![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Apocalypse How - App
Character Name: Rye Kalibash
Age: 24 (appearance 34)
Canon: Original Character
Canon point: n/a
History:
England
A big-brother style, technologically advanced society where citizens are implanted with a multi-purpose biochip that can monitor their vitals statistics PLUS geolocation, information on any criminal records and their standing in society. The world is run by corporations from the shadows, pulling strings of governments to line their own already overflowing pockets. Citizens are unofficially graded into different echelons based on their origin, their job and their usefulness based on agreeableness to the government's party lines.
Angland
A kingdom currently afflicted by political unrest in the state of Londinium following the assassination of the magically-gifted royal family and simultaneous coup by an extremist right-wing political party called Vox Populi whose manifesto's headline act is their anti-magic sentiment and related laws. Magical citizens are stuck on the fringes of the state in hiding or in neighbouring kingdoms, waiting for a safe time to return.
Rye
Early life:
Originally from Bangladesh, Rye's parents relocated to London when he was just three years old, searching for better prospects for their only child. Life was hard living barely a breath above the poverty line, but Rye's memories of his childhood are fond thanks to his parents' love and warmth. They didn't have much, but Rye felt the wholeness and richness of his life during childhood in a way he's been reaching to match ever since he entered adulthood.
Pre-Angland:
During his early teens, he met a man called Thomas St. Clair, better known as P0s3id0n, who introduced him to the world of protest and subversion via hacking. St. Clair's hacking collective was disorganised, grassroots in nature and not sophisticated enough to make any major headway in disrupting official government business.
Dedicating every spare hour in the day he had (outside of school and helping his parents at their street food stall), Rye showed an aptitude for digital networking and subverting cyber security from the start until he had become the collective's most notorious member; jup1t3r. By the age of 14, he'd taken out the power grid for the Houses of Parliament twice while then prime minister, Roland March, debated the merits of a new 'Safer England' initiative. With authorities closing in on the collective, St. Clair surrendered himself as the culprit in place of Rye and was dragged through the English courts and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Safer England's introduction was swift and, though some in hacking circles blamed St. Clair for expediting the process, the inevitability of England becoming a nanny state had been on the cards for decades. The rich and powerful wanted to remain rich and powerful, and access to technological advances for the average citizen would need to be monitored and controlled. March was booted from office amidst a leaked scandal that alleged he had been caught with a class A drug and three sex workers while he was supposed to be visiting a primary school in one of London's poorest boroughs.
Under the guise of tech innovation, and with a sustained and aggressive campaign pushed by newly installed prime minister, former energy giant CEO Crofton Bailey, government statistics put uptake of the new Safer England biochip around 97.6%. In truth, the percentage of initial population compliance was much lower, but over the next two years the government found ways to force people's hand. Want your child to attend the school of your choosing? Set them up for success with the Safer England bioship. Want tax breaks for married couples? In sickness and in health is better managed with a Safer England biochip automatically talking to health services. Waiting for bail after getting stopped speeding? Speed up the process by having a Safer England biochip installed for a state appointed lawyer to review quickly.
By the time Rye turned 18, the freedoms of the average citizen was, for the most part, an illusion carefully maintained and controlled by Bailey's government. Eventually, when citizens finally discovered how expensive and dangerous chip removal was, the Safer England program had them exactly where it needed them: compliant. St Clair had gone silent behind bars, any contact that he had with the outer world seemingly ceased. With the population pinned in place by the biochips feeding back more data than had been originally explained, the government's plans to move to Phase Two of Safer England is hampered only by the an underground resistance known only as ±.
Now 24, Rye's involvement in ± is as a trusted general and head of the hacking division intent on protesting against and disrupting the Safer England program's Phase Two. He does all this while planted in plain sight as a talented cyber security expert for a government minister's cyber security firm, hired to protect the program. His life revolves around maintaining a carefully put together life of luxury, funded by his well-paid government cyber security job, while balancing what information he can use and share with his ± hacking team. He's driven by guilt to find out what happened to St. Clair, and if he's still alive, especially as the man took the fall to keep jup1t3r off the government's radar.
Angland:
For as long as there has been an Angland, there has been a royal family ruling the state of Londinium and blessed with magic, if history books are to be believed. Not all in Londinium (or across Angland) are blessed the same way, but for those who are they had enjoyed many years of relative peace and harmony thanks to their monarchy. All Londinium's subjects were treated fairly, equally, no matter their magic status. Prince Wylliam of Londinium had enjoyed the life of luxury, that of a prince knee deep in wealth and debauchery, his ascension to the throne something for his future self to worry about.
