Chuckg

Satori looks around the attic, then walks noiselessly to the stairs. Focusing his mind on the correct meditative technique, he becomes as the still pool, as the drop of water that falls without leaving ripples. As quietly as a dream, he heads down the stairwell and, using another of his supernal martial arts talents to cling to sheer surfaces, leaves the steps behind for the very walls themselves, and the ceiling itself at need. Despite the lack of cover and the interior lighting, he still moves in such a way as to never draw the eye, as to be overlooked even while being seen, as he lurks in the corner high up near the ceiling and wall, moving down to where he anticipates he can gain a discreet overview of the room where the meeting is to take place...

Satori looks around the attic, then walks noiselessly to the stairs. Focusing his mind on the correct meditative technique, he becomes as the still pool, as the drop of water that falls without leaving ripples. As quietly as a dream, he heads down the stairwell and, using another of his supernal martial arts talents to cling to sheer surfaces, leaves the steps behind for the very walls themselves, and the ceiling itself at need. Despite the lack of cover and the interior lighting, he still moves in such a way as to never draw the eye, as to be overlooked even while being seen, as he lurks in the corner high up near the ceiling and wall, moving down to where he anticipates he can gain a discreet overview of the room where the meeting is to take place...

Satori watched from the shadows as the large man in the trenchcoat argued with the doorman. Competitor? Or fellow mercenary? he thought idly, as Heavy argued for entrance. Waiting will reveal. Walking silently across the rotting boards of the rooftop, a ghost in his black-and-gray skintights and face scarf, hair covered by a hood and the glint of slim night-vision goggles across his eyes, Satori finished casing the rooftop and selected a likely entrance point. Satori frowned with annoyance as, despite all his caution, a single especially-rotten board creaked slightly under his foot, but as far as he could determine he was still not overheard. A regrettable lapse. Still, I needed to come this way. If this is not a trap, then I will have demonstrated my discretion and intrusion skills to my employer. And if this is a trap... then we will see. In any event, it is better to enter by the path one has chosen, not the path chosen by others. Having picked his entry point, Satori took his picks and began to discreetly work on the lock...

Satori watched from the shadows as the large man in the trenchcoat argued with the doorman. Competitor? Or fellow mercenary? he thought idly, as Heavy argued for entrance. Waiting will reveal. Walking silently across the rotting boards of the rooftop, a ghost in his black-and-gray skintights and face scarf, hair covered by a hood and the glint of slim night-vision goggles across his eyes, Satori finished casing the rooftop and selected a likely entrance point. Satori frowned with annoyance as, despite all his caution, a single especially-rotten board creaked slightly under his foot, but as far as he could determine he was still not overheard. A regrettable lapse. Still, I needed to come this way. If this is not a trap, then I will have demonstrated my discretion and intrusion skills to my employer. And if this is a trap... then we will see. In any event, it is better to enter by the path one has chosen, not the path chosen by others. Having picked his entry point, Satori took his picks and began to discreetly work on the lock...

Satori watched from the shadows as the large man in the trenchcoat argued with the doorman. Competitor? Or fellow mercenary? he thought idly, as Heavy argued for entrance. Waiting will reveal. Walking silently across the rotting boards of the rooftop, a ghost in his black-and-gray skintights and face scarf, hair covered by a hood and the glint of slim night-vision goggles across his eyes, Satori finished casing the rooftop and selected a likely entrance point. Satori frowned with annoyance as, despite all his caution, a single especially-rotten board creaked slightly under his foot, but as far as he could determine he was still not overheard. A regrettable lapse. Still, I needed to come this way. If this is not a trap, then I will have demonstrated my discretion and intrusion skills to my employer. And if this is a trap... then we will see. In any event, it is better to enter by the path one has chosen, not the path chosen by others. Having picked his entry point, Satori took his picks and began to discreetly work on the lock...

