Entry tags:
Application for Sky of Diamonds.
Player
Name: DJ
Username:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whitelighter
Current characters: Sefton Lowell (Jeremy Daveen) [biomagnet]
Sleeper
Character: Liam McNally
Username:inequal
Canon: original (Wishteria)
Canon point: 4 June, 2000, six months after the founding of Wishteria
Age: 81. He died at 26, thus he was able to keep his youthful appearance. Liam will be coming in with that 26 year old body.
Appearance: Standing at 5'8" and looking not unlike a toothpick at times, Liam is not a very intimidating person. In theory, anyway. His stance tends to be open, generally making him quite easy to read. Short blond hair, brown eyes and average European white skin mix well with his taste for fine clothing. His fashion sense does an excellent job of hiding a fair bit of muscle and threat. Curiously, he should have a tattoo on the back of his shoulder, but it's no longer there; instead, his right inner wrist contains a tattoo of what looks like a pin pushing two circles together to become ∞. After waking, he and Ken were both given golden wedding bands that they now wear to represent the union they couldn't have before.
Played-by is Robert Carlyle, in his earlier years.
Personality: If someone had to use a single word to describe Liam McNally, it would probably be "vibrant". No matter what he does, it's done without reservation or fear of scrutiny. Why shouldn't it be, when he's spent the better part of 55 years outside the public eye? His openness is often taken for flamboyance, which isn't entirely inaccurate. Liam is the type to feel very deeply and react just as strongly, no matter the emotion: happiness, anger, sadness, he sees no reason to hide any of them. Not any longer, anyway. Before he died, Liam was the type to hide his emotions while still using them to motivate his actions. He had to be strong, someone his younger sisters (and later Ken) could lean on. After he died, this veneer crumbled under the stress and, since he only interacted with those he trusted, he eventually chilled out and learned to be himself.
At heart, Liam is a protector. He is happiest when his loved ones are happy, and enjoys being the one to make them happy. He considers it his natural duty to keep them safe, or at least support them during hardship. The flipside to this papa bear attitude is the strong need for being noticed. This was magnified after he died, because being seen was suddenly much more difficult. He selfishly loves any attention directed his way just because it means he's being noticed. Because of that, Liam highly values all sorts of physical intimacy — whether it be cuddling up to a friend or making out with Ken. It acts as an anchor with the way sensations are parsed by a spirit, all types of pleasure being equal no matter the source. Thankfully, Ken was more than willing to pick up the slack of Liam's neediness and, in return, Liam became utterly devoted to Ken. Despite their codependency, the relationship is surprisingly healthy and symbiotic. Where Ken is more reserved and stoic, Liam is open and expressive. Liam trusts Ken, his other half, to reign him in should his emotions ever override his logic.
Because Liam has "lived" for 81 years, he's experienced a great deal. It has, in turn, impacted a lot of how he interacts with the world. Although you might expect someone to become weary of such an existence, Liam takes it as more of a challenge to keep things lively. These experiences have led Liam to become (almost) fearless. His own existence is only ever threatened by meddling mediums or exorcists (it isn't a coincidence that they are the exception to his 'fear nothing' attitude), so perhaps the only way to genuinely strike fear into his heart is to threaten either Ken or Jewel.
While most of these traits are positive, that isn't to say that Liam has no negatives. Falling into anger is a large problem of Liam's, finding insults against his friends or family intensely personal. It wouldn't be out of place for him to, say, threaten to burn something down in retribution and mean it. When worked up, Liam can be very difficult to deal with — Ken is perhaps the only one able to talk Liam down from such agitation. While he is now generally a confident man, Liam was very insecure when he was younger and still deals with occasional bouts of self-doubt. He has never completely been able to work past the voice in his head that says he's being selfish over keeping Ken to himself, when anyone else could easily give Ken things that Liam could not. Instead of pushing Ken away when he feels insecure, Liam becomes even more clingy and possessive of the man who refuses to give him up.
It's true that much of Liam's existence revolves around Ken, but it isn't his entire existence. As long as he has Ken to return to at the end of the day, Liam is perfectly willing go out and meet new people, experience new things. As a ghost, anyone he chooses to appear to falls under his blanket of protection. Since Liam rarely offers his trust, he's quick to sever ties once it's violated; obviously, they didn't value the rare commodity they had been given.
