Sanctum App

[abjurer]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Zalia
Contact Information: zaliachimera

Personal Journal: zalia
Age: 29
Characters Played: Lawrence
IN-CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Maxwell Edward Woodville
Fandom: OC
Age: 27
Canon Point: N/A
Original Universe or Alternate Universe? Native OC


Personality:

For the most part, Max comes across as open, friendly and charming, with a wicked sense of humour. He's good at making friends, has a knack for easing social situations and making people feel at ease and comfortable around him. He likes to think the best of people and for the people he cares about? He will put himself through the wringer for them. He will also be downright vicious towards the person who hurt them, and he generally has the resources and imagination to make someone's life miserable.

All of this hides a certain amount of insecurity. There is a lot expected of him because of his family, but as the youngest child, feels like he has to work a lot harder to be recognised. He knows that it is primarily a worry that is in his head, but it's something he can't quite shake, and he has been known to push himself to greater lengths than necessary to prove a point.

He isn't just coasting on his family's name though. He is extremely intelligent and talented in what he does and has the best education to make up for it. He also knows exactly how good he is which can make him cocky, sometimes even arrogant.

Even Max loses sight of how much of this is genuinely him, and how much is him pretending. He's been raised in a family of socialites, politicians and academics, where the ability to be diplomatic, to negotiate and make people feel at ease is required, and thus, Max has been brought up in that environment. It comes naturally to him by now. It also means he is very good at ignoring his true emotions in favour of presenting a more pleasing front. His upbringing has also in a lot of ways, made him careless, thoughtless and spoiled. He doesn't always think about how his words might be taken outside of the narrow world that he's been brought up in because he simply hasn't got much experience of dealing with anyone outside his family's social circle in D1. While he is trying to learn, reading and watching vids is not the same as first hand experience.

Many of his worst qualities are brought out when he feels that someone doesn't believe he is competent or isn't taking him seriously, for example, his older brother, Alex. He can be extremely petty, dragging up old arguments that should have been long forgotten, deliberately misunderstanding and behaving much like a spoiled brat. Once someone has lost his trust, he can hold a grudge for a long time, and it's difficult to sway him from his opinion once it's been made up. For example, after Max's accident, Alex pushed him to stay at a retreat for his health for a while, worried about his mental state. Max took this as an outright attack, seeing it as Alex suggesting that he was insane. The rift between them, at least on Max's side, has yet to heal.

Before the accident that put him in hospital, he was very much a hedonistic playboy; clubbing, enjoying all of the luxuries afforded someone like him. While he still indulges, it's taken on a somewhat more self-destructive bent. He feels a lot of guilt for what happened, blaming himself for going through with the research, even if he couldn't have predicted the results. This is bound up in a lot of festering anger towards Bifrons, the government, and in some ways his family, for their covering up of the incident, no matter how well he hides it in public.



Is this character immune?No


Background:
- Comes from a wealthy and prestigious D1 family of politicians, socialites and academics. His dad is a scholar while his mother is ex-militia. His two older brothers both work in the government. He is very much the baby of the family. His eldest brother, Richard, is a fair bit older than Max, and Max adores and idolises him, at least partially because Max didn't actually grow up with him. His middle brother, Alex, is someone whom he has an antagonistic relationship with since they're closer in age. Despite this, he actually gets on very well with his family for the most part.
- Of course this means he had the best of everything, especially education, with private tutors in a variety of subjects, including history and languages. He grew up learning that he was part of an elite, and that he would eventually take up a similar position. A lot was expected of him. Taking classes wasn't enough, he had to excel, and he pushed himself hard to live up to his brothers before him. He was particularly good at history, but also developed a keen interest in technology which he was encouraged to pursue.
- He lived recklessly through his teens and early 20s, spending a lot of time in clubs and bars, occasionally attending parties of dubious legality and generally being a rich dumb boy. His family connections shielded him from any legal repercussions. Socially it was generally brushed off as just being what people of his status did, and he was charming enough to smooth over ruffled feathers.
- Despite this, his studies paid off and he proved to be a talented researcher working on Port technology and archival systems. He was especially interested in looking at memory transference regarding Legacy ports. He mostly was able to overlook any of Bifrons less ethical works, although they niggled at him. However, an unfortunate accident occurred which forced him to reevaluate. While researching, an experiment went badly wrong, leaving a good friend and fellow researcher comatose and mind-wiped, essentially dead. Max himself was comatose and hospitalised for a couple of months. When he returned, he pushed for an investigation into what had gone wrong, but was constantly blocked by Bifrons, who buried the results, his friend going mysteriously missing from the hospital.
- While he attempted to return to his old life, he found himself increasingly at odds with Bifrons because of what had happened, as well as Project Immunis which seemed increasingly unethical to him. Unable to continue working for Bifrons, and suffering bouts of depression, Max left, doing custom work and research as a contractor, and investigating the ghost effects in ports on his own time, but primarily threw himself into archiving history to preserve it, despite being pushed to go into politics or the military like his family.
- He also started publishing a series of popular urban fantasy novels under a pen name, building a reputation as a reclusive and secretive novelist.
- With whispers of rebellion in the air, Max is being forced to decide exactly which side he is on.


