.) When he's angry or hurt it becomes more slang-heavy--'ain't's and 'wanna's and 'dontcha's abound. Finally, when he's around family or good friends the German comes out more, though he's gotten rusty over the years.

PERSONALITY

Overview: Lucas is a rather strange young man. For the most part, his personality is optimistic and silly and a bit impish--he thinks of himself as a genius wit and likes making other people laugh and having a good time, and occasionally getting up to adventures and shenanigans. He will help anyone in need and offer advice as needed, and will often go out of his way to stop a bad situation, even if he's slightly bitchy about it. This seeming heroism is countered badly, however, by his love of such questionable acts as pickpocketing and games of chance and scams. While he doesn't wish to see anyone get hurt and keeps a solid set of moral rules, he loves the game and making a sly few bucks on the side. He tends to be an idealist, wanting to keep people safe and help those in need but also having a deep love for adventure and turning a profit. He's a bit of a blathermouth and perpetually curious, eager to learn new things.

Internally, though, Lucas has some issues. He grew up in a rough household--overshadowed by his successful older siblings and neglected and oft ignored by his busy parents outside of troublemaking, he developed severe self-esteem issues and a habit of getting up to trouble for attention's sake. He tends to avoid actual friendships out of fear of getting hurt or people figuring out how worthless he is, but once he does get attached he's loyal as a dog. He thinks exceptionally lowly of himself and tends to take his failures and mistakes far too heavily and hold himself to too high standards. He's slightly paranoid, and actual compliments or kindness tend to weird him out, as he always suspects others of being up to something or out for their own gain.

Passions: Lucas has several passions, but his biggest is probably The Game. He views life almost like a big game, racking up points through helping people and making money and in general being successful. He's nuts for a challenge and rarely turns down a dare. His other passions include proving himself, going on adventures, making others laugh and have a good time (while he makes off with their wallets), and radio dramas and comics about superheroes or science fiction.

Fears: Lucas's main fear, which he has resigned himself to, is being a failure and disappointing people. He hates the thought of being hated and alone, of being worthless and pathetic, and of ruining things for other people or hurting them. Worse, he fears that this is the sort of person he'll always be, that he's a walking plague who brings nothing but suffering and burdens to those he cares about. He is terrified of abandonment and rejection. Other than that, the dark makes him slightly uncomfortable, and he tends to get uneasy around weapons, especially guns and the like.

He also dislikes horses and water. He can't swim, and considers horses to be oversized, panicky, stupid creatures.

Strengths: Lucas has several skills accumulated from both an adventurous life and a love of reading. He knows how to cook, pick locks, use a pistol and a carbine, trick people out of their money, rig card games, and several methods of hand-to-hand combat and techniques, on top of fistfuls of more random, minor skills. He's handsome and can be charming and witty when he puts his mind to it. He's tricky and a good liar, great at working his way out of a bad situation. He's optimistic, has a good sense of humor, and is a hard worker. For the most part, at least when it gets down to it, he's a good person and decent at making friends and helping others in whatever way he can. Real selfless bloke, in some ways. He's a workaholic and tends to give his all in projects, often driving himself to the point of exhaustion to make things work. Mostly, though, he's tenacious to hell and back; when he's determined, hell or high water won't stop him.

His latest job, finally, has given him a bit of experience with magical artifacts, but he's still very new to the field.

Weaknesses: First off, Lucas is entirely human. No special abilities, no powers, nada. He's physically fit and can handle a weapon, but prefers not to, and supernatural stuff and modern stuff weirds him out appropriately. He's more likely to point and go 'YOU'RE A WIZARD' than actually help a wizard.