Hey. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but I was out of the house most of the day. Satori's going to be showing up in costume. But he's going to be entering /not/ by the front door, but instead, is going to showcase his stealth and intrusion skills, as well as check out what could possibly be a trap before he enters it. (As to how he got on the roof, I have Wall-Walking, considerable Stealth, Hide In Plain Sight, and its getting on towards dark. So, enter the ninja.) http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1416188 Stealth check to avoid being spotted by Heavy or the doorman, if either is being particularly alert for lurkers above: 4 + 16 = 20 Disable Device check to open a door on the roof or an upper-story window and enter the building. 15 + 10 = 25

Hey. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but I was out of the house most of the day. Satori's going to be showing up in costume. But he's going to be entering /not/ by the front door, but instead, is going to showcase his stealth and intrusion skills, as well as check out what could possibly be a trap before he enters it. (As to how he got on the roof, I have Wall-Walking, considerable Stealth, Hide In Plain Sight, and its getting on towards dark. So, enter the ninja.) http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1416188 Stealth check to avoid being spotted by Heavy or the doorman, if either is being particularly alert for lurkers above: 4 + 16 = 20 Disable Device check to open a door on the roof or an upper-story window and enter the building. 15 + 10 = 25

Hey. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but I was out of the house most of the day. Satori's going to be showing up in costume. But he's going to be entering /not/ by the front door, but instead, is going to showcase his stealth and intrusion skills, as well as check out what could possibly be a trap before he enters it. (As to how he got on the roof, I have Wall-Walking, considerable Stealth, Hide In Plain Sight, and its getting on towards dark. So, enter the ninja.) http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=1416188 Stealth check to avoid being spotted by Heavy or the doorman, if either is being particularly alert for lurkers above: 4 + 16 = 20 Disable Device check to open a door on the roof or an upper-story window and enter the building. 15 + 10 = 25

I'm a gamer, mid-30s. Mostly the last few years I've done games with the same small circle of friends via real-time chatroom (we live in different states). This is the first time in a long while I've stepped back into the online gaming thing. I've played D&D (all versions), GURPS, Hero System 4e & 5e, PDQ, Risus, Wushu, Paranoia, Traveller (classic, Megatraveller, and GURPS), and, I am mildly ashamed to confess, Rifts. I do clerical work and basic IT for a living, right now the job market is slow.

I'm a gamer, mid-30s. Mostly the last few years I've done games with the same small circle of friends via real-time chatroom (we live in different states). This is the first time in a long while I've stepped back into the online gaming thing. I've played D&D (all versions), GURPS, Hero System 4e & 5e, PDQ, Risus, Wushu, Paranoia, Traveller (classic, Megatraveller, and GURPS), and, I am mildly ashamed to confess, Rifts. I do clerical work and basic IT for a living, right now the job market is slow.

I'm a gamer, mid-30s. Mostly the last few years I've done games with the same small circle of friends via real-time chatroom (we live in different states). This is the first time in a long while I've stepped back into the online gaming thing. I've played D&D (all versions), GURPS, Hero System 4e & 5e, PDQ, Risus, Wushu, Paranoia, Traveller (classic, Megatraveller, and GURPS), and, I am mildly ashamed to confess, Rifts. I do clerical work and basic IT for a living, right now the job market is slow.