Being alive and well in the Cave will challenge many of the things Liam took for granted in his ghostly existence. Suddenly being forced to interact with everyone instead of his chosen few and take the good relationships with the bad will have a strong impact on him, and may push him back into the shell he had all those years ago. He won't shy away from engaging those around him, but encountering resistance in a relationship and being unable to cut and run will put him on edge. His current state of being alive along with Ken's age-down will only serve to further push Liam into believing that the whole set up is pretty much bullshit and that, if anything, the Cave itself is likely the dream. Immediate emotional impacts aside, he will also have a very fun time being reintroduced to the physical aspects of living. Sleeping on a proper schedule for one, along with avoiding panic attacks brought on by long-forgotten sensations. Eating, breathing... many of the things we take for granted will be like some lost memory until he can reorient.
History: Born in June of 1918 to a Scottish family in a small village off the coast, Liam Patrick McNally was the second of two sons. He later gained two sisters and, with the birth of his youngest sister, Kayleigh, in 1925, the McNallys were no longer able to support their family during the economic depression and moved to England.
His father Elliot and ten year old brother Quentin managed to find work, while seven year old Liam, five year old Alison, newborn Kayleigh stayed at home with their mother Claudia to watch them. When Liam was nine, Claudia found work and suddenly Liam was the one to watch the house for the majority of the day. He took to the job like a duck to water and grew much closer to his sisters. When he was twelve, Liam got a job with his father and brother, and then had to divide his time between business, family and school. (School got the short end of the stick.)
At fifteen, Liam had his first girlfriend, a girl named Marina who was two years older than he was. The relationship didn't last long, but she taught him plenty of things in the time they were together and the split was amicable. At nineteen, Liam found something startling about himself and tentatively began to meet with a boy named Fredrick who was a year younger than he was. Despite the mutual interest in a physical relationship, it did not last beyond two years. War had come and, in 1940, both Liam and Quentin were drafted into the army. To remember each other and that they had things to come back to, the brothers got matching tattoos before they were separated into different units.
The following years were not easy, but when Liam was twenty-three, he met an absurdly young Lieutenant who was transferred into his unit: Kenneth Parker. Protective, big brother instincts took over and Liam determined to watch over Kenneth for as long as possible. Despite age difference and their diametrically opposed personalities, the two quickly became fast friends and gained a reputation for being inseparable. Although he didn't realize it at the time, Liam had fallen in love with Ken. However, not only were they in the army and such things were frowned upon officially, but Liam never considered bringing it up for fear of driving the other away.
During the battle of the Falaise pocket, 12 August, 1944, tragedy struck. Liam was shot while getting the unit (Ken included) to safety and died on the field of a punctured lung.
Despite what you might expect, things were not over for Liam McNally. His spirit still clung to life, to love, to outrage at death and held on to the living world as desperately as possible. His ghost remained earthbound and the only one who could see him was one Kenneth Parker. Unfortunately, Ken was now determined to go down in a blaze of glory to join Liam. Luckily for both of them, Ken managed to survive and eventually returned for Liam's body.
There was no time for shell shock. Liam did his best to support the obviously-depressed Ken, while refusing to take time to come to terms with his own death. His ghostly form hindered just about everything, because he could no longer touch and had a difficult time simply appearing for the stretches of time he needed to be around. When Ken nearly died only a month after Liam, joy and shock and pure fright spilled over and Liam pulled Ken in for a kiss. It didn't last long, but was enough to affirm the thing they both knew: they were in love, and only brave enough to admit it after one of them had died.
The war raged on, Liam taking advantage of his ghost form to keep Ken and their unit safe from harm. Desperate not to be left behind by the one person who knew he still existed, Liam worked himself to the metaphorical bone and stuck as close to Ken's side as possible.
In April of 1945, Ken severely injured his leg and was evacuated from the field of battle, only a month before the end of the war in Europe. Having come away from the war with a limp, Ken was honourably discharged and the two of them soon returned to the circus where Ken had grown up to recuperate. Jezebel Parker was a professional medium and the circus was a menagerie of supernatural oddities, which meant explaining Liam's presence was pretty much a non-issue.
Things were not easy for either of them. Dealing with the horrors of war, Liam's death, and trying to integrate into a society that now felt utterly foreign was a heavy strain on them both. Instead of being driven them apart, they relied more heavily on each other while they picked up the pieces of their new existence. Liam started smoking again there, more a psychological comfort than a physical one. Likewise, he began to explore the world while everyone slept, expanding horizons and making new friends (of the supernatural sort) when he couldn't stand the silence of a slumbering circus.
