Nighthawk/Dayhawk
Height: 6'8"
Weight: 240 lbs
Age: A few days, thirty-five years, or seven thousand
years, depending how you look at it
We know that ND somehow copied the body of Harlan (Harl) Xis, an
archaeologist working on a dig in Colombia where a very old civilization
was recently uncovered. We also know that there are two people in ND's
body, one levelheaded but confused and sad, the other angry, murderous, and
selfish. The former seems dominant, in that he is able to suppress the
latter through conscious effort. Neetch coined the names "Nighthawk" and
"Dayhawk." In the civilization he came from, images of sacred figures were
drawn without arms, to signify their spiritual rather than physical
interaction with this world - and so he immediately recognizes Lu as
important.
Nighthawk, the dominant personality, was born an adult. He only gradually
learns to read throughout the story, and recognizing pictures is still difficult
for him. Being a stranger in a strange land has has a very important effect
on him. He is not confident about anything, except that he is loosely
aware of what must be done at any given moment. Nighthawk does not like to
hurt people, but in times of stress he cannot hold Dayhawk back nearly as well,
and fighting is usually what happens.
Lu Ram
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 170 lbs
Age: 26
Lu is something of a mutt: her father was Chinese, and her mother was the
daughter of a Laotian Khmer woman and a French occupational soldier. They
each came to America in the 1980s, and became drug addicts. Due to their
drug use during her mother's pregnancy, Lu was born without arms. Her
abnormal height may also have resulted from it. She was given up to a state
ward because her parents could not take care of her, and after bouncing between
foster homes for several years, she met Neetch. Lu is bisexual, and she took
to Neetch immediately. When they turned eighteen, they rented an apartment
together in the West Borough (Manhattan), where they still live. Eventually
they married, though under President Whitley, elected in 2012, their marriage
was illegal - which made it a point of pride for both of them.
Lu is an Amida Buddhist. After several years she gave up meditation and other
traditions, which she could not keep up with because of painkillers she must
take to deal with phantom pains in her arms. However, she does fullheartedly
believe in the pledge of Amitabha. She writes poetry based on her
lavishly detailed dreams, but has only published a few so far.
Neetch
Real name: Kari Vittikohuhta
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 150 lbs
Age: 26
Like Lu, Neetch's parents were recent immigrants to the United States, this
time a Jewish couple from Rovaniemi, Finland. Neetch was born more than two
months premature; her mother went into labor while the plane made its descent,
and they couldn't reach the hospital in time. She was born at a bus stop in
Hoboken, New Jersey, in what is now Frank Sinatra Memorial Park. The
Vittikohuhtas lived in Hoboken until 2001, when the government's post-9/11
crackdown on immigration found that they were not in the country legally.
Somehow, fourteen-year-old Kari slipped through the cracks, and was sent to
the state ward where she met Lu. In all, she changed hands five times, hence
the V in her signature. She attended a local art college, majoring in graphic
design and minoring in computer science. Ever since, she has worked as a
professional tattoo artist in a parlor called "Pariahdise," where she earns
enough to live modestly with Lu. She silently dreams of writing novels,
but has essentially given up on all her ambitions.
Neetch is very shy. Ever since an incident with her first foster family,
in which her adopted brother unwittingly outed her as a lesbian and an atheist
to their fundamentalist Christian parents, she has been extremely uncomfortable
opening herself up to others. She has lost contact with her friends from
highschool and the state ward, and her foster brother died in the Iraq war,
so Lu is essentially her entire life. She is also close friends with
Skurk, but she is not open with him. Depression has debilitated her many
times in recent years. The sudden appearance of ND, however, has added a
degree of color to her seemingly empty life.
Though she accepts the label of "lesbian," she is in fact asexual. She
is a foot fetishist (and very ashamed of it), but feels no physical attraction
to other people. At 26 she still has no inclination to lose her virginity.
She likes industrial and jazz music.
Ave Questoya
(There should be accents over the E in Ave and the O in Questoya)
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 190 lbs
Age: 38:
Not a sociopath, but he'll do 'till one gets here.
He was born in Madrid, Spain, and lived an unassuming life for many years,
until he seemed to suddenly seemed to lose touch with others entirely.
