Booker DeWitt

CHARACTER NAME: Booker Dewitt
CHARACTER SERIES: Bioshock / Bioshock Infinite

[OOC]
This is the permissions list for OOC (out of character), activity.
Answer the following questions with "yes" or "no", as well as additional information if desired.

Backtagging: Sure
Threadhopping: Sure
Fourthwalling: God yes
Offensive subjects (elaborate): I find nothing offensive enough that it would have to not be mentioned.

[IC]
This is the permissions list for IC (in-character), activity.
Answer the following questions with "yes" or "no", as well as additional information if desired. With IC permissions, it's a good idea to elaborate on what other players can expect from your character if they choose to do any of the following:

Hugging this character: He'll appreciate it, as long as he knows it's coming.
Kissing this character: See above.
Flirting with this character: He usually doesn't reciprocate, but there's a first time for everything.
Fighting with this character: GOD YES but be prepared, he can take down entire armies alone. Best stick to verbal fights where he very quickly becomes useless.
Injuring this character (include limits and severity): It takes some effort to hurt him, but it's possible. Please talk to me before doing anything that'll incapacitate him, at least so I know for any threads that happen afterward.
Killing this character: Again, talk to me first. I reserve the right to deny the request.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Yes yes good go ahead, contact me to see what they'll find. Also, keep in mind Booker is very weak to psychic powers and it could end up being very bad for his health. Reactions to psychic suggestions range from nosebleeds and headaches to seizures or loss of consciousness.

Warnings: Booker has literally massacred small villages and slaughtered small armies. Aside from that, Booker is heavily depressed, and sold his one-year-old daughter to repay gambling debts. Oh, and then there's all the torture he put that daughter through in an alternate reality that doesn't really exist but he thinks it does. I can avoid mentions of his daughter, but you can also note if you don't want me tagging you.

Also, not a warning but a note. Since the Luteces were overly thorough in the hallucination they put him through, Booker is in possession of the weapons he had in Columbia; a pistol, a shotgun and a skyhook. The guns are both 1912 models, and the skyhook is an invention by the Luteces themselves. It's useful for riding along rails and smashing skulls to pieces.


Get your own copy of the IC/OOC Permissions meme!

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Xep
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yep
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: I’m 18
CONTACT: Plurk – xep_lag, Skype – xep-lag
CHARACTERS PLAYED:Bigby Wolf and Jack Ryan.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Booker DeWitt
CANON: Bioshock Infinite
CANON REFERENCE: http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Booker_DeWitt
AGE: 38
GENDER: Male
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: Custodian
APPEARANCE: http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130208122619/bioshock/images/thumb/7/75/Bioshockinfiniteartworks7.jpg/280px-Bioshockinfiniteartworks7.jpg
While his clothing is now starkly out of fashion, they have not changed. Extra changes of clothes were provided by the Luteces, which he finds suspicious but has no way of questioning them about it. On the other hand, he no longer carries guns around so his holster is not usually on him either.


PERSONALITY:
Note: apologies in advance if this is scattered.

As far as first impressions, Booker is often seen as aloof and snarky, overly serious and easily annoyed. The claims are not wrong; he is a man who never had much of a chance to be a child, and has since never really given himself the chance to make up lost time. He is constantly tense, never quite satisfied with his life. Booker has come to the conclusion that he doesn’t deserve happiness, so he doesn’t allow himself the pleasure of pleasure.

Instead, Booker is constantly caught between depression and rage. His moods follow a general cycle; he experiences a fit of rage, and then deep regret, and stumbles through a bout of self-loathing before his next fit of rage appears. When nothing triggers his rage he falls into depression, feeling out of place when he is not experiencing the adrenaline of battle. At Xavier Institute he handles this by regularly training in the danger room, which is the closest he can bring himself to healthy habits.

While Booker would be perceived by most as a heartless killing machine, he’s far from it. He has a very strong sense of justice, the main source of his self-hatred. Booker is very protective of the people he considers his friends, and thoughtlessly violent against those he considers worthy of it. His self-hatred spawns from his belief, reasonably, that he is deserving of such punishment. But with those he is close to he is not only protective, but understanding, loving and willing to do anything to make them happy. Making others happy is the closest he can get to being a good person.

Booker is a man of habit, above all else. He holds onto things he has gotten used to and refuses the new; he wears the same clothes he has since he was 20, acknowledges Anna as Elizabeth now that he has grown used to Elizabeth’s name, depends on alcohol even when he has no need for it, and scrounges through trash for scraps even though he now has the money to buy proper meals. New things scare him; new powers, new surroundings, new people, any new experiences. But he is quick to adapt, when he has no other option. He seeks the exacts of his new situation, but usually accepts it as his new reality and doesn’t bother changing it unless it places someone he cares about in danger somehow.