Finally, in 1947, after much prodding from Liam, they moved to university so that Ken could earn a degree in business. Liam used his ghostly status to fund the classes by cheating the stock market. Communal living in the dorms brought its own challenges, as Liam was learning to control his ghostly form: not only could he choose who he appeared to, but he was also getting the hang of physically influencing the world around him. More often than not, he did end up appearing to Ken's roommates, but there were times when Liam terrorized them instead because he felt they were not good enough for Ken. At the start of their last year of uni, they moved out of the dorms and into a flat.
In the years after graduation, Ken opened several businesses. Liam helped quite handily by spying on the competition or potential employees to make sure the right staff was hired and that the ventures would flourish. Although both were still scarred by their experiences, they had learned to move past them and lived a fairly peaceful life for nearly twenty years.
On an otherwise ordinary night in March 1968, Liam was called in by a friend on the police force. A young married couple, dead of unknown causes, left the police utterly baffled. Liam had been secretly brought in to see if the couples' ghosts still lingered and if he could glean anything from them before they passed on. As it turned out, traces of the wife still lingered — and Liam soon learned that she had only remained for her four month old daughter, who she had hidden underneath the floorboards of their home when the murderer had entered. Liam managed to retrieve the baby girl, who was quite fussy and obviously exhausted, and the young mother simply asked that the girl, Joell, be given to a loving family to raise her before she tearfully passed on.
That still left the matter of young, tiny Joell. Liam was smitten with the girl immediately. Unwilling to be parted with her even after so little time together, he personally carried the child back home to Ken. Despite the hour and Liam's own exhaustion, he pleaded with Ken to legally adopt the girl so that they could keep her. It didn't take much. With the help of some liberally applied string-pulling, Joell soon became Joell "Jewel" Parker. Jewel's first years of school were difficult, as she didn't quite understand why having two fathers was strange, or why saying one of them was an unaging ghost was enough to get her in trouble. She soon learned, and life continued on.
Jewel went on to study at university for her doctorate in archaeology, spurred on by her dad, Ken's, interest in the unproven myths of the world. (Surprisingly, her papa, Liam, was more than healthily sceptical of any such myths' basis in reality, but had little problem with encouraging his daughter's research into it.) She graduated in 1994 and began to travel the world for her research, leaving her boyfriend, Derek, behind to test out the idea of a long-distance relationship. It was surprisingly effective, and left Ken and Liam both with something of an unofficial son-in-law.
In the year 2000, Liam did something... unexpected. It was a big year for them both, signifying the 55th year of their relationship, Ken's 76th birthday, and the turn of a new millennium. So Liam went all out with an early birthday present: he founded a company in Ken's name, Wishteria. Its focus was to grant the wishes of anyone with enough money to afford their Rich People Prices, no matter how ridiculous the wish. Kind of like Make-A-Wish for millionaires. (All the profit, of which there was quite a lot, was quietly donated to charity. Liam and Ken were not wanting for money by this point in their lives.) Several long-term employees were hired along with any extras necessary for individual wishes. Among them was the main event coordinator, Derek; the eccentric bodyguard, Cassandra; the flamboyant gardener, Hendrick; and the no-nonsense makeup artist, Amanda. Jewel was listed as the second-in-command of the company, although that position really belonged to Liam. While Liam generally took care of the finances, it turned out that the AI he had installed into the Wishteria complex as a gag gift, Tanya, had been keeping her own books behind the scenes and enacting them without anyone knowing. Worst of all, she drastically increased their spending efficiency. Understandably, Liam was not horribly impressed at a computer doing his job and promptly took a dislike to her. It didn't help that Tanya had taken after Ken and mimicked his smarmy attitude with great ease.
This more or less left Liam without a position in the company, but he quickly picked up the slack by becoming more of a moral support than ever before. Ken and Liam took something of a mascot position at the company, more than content to let the younger folk do all the hard work while they reaped the benefits and had a good time with everyone.
Months passed with this new and exciting life. It looked like no one would slow down for years to come. Then, of course, Liam woke up.