Other Notables: N/A
Inventory: N/A
SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE:
[When Max appears on the screen, he looks, for want of a more polite term, like absolute hell. It's not surprising. It's been a long few days and he's been watching the messages from his family get more and more irate and then more and more worried as the days have gone on. He feels bad for doing this to them, but he's also bracing himself for their reactions when they find out where he actually is. And who he's with.

Still, he manages a tired smile and a wave.]

Hey, so, some of you probably don't know me. If you do then... we'll burn that bridge when we get to it, I guess. My name is Max Wodville.

[He personally may not have been in the limelight, but his family certainly could be and he wasn't expecting people to ignore that.]

The point is, with how things have gone down, Bifrons probably isn't going to be keen to offer their help if anyone has trouble with unimportant things like ports. Which is where I come in. I can deal with most problems you have with them short of- I don't know, major surgery.

[He straightens up a little as he falls into his stride. This is more his forte.]

I've been involved in a lot of research for the ports, especially looking into anomalies. Memories. If anything like that comes up, even if it seems minor, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know too.

[His smile brightens a little, boyish and charming.]

So, keep in touch and I'll do my best to help.



LOG SAMPLE:

He entered his apartment and locked the door behind himself, just in case. He couldn't imagine that anyone would be getting up here, but it couldn't hurt to make sure. In all of the chaos it didn't pay to take risks.

He was halfway through sorting through his personal files when the call came in.

“Max?” His brother. Of course it would be Alex. Exactly the person that he doesn't want to talk to right now. He turned to the screen, smiling as blithely as he could manage, and hoping the worry didn't show too badly.

“Hey. What is it?” he asked, although he could guess what it was about without too much trouble. There wasn't a lot else that it really could be about.

“Are you safe?” Alex asked and Max thought that he actually looked genuinely worried. All of this chaos had to be putting a strain on him, whatever he actually did that required him to be so bloody minded and tight-lipped about everything. “You should probably come back home. It's safer in the compound.”

Max rolled his eyes. “I'm fine, Alex. I'm perfectly safe here. There's enough private security to take out a battalion.”

Alex did not look impressed. “Yes, and at the rate things are going, they might have to, I really think...”

“It's fine,” Max said. He sat down at his computer, starting to pull up every scrap of information that he had access to. Most of the Bifrons stuff he was locked out of, the really high level stuff anyway, but a lot of it hadn't changed and he'd kept copies, not to mention that his ex had an awful habit of leaving his computer logged in. It was a bit unethical perhaps, but Max hadn't been able to help himself.

“I'm just worried about you,” Alex replied.

Max sighed and glanced up at the screen, giving his brother a sour look. “Please. I can take care of myself. If things get too bad, I swear I will come back to stay with mum and dad in the compound, okay?”

Alex did not look particularly mollified, but he nodded. “Good. Be careful. Stay indoors. Call me if anything happens.”

“I will. You too,” Max said, and it wasn't entirely grudging.

The screen went blank. Max stared at it for a moment, but then restlessness took control. He left the files copying and went to pack. He didn't know how long he'd be away. He hadn't actually thought this through much beyond the basics, but he threw whatever possessions he could into a bag and swung it onto his back. His equipment went into another, more sturdy case, and finally, the copy of the files, he slipped into a pocket inside his jacket, before uploading a second copy so that he'd be able to reach it if anything bad happened.

He hesitated for a moment, but then opened one of the desk drawers. He had a gun there with stun rounds which he holstered beneath his coat, and also a long knife which he sheathed at the small of his back, out of sight. Hopefully it wouldn't be necessary.

He looked around his apartment one last time, and then headed out.