Unfortunately, Booker has yet to find anything particularly fun to do with his life now that he has no battles to fight. Off duty he mostly just wallows in depression, leading to him frequently missing days of work because he finds himself unable to get out of bed. He has yet to seek therapy, as someone would need to convince him to do so, so it’s becoming an increasing problem as far as, well, continuing to be useful to society.

This comes to another habit; therapy is new, and scary on top of that, for Booker doesn’t want to dwell on the past. He is a cynical man, unsurprisingly, and he knows the moment he starts having to talk about what he’s been through on a regular basis he’ll break all over again. So it would probably take Elizabeth, or someone he comes to care for about as much, to convince him he really needs it.

Speaking of Elizabeth, god damn does he miss her. He’s still not used to not having her around; often he will begin speaking to her, before realizing she is no longer there and he is objectively talking to himself. He blames himself for not making sure she came with him to Institute, and having honestly no idea what happened to her. This is not helped by his inability to find any reference to Columbia’s existence anywhere. He thinks of Elizabeth as the most important person in his life, infinitely more important than his own life and the safety of anyone else in the world, and it terrifies him that she might not even have been real.

Due to a mixture of invalid memories of Columbia and aggressive amounts of alcoholism, Booker occasionally suffers from hallucinations in the form of snatches of memories that may or may not be correct. He figures this is some effect of traveling through dimensions, but it’s more of a side effect of the Luteces’ powers completely rewriting a good portion of his memories and then losing their power due to the time gap. During these flashes his blood races and he usually ends up with a nosebleed on top of a pounding headache. This is also how he reacts to most psychic attacks at this point; if his perception of reality is skewed too suddenly, and he can’t keep up with the change, he becomes overloaded and may even pass out on the spot or have a seizure.


POWERS/ABILITIES:

The basics are that Booker can generate a psychic shield around himself, durable enough to stop bullets and bounce them back at his attacker. He is virtually untouchable while it is up, although on average his energy runs out rather quickly while it’s up so he has to choose when and where he puts the shield up. However, his powers are greatly aided by alcohol; his mutation processes alcohol in a special way that boosts his energy specifically for the shield, so he can create a longer-lasting shield or replenish his shield entirely given enough to drink. However, relying too heavily on booze (replenishing the shield more than five times without breaks) will leave him tired and unable to focus for at least a day. His hangovers hit hard.

If he honed the ability, Booker would be able to store momentum in his shield from bullets, and send them back at the same speed toward his attacker. But currently the shield absorbs most of the momentum, so the result is more like throwing the bullets back by hand. It can, however, still be used offensively by ramming into people as it repels them with enough force to be much like being hit by a steel wall. He can store things inside the shield as well, so as long as someone is basically clinging to him he can protect them as well. His limit for that is one person.

He is also very physically strong; not because of super-strength, but because of his abilities impede his body from limiting his strength. He is partially numb to pain, so straining his muscles doesn’t always register until he’s broken something. Ironically this doesn’t always work for attacks on him, particularly unexpected attacks. It takes some work to compartmentalize pain after that.


AU HISTORY:
NOTE: A large chunk, like over half, of this section is actually a hallucination. Markers are placed before and after the things that never actually happened for your convenience. Assume during this time that at least Booker was stuck in an illusion pocket, if not Anna/Elizabeth as well if she is apped in and the mun likes the idea.

Booker was born and bred in New York, back in 1874. Never having access to booze or any real danger, it took a long time for his powers to manifest and he was brought up in a house where mutants were shamed constantly and seen as freaks of nature. He would never have thought he was one of them. When he was 16 he enlisted in the army, joining the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. He first saw battle at the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, where his powers manifested for the first time.

The night before the attack, a sergeant accused Booker of being of Native American descent. In a fit of shameful rage, Booker went forth in battle to scalp several Native American victims, burn teepees with people inside them and, most concerningly, show a distinct inability to get hurt. Even when others tried to fight back, or his fellow soldiers tried to restrain him, Booker deflected them as if there was a steel sphere around him. And by the end of the battle, Booker had single-handedly killed half of their victims.