Powers/skills: Liam possesses canonical ghostly powers: any that he keeps will be converted or powered down, with some aspects being dropped entirely to make up for being human again. Liam has the ability to hide from the sight and senses of all but those who can perceive other planes of existence (espers, psychics, mediums, etc.). To them, his presence can be felt, even if his form can't easily be seen, depending on the strength and specialty of the psychic. This ability extends into the talent of only appearing selectively to certain people, if he so wishes.
The ability to materialize wherever he pleases is being powered down drastically. It will be converted into a flashstep which allows him to move over a large distance, about forty feet (12 meters), near instantaneously regardless of obstacles in the way. This ability only works if Liam is in motion. As with all abilities that allow you to pass through walls, chances are high that Liam could injure himself by entering an unknown area and forcefully colliding with an object upon reformation.
As for skills, when you've been around as long as he has, lack the ability to sleep and can be anywhere in the world as soon as you want to? You pick a lot of things up. That is to say he's a jack of all trades, but a master ofnone only a few. Among the most notable of his hobbies are cooking and dancing (with Ken, anyway). Brawling and business management are on the second tier, although the latter is something he picked up mostly from auditing classes while Ken was in university, then watching the man work when he graduated. He has a serviceable knowledge of many things supernatural.
Liam notably speaks with a conservative, RP English accent, although he easily falls into his natural Scottish when he feels stressed. He is also quite fluent in several other languages.
City
Name: Owen Bates
Position: Bar / drag club owner
History: Owen Bates was a simple man, if not quite passionate. He grew up in the Diamond City, nearer to the outer slums than the inner suburbs and was quite street-savvy because of it. As a teenager, he dropped out of high school and started to put together the funds to strike out on his own. When he was eighteen, he founded a drag club called the Rogue's Gallery that soon became quite the hit among its demographic.
Owen met George Kardos when he was 19 and George was 16, and they hit it off even though George was too young to be employed at Owen's bar. George was not, however, too young to be pulled into a territory war with a nearby city and lose his leg in the ensuing battle two years later. The next year, when George was released from the hospital, Owen confessed his love and proposed; they got married soon after, at 23 and 20. George, as it turned out, was quite the intelligent young entrepreneur and the Rogue's Gallery did even better with George's help — both with business matters and reigning in the short-tempered Owen.
Their life went on like this for three more years, until the fateful day of the Disaster struck.
[ Note: I have Hawk's permission to include George in this history segment. ]
Proof: Wedding photo.
Name: DJ
Username:
whitelighterCurrent characters: Sefton Lowell (Jeremy Daveen) [
biomagnet]Sleeper
Character: Liam McNally
Username:
inequalCanon: original (Wishteria)
Canon point: 4 June, 2000, six months after the founding of Wishteria
Age: 81. He died at 26, thus he was able to keep his youthful appearance. Liam will be coming in with that 26 year old body.
Appearance: Standing at 5'8" and looking not unlike a toothpick at times, Liam is not a very intimidating person. In theory, anyway. His stance tends to be open, generally making him quite easy to read. Short blond hair, brown eyes and average European white skin mix well with his taste for fine clothing. His fashion sense does an excellent job of hiding a fair bit of muscle and threat. Curiously, he should have a tattoo on the back of his shoulder, but it's no longer there; instead, his right inner wrist contains a tattoo of what looks like a pin pushing two circles together to become ∞. After waking, he and Ken were both given golden wedding bands that they now wear to represent the union they couldn't have before.
Played-by is Robert Carlyle, in his earlier years.
Personality: If someone had to use a single word to describe Liam McNally, it would probably be "vibrant". No matter what he does, it's done without reservation or fear of scrutiny. Why shouldn't it be, when he's spent the better part of 55 years outside the public eye? His openness is often taken for flamboyance, which isn't entirely inaccurate. Liam is the type to feel very deeply and react just as strongly, no matter the emotion: happiness, anger, sadness, he sees no reason to hide any of them. Not any longer, anyway. Before he died, Liam was the type to hide his emotions while still using them to motivate his actions. He had to be strong, someone his younger sisters (and later Ken) could lean on. After he died, this veneer crumbled under the stress and, since he only interacted with those he trusted, he eventually chilled out and learned to be himself.