Other than that, his main weaknesses is that he has cripplingly low self-esteem and is a bit clingy; while he can laugh off most insults good-naturedly, and he's certainly not going to be spending his entire time feeling sorry for himself, he will do what he can to protect those close to him and is often disgusted at himself and his failures, a fact that he represses heavily. He is curious and often meddling, and tends to act recklessly. He's bad at turning down a dare or challenge, he's idealistic, and he's painfully insecure. Next, in spite of his own skill at lying and trickery, he's pretty easy to abuse or manipulate--once he does let someone get close, he is almost blindly loyal to them and will do just about whatever it takes to protect them and keep them as a friend or just have them not reject him. More often than not, he will shrug off any abuses happening to his own person. (Mess with a friend, however, and you are dead, thank you very much.)

Quirks:

- He tends to talk fast when excited or happy. As a part-time snake oil salesman, he can talk very fast.

- Lucas has a thing for noir detectives and enjoys pursuing the work himself, on and off, in his free time. To others, this is just seen as paranoid and conspiracy-theory-making. Details. He dreams of being one someday, and if he does it'll be his Big Break. He'll go straight as an arrow and be liked by everyone except criminals and be able to afford cake every day.

- Lucas is an avid reader and will happily take in any book tossed his way. As such, he has a surprising amount of mental fun facts and random knowledge.

- While he does speak German, he hasn't in years and it's a little rusty. He tends to forget more unusual words and speak with a clipped and robotic language style lacking much in the way of casual slang.

HISTORY

Dream: Lucas dreams fairly normally. He has a high ratio of nightmares, but they're mostly incoherent if not silly in real life--things like trying to get up stairs while being up able to control his limbs, wandering through a house full of bugs, and being chased by a witch. They tend to make no sense and have no real reason, and only vague ties to his real life.

Homeworld: Lucas currently lives in Maine, year 1933. However, he's traveled around a lot, and spent a long amount of time in London before being drawn back to the US he was born in. There are rumors and mention of magic, but these are mostly superstition and hardly important.

Family/Friends: Lucas is fairly bad at keeping friends in the long term due to his frequent moving about, and mostly refers to them casually--Darla, Charlene, those three Irish ladies, and so on. He does have a pretty large family, though, boasting four siblings, a father, and a stepmother. Or... had, I suppose. Lucas was estranged from them after a rather nasty falling-out that came about from their father's lavish business being exposed as a pyramid scheme and his resulting fleeing the country. Lucas has tried a few times to re-establish a relationship with them, but he hasn't been very successful.

History: Lucas was born to Hans and Felicia Ritter in 1914. He had two older siblings--Daniel Ritter, age nine, and Lydia Ritter, age six. In spite of being awkwardly German in a pre-WWI US, by the time Lucas was born Hans had already established a rapidly-rising travel business, and he and Felicia were perpetually busy traveling about and juggling investments. This left little time for a growing baby Lucas, who quickly grew to understand that between work and his own lack of real special talents or school-based aptitude compared to his brilliant siblings... well, the only way to get noticed was to take action. He rapidly established himself as a loud troublemaker and perpetual meddler, the latter of which wasn't helped by his natural curiosity and desire to one day be a detective.

When Lucas was six, increasing arguments and tension between Hans and Felicia culminated in a divorce, with Felicia leaving the family and taking half the business profits with. Hans took this as a sound moral lesson and remarried a woman considerably younger, more attractive, and more eager to raise children than involve herself in business and politics. (With the minor side-effect of being exceptionally critical and perfectionist of her kids.) This resulted in two baby sisters for Lucas--Bridgette and Amanda.

Over time, the point of original conflict between Hans and Felicia slowly came to light: much of Hans's business was a form of complex pyramid scheme, which involved such gems as convincing people to invest in companies that didn't exist and get paid only based on recruitments and promises to maybe someday turn a profit. Eventually the entire thing unraveled, and the business was closed and assets seized. This left Hans with a tricky decision, whether to stay and bear through the fallout with his family, or to flee and hideout with an emergency fund.

And so Lucas, then fifteen, rapidly found himself the new head of the household.