Under an assumed name he attempted to live a separate life, but ended it
abruptly by murdering his lover and her family, then fleeing the country.
He fled to Cuba, allegedly for no reason other than that he spoke the language
there. In Havana he took on a third identity and lived day to day, or rather
night to night. He haunted night clubs and harassed tourists, living with
delusions of infamy. When he finally did attract the police's attention,
he fled the country once again, in a boat with several families headed illegally
for Florida. A storm wrecked the boat, and Questoya was one of few survivors
who washed up along the coast near Miami. He was found - and quite likely
rescued from drowning - by Currad Marus, who would eventually become his
mentor. In the United States, he used his given name, as Marus could protect
him from arrest for any crimes.
Obviously, Questoya is prone to erratic behavior and machismo. The latter
however is more related to his rampant selfishness than any cultural heritage.
Currad Marus
Height: 7'8"
Weight: 460 lbs
Age: 52
(documented as 60)
Currad Marus is an assumed name, but his real name has been lost.
Born in the suburbs of Miami, Florida, Marus's childhood was uneventful,
until he developed a malignant tumor on his pituitary gland at the age of
twelve. When the tumor was removed, the scarring on his pituitary gland
disrupted his growth. As long as he lives, he will continue to grow. He
lifts weight and trains constantly to keep his heart in shape, as it will
otherwise eventually be unable to support his body. He has kept up with
it successfully thus far, however, and his physicians tell him his heart could
last another twenty years. A mechanical heart his size has been developed
by Marus Electric, but mysteriously suppressed.
When he grew sixteen inches in his first year of puberty, thirteen-year-old
Marus felt alienated and fled home. He lived on the streets of Miami for
awhile, working as a bouncer, security guard, loneshark's muscle, and other
jobs that benefitted from his size. He pretended to be eight years older
than he was, in order to start his own business. The false age stuck and
remains to this day. Following the failure of his first business, he learned
of a Lithuanian nobleman named Marus who had disappeared in the 1800s, he
took advantage and claimed to be the nobleman's descendent, and by falsifying
documentation was able to get ahold of a massive inheritance. He assumed the
name Currad Marus, and used his newfound fortune to found Marus Electric in
1980, when he was only eighteen (officially twenty-six) years old. The
company was moderately successful, until in 1995 his R&D department developed
the first fully functional, efficient, and safe form of wireless electricity
transfer. The success skyrocketed Marus Electric to the forefront of the field,
and his new technology instantly made nearly all others obsolete as it was
slowly perfected and distributed over the next decade. Combined
with his ill-gotten fortune from the Marus estate, he became phenomenally
wealthy, and therefore influential. Suddenly in the public eye, he caught
the eye of noted journalist Ingeborg Stark. They were married in less than
a year, but Marus soon discovered that she was attempting to investigate
his illicit business practices, and divorced her, telling the press that she
had used his fortune for obscene sexual fantasies. Stark was defamed and
was never able to work back up in her field from the position of correspondent
on a local news network. The feeling of betrayal Marus experienced after finding
her notes on him struck him deeply. Combined with his inability to integrate
into any social situation due to his size, the sense of alienation that had
driven him from home in his youth swelled uncontrollably. He returned to
his native Miami with hopes of revealing himself to his parents, to find
them dead, one of cancer and the other of diabetes. He spent several weeks
sleeping on the shoreline and walking for miles, deep in thought. In this
time, he found Ave Questoya washed up on the beach half-drowned. He took
Questoya in, intending to offset his grief by helping the immigrant, but
as he came to know his new protege, the plans around which this story revolves
began to take form, and Marus began to slip towards insanity.
It is impossible to tell what is going on in Marus' head.
Height: 5'1"
Weight: 210 lbs
Age: 41
Born and raised in Spanish Harlem (which are not just pretty words to say).
Throughout highschool and his first years afterwards, Enso had considerable
success in weight lifting and bodybuilding competitions. In his middle
age he does not keep himself toned, but focuses like a madman on his upper body.
For years he was practically obsessed with fitness, and was convinced
that it could solve all the world's problems. With this mindset, he fell
in with the disparate group that would eventually grow into Androperfectis.