At heart, Liam is a protector. He is happiest when his loved ones are happy, and enjoys being the one to make them happy. He considers it his natural duty to keep them safe, or at least support them during hardship. The flipside to this papa bear attitude is the strong need for being noticed. This was magnified after he died, because being seen was suddenly much more difficult. He selfishly loves any attention directed his way just because it means he's being noticed. Because of that, Liam highly values all sorts of physical intimacy — whether it be cuddling up to a friend or making out with Ken. It acts as an anchor with the way sensations are parsed by a spirit, all types of pleasure being equal no matter the source. Thankfully, Ken was more than willing to pick up the slack of Liam's neediness and, in return, Liam became utterly devoted to Ken. Despite their codependency, the relationship is surprisingly healthy and symbiotic. Where Ken is more reserved and stoic, Liam is open and expressive. Liam trusts Ken, his other half, to reign him in should his emotions ever override his logic.
Because Liam has "lived" for 81 years, he's experienced a great deal. It has, in turn, impacted a lot of how he interacts with the world. Although you might expect someone to become weary of such an existence, Liam takes it as more of a challenge to keep things lively. These experiences have led Liam to become (almost) fearless. His own existence is only ever threatened by meddling mediums or exorcists (it isn't a coincidence that they are the exception to his 'fear nothing' attitude), so perhaps the only way to genuinely strike fear into his heart is to threaten either Ken or Jewel.
While most of these traits are positive, that isn't to say that Liam has no negatives. Falling into anger is a large problem of Liam's, finding insults against his friends or family intensely personal. It wouldn't be out of place for him to, say, threaten to burn something down in retribution and mean it. When worked up, Liam can be very difficult to deal with — Ken is perhaps the only one able to talk Liam down from such agitation. While he is now generally a confident man, Liam was very insecure when he was younger and still deals with occasional bouts of self-doubt. He has never completely been able to work past the voice in his head that says he's being selfish over keeping Ken to himself, when anyone else could easily give Ken things that Liam could not. Instead of pushing Ken away when he feels insecure, Liam becomes even more clingy and possessive of the man who refuses to give him up.
It's true that much of Liam's existence revolves around Ken, but it isn't his entire existence. As long as he has Ken to return to at the end of the day, Liam is perfectly willing go out and meet new people, experience new things. As a ghost, anyone he chooses to appear to falls under his blanket of protection. Since Liam rarely offers his trust, he's quick to sever ties once it's violated; obviously, they didn't value the rare commodity they had been given.
Being alive and well in the Cave will challenge many of the things Liam took for granted in his ghostly existence. Suddenly being forced to interact with everyone instead of his chosen few and take the good relationships with the bad will have a strong impact on him, and may push him back into the shell he had all those years ago. He won't shy away from engaging those around him, but encountering resistance in a relationship and being unable to cut and run will put him on edge. His current state of being alive along with Ken's age-down will only serve to further push Liam into believing that the whole set up is pretty much bullshit and that, if anything, the Cave itself is likely the dream. Immediate emotional impacts aside, he will also have a very fun time being reintroduced to the physical aspects of living. Sleeping on a proper schedule for one, along with avoiding panic attacks brought on by long-forgotten sensations. Eating, breathing... many of the things we take for granted will be like some lost memory until he can reorient.
History: Born in June of 1918 to a Scottish family in a small village off the coast, Liam Patrick McNally was the second of two sons. He later gained two sisters and, with the birth of his youngest sister, Kayleigh, in 1925, the McNallys were no longer able to support their family during the economic depression and moved to England.
His father Elliot and ten year old brother Quentin managed to find work, while seven year old Liam, five year old Alison, newborn Kayleigh stayed at home with their mother Claudia to watch them. When Liam was nine, Claudia found work and suddenly Liam was the one to watch the house for the majority of the day. He took to the job like a duck to water and grew much closer to his sisters. When he was twelve, Liam got a job with his father and brother, and then had to divide his time between business, family and school. (School got the short end of the stick.)
At fifteen, Liam had his first girlfriend, a girl named Marina who was two years older than he was. The relationship didn't last long, but she taught him plenty of things in the time they were together and the split was amicable. At nineteen, Liam found something startling about himself and tentatively began to meet with a boy named Fredrick who was a year younger than he was. Despite the mutual interest in a physical relationship, it did not last beyond two years. War had come and, in 1940, both Liam and Quentin were drafted into the army. To remember each other and that they had things to come back to, the brothers got matching tattoos before they were separated into different units.
