Joel Durand

Basic Info:

Player: Ihp

Position: Task Force Operative (Sniper)

Demeanor: Stereotypical Frenchman to the max. Often seen smoking an incredibly noxious brand of cigarette, often wears combat fatigues while off-duty, and yes, he does seriously wear a beret sometimes. Also somewhat rude.

Nature: Think of your uncle. The good one, not the creepy one. He's cheery when you get to know him, even a little eccentric, but a bit too proud of killing people in the last war he was in.

Description: Joel is a fifty-ish Frenchman with a scraggly, graying beard, always seen with some kind of tobacco and wearing a beret. Taking off the beret reveals a large metal plate on his skull, with an Imperial Eagle stamped on it. There's a reason he doesn't like taking it off.

Stats:

You have 36 points to distribute among Basic and Pseudo-Specialty Skills. Please follow the guidelines on the Game Mechanics page. Erase any skills you have no points in.

Health
  • Physical Health: 7
  • Mental Health: 7
Basic Skills
  • Physical Defense: 3
  • Mental Defense: 6
  • Perception: 3
  • Agility: 2
  • Strength: 3
  • Persuasion: 3
Pseudo-Specialty Skills
  • Melee: 3
  • Ranged: 4
  • Survival: 2
  • Sneak: 3
  • Academics: 4
Specialty Skills:

You have twelve points to distribute among as many or as few specialty skills as you see fit (but at least three is almost always warranted). Remember to explain what each specialty entails.

  • Mind Wall: 4. Through years of training, Joel has managed to block out mental interference from outside sources, and has become rather cold to the world as a result. He has a +4 bonus to mental defense, provided this skill is not used to soak up a Psionic ability. If this ability is disabled, he takes a -1 to all skills except pdef and mdef for the rest of the run, as telepathic signals overload his brain.
  • Sneaky Sniper: 5. He was a fairly good sniper, and the only reason he got caught during WWII was because he accidentally stepped in a bear trap. He's not about to make that mistake again; he's trained himself to walk softer, as well as training his eyesight through a scope so that he can spot threats from a longer distance. (Split skill; +3 to sneak, +2 to ranged)
  • Psionic Man (anomalous): 3. Due to experimentation by Nazi Scientists during WWII, Joel has gained some minor psychic abilities. Three times per day, he can use half to three quarters of his mdef score to augment his skills in one of three ways:

Influence: By tugging on certain parts of the subject's subconscious, he can become more persuasive. (+3 to +4 to persuasion)
Fray: A ranged attack that does mental health damage to the target. If this succeeds by a margin of three or more versus the target's mdef, Joel may command the target to do one (non-self terminating) action, such as attacking a comrade, opening a door, or giving up all their weapons and tying themselves up. (uses ranged and +3 or +4 to hit; Sneaky Sniper cannot apply here.)
Kinesis: Joel adds part of his mdef score to his strength score, allowing him to lift heavier objects, and lift objects from a distance. He can also use this to briefly power up a single melee attack, provided his strength is above +4 when using Kinesis. (+3 or +4 to strength)

However, each time he uses an ability, he takes a penalty to his mdef score for the rest of the run; -1 if he uses an ability with a +3 bonus, -2 if he uses an ability at a +4 bonus. This also means subsequent abilities using this skill are weakened. Mind Wall may be used to soak up one of these penalties, after which it cannot be used for the rest of the run.

Possessions:

List everything your character carries on their person here. Be reasonable.

  • Fusil MAS 36 Sniper rifle with scope; twenty-two notches are carved into the stock, and a small piece of metal is attached to it for carving more notches.
  • Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver
  • Kukri
  • Plenty of Ammo
  • A beret (always kept on his head)
  • A silver flask with a bullet hole in it, kept in his breast pocket.
  • A single photograph of a woman.

And everything that they keep in their room at Site 19. Anything that's not listed here or in the section above will be difficult for the character to retrieve.

  • A bowl of cherries, his favorite fruit
  • A copy of Mein Kampf, kept as a reminder of the fact that, as he put it, "Anyone can do great, and terrible, things."
  • A Zener card with a hole burned through it.
  • A set of shaving implements, never used.
  • Various toiletries
  • A photograph of him and several other soldiers during late WWII.

Personal History:

Joel Durand was born in 1901, on a farm in France. Said farm later became a battlefield in WWI, forcing his family to relocate. His mother and father were old when they had him (mother was 38, father was 48), and they were both dead by the time WWII started.

World War I had a profound effect on the 13-year-old Joel. He wanted to go into battle, but was constantly turned away because he was too young. Ironically, by the time World War II rolled around, he would have been considered too old to enlist by most standards. Luckily, the French Resistance didn't have any criteria that excluded enrollment. Joel was mainly tasked with clearing out Nazi encampments in the wooded areas near the Fontainebleau Forest.

He was good at his job, taking out fifteen of the opposition with his rifle; however, his streak ended when he got stuck in a bear trap, leading to his capture by German forces. He was hauled off to a secret POW camp, where he was randomly selected for experiments.

The experiments dealt with finding psionic potential in soldiers of opposing armies, and if they weren't found, they were forced into them. Joel had painful brain surgery done on him in order to artificially induce psionic abilities, which fired off randomly and failed in spectacular ways. Joel was slated for death, as his modifications were believed to be failures; he had gained psionic abilities, but he was unable to block out the thoughts of others, caused minor telekinetic outbursts in the area, and killed a guard by telling him to "Go fuck himself with a rifle and then pull the trigger".

So, he was set up to be executed, but instead drove the executioner insane to the point where he shot his own superior officer. After that, there was chaos in the camp, and it was bombed by German planes to prevent any of the prisoners from escaping. Joel managed to escape by jumping over the wall from the rooftop, which left him with shredded ankles from the barbed wire on top of it catching his foot.

Joel limped out into the wilderness of Germany, eventually finding a German supply depot in France, where he was promptly captured… by Allied forces, believing the metal plate on his skull with Nazi symbols on it signified him as being a member of the German army. However, a fellow bearded Frenchmen who happened to have similar abilities to his convinced the force not to shoot him.

The Frenchman helped Joel learn how to block out outside interference, while Joel himself learned how to weaponize the abilities, at a great cost to himself; if he used it too much, he could feel his sanity slip away.

He kept going with the allied force for some time, getting seven more confirmed kills during that time, until, one day, the war was over. After that, Joel went back to Paris, where he intended to live out the rest of his years in peace.

If only it were that easy. A certain clandestine NGO found out about him through unknown means, and he was asked to come work for the Foundation. They were very… persuasive in their offer.

Miscellaneous:

Any other information you think would be interesting.

XP: 13

Previous Character Retired: 1
Off-the-books operation (part 1): 2 XP
Prometheus Labs Heist : 4 XP
The Egypt Incident: 6

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