Players Name: Chuckg Power Level: PL11 (154 PPs) Unspent PPs: 2 Characters Name: Satori Alternate Identity: Donovan Blaine Height: 5' 11" Weight: 172 lbs. Hair: Blond Eyes: Blue Description: A handsome, athletic man in his mid-20s with an extremely toned gymnast's build. Not bulky. Usually with a calm and businesslike expression, occasionally smiles quietly. Never visibly gets upset. In costume as Satori, he wears skintight blacks with dark grey highlights, and a ninja-type mask covering everything but his eyes. His black-lacquered longbow and large quiver of arrows generally rests slung over his back. History: Donovan Blaine started out as an ordinary, athletic, upper-middle-class scion. Doing well in athletics and adequately in grades, his life looked to be laid out ahead of him -- four years at state college, then back to work in dad's paper company in a job made for him, marry some girl next door, eventually retire owning dad's business with 2.4 kids. But there was always something missing there. Something that didn't feel right. Was growing up just to live like everybody else around you lived, and like your family had always lived, really what it meant? So Donovan decided to major in philosophy, and started looking for answers. One of his instructors told him that the meaning of life was not to be found only in books, but also on the streets. So Donovan started volunteering for community service. He worked in soup kitchens. He unloaded food from trucks for food banks. He opened his eyes and took a look at the world outside of his comfortable strata, and saw the decent people, the good people struggling to raise their families and build their lives in the middle of squalor, crime, and urban decay. And he saw how the world around them dragged most of them back down into the dingy grey that was their lives, and how most of the determined few who managed to escape that life left it without looking back, thus making their struggle... irrelevant, somehow. Something didn't feel right about that, either. Was spending your life enduring all sorts of hardship just so you could grow up to move away and pretend that you never had been there meaningful? Was that all it meant? So Donovan decided to screw charity work and concentrate the good things in life. He spent his next year in college barely attending classes, using his daddy's money to pay geeks to write his papers for him, partying till he puked, and having every sorority girl that moved. And gave up on that within a year. There was nothing here, either. It didn't mean anything. It was just another way of not really living at all. So after graduating college, he went off backpacking, wandering the world. Within a year he ended up in a Zen monastery in Japan, deciding to seek meaning in life through meditation. And he stayed there for more years than he'd stayed anywhere else before. It felt... fitting, somehow. He learned the prayers, and the stances, and the exercises. He'd already taken a few self-defense classes before, but in the monastery he learned /real/ martial arts, things that bordered on the miraculous. He took to the ancient way of the bow as art, sport, and craft, all in one. He helped forge swords and craft arrows. He even began to learn the basics of focusing his chi for advanced techniques, like leaping great distances or climbing up walls and clinging on sheer surfaces. He finally felt like he was doing something that mattered, that wasn't just doing the same old meaningless things over and over again. And then the letter came from the family's attorney, informing him that his parents were dead. Ironically, it was at the hands of one of his father's best friends, in a drunken accident. Despite never having felt particularly close to his parents before, their sudden absence from his world hit Donovan hard. Donovan screamed and wept and raged for days, leaving the monastery behind in his rapid downfall from serenity. What did inner peace matter if the world would come find you anyway? Wasn't there any meaning to be found even in the martial arts? In the philosophies of the ancient masters? Was that peace too, just an illusion? So Donovan embraced his inner bitterness and anger wholeheartedly, and took his bow, and went to kill the man who had killed his parents with his drunken driving, whose position as a circuit judge meant that he had sufficient connections to escape any punishment for his crime. His death was trivially easy to accomplish for an archer as skilled as Donovan Blaine had become. And, the deed having been done, Donovan then sat and looked at his handiwork, and felt nothing. The man was dead. But it didn't change anything. It didn't mean anything. And then suddenly he felt peace, true peace, quietly settle upon him for the first time in his life. All of the paths he had tried before, all the paths that had failed him -- normal life, charity work, self-indulgence, monastic contemplation, even rage and