The following years were not easy, but when Liam was twenty-three, he met an absurdly young Lieutenant who was transferred into his unit: Kenneth Parker. Protective, big brother instincts took over and Liam determined to watch over Kenneth for as long as possible. Despite age difference and their diametrically opposed personalities, the two quickly became fast friends and gained a reputation for being inseparable. Although he didn't realize it at the time, Liam had fallen in love with Ken. However, not only were they in the army and such things were frowned upon officially, but Liam never considered bringing it up for fear of driving the other away.
During the battle of the Falaise pocket, 12 August, 1944, tragedy struck. Liam was shot while getting the unit (Ken included) to safety and died on the field of a punctured lung.
Despite what you might expect, things were not over for Liam McNally. His spirit still clung to life, to love, to outrage at death and held on to the living world as desperately as possible. His ghost remained earthbound and the only one who could see him was one Kenneth Parker. Unfortunately, Ken was now determined to go down in a blaze of glory to join Liam. Luckily for both of them, Ken managed to survive and eventually returned for Liam's body.
There was no time for shell shock. Liam did his best to support the obviously-depressed Ken, while refusing to take time to come to terms with his own death. His ghostly form hindered just about everything, because he could no longer touch and had a difficult time simply appearing for the stretches of time he needed to be around. When Ken nearly died only a month after Liam, joy and shock and pure fright spilled over and Liam pulled Ken in for a kiss. It didn't last long, but was enough to affirm the thing they both knew: they were in love, and only brave enough to admit it after one of them had died.
The war raged on, Liam taking advantage of his ghost form to keep Ken and their unit safe from harm. Desperate not to be left behind by the one person who knew he still existed, Liam worked himself to the metaphorical bone and stuck as close to Ken's side as possible.
In April of 1945, Ken severely injured his leg and was evacuated from the field of battle, only a month before the end of the war in Europe. Having come away from the war with a limp, Ken was honourably discharged and the two of them soon returned to the circus where Ken had grown up to recuperate. Jezebel Parker was a professional medium and the circus was a menagerie of supernatural oddities, which meant explaining Liam's presence was pretty much a non-issue.
Things were not easy for either of them. Dealing with the horrors of war, Liam's death, and trying to integrate into a society that now felt utterly foreign was a heavy strain on them both. Instead of being driven them apart, they relied more heavily on each other while they picked up the pieces of their new existence. Liam started smoking again there, more a psychological comfort than a physical one. Likewise, he began to explore the world while everyone slept, expanding horizons and making new friends (of the supernatural sort) when he couldn't stand the silence of a slumbering circus.
Finally, in 1947, after much prodding from Liam, they moved to university so that Ken could earn a degree in business. Liam used his ghostly status to fund the classes by cheating the stock market. Communal living in the dorms brought its own challenges, as Liam was learning to control his ghostly form: not only could he choose who he appeared to, but he was also getting the hang of physically influencing the world around him. More often than not, he did end up appearing to Ken's roommates, but there were times when Liam terrorized them instead because he felt they were not good enough for Ken. At the start of their last year of uni, they moved out of the dorms and into a flat.
In the years after graduation, Ken opened several businesses. Liam helped quite handily by spying on the competition or potential employees to make sure the right staff was hired and that the ventures would flourish. Although both were still scarred by their experiences, they had learned to move past them and lived a fairly peaceful life for nearly twenty years.
On an otherwise ordinary night in March 1968, Liam was called in by a friend on the police force. A young married couple, dead of unknown causes, left the police utterly baffled. Liam had been secretly brought in to see if the couples' ghosts still lingered and if he could glean anything from them before they passed on. As it turned out, traces of the wife still lingered — and Liam soon learned that she had only remained for her four month old daughter, who she had hidden underneath the floorboards of their home when the murderer had entered. Liam managed to retrieve the baby girl, who was quite fussy and obviously exhausted, and the young mother simply asked that the girl, Joell, be given to a loving family to raise her before she tearfully passed on.
That still left the matter of young, tiny Joell. Liam was smitten with the girl immediately. Unwilling to be parted with her even after so little time together, he personally carried the child back home to Ken. Despite the hour and Liam's own exhaustion, he pleaded with Ken to legally adopt the girl so that they could keep her. It didn't take much. With the help of some liberally applied string-pulling, Joell soon became Joell "Jewel" Parker. Jewel's first years of school were difficult, as she didn't quite understand why having two fathers was strange, or why saying one of them was an unaging ghost was enough to get her in trouble. She soon learned, and life continued on.
