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Player: Vette
Age: Over 25 years old
Contact:
Current Characters: N/A
Character: Gabriel Reyes (Alias: Reaper)
Canon: Overwatch – Issue #13 Doomfist: Masquerade – After the coup of the current Talon leadership.
Age: 62 years old (thanks to CRAU)
Background Information: b>History: History
[Extra background information: Overwatch, Blackwatch]
CRAU Background – Deerington (3 year duration)
Reaper was brought into Deerington during the early stages of its inception, ironically in his favourite month of October. At first, he was more determined to find a way back to his revenge than engaging with the setting and events, but gradually began to invest more of his time with the encouragement of castmates. He took on missions to prove his skills rather than a real interest to do so, and he enjoyed proving people wrong about certain locked areas because his powers allowed him into such places.
In general, he failed to bond with many of the other characters for his first year in the game, keeping himself aloof, sarcastic and at times cruel. He killed an innocent young woman to test the limitations of death, and it was her similar history of multiple deaths that began a slow turning point where he allowed himself the occasional closer connection. This was important as he had never met anyone else who had returned after multiple deaths before.
He would begin to participate in events with more motivation to find answers rather than because it was expected of him. When the great plague struck out of a sinkhole and much of the Deerington Sleeper population grew sick or succumbed, he weathered the emotional storm and drove forward into the dangerous Flesh Caverns in order to look for reasons for the plague and how to stop it. While he never personally found it, the plague was the big first event where he was forced into a position to actually emotionally support other CR through losing friends and lovers.
This was a time where he built some of his own close CR as he fought many times in the Flesh sinkhole and saved quite a few people. He would start to bond and be less fervent about returning to his own world to finish off his revenge. In a sense, he began to let some of his guard down with certain characters, which made him protective of them.
In the months that followed, he began to take more interest in training others to defend themselves. He particularly took interest in younger characters such as teenagers and adults who came to Deerington without much in the way of weapon skills. He would take time to teach weapon safety first before moving on to handing, maintenance, and use of various weapons of interest. Training others helped him integrate more into Deerington’s Sleeper class and he developed far more honest alliances and friendships.
While he was careful, Reaper also experienced the death four times over the course of his stay. With the increasing cost of each death by the rules of Deerington, he experienced illness and amnesia and even sleeplessness. The amnesia in particular opened him more to development within his close CR, as they often times would take care of him during the months of memory loss. While the deaths themselves didn’t create much effect, he often was more curious of those around him and had to relearn his abilities, which often came with someone else telling him what he previously could do.
One of the final big steps to Reaper settling into Deerington was developing an affectionate relationship with another character in the game. They have managed a relationship for a year in game and formed considerable trust. So much so that Reaper had even willingly shared his name, much of his past and even supported one another through difficult times with little to no judgment of one another. It’s the closest relationship he has had since being back on his world, and it was the one relationship he was hard-pressed to lose when choosing to return to his own world. It forced him to admit that he missed that kind of deep personal connection.
Of course, he still prioritized his revenge over the relationship that he had built rather than move on to Deerington Chapter 2. In moving to a different dream world, he will be forced the face the reality of that decision and have to make a decision if revenge is worth more than personal connections again.
Personality:
Gabriel Reyes is a man who has lived most of it in conflict. As a career soldier, he has been shaped by the near continual exposure to conflict, planning for the next conflict, or subduing conflict temporarily. Such a life has left him battle-hardened, no-nonsense, and cynical while at the same time being a realist. He understands that hard, often dirty action is required for similar action from the enemy. In war, the rules of engagement is whoever outsmarts the enemy is the winner. Seeing as he served much of his career in black op missions, he has developed a unique perspective on the bloody underbelly of infiltration, espionage, interrogation and even assassination.