revenge -- had all failed him because Donovan had never confronted the one essential truth. That it was never /supposed/ to mean anything. Defining one's self by the effect one had on the world, whether for good or ill, was the wrong path. The world was the illusion. The self was what mattered. The purity of excellence. The calm clear serenity found in focus. Enlightenment was the target, and the arrow, and the bow. Enlightenment was knowing what your greatest talents were, and exercising those talents under conditions of challenge. The law, the police, superheroes... they were the thorns on the path to enlightenment, nothing more. Enlightenment was everywhere. Its truth was found not in any one thing, but as incomplete glimpses among many things. His initial life and its intended end were there to teach him of the living death that was life without challenge. His period of charity work was there to teach him of the futility of a life of self-sacrifice in the name of others, as if a cup of water could be poured into an ocean of blood and thus claim to have purified the ocean. His time of wanton self-indulgence was there to show him the soft and honeyed trap that awaited a man who lived only for gratification of the senses, but also of the surcease that could be found in such gratification, as an occasional rest from hard labor and deprivation. And the monastery? The monastery was a valued and treasured place in his heart, for it taught him the skills and tools he would need to reach true enlightenment, and true mastery of self, and thus at long last find the meaning of life. Even if the monks were /so/ far away from the truth, because they were /so/ close -- and yet never any closer. And so meaning could not be found in the monastery, either. It could only be found in the sheer, simple purity of holding the bow. Looking down the shaft. Aiming at the target. And releasing the arrow to do its work. And so Satori, master archer, philosopher, and aspiring mercenary assassin, began his new life. Current Status: After having achieved the first awareness of his philosophy of dark enlightenment, Donovan Blaine claimed his inheritance, sold his father's company, and set about teaching himself some of the skills that a professional assassin would need to excel in the business. (While enlightenment may be found in doing what one does well, avoiding jail is necessary to be free to continue practicing one's enlightenment. And professional assassins tend to much longer careers than serial killers.) Although he's still learning the ins and outs of the underworld, his first few "jobs" have gone well enough that he's starting to be known in criminal circles as a man who can get your job done for you, without fear and without fuss. Furthermore, while he's generally entirely indifferent to human life, his rep is that of a mercenary who insists on a certain... calmness... to endeavors he's going to be a part of. Any psychopath can go on a shooting spree in a schoolyard and enjoy his brief moment of un-glory before being gunned down by a massive police response. Satori intends the end of his life to come in a more peaceful manner, after a full completeness of his progress to enlightenment. After all, being awakened to the truth is only the beginning. True satori is to be attained by living one's entire life. Donovan Blaine currently has a clean criminal record, and is a new young socialite who has moved to Freedom City. Just wealthy enough to afford living and socializing in North Bay, but hardly anything noteworthy there. Stats: Str: 14 (+2) Dex: 20 (+5) Con: 18 (+4) Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 26 (+8) Cha: 16 (+3) BAB: +10/+14 bow BDB: +8/+12 (+4 flat-footed) Initiative: +5 Saves: Toughness: +4/+8 Fortitude: +4 Reflex: +8 Will: +10 Skills: Acrobatics 10 (+15), Climb 5 (+7), Craft/Mechanical 9 (+10), Diplomacy 2 (+5), Disable Device 9 (+10), Drive 3 (+8), Escape Artist 5 (+10), Intimidate 9 (+12), Knowledge/Tactics 4 (+5), Knowledge/Theology & Philosophy 9 (+10), Language (Japanese), Notice 7 (+15), Sense Motive 7 (+15), Stealth 11 (+16), Survival 5 (+10) Feats: Acrobatic Bluff, All-Out Attack, Attack Specialization 2 (Bow), Assessment, Attractive, Defensive Roll 4, Dodge Focus 4, Equipment 1, Evasion, Fascinate (Intimidation), Fearless, Hide In Plain Sight, Improved Ranged Disarm*, Luck 2, Power Attack, Precise Shot 2, Quick Draw, Ranged Pin, Takedown Attack, Ultimate Aim, Ultimate Save (Will), Uncanny Dodge (auditory), Wealth 2 Powers: Device 2 (Blast 5) (Bow & Arrow; Easy To Lose), Super-Movement 1 (Wall-Walking) Equipment: Normally Cell Phone, Night Vision Goggles, Binoculars, Lockpicking/Security Tools, and Rebreather. Occasionally changed as per mission loadout. Drawbacks: Costs: Abilities (46) + Combat (36) + Saves (5) + Skills (24) + Feats (33) + Powers (8) - Drawbacks (00) = 152 total points *Improved Ranged Disarm eliminates the -4 penalty for making a ranged disarm.