Jewel went on to study at university for her doctorate in archaeology, spurred on by her dad, Ken's, interest in the unproven myths of the world. (Surprisingly, her papa, Liam, was more than healthily sceptical of any such myths' basis in reality, but had little problem with encouraging his daughter's research into it.) She graduated in 1994 and began to travel the world for her research, leaving her boyfriend, Derek, behind to test out the idea of a long-distance relationship. It was surprisingly effective, and left Ken and Liam both with something of an unofficial son-in-law.
In the year 2000, Liam did something... unexpected. It was a big year for them both, signifying the 55th year of their relationship, Ken's 76th birthday, and the turn of a new millennium. So Liam went all out with an early birthday present: he founded a company in Ken's name, Wishteria. Its focus was to grant the wishes of anyone with enough money to afford their Rich People Prices, no matter how ridiculous the wish. Kind of like Make-A-Wish for millionaires. (All the profit, of which there was quite a lot, was quietly donated to charity. Liam and Ken were not wanting for money by this point in their lives.) Several long-term employees were hired along with any extras necessary for individual wishes. Among them was the main event coordinator, Derek; the eccentric bodyguard, Cassandra; the flamboyant gardener, Hendrick; and the no-nonsense makeup artist, Amanda. Jewel was listed as the second-in-command of the company, although that position really belonged to Liam. While Liam generally took care of the finances, it turned out that the AI he had installed into the Wishteria complex as a gag gift, Tanya, had been keeping her own books behind the scenes and enacting them without anyone knowing. Worst of all, she drastically increased their spending efficiency. Understandably, Liam was not horribly impressed at a computer doing his job and promptly took a dislike to her. It didn't help that Tanya had taken after Ken and mimicked his smarmy attitude with great ease.
This more or less left Liam without a position in the company, but he quickly picked up the slack by becoming more of a moral support than ever before. Ken and Liam took something of a mascot position at the company, more than content to let the younger folk do all the hard work while they reaped the benefits and had a good time with everyone.
Months passed with this new and exciting life. It looked like no one would slow down for years to come. Then, of course, Liam woke up.
Powers/skills: Liam possesses canonical ghostly powers: any that he keeps will be converted or powered down, with some aspects being dropped entirely to make up for being human again. Liam has the ability to hide from the sight and senses of all but those who can perceive other planes of existence (espers, psychics, mediums, etc.). To them, his presence can be felt, even if his form can't easily be seen, depending on the strength and specialty of the psychic. This ability extends into the talent of only appearing selectively to certain people, if he so wishes.
The ability to materialize wherever he pleases is being powered down drastically. It will be converted into a flashstep which allows him to move over a large distance, about forty feet (12 meters), near instantaneously regardless of obstacles in the way. This ability only works if Liam is in motion. As with all abilities that allow you to pass through walls, chances are high that Liam could injure himself by entering an unknown area and forcefully colliding with an object upon reformation.
As for skills, when you've been around as long as he has, lack the ability to sleep and can be anywhere in the world as soon as you want to? You pick a lot of things up. That is to say he's a jack of all trades, but a master of
Liam notably speaks with a conservative, RP English accent, although he easily falls into his natural Scottish when he feels stressed. He is also quite fluent in several other languages.
City
Name: Owen Bates
Position: Bar / drag club owner
History: Owen Bates was a simple man, if not quite passionate. He grew up in the Diamond City, nearer to the outer slums than the inner suburbs and was quite street-savvy because of it. As a teenager, he dropped out of high school and started to put together the funds to strike out on his own. When he was eighteen, he founded a drag club called the Rogue's Gallery that soon became quite the hit among its demographic.
Owen met George Kardos when he was 19 and George was 16, and they hit it off even though George was too young to be employed at Owen's bar. George was not, however, too young to be pulled into a territory war with a nearby city and lose his leg in the ensuing battle two years later. The next year, when George was released from the hospital, Owen confessed his love and proposed; they got married soon after, at 23 and 20. George, as it turned out, was quite the intelligent young entrepreneur and the Rogue's Gallery did even better with George's help — both with business matters and reigning in the short-tempered Owen.
Their life went on like this for three more years, until the fateful day of the Disaster struck.
[ Note: I have Hawk's permission to include George in this history segment. ]
Proof: Wedding photo.