In many ways, he knows that in order to make an omelet, you have to break however many eggs necessary in whatever fashion the situation requires. He is not afraid to take decisive action, to use any tactical situation to his advantage even if it rubs political feathers the wrong way. He makes no apologies for getting the job done, and he respects sovereign borders only when there is no enemy that requires action against. He considers himself accountable only to his own conscience, which has been several damaged and jaded over seeing so much war and death. His code of conduct starts and ends with seeing the mission to its completion, and he lets those who have to play by the rule book to answer or cover what he has done.
Along that vein, Reyes isn’t afraid to use his intelligence to manipulate those around him to continue to have relative free reign to operate off the books. He makes several comments about how much information he will pass along to Jack Morrison, and he also uses the grief of dead agents to nudge Morrison into turning a relative blind eye to his activities against terrorists. This likely is also a subtle attempt on his part to protect those that he cares about, doing the dirty work so they can continue to smile and concentrate on keeping the politics out of operations.
He is a leader who never shirks stepping into the action first. Likely he is the man who is first on the field and last to step off of it. This accords him much respect, and during wartime, he lead the super soldiers initiative and the beginnings of Overwatch during the First Omnic crisis. His leadership skills continue to remain sharp with his command of Blackwatch, and he isn’t afraid to recruit individuals who would otherwise be sidelined. He is difficult to impress, works his people hard but expects nothing of them that he wouldn’t otherwise give of himself. He also isn’t afraid to mentor, to raise up the next generation of covert op specialists, as he did with Jesse McCree.
His sense of humor is dry, sharp and often sardonic. His often flippantly snide wit hides under it both a flare for drama but also hides a deeper conflict within him. He has seen as much loss as he has saved, and his humor is just another weapon in his arsenal to keep people from digging too deeply into his personal affairs or sense of being. He also uses his humor to disparagingly put down what he considers useless political dithering or red tape.
While he has discarded his former friends and colleagues for various reasons, his relationship with them are a statement of his character. Both Jack Morrison and Ana Amari are his closest friends, and they have a back and forth with him that speaks of depth of their respect for one another. These two individuals also cover for him when his covert actions get a little too much blow back, settling things down politically while he continues to operate. While he takes in Jesse McCree with the coercion of an ultimatum, they build a mentorship that can almost be fond even if there is likely some bitterness over the recruitment. He seems to have had a good working relationship with many Overwatch agents, including Angela Ziegler. He seems to have respect and a business like arrangement with Moira O’Deorain.
However, of all the people he has a relationship with, it is likely Jack Morrison who he has been closest to. They entered, trained under and were sent into combat from the military super soldier program, and while they both excelled, it may be that Gabriel suffered. While not explicitly stated, it is unclear any side-effects of the program, and it may be true that Reyes began to manifest some of his abilities gradually. Morrison, being the only other known super soldier, would likely be the only one to understand the suffering of losing slow and gradual control. It may be why Morrison was so willing to continually cover for Reyes when his no-holds-barred methods landed Overwatch in trouble.
In the end, Gabriel Reyes is a man who has also performed a lifetime of great personal sacrifice. He has served his country with distinction, volunteered for questionable experimentation, has been passed over for promotion for lead of Overwatch (he is only mildly bitter over that), seen his friends and allies injured or killed, and has experienced his very life coming apart one cell at a time. He has given everything he is to seek a profound peace, and when it the chips are down, the very governments he has little respect for the hand-wringing of shuts down the organization he helped to see successful. Yes, he likely understands that his own actions contributed to this, but slowly but surely he watches as his friends and allies turn their backs on him as tensions rise.
So when he has nothing left, and he’s considered dead to the world: he does what he needs to. He enters back into covert action to steer the world towards that necessary peace without the rules of the UN to hold him back. And joining the enemy? They might just give him the tools he needs to kill two birds with one stone: seek peace through any means necessary and to make certain that no bastardization of the organization he helped create and run comes to light.
