John Chester Ripley
Missing persons
Tragic answers
Haunted dreams
(a.k.a. Ripley)
"'Ello Sir! Can I int'rest you in any of my fine jewels or trinkets?"
"No."
"Are you sure? They're quite 'andsome, a man like yo'self ought to 'ave a nice lady to impress?"
"No."
"Bit lonely then, ain't we? Jewels cheer me up!"
"No."
-Ripley's conversation with a street merchant, 48th of the Month of Hooks, 1160
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Not particularly fit, or agile. Ripley's tall, thin, gangly form seems as though he may fade away at any moment.
Body Features
Pale skin, moderate body hair
Facial Features
Bearded, Sleep-deprived
Identifying Characteristics
Ripley has a mark on his left thigh that was placed upon him before he can remember. The mark is complex in nature and bares obvious signs of "witchcraft" or magical origin. After Ripley experiences a vision, the mark often flares and causes Ripley considerable pain. If one thing might give away his identity, it may be the intense gripping of the mark on his left leg.
Physical quirks
Right-handed, poor posture
Special abilities
Ripley has "the Sight". His ability to glance into to the future has been with him since the development of his awareness in his teenaged years. These abilities were eventually honed through magic training and later in life allow Ripley to be a particularly capable private investigator around Brigands' Landing.
Apparel & Accessories
Ripley is always finely dressed, despite his low funds. His clientele demand a certain dignity from those they bestow their coin.
Specialized Equipment
Flintlock Pistol: Though Ripley is capable of great feats of magic, to cast a spell in public in Brigands' Landing is suicide. So to allow Ripley to maintain a legal form of self-protection, he carries with him a loaded one-shot flintlock pistol. This pistol is used more an enforcement tool than a killing machine.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
No record of a family named Ripley exists within Brigands' Landing, nor has there ever been one. The knowledge concerning the conception, birth, and initial existence of John Chester Ripley is absent, along with his supposed ancestors. It is no supplement to the matter that Mr. Ripley himself has no recollection of his early childhood. He recalls that he certainly had a family, and that they disappeared. From that point on, his memory is inconsistent, blurred by the numbing effect which the mind uses to protect itself from only the most traumatic events. Rain is the one constant of his mind's few clear recollections of the past. Rain, and the eternally drowned cobblestone streets of the Landing.
In his youth, about the age of 13, Ripley's memories begin to take shape. He recalls the other street-children of the Landing, and a mutual mistrust and hatred between the violent youth gangs and himself: an outsider. Around this time, Ripley was forced to a hideous understanding of his supernatural abilities. One fateful evening, by which Ripley would define himself for years to come, as he approached his own hard-won dry spot under the dubious shelter of a small tree, which had only that year grown large enough to block any of the unceasing rain, another boy attempted to mug him at knife-point. The boy became impatient with Ripley's stunned silence and lunged with the knife for Ripley's neck, at which Ripley instinctively shouted a word of power. A syllable of power really, not a true Word, but enough to invoke his latent magical talent. Untrained magical abilities can be devastatingly dangerous in volatile children, especially when awakened during moments of trauma and fear. The spell, though primal and formless, was lethal. The other boy was hurled backwards, crashing brutally against a wooden shopfront, and lay ridden with internal wounds so horrific they caused him to bleed out within a few terrifying moments, for both himself and his killer. Panicking and near madness, Ripley fled the scene, a murderer.
The unintended slaying of another human being caused Ripley to become fearful of his own capabilities, but was determined to find a way to improve himself with them. He began to focus his energies internally, and through four years of discipline and meditation, Ripley achieved a state of heightened awareness. Ripley's mind expanded with the first understandings of magic's place in his existence. He began to perceive tiny snatches of the future. Only tiny glimpses; a color, a spoken word, a particular rain-slick alley. These images meant nothing to him at first until he began to recognize them in his waking hours, and with practice he was eventually able to pull the occasional detail from such visions with total clarity.
This ability proved most fateful when a seventeen year-old Ripley warned a passerby that he "should stay on the left side of the street." The man was puzzled and dubious, but the grave manner and tone of Ripley's warning convinced him. The man crossed the street, and continued on his way, sparing a glance or two back at the odd young gentleman. As he did so, as if on queue for a stage performance, a weathered old brick from the nearest building on his right came crumbling down to the cobblestone below with a tremorous crunch, landing exactly where the man would have been walking had he continued without crossing. With a newfound curiosity, the man glanced back at his young soothsayer. Ripley gave a knowing smile and began to carry on his way. As he turned to leave, Ripley started to see that the man was suddenly in front of him again, which was surely impossible, somehow having traversed the hundred yards or so in an instant and without being seen.