Players Name: Chuckg Power Level: PL11 (154 PPs) Unspent PPs: 2 Characters Name: Satori Alternate Identity: Donovan Blaine Height: 5' 11" Weight: 172 lbs. Hair: Blond Eyes: Blue Description: A handsome, athletic man in his mid-20s with an extremely toned gymnast's build. Not bulky. Usually with a calm and businesslike expression, occasionally smiles quietly. Never visibly gets upset. In costume as Satori, he wears skintight blacks with dark grey highlights, and a ninja-type mask covering everything but his eyes. His black-lacquered longbow and large quiver of arrows generally rests slung over his back. History: Donovan Blaine started out as an ordinary, athletic, upper-middle-class scion. Doing well in athletics and adequately in grades, his life looked to be laid out ahead of him -- four years at state college, then back to work in dad's paper company in a job made for him, marry some girl next door, eventually retire owning dad's business with 2.4 kids. But there was always something missing there. Something that didn't feel right. Was growing up just to live like everybody else around you lived, and like your family had always lived, really what it meant? So Donovan decided to major in philosophy, and started looking for answers. One of his instructors told him that the meaning of life was not to be found only in books, but also on the streets. So Donovan started volunteering for community service. He worked in soup kitchens. He unloaded food from trucks for food banks. He opened his eyes and took a look at the world outside of his comfortable strata, and saw the decent people, the good people struggling to raise their families and build their lives in the middle of squalor, crime, and urban decay. And he saw how the world around them dragged most of them back down into the dingy grey that was their lives, and how most of the determined few who managed to escape that life left it without looking back, thus making their struggle... irrelevant, somehow. Something didn't feel right about that, either. Was spending your life enduring all sorts of hardship just so you could grow up to move away and pretend that you never had been there meaningful? Was that all it meant? So Donovan decided to screw charity work and concentrate the good things in life. He spent his next year in college barely attending classes, using his daddy's money to pay geeks to write his papers for him, partying till he puked, and having every sorority girl that moved. And gave up on that within a year. There was nothing here, either. It didn't mean anything. It was just another way of not really living at all. So after graduating college, he went off backpacking, wandering the world. Within a year he ended up in a Zen monastery in Japan, deciding to seek meaning in life through meditation. And he stayed there for more years than he'd stayed anywhere else before. It felt... fitting, somehow. He learned the prayers, and the stances, and the exercises. He'd already taken a few self-defense classes before, but in the monastery he learned /real/ martial arts, things that bordered on the miraculous. He took to the ancient way of the bow as art, sport, and craft, all in one. He helped forge swords and craft arrows. He even began to learn the basics of focusing his chi for advanced techniques, like leaping great distances or climbing up walls and clinging on sheer surfaces. He finally felt like he was doing something that mattered, that wasn't just doing the same old meaningless things over and over again. And then the letter came from the family's attorney, informing him that his parents were dead. Ironically, it was at the hands of one of his father's best friends, in a drunken accident. Despite never having felt particularly close to his parents before, their sudden absence from his world hit Donovan hard. Donovan screamed and wept and raged for days, leaving the monastery behind in his rapid downfall from serenity. What did inner peace matter if the world would come find you anyway? Wasn't there any meaning to be found even in the martial arts? In the philosophies of the ancient masters? Was that peace too, just an illusion? So Donovan embraced his inner bitterness and anger wholeheartedly, and took his bow, and went to kill the man who had killed his parents with his drunken driving, whose position as a circuit judge meant that he had sufficient connections to escape any punishment for his crime. His death was trivially easy to accomplish for an archer as skilled as Donovan Blaine had become. And, the deed having been done, Donovan then sat and looked at his handiwork, and felt nothing. The man was dead. But it didn't change anything. It didn't mean anything. And then suddenly he felt peace, true peace, quietly settle upon him for the first time in his life. All of the paths he had tried before, all the paths that had failed him -- normal life, charity work, self-indulgence, monastic contemplation, even rage and