Daniel followed the example of his father and left for his own means, while Lydia preoccupied herself with trying to build up and patch up what remained of the family business. This left Lucas, a Catholic school drop out, with two child siblings, an increasingly hysterical stepmother, and a media circus eager to see the fallout of a once almost household famous name. Panicked, he packed up his baby sisters, stole a considerable amount of money, and skipped town like a rat leaving a sinking ship.

As it turns out, unfortunately, a few hundred dollars doesn't get very far even in the Depression. The siblings struggled for a while, Lucas turning to acts of pickpocketing and thievery and conning to make ends meet. (Never begging, though, never that far down.) Soon enough he got the hang of it, and they floated along relatively okay... at least, up until Lucas got cocky with a scam and ended up spending a week in jail. When he returned, his sisters were missing, and he spent a great deal of time panicking and trying to hunt them down. Eventually, fortunately, he found they had been discovered by his older sister, Lydia, who was slowly patching together and restoring the Ritter business with some help from those eager to leave the US and a few, more subtly shady deals.

After the incident, Lucas realized he was unfit to raise two young girls, and his terror of nearly losing them again made him hesitant to take them back from his sister. On Lydia's advice, he went on a journey to find himself, and to get away from the past. He took odd jobs, learning new things and having fun and getting up to adventures. Mostly things like cooking at a diner and selling snake oil, but he once befriended the wealthy heir to a vast airship industry, which resulted in a few delicious months living the high life before he realized he was being used as almost an indentured slave. Tired of lying and reinventing himself into someone likeable, Lucas started on the path to trying to become a private eye. So far, he's been unable to turn a profit off it and has been selling snake oil again to make ends meet, but he's confident that he can do it. And once he can, he's putting up the scams for good, going straight as can be. He'll be the best detective EVER.

Sleeping: Lucas was investigating a new case he got, courtesy of a mysterious cult trying to find a missing member who ran off with some mystical artifact. Alliteration aside, he was making good progress and was staking outside an apartment he thought the missing woman was hiding out in. Three cigarettes later, just as he was about to doze off, he became aware of the dizzying sparkly sensation that comes with a bit of magic. All he saw was a rather large, dark shape covered with dully glowing blue symbols.

He has a bad feeling about this case.

SKILLS

Primary Skills: Lucas's primary skill is his sleight of hand and deception. He can steal the wristwatch off your wrist and sell it back to you, and can make a bag of junk look like diamonds. He's fast-talking and quick-thinking, knowledgeable and maybe a bit impish.

Other than that, he's handy with and unfortunately has experience with small arms, though he prefers to not use them. He's good at hand-to-hand combat (mostly because he fights dirty), and is able to keep calm in a bad situation and think practically and beg and fight and run his way out of it. He's a good talker, and knows when and how to back off, generally. (Sometimes his pride or deductive mind, however, get the best of him. On at least one occasion he's started prattling off as the pieces fit together, only to realize at the end they fit together in a way that doesn't make the person he's talking to look terribly great. This is usually followed by a dull, "...shit.")

Combat: Lucas prefers not to fight, instead trying to talk problems out or work things out in a calm and reasonable and occasionally only slightly deceptive manner. He really, really prefers not to draw weapons, as that makes things escalate way too quickly.

When pushed into a fight, though, he will fight quick and dirty and hard. He'll try to disable his opponent, going for the nose or throat if he likes you, eyes or crotch if he doesn't. He knows a few fancy moves, such as suplexes and headlocks and how to get someone on the ground and pin them, but those are more showy than anything; when actually fighting to win, he will forgo theatrics and just seek to get that person on the ground and out, or at least stunned enough to allow him to run.

Weapons/Gear: Lucas has a gun tucked into the inside of his shirt, in a little holster. It's a Colt Model 1873 (a revolver), and he keeps it unloaded, but with ammo in his right pocket. It's best not to ask why he feels the need to keep it on hand. Other than that, he has a deck of cards, a bit of cash, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and some gum.

Unusual Abilities: He can juggle, like, up to seven items at once. And he does the best brooding noir mental narrative, you should hear it.