Initially it was an organization intended to raise awareness of medical
research, public health, and even the occasional human right's issue. They
were no angels of course; there was always an element of eugenic ideology
in their practices, but they did not intrinsically wish harm on anyone.
After Enso had been a member for several years, there was a sudden dramatic
change in Androperfectis. Ave Questoya came north from Florida to take over
.
Women were expelled and narrow restrictions were placed on the body shape of
members. Eugenics became their ideological focus - but, far more sinister,
recruitment replaced most of their activities. Though Enso was suspicious,
Questoya refused to allow him to leave, even threatened him. Because of his
powerlifter's body and seniority, and because he could be far more charismatic
than Questoya, Enso was enlisted as their public relations manager, a position
he has no choice but to hold to this day.
Skurk
Real name: Stephen Kirk
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 145 lbs
Age: 24
Skurk is not important to the story at all.
But because I love my characters, here's some information on him.
Skurk is a talented young artist who entered college two years early and
graduated in the same art school class as Neetch, though they didn't know
each other. He contracted his name to S. Kirk for his signature, and further
to Skurk, after a KMFDM song of that name. His lizard skin tattoo was applied
bit by bit, by tattoo artists throughout Laughton while he interviewed for
jobs. Neetch herself put the finishing touches on it. They are close friends,
but it is nearly impossible to tell. A born asshole, Skurk takes pleasure
in making others uncomfortable - yet somehow Neetch takes it well. He
likes to wear as little clothing as he can get away with, mostly to tease her.
Their friendship is ironically perfect: he lives a completely transparent life,
so he has nothing to confide in Neetch, and he never demands that Neetch do
so in him.
Lord Harris
Height: 5'5"
Weight: 130 lbs
Age: 76
Jonathan Marx-Harris' great-grandfather abdicated his family's hereditary
lordship in the early nineteenth century, but the family has held on to the
title. Harris was a successful businessman in Liverpool, operating the shipping
division of a computer parts manufacturer. In 2000, at the age of sixty-two,
he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack and received a pacemaker that ran on
satellite power. The near-death experience took on a spiritual angle to him
and he came to feel that the way the indiscriminate transmission of energy
from satellites which now kept him alive was the most literal expression of God's
love he would ever experience. He quit his job and became a Catholic monk.
When he contacted the CEO of the company that was now responsible for every
second he lived after his heart attack, Marus took particular interest in
him. Harris hardly noticed as he became wrapped up in Marus' plot. He used
the connections he had forged when working for the computer company to set
up the private network that would give Marus undisputed control over global
energy. Over the next fourteen years he gave up his faith in order to give
himself wholly over to the very explicit God of his life, Currad Marus. He
now operates everything behind the scenes of Marus' plot.
The "PEEPL" Kid
Height: 2'3"
Weight: 37 lbs
Age: 2
Neetch's arch-nemesis. Also the most important character in the entire comic.
The "PEEPL" Kid has just learned the word "people," and wants to make absolutely
sure his mother knows that he knows how to use it. His mother takes him
with her everywhere on a short pink harness, because he is rambunctious.
A few tidbits you should know about the "PEEPL" Kid:
-The "PEEPL" Kid is the mastermind behind Marus' evildoing.
-The "PEEPL" Kid wants to be a fireman and a bear.
-The "PEEPL" Kid knows the secrets of all space and time.
-The "PEEPL" Kid has been trained in the most secret and deadly martial arts.
-The "PEEPL" Kid's tears can cure cancer. Unfortunately the "PEEPL" Kid has
never cried.
Not pictured: Senator Leonard Raleigh
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 200 lbs
Age: 46
Sen. Leonard Raleigh (R. Illinois) is the current Senate Majority Leader
Under President Whitley's reforms, this position essentially holds sway over
most of the Senate and much of the House. Not to mention that he is a member
of the club of politicians on Currad Marus' payroll, which is far from exclusive.
Raleigh is able to pull strings for Marus, and was instrumental in legalizing
Marus Electric's energy monopoly. He has also singlehandedly passed several
bills that have made it illegal to arrest or prosecute members of Androperfectis.