Although he was now out as Native American and a mutant, the other soldiers applauded his fervor. It didn’t sit as well with Booker, though. For two years he tried to block out his guilt and continue to work as a soldier, but despite his violent acts earning him medals of honor and the respect of many men, he grew to deeply loathe himself and sought redemption in the form of a baptism. However, just before he could complete the baptism, he changed his mind, deciding that a religious ceremony wasn’t going to change the past and bring those people he killed back to life.

Still, the thought remained that perhaps he hadn’t made the right choice. Perhaps if he had chosen the baptism he would have been a better man. Booker developed sleeping problems soon after this, and his habit of trying to drink them away led to him learning to control his powers. He kept them to himself outside of battle, but at least he was learning how they work.

In 1982 Booker joined Pinkerton’s Agency, and gained the same reputation as the army; he habitually slaughtered instead of simply killing, and proved uncontrollable and unpredictable in battle. A one-man army proved pretty hard to control. While he was a Pink, he met and became attached to a woman, who subsequently died giving birth to his daughter but never had the chance to marry him. He kept his daughter, Anna, but soon proved to be the terrible father that everyone had expected him to be. He was dismissed from the Agency soon after Anna’s birth for excessive violent behavior, and he soon became depressed. Anna was ignored in favor of booze and gambling, and the vicious cycle that adding debt to the pile of his problems created.

In late 1893, Booker was visited by Robert Lutece, who claimed to be a representation of “Father Zachary Comstock”. He offered a deal to Booker; Father Comstock would wash him of his sins and his debt, if he gave up Anna. Booker was at the end of his rope, and was easily swayed into giving her to him. Immediately afterward, he came to his senses and chased Lutece down to get her back. But right when he was about to get to them, Lutece, his sister, and Anna all teleported away and were gone.

This left Booker too depressed to even consider putting the effort into suicide. He branded his hand with Anna’s initials – “AD” – and lived on booze and self-hatred for nearly twenty years. Without Anna he had nothing left in life. And he was cast out as a violent, antisocial mutant, one who even mutants wanted no association with. When those twenty years passed, Robert and Rosalind Lutece returned. In reality, they kidnapped Booker using an illusion field and held him in captivity for about a week. But from his perspective, the journey of a lifetime had just begun.

NOTE: From this point on is an account of Booker's stay in an illusion pocket. None of this should be assumed to be real events as they are simply an elaborate illusion created by the Lutece twins.

Booker entered a portal into another dimension, and his memories were reconstructed to fit his new surroundings. He was sent to a city in the sky called Columbia, with the task given to him by the Luteces before they left him: “Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt.”

Before reaching his destination, Monument Island, Booker learned that the people of Columbia had been told that a false shepherd would come to steal the lamb away, and they would know him by the initials AD engraved in his hand. Knowing this did not, however, stop Booker from accidentally outing himself as the man they were looking for. And after all, he had come there to look for the girl they were protecting.

The girl in question was Elizabeth Comstock, the daughter of Father Comstock and future leader of Columbia. Booker, no longer remember his own daughter, took the job to kidnap her readily and saw it as the same as his work in the Pinkertons; he was doing a job and getting money, not thinking about it any further than that. Even when Comstock confronted him, teased him for what he had come to do, he thought nothing of it.

Then he actually met Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was trapped in a tower by a creature called the Songbird, a mutant man genetically engineered to be gigantic, to be able to fly and withstand extremely low temperatures and to have no thoughts in his head except to protect Elizabeth and stop her from leaving the tower. But as soon as she met Booker, she insisted on escaping. During their escape, they learned that Elizabeth had been the subject in an ongoing mutant experiment, studying her like a caged animal due to her powers.

As they left the tower, narrowly escaping Songbird, Booker directed Elizabeth toward an airship that they could hijack and take to Paris, where he had convinced her they were headed. On the way they were stopped by Cornelius Slade, an old colleague from Booker’s soldier days. Slade forced Booker to admit his sins in front of Elizabeth, as well as slaughter Slade’s men to appease him. This was Elizabeth’s first hint that he was not a good man. The second was her realization that when he entered the coordinants for the ship to steer to, he was going to New York, not Paris.

Elizabeth and Booker started out on a bad foot, and continued to have a strained relationship for a long time. This was not helped by Booker discovering that Elizabeth could control portals to different dimensions, and Booker was a glorified serial killer. The former came into effect when Booker ended up in debt to the Vox Populi, a gang of revolutionaries led by Daisy Fitzroy, and found that the man he needed to repay the debt was dead. Elizabeth took him through several new universes, until they found one where the Vox Populi had the ammo. In this universe, Daisy and Booker had been in a relationship, and Booker had died setting fire to a building that commemorated Comstock’s false victories in battle that, as Booker learned, were actually his victories.