Now that he was closer, Ripley took stock of the man - old, tremendously old, but still vital; draped in an aged travel cloak of deep-sea blue, which had clearly been patched and repaired many times; brilliant blue eyes that sparkled with an inner light, set in a face creased by laughter and weather in equal measure. The man's mystical gaze pierced into Ripley's mind, and suddenly the young vagabonds' surroundings changed. One instant the two were facing each other on a crowded street, the next they were drifting through an arcane abyss of formless light and color, the imperceptible depths of which Ripley felt innately terrified of and drawn to simultaneously. He could hear, not with his ears but with his soul, the sound of the universe's blood circulating, and the unbridled primal force of it threatened to sweep him up and carry him helplessly across un-reality. The man's brilliant blue gaze was constant, and Ripley instinctively knew he must remain within it. It took a strange sort of willpower to remain stationary within the abyss, an effort Ripley subconsciously recognized from fleeing horrors in his nightmares, but somehow he managed to prevent himself from being torn away by the aetherous current. The sub-aural roar of the magical torrent increased, and Ripley tried frantically to signal to the man that his strength was failing, but like those terrible dreams he found himself unable to cry out or run, and now he could feel himself slipping-
As quickly as the harrowing experience had begun, it ended - Ripley found himself back on the rainy street of Brigands' Landing, screaming at the top of his lungs. The old man was still there, doubled over laughing, and passers-by were giving them an increasing berth and cock-eyed stares as Ripley continued to howl for a moment or two before regaining his composure. As the two men, who were seperated by centuries of age but united by this strangeness, settled themselves, Ripley finally ordered his thoughts enough to ask "What the...where did we...who are you?"
"My name is Cornelius Kreaver," the old man twinkled, "and I am a wizard." Then he leaned in, and staring into Ripley's eyes with that same steely, omnipotent gaze, "You are John Chester Ripley, and you are a natural. Do you have any idea what happens to the minds of most mortals when confronted by the raw aether? You should be howling at the moon and throwing your own shit, if you'll pardon my Retaxi, but you're fine aren't you? You're even more curious than before, I can see it in your eyes. Come with me then, chap. There's more for you in life than the soaking streets of this den of thieves."
From that day on, Ripley no longer lived on the streets or stole for his supper. He prepared meals for himself and his mentor with food they bought with the proceeds from Cornelius' work as a private investigator. Ripley spent his days receiving a true wizards education from the texts that Cornelius had collected throughout his years travelling the known world, but always with the admonition of secrecy. Though there were no laws against it (there are no laws at all in Brigands' Landing), the practice of magic was one of the swiftest ways to draw the attention of the Coinlords, Cornelius admonished him, and must be concealed at all costs while within their domain. Apart from his seriousness when discussing the finer points of magical safety or avoiding the wrath of the Coinlords, Cornelius was a humorous man, or at least Ripley found him to be, though their raucous laughter would often draw a raised eyebrow from eavesdroppers. The old man would reminisce some evenings about the "fair maidens" he had so heroically rescued in his youth, often divulging a curvacious detail or two which never failed to embarrass even the street-hardened young Ripley. He used queer, outdated sayings, and his strange rambling stories ever were simultaneously spellbinding, and sleep-inducing. For Ripley, Cornelius was the closest thing to family he ever knew.
By the time Ripley was reaching adult hood, the Whaler's War was in full fury. During these dark days, for reasons he would not explain, Cornelius had been disappearing for days at a time, often arriving home in the dead of night, unshaven and disheveled. Ripley began to develop a omnipresent anxiety, as his visions had given him no insight about what Cornelius was up to, until one night Ripley suffered a most disturbing nightmare. The collectors had appearing like phantoms out of the rain-slick darkness of the Landing at night, invaded their home, and murdered Cornelius and himself, slitting their throats.
Ripley woke up with a jolt; everything felt wrong. He got out of bed and ran to the door of his room. He could hear Cornelius whimpering through the wooden walls as he approached. "...Please, I beg of you...", groaned Cornelius, "I can pay, I can find them...I just need a few more days. A week at most, please - tell Mr. DeVries-" Cornelius' voice pinched and halted, as if something heavy had just pressed on his throat.
Ripley felt ice in his heart, and his entire body began to tremble. He could tell Cornelius had fallen to the floor, and his magical awareness perceived that his beloved mentor was inches from death. Then a very coarse and icy voice spoke, and the words seemed to hang on the air like a killing frost, "We both know it has nothing to do with the amount you owe, though that's no small factor. You should have known where to stop, when to let it go. Mr. DeVries doesn't have time for nosy pricks like you fucking everything up!" The bloody choking and gurgling sounds that followed were far too much for Ripley to bear.
In a blind rage he burst through the door to see a man in dark clothes choking the last breath from Cornelius battered form. A few more brutish men entered the house, holding buckets of oil and fresh torches. Ripley's young mind was almost caving in on itself. The horror - his only family, his home, he would have cried but it seemed he could not utter a sound. "Why didn't I move sooner?" Ripley screamed in his mind, "I could have saved him!" And yet, that same paralysis overcame him again even as his heart demanded he conjure up a seething witch-fire and condemn the intruders all to incineration.
The harsh, dark men laughed at the sight of him. A pale wisp of a man, barely old enough for a beard to shadow his cheek, in his pajamas, dumbstruck with fear and shock. "What do we have here? Didn't know the old codger had a boy-toy," said one of the men holding torches.
