fivefingereddiscount

There was a war going on, somewhere. It had been here, once, and it had claimed more than a few cities, but the specifics escaped Garrett. Had never really concerned him. Survive, and steal to survive. That's the only thing that concerned him, had ever concerned him. There were people and creatures you never dealt with, of course, because dealings with them always led to your death or enslavement, but everyone else? He'd work for them as long as they had enough coin and didn't get any ideas about trying to buy his loyalty.

It's because of this shady lifestyle that Garrett is now deep within a Special Forces base. He knew there was an Outworld portal that had just opened outside; perfect timing, as far as he was concerned. Monsters trying to sneak in from another world meant that everyone's attention would be focused on mowing them down, not a lone thief slipping through the shadows and crawling in the vents.

OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Scarlet
Other characters: Any other characters you play here?
No

IN CHARACTER
Name: Garrett
Alias: Master Thief
Fandom: Thief (specifically, the 2014 reboot)
Canon point/AU: End of chapter 6

Journal: fivefingereddiscount
Age: Looks to be in his thirties, possibly early forties.
History: http://thiefgame.wikia.com/wiki/Garrett

Presentation: He presents himself as aloof, mysterious, and cold. He rarely leaves his hideout without his mask on, and tends to sneak around in the shadows even when he isn’t up to no good. He has been caught by the Watch on some rare occasions, but has always broken himself out of prison. This, as well as his well-earned reputation for being able to steal anything from anyone, has made him a notorious criminal in the eyes of the Watch and most of the populace, as well as an invaluable professional for sketchy and desperate individuals in The City’s festering underbelly.

Even to his allies, he is generally distant and prone to cracking jokes at their expense. He treats most of his relationships as purely professional, with no emotional attachment and no judgments about his clients’ motivations for hiring a thief. On the very rare occasion he does become close to someone, Garrett will still crack jokes at their expense, but his tone will be much friendlier and he will put his own safety on the line to help them if they run into trouble. In the case of Basso, his only friend as well as his main “fence,” he was willing to risk life and limb to rescue him from The Keep (a prison somewhat like Alcatraz, and run by a very corrupt Watch).

Motivations: Garrett is driven and plagued by kleptomania and a distrust of the world. He does not have much faith in any given society, which stems from him being an orphan in a society that swept anyone unlucky enough to wind up in the lower classes under the rug to fight over what scraps the upper classes left behind. He lives by his own ethical code as a result, and intentionally distances himself from others to avoid being disappointed or abandoned by them. This has allowed him to actually thrive in his environment, as his stubborn independence has pushed him to learn how to scrounge up resources and escape any sort of danger he might come across. He believes that depending on others is setting yourself up for failure, and given how willing the City residents are to sell each other out, he has plenty of evidence to back up his attitude. While he himself is unlikely to rat out someone for a reward, he will not hesitate to save his own skin at their expense if he has no attachment to them.

He has even less faith in the ability for society to change for the better. He had witnessed what should have been a social uprising for the lower classes turn into a vicious bloodbath in which fanatics slaughtered anyone who didn’t follow their ideals, effectively trading one kind of tyrant for another. If he didn’t like politics before, this event would have sealed his absolute distrust of anyone claiming they could do things better than their predecessor.

Because of his distrust of the world at large and his cynical attitude, Garrett has turned to theft as his life’s purpose. He works alone, and feels safer this way, especially since his relationship with his former apprentice turned sour. He does, however, possess a surprising capacity for forgiveness and loyalty. With Erin, his former apprentice, he still tried to teach her to become a better thief when they were unexpectedly re-united on a job even after she’d betrayed his ethical code by killing far too willingly for his tastes.

His kleptomania has driven him to take on far more dangerous jobs than he ever should have, such as breaking into the well-guarded Great Vault while the aptly-named Thief-Taker General was searching for him. It is his main reason for getting out of bed at all, and he has turned theft into a sort of art form as a result of needing to avoid traps, guards, and dogs. He takes a great deal of professional pride from being able to pull off any theft cleanly, although he won’t hesitate to knock out any sort of threat he can’t obviously run away from.