Unbeknownst to Wyll's family, growing in the shadows was the idea that one day the royals would elevate those blessed with magic to stations above their non-magic neighbours, colleagues and friends. The idea grew into a movement, whispers became public protests and, one sunny day, years later, the opposition made its move. The royals were all slain simultaneously at different locations across Londinium, and out of the bloodshed stepped the new power; the anti-magic political group Vox Populi.
Barely escaping with his life, and thanks to his best friend and sometimes lover, a powerful sorcerer called Rickhart, Wyll retreated to White Island, eventually summoning a storm that raged so hard it obscured even the sophisticated technology of the Vox Populi from peeking at the island. Grieving the loss of his family, Wyll resolved to return to Londinium and take back the throne, but his allies could be counted on one hand only. Hunted across Angland, Wyll's closest confidant and protector was Rickhart, and together they worked to return a king to Londinium, but before they could see their goal achieved, Rickhart was killed by a sniper and Wyll was left alone in a savage world.
Months pass by and, on the anniversary eve of Rickhart's death, Wyll finally has everything he needs to pull his best friend, and the love of his life, back from the clutches of death. What Wyll's spell resurrects isn't Rickhart; instead it's Rye that wakes up in a world roughly parallel to his own. His soul has been lassoed and pulled into the body of Rickhart, a different version of him, preserved magically for an entire year but a whole decade older than he is.
Confused and disoriented, Rye's first few days in Angland are hard, the impossibility of the situation hard to reconcile, the state of his gut even worse. A mid-20s professional government employee and secret hacker stuffed into the body of a mid-30s royalist sorcerer comes with one especially dangerous side effect. Rye doesn't know how to control magic let alone use it, and Rickhart's magic is powerful, capable of wide-reaching destruction in the blink of an eye.
Rye's initial distrust of Wyll shifts as the man teaches him the beginner's stages of How To Not Blow Things Up With Magic, the relationship between them complicated the more Rye sleeps and dreams. His subconscious is tied to Rickhart's memories and, unknown to him, he's inherited telepathy - he can hear Wyll's thoughts too. Wyll's fight to take back the throne and expel Vox Populi from Londinium isn't his fight, and Rye has no great love or trust of anybody who has power. It's his affinity with tech, and his talent with networking, that eventually makes an ally out of him.
Where Rickhart's magic had been purely organic in nature, Rye's can affect and infect technology, too. What feels like his 'past life' as a hacker is what he builds his spells upon, and as long as he knows what he wants to achieve and understands how the technology works, he's able to control it, including shutting it down. For as long as Vox Populi use technology to subdue and rule the state, Rye becomes the best weapon that Wyll possesses in his bid to simultaneously liberate Londinium from Vox Populi and reinstall a monarchy.
Working with Wyll to loosen Vox Populi's grip on power, eventually Rye will have to chose whether he really believes reinstalling a monarchy is something he agrees with on principle. Vox Populi are cruel and discriminatory, but a monarchy doesn't align with Rye's beliefs about true democracy. Removing Vox Populi from power is something he can reconcile in his head, but putting that very same power in the hands of one man - even if that man is Wyll - doesn't feel right either.
Personality:
Steadfast
In his own world, Rye plays the dangerous game of using what he learns at his government-funded cyber security job to subvert the very same government that employs him. The information he can use while keeping his position on the inside he does, and he's steadfast in his commitment to continually disrupt threats to freedom, primarily. He's unwavering in his aims and has laser focus on his goals. It makes him a good choice for entrusting an important job to, so long as he's on board with the reason behind it.
Additionally, even in an alternate world he teams up with Wyll, somebody who on paper he should be opposed to, but sees the bigger threat to the freedom from Vox Populi.
The downside of this is once he gets going, it's difficult to derail Rye or talk him out of something. In some cases it will be necessary to resort to force to stop him, especially if something not only makes logical sense but is also something he wholeheartedly believes in.
Aloof
Playing the double agent leaves Rye in a position where allowing anybody close is the kind of risk he cannot afford to take. He's angry at the state of England, of Angland, and highly distrusting of all people in power, and this all culminates in him presenting himself as too good for most conversations in case he trips up and accidentally gives more away than he means to. In his mind, people won't want to pursue more details if he's unpleasant to them from the outset.
Just as he plays the double agent at work, people's experience of him varies depending on the situation. His family, his cell of ± hackers and his handful of friends' experience of him are all different shades of who Rye is. His people - the ones on the right side - might lift the lid and find Rye has feelings and they're not all cold, biting and sarcastic. Despite his standoffishness - his penchant for lashing out with words first - he does have the capacity to care deeply for the people who take the time to ride out the journey to friendship with him.