"I've got an idea," his superior said, "You understand me, boy?"
Ripley nodded, almost involuntarily. His mind flared again with images of killing them all. He knew he probably could, and if he failed, what would it matter? They were surely about to murder him anyway.
"Good...", the superior man, a tall, wolfish rogue with merciless black eyes rummaged in his pack and pulled out a yellowed piece of paper, folded and creased several times. It had obviously been in his pack for some time. He unfolded it passed it to Ripley, "Now you can take on your uh.. whatever he is to you..", he glanced down at Cornelius' body, "..you can sign this here contract, inherit his debts, and we'll just walk right out of here...or we can lock you in, and you can burn to death while we torch the place. Your choice." The men sniggered, as Ripley's frayed sanity struggled to consider his options.
"I don't have a pen," Ripley said blankly.
The wolfish man grinned a predators' smile, "So you accept?" With a deft whirl, the man drew a small knife, and Ripley thought he meant to eviscerate him after all, but then he tossed the knife and caught the blade, holding the worn whalebone handle out to Ripley. "We don't sign with ink, boy."
Ripley meekly took the knife, his hands still cold and shaking. He paused a moment, memorizing their brutish faces. Facing the leader, Ripley imagined jabbing the knife into the man's eye - but he turned the point and pierced the skin of his own thumb, pressing the crimson well of blood to the fiendish contract. By his very blood, he signed his life away, as though some primal section of his human nature was forcing him to choose life though he yearned for death.
The wolfish man chuckled gleefully, "Oh ho my boy, we're going to be great pals you and I. The name's Doyle, Edwin Doyle, don't you forget it, because now I get ten percent of what your dead boyfriend owed Mr. DeVries. So you'd best not be missing any payments, because I can't be pals with loafers who don't pay their debts." Doyle's wolf eyes flicked to the knife in Ripley's hand, but his smile remained just as unsettling, "You keep that, little souvenir. It's real whale-bone, you know? But like I said, we'll be coming around to collect and, well -" he gestured to indicate the barrels of oil and torches, "I'd rather we stay pals." The men left without another word, disappearing into the darkness from which they came, leaving Ripley to mourn the bloody demise of the only family he'd ever known.
Many years have passed since then, and the war has ended. Ripley still lives in Cornelius' home, utilizing his vast repertoire of arcane knowledge to continue Cornelius' trade of working as a private investigator. Ripley's magical capabilities make him by far the most conclusive investigator that operates within Brigands' Landing, though there are others who seek to claim his notoriety for their own. Ripley's reputation for achieving results has put him at the top of Tybalt Rembini's list of specialized collectors, who are employed when more mundane methods of tracking debts are unsuccessful. Ripley's dependence on the Coinlords contributes to his survivor's guilt, and he still harbors designs of revenge against them.
Sexuality
Heterosexual
Employment
For the last few decades, Ripley has been employed by the likes of Tybalt Rembini to conduct investigations on their behalf. This has proved profitable and disturbing for Ripley in some cases. However, Ripley seems entirely drawn to this line of work like an addiction.
Mental Trauma
Being an orphan, Ripley has suffered significant mental derangement. His traumas, however, do seem to be the source of his high IQ and portentous abilities. Ripley regularly dreams vivid nightmares; foreseeing his own death in unique ways each night. Albeit, these subconscious predictions of is own death have never come to fruition. Ripley finds this especially troubling, due to the accuracy of his wakeful predictions. He believes it is only a matter of time before he views his true demise, only to enact it in pure ignorance of its finality until it is too late. Just as it had happened with Cornelius.
Intellectual Characteristics
The capability to correlate the mass contents of reality is not always as positive as one may believe. Ripley's high intelligence is almost crippling as he finds himself overthinking constantly. This gives him a negative outlook and a constant sense of foreboding.
Social
Contacts & Relations
Tybalt Rembini - Secretary of Coin Lords
Renzo "the Cat" De Fiori (Confidential Informant)
-AKA "The Black Cat of Brigands' Landing"
Family Ties
Ripley has no knowledge of who is family was, where he comes from, or why he is alone.
Cornelius Kreaver was the closest thing Ripley had to a family, as he inherited his belongings upon his death.
Speech
Ripley's speech is low, thought-out, and filled with wit. He doesn't always choose to speak but when he does so others find themselves more uneasy than if he had remained quiet.
Created by Leland.the.Wizard, Co-created/Editied by Dancylad
Artwork by Daniel Kataiev
Current Location
Species
Honorary & Occupational Titles
"That Weirdo"
Year of Birth
1117 ENL
51 Years old
Birthplace
The details of Ripley's birth are lost with his family, by his physical age, Ripley estimates he was born around the year 1117 ENL.
Children
Current Residence
Ripley currently resides in the old, dingy, and poorly lit flat in the slums which used to belong to one Cornelius Kreaver.
Gender
Male
Eyes
Green, Sunken, bagged
Hair
Trimmed, coarse and Auburn
Height
6'0''
Weight
164 lbs
Other Affiliations
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