What else does one do when it’s questionable if they can even die anymore? It leaves him in a unique position to push the limits with fewer soldiers to put in the line of fire. It also puts him in position to takes risks and fight until he has nothing left, aware it likely won’t kill him anyway. Combining a jaded will to see things done with suicidal reckless makes him both highly effective and unpredictably dangerous to any who may cross him.
Abilities & Inventory:
•Super soldier - During the First Omnic Crisis, Gabriel was one of a handful of soldiers of the United States military chosen to participate in a super soldier program. In this program, the men were experimented on and enhanced to increase their physical and mental capacities. Reyes was known as Soldier: 24 under the program. He was considered a success, and he served in combat. However, the side-effects were not known and likely individual, likely with the slow and gradual manifestation of some of his other abilities.
•The Reaping – After continual experimentation on behalf of his own government and voluntary experimentation at the hands of Moira O’Deorain, his physical form has entered a state of hyperactive systematic degeneration and regeneration. A side effect that allows him to sustain himself, Reaper drains the life energy of those that he attacks, and the more he harms them, the more that he absorbs the energy into himself to sustain and heal his own body.
•Wraith Form – Reaper is able to willfully allow his cells to separate and enter a mist-like state where he can pass under doors, sneak into tight spaces, glide across the floor. He can completely dissolve his entire body into this form, or he has developed enough control of it that he can alter parts of himself such as his legs. Once he decides to reform, it takes mere seconds to do so. In this form, he is immune to damage, and he seems to have enough control of himself that he is not easily blown away in even wind.
•Shadow Step – Much like his wraith form, Reaper is able to enter his mist form and translocate himself from one location to another. This new location must be line of sight for him, cannot be through doors or windows unless they are open. He can translocate himself up or down the outside of buildings, over rough terrain. This is used to place him in a tactical advantage to strike at enemies.
•Death Blossom – Much like a real military death blossom, Reaper rapidly empties his shotguns in many directions, twisting and turning as he does so. His mist form obscures him, allowing him faster motion as he shoots 360 degrees and causing massive damage to anyone within his range.
•Immortality? - With his body in a constant state of regeneration and decay, there is debate if Reaper can actually die. In the animated short “Recall”, he was blown apart by Winston but still survived in a mist that took him from the area. He also has a line in the game after he respawns where he says “This is my curse”, indicating that he hasn’t yet found a way to die. A similar line was used in a dialogue with Jack Morrison where he says that death “didn’t take”. While the game lines are not exclusively considered canon, they do indicate a continual theme of everything but him dying.
Suitability & Plans:
Reaper has spent the last three years of his life in horror town, Maine (aka Deerington), in which he participated in opening the seals to releasing the child god who was held captive in order to run the nightmare world. He is used to and appreciates a ‘mission type’ system of play where he can utilize his skills as a military tactician and mercenary.
The fact that he has shifted from one dream setting to a new one will only irk him a little, as he was expecting to return home in order to exact his revenge. However, because his choice to return home has been thwarted once again, he will throw himself back into the fray to learn the power system and how it affects his canonical powers. He is very adaptable given his history of black-ops, meaning that he would be keen to learn about and incorporate the dream system into his own canonical powers, potentially using the dream power system to mitigate the pitfalls of his own decay.
At the end of his tenure, Reaper was fairly involved in protecting and teaching teenagers how to defend themselves, and it could be an easy avenue for him to take again in order to build CR cross-canon. The type of mission based events also would allow him to partner up with other characters who all have the same goal, which tends to direct his sometimes caustic personality aimed at the goal rather than the character he is partnered with.
He also has been put in some very strange event situations, so random shenanigans will be weathered well as he’s already been thrown against most of such events over the course of the last three years. He also is well adapted to the idea of there being different planets, time lines and even galaxies compared to his own, and he is not eager to fourth wall anyone.
Test Drive Sample: Sample
Questions: Would it be alright if I post my application in this journal, but if I am admitted to the game, I use a different journal for ease of keeping my games separate?