revenge -- had all failed him because Donovan had never confronted the one essential truth. That it was never /supposed/ to mean anything. Defining one's self by the effect one had on the world, whether for good or ill, was the wrong path. The world was the illusion. The self was what mattered. The purity of excellence. The calm clear serenity found in focus. Enlightenment was the target, and the arrow, and the bow. Enlightenment was knowing what your greatest talents were, and exercising those talents under conditions of challenge. The law, the police, superheroes... they were the thorns on the path to enlightenment, nothing more. Enlightenment was everywhere. Its truth was found not in any one thing, but as incomplete glimpses among many things. His initial life and its intended end were there to teach him of the living death that was life without challenge. His period of charity work was there to teach him of the futility of a life of self-sacrifice in the name of others, as if a cup of water could be poured into an ocean of blood and thus claim to have purified the ocean. His time of wanton self-indulgence was there to show him the soft and honeyed trap that awaited a man who lived only for gratification of the senses, but also of the surcease that could be found in such gratification, as an occasional rest from hard labor and deprivation. And the monastery? The monastery was a valued and treasured place in his heart, for it taught him the skills and tools he would need to reach true enlightenment, and true mastery of self, and thus at long last find the meaning of life. Even if the monks were /so/ far away from the truth, because they were /so/ close -- and yet never any closer. And so meaning could not be found in the monastery, either. It could only be found in the sheer, simple purity of holding the bow. Looking down the shaft. Aiming at the target. And releasing the arrow to do its work. And so Satori, master archer, philosopher, and aspiring mercenary assassin, began his new life. Current Status: After having achieved the first awareness of his philosophy of dark enlightenment, Donovan Blaine claimed his inheritance, sold his father's company, and set about teaching himself some of the skills that a professional assassin would need to excel in the business. (While enlightenment may be found in doing what one does well, avoiding jail is necessary to be free to continue practicing one's enlightenment. And professional assassins tend to much longer careers than serial killers.) Although he's still learning the ins and outs of the underworld, his first few "jobs" have gone well enough that he's starting to be known in criminal circles as a man who can get your job done for you, without fear and without fuss. Furthermore, while he's generally entirely indifferent to human life, his rep is that of a mercenary who insists on a certain... calmness... to endeavors he's going to be a part of. Any psychopath can go on a shooting spree in a schoolyard and enjoy his brief moment of un-glory before being gunned down by a massive police response. Satori intends the end of his life to come in a more peaceful manner, after a full completeness of his progress to enlightenment. After all, being awakened to the truth is only the beginning. True satori is to be attained by living one's entire life. Donovan Blaine currently has a clean criminal record, and is a new young socialite who has moved to Freedom City. Just wealthy enough to afford living and socializing in North Bay, but hardly anything noteworthy there. Stats: Str: 14 (+2) Dex: 20 (+5) Con: 18 (+4) Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 26 (+8) Cha: 16 (+3) BAB: +10/+14 bow BDB: +8/+12 (+4 flat-footed) Initiative: +5 Saves: Toughness: +4/+8 Fortitude: +4 Reflex: +8 Will: +10 Skills: Acrobatics 10 (+15), Climb 5 (+7), Craft/Mechanical 9 (+10), Diplomacy 2 (+5), Disable Device 9 (+10), Drive 3 (+8), Escape Artist 5 (+10), Intimidate 9 (+12), Knowledge/Tactics 4 (+5), Knowledge/Theology & Philosophy 9 (+10), Language (Japanese), Notice 7 (+15), Sense Motive 7 (+15), Stealth 11 (+16), Survival 5 (+10) Feats: Acrobatic Bluff, All-Out Attack, Attack Specialization 2 (Bow), Assessment, Attractive, Defensive Roll 4, Dodge Focus 4, Equipment 1, Evasion, Fascinate (Intimidation), Fearless, Hide In Plain Sight, Improved Ranged Disarm*, Luck 2, Power Attack, Precise Shot 2, Quick Draw, Ranged Pin, Takedown Attack, Ultimate Aim, Ultimate Save (Will), Uncanny Dodge (auditory), Wealth 2 Powers: Device 2 (Blast 5) (Bow & Arrow; Easy To Lose), Super-Movement 1 (Wall-Walking) Equipment: Normally Cell Phone, Night Vision Goggles, Binoculars, Lockpicking/Security Tools, and Rebreather. Occasionally changed as per mission loadout. Drawbacks: Costs: Abilities (46) + Combat (36) + Saves (5) + Skills (24) + Feats (33) + Powers (8) - Drawbacks (00) = 152 total points *Improved Ranged Disarm eliminates the -4 penalty for making a ranged disarm.