Setting: Garrett will carry his suspicion of everyone with him, and will naturally rebel in his own way. While he may kill during the Games, he is likely to try to stick to his own ethical code and merely knock people out instead. Outside of the arenas, he will seek out both someone who can help him get home and the local black market. Luxury holds no appeal for him, so he’ll still be prone to pickpocketing and theft even as he tries to find some way home. As bad as The City is, he’ll still believe it’s marginally better because no one is made to fight to the death for entertainment.

SAMPLES
First Person Thread:

[He blinks at the sudden burst of light. Everything had faded to darkness, pain giving way to numbness; he’d even sworn he felt the heat of his body leaving him toward the end. Now here he was. Alive, apparently. Or was this some bizarre hell? Sitting up, he decides that if this is what damnation looked like, then the old scriptures had clearly been exaggerating things. And then the voice comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once. If it was some kind of demon or spirit speaking to him, it seemed oddly polite.

Reasoning that he must be alive since he’s definitely breathing and the dead don’t need to breathe, Garrett reluctantly takes the small device. It takes him a moment to find the right button. A little light comes on, so he assumes it’s on.]

Loss? I’m alive, aren’t I? That already puts me ahead of a lot of people I know. If you’re looking for some speech about how “dying” in your Arena put my life in perspective, or how it broke my spirit, you should have kidnapped a poet, not a thief.

[Now that he’s said his piece, he fumbles with the device until the light goes out again and gets up. He examines the door to the room carefully, trying to work out how one goes about picking that sort of lock. Whether they let him out or not, he was leaving.]



Prose:

Garrett allows himself to be herded toward wherever these people are taking him, but he is barely paying any attention to them. He keeps searching his surroundings, memorizing the location of every door, every intersecting hallway, scanning for any possible escape route. There are none; at least, none he could get to without being seen. Why was it so well lit here? This didn’t look like any kind of mansion he’d ever been in; why light such a huge building with something as expensive as electricity? And what was this about a death match? Then it hits him: whoever is running the place must be a Noble. Yes, that made sense; the lights, the expensive materials making up the hallways, the blatant disregard for human life in the name of entertainment.

When he’s shepherded in front of the Gamemakers, he hides his frustration with not being able to find so much as a single shadow to slip into by crossing his arms and treating the judges to a subtle glare.

“So, I’m supposed to impress you?” he sneers. “Am I supposed to pick up this bow,” he picks up a crude bow and arrow, “and shoot this dummy?” He looses an arrow, which buries itself in the dummy’s neck.

“So, what, you clap and hold up my score now? If we’re done here, I’ve got a few things I’d like to get around to.”

What is your character scored: Probably around 9 or 10. While Garrett avoids killing when possible, he has killed more than a few guards, thugs, fanatics, rivals, and monsters. What really gives him an edge, however, is his considerable skill in stealth. Even without the powers given to him by the Primal, he is more than capable of infiltrating a well-guarded building undetected, pickpocketing each and every one of the guards on duty, and sneaking out with his pockets full of valuables. When his Focus powers are activated, they simply bolster his natural abilities.

Token: A single gold coin from The City.

A small note about the Focus powers: These supernatural powers stem from the piece of the Primal Stone that wound up lodged in his eye. The grant him the following abilities when he activates these powers:

- the ability to instantly recognize and pick out threats, valuables, traps, and escape routes such as windows

-the ability to pickpocket multiple items from a person in a split second

-abnormally fast speed with lockpicking and combat (faster than a normal person, but slower than many superheroes)

-greatly improved senses

-the ability to pick out and target weak points on opponents; this is generally used to knock them out in one blow


-the ability to distort time around himself so it moves more slowly in relation to him

-the ability to move silently over most surfaces, and to reduce the amount of noise made over surfaces such as broken glas

-the ability to remained concealed from all but the most attentive of people

With his Focus powers inaccessible, he will revert to being a highly skilled but mundane individual, and both his eyes will appear to be brown. With the powers accessible, his right eye will appear to be an unnatural pale blue.