Understandably, Daisy was hurt and terrified by Booker’s sudden appearance. She sent soliders after him, and he and Elizabeth made it through just in time to see her murder one of Columbia’s most famous men, and turn on a small child nearby. Elizabeth managed to sneak behind her and kill her, but was traumatized by the act. But she took it as a moment for rebirth, cutting her hair and changing her dress and becoming a woman.

Before Booker and Elizabeth could continue their quest, the Songbird crashed their ship and stuck them in Columbia once more. At their landing site they met the Lutece twins, who revealed the existence of a flute that could control Songbird. Thus their course changed to try and use this to their advantage, to get free of Songbird for good. Booker learned a bit about Elizabeth’s past, and how she would be tortured beyond the limits of sanity if she returned to her tower now.

As their journey continued, Booker put more clues together. Booker learned that Elizabeth was not Comstock’s daughter, but a child stolen from another reality. His wife had been murdered to shield that secret, and Daisy Fitzroy had been framed for it. An attempt had also been made on the Luteces’ lives, but it was thwarted by their apparent mutant immortality. After all these clues were put together, Elizabeth was kidnapped, and she and Booker were transported to another reality. In this reality, Elizabeth had been stuck in Columbia and tortured for decades until she finally became what Comstock wanted, and Booker had never come for her. When Booker finally found her she was in her fifties, broken and hopeless as Comstock had left her. She gave him information to give to her younger self, to prevent this reality, and sent him back to the reality before.

Booker finally found Elizabeth being siphoned for her power by Comstock’s scientists, and rescued her by destroying the siphon and letting her kill them by summoning a twister. He delivered older Elizabeth’s message, and Elizabeth sets off to kill Comstock, only to be stopped by Booker; he planned to kill him himself, and save Elizabeth the regret he’s gone through for his violent ways.

Booker and Elizabeth caught Comstock, who tried to convince Elizabeth that Booker had been using her for his own purposes. Booker went into a fit of rage and murdered him, shocking Elizabeth but not stopping her from her goal. She continued on to find the flute that controlled Songbird, and using it to destroy the siphon in the city that still kept Elizabeth’s powers under control.

With that destroyed, Elizabeth was able to create and enter any reality she chose. She killed Songbird by teleporting them into the ocean and breaking him with the pressure, and then they continued on, looking for a door to kill Comstock through. Though Booker insisted Comstock was dead, Elizabeth revealed that he was still alive in millions of realities, and they had to stop him from ever existing. This led to a trip through Booker’s memories; his baptism, selling Anna, trying to get her back, accepting his job from the Luteces… he finally learned that Elizabeth was Anna, that Comstock was him, and that the Luteces had tried to use him to destroy Comstock so that they could prevent being in danger from him. In order to stop Comstock from existing, he had to be smothered in his crib; they had to kill Booker before he had the chance to become him.

Comstock was a Booker who had taken his baptism and become a new man. So Elizabeth defeated him by going back in time to when Booker was about to take the baptism… and drowning him.

NOTE: This is where the previous note's subject ends. Everything past this point is back in reality.

Booker awoke on the floor of his apartment, confusing his surroundings for his apartment twenty years ago and going to check on Anna. Instead he found the Lutece twins, who explained that he had succeeded, and was now in a reality where he had managed to live but did not become Comstock. Although he asked how that was possible and what had happened to Elizabeth, they only told him the small bit of truth that aided their plans; that they had seen a future where he was needed, and needed to cryogenically freeze him until then, because otherwise he would be too old by then. Already frustrated by his constant inability to understand their intentions, he just accepted it.

Booker was frozen and eventually given to Xavier with a specific date to unfreeze him. As it turned out, however, the event that the Luteces were preparing for had yet to happen and they had never explained to anyone what he was for. Booker was welcomed in as part of the staff until the time came; originally he was a security officer, but in the face of the very real danger of hurting innocents with his violent nature, Booker instead chose to become a janitor. It seemed much safer for everyone. So for the last three years he’s been the local custodian, mostly keeping to himself and not causing trouble if he can keep it. He still has no idea what happened to Anna, nor has he learned that Elizabeth and Columbia were an elaborate illusion by gifted psychics.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE:
Oh boy look at all these
Note: Originally Booker was meant to be modernized, and it wasn’t until I started writing his app that I realized it wasn’t going to work. So most mentions of his past are incorrect, and his mentions of Anna should be taken with a grain of salt.

LOG SAMPLE: There is this one.
And the same note applies.