Blunt
One thing Rye doesn't mince is his words, and more often than not he doesn't care how his words might make somebody else feel. It's very rare that he says anything by accident, especially when he needs something and doesn't have time to wait for somebody else to get up to speed. It makes him blunt and caustic at times, bristling and sarcastic at others. His bluntness is also another method to stay aloof, trying to keep people at arm's length. It's safer for both parties this way, so if blunt is how he gets results, he'll keep approaching conversations that way.
Rudeness is something that he thinks is subjective - after all, what's offensive to you might not be to him - but he's not overly rude or offensive for no reason. He knows how to keep people on his side, he simply chooses not to use it outside of the intense performance he has to put on whenever he's at work.
Idealistic
Rye's steadfast commitment to the causes he believes in is born from his ideals. When his parents arrived in England they were sold a dream, and Rye was sold it too when his parents would tell him of all the opportunities he was going to have to be happy and successful. But these ideals are what keeps Rye in a semi-permanent state of frustration and dissatisfaction. Nobody ever lives up to his ideals - how can they? - and so Rye chooses to put his stock behind ideas and not people, mostly.
These ideals - for example, freedom for everybody, not just those who can afford to pay for it - are close to his heart, though he wouldn't admit that his feelings are what drives him, citing that it's only logical, instead. While his idealism can be a source of strength, they're also part of what makes him dangerous. He's more likely to sacrifice others for his ideals to be reality, especially if he thinks it's for the greater good.
Adaptable
Ever since he was a kid, Rye has been adapting. As a three year old in a new country, adapting to different surroundings was always going to be something he needed to learn, and fast. As a 14 year old finding out their mentor was taking the fall for him - going to prison for him - he had to find a way to continue their important work. As a stranger from an entirely different world in somebody else's body, Rye had to learn how to adapt to his new environment and what that meant for him. Throughout his life, being able to adapt quickly has shaped him into the kind of person who is pragmatic with their approach and generally able to hit the ground running very quickly.
Due to this adaptability, he doesn't panic often, and sometimes it can be disconcerting, as though he has no reaction at all to something that should very obviously be effecting him. This also links in with his aloofness and not wanting to (or being able to) show how he's feeling, or not giving himself the time and space to feel it.
Suitability:
Not unused to being sucked into a different world, Rye will be trying to establish what ADI is all about. He's a sucker for a cause, and since there's a certain relationship between fears and the freedom from them, that he can 100% transfer back to experiences from his past, he'd be keen to stick around to try balance those scales of power. He's also not fully in control of the magic he's got, and that added on top of the how powers link in with entities and the effects of them, he'll realise reasonably quickly that he needs assistance.
Powers/Abilities:
Mundane but potential to be extended with powers:
Hacking - Rye is a hacker and cyber security specialist and has been since he was a teenager, so this is something he can do without the use of power. However, his magic can take his hacking to a higher level. The differentiation is, for example, mundane hacking is when he uses a computer to breach the security of anything able to be hacked. The powered version is he is able to touch an electronic device so he is the 1s and 0s breaching the security and entering the system himself. More info on that below.
Powered and therefore tied to entity:
Telekinesis - ability to move objects and people with a concentrated thought, though he doesn't have fine motor control of this so it's likely to be worse the more accurate he needs to be. This leads him to be extremely wary of using it.
Telepathy - as above, he doesn't have control over this so isn't always sure what are his own thoughts and what are other people's thoughts.
Technopathy - using magic to gain access to any object able to carry a current of electricity. He's much better at this than any powers to do with people.
Technokinesis - in rare cases, when an object is unpowered by electricity, Rye can pour electrical energy from himself into the object to get it working for no more than 5 seconds. The cost is massive and he's likely to lose consciousness for a proportional amount of time to how long he used this power for.
Entity Affinity:
The Stranger - given that Rye's soul and consciousness is in the body of an alternate version of himself from a different world, he suffers greatly with thoughts of identity. His own, that of Rickhart's, the fact that his identity has replaced somebody else's in their own body. Further to that, the differentiation between his true identity as an anarchist social justice hacker vs the identity he presents to the rest of the world (cyber security government specialist) plays into his worry that he'll lose himself in the wrong identity.
Inventory:
- Laptop that looks like it's seen better days - duct tape around the edges of the screen, faded stickers
- Folded up wanted poster
- Clothes he's wearing - definite fisherman's aesthetic going on.