Players Name: Chuckg Power Level: PL11 (154 PPs) Unspent PPs: 2 Characters Name: Satori Alternate Identity: Donovan Blaine Height: 5' 11" Weight: 172 lbs. Hair: Blond Eyes: Blue Description: A handsome, athletic man in his mid-20s with an extremely toned gymnast's build. Not bulky. Usually with a calm and businesslike expression, occasionally smiles quietly. Never visibly gets upset. In costume as Satori, he wears skintight blacks with dark grey highlights, and a ninja-type mask covering everything but his eyes. His black-lacquered longbow and large quiver of arrows generally rests slung over his back. History: Donovan Blaine started out as an ordinary, athletic, upper-middle-class scion. Doing well in athletics and adequately in grades, his life looked to be laid out ahead of him -- four years at state college, then back to work in dad's paper company in a job made for him, marry some girl next door, eventually retire owning dad's business with 2.4 kids. But there was always something missing there. Something that didn't feel right. Was growing up just to live like everybody else around you lived, and like your family had always lived, really what it meant? So Donovan decided to major in philosophy, and started looking for answers. One of his instructors told him that the meaning of life was not to be found only in books, but also on the streets. So Donovan started volunteering for community service. He worked in soup kitchens. He unloaded food from trucks for food banks. He opened his eyes and took a look at the world outside of his comfortable strata, and saw the decent people, the good people struggling to raise their families and build their lives in the middle of squalor, crime, and urban decay. And he saw how the world around them dragged most of them back down into the dingy grey that was their lives, and how most of the determined few who managed to escape that life left it without looking back, thus making their struggle... irrelevant, somehow. Something didn't feel right about that, either. Was spending your life enduring all sorts of hardship just so you could grow up to move away and pretend that you never had been there meaningful? Was that all it meant? So Donovan decided to screw charity work and concentrate the good things in life. He spent his next year in college barely attending classes, using his daddy's money to pay geeks to write his papers for him, partying till he puked, and having every sorority girl that moved. And gave up on that within a year. There was nothing here, either. It didn't mean anything. It was just another way of not really living at all. So after graduating college, he went off backpacking, wandering the world. Within a year he ended up in a Zen monastery in Japan, deciding to seek meaning in life through meditation. And he stayed there for more years than he'd stayed anywhere else before. It felt... fitting, somehow. He learned the prayers, and the stances, and the exercises. He'd already taken a few self-defense classes before, but in the monastery he learned /real/ martial arts, things that bordered on the miraculous. He took to the ancient way of the bow as art, sport, and craft, all in one. He helped forge swords and craft arrows. He even began to learn the basics of focusing his chi for advanced techniques, like leaping great distances or climbing up walls and clinging on sheer surfaces. He finally felt like he was doing something that mattered, that wasn't just doing the same old meaningless things over and over again. And then the letter came from the family's attorney, informing him that his parents were dead. Ironically, it was at the hands of one of his father's best friends, in a drunken accident. Despite never having felt particularly close to his parents before, their sudden absence from his world hit Donovan hard. Donovan screamed and wept and raged for days, leaving the monastery behind in his rapid downfall from serenity. What did inner peace matter if the world would come find you anyway? Wasn't there any meaning to be found even in the martial arts? In the philosophies of the ancient masters? Was that peace too, just an illusion? So Donovan embraced his inner bitterness and anger wholeheartedly, and took his bow, and went to kill the man who had killed his parents with his drunken driving, whose position as a circuit judge meant that he had sufficient connections to escape any punishment for his crime. His death was trivially easy to accomplish for an archer as skilled as Donovan Blaine had become. And, the deed having been done, Donovan then sat and looked at his handiwork, and felt nothing. The man was dead. But it didn't change anything. It didn't mean anything. And then suddenly he felt peace, true peace, quietly settle upon him for the first time in his life. All of the paths he had tried before, all the paths that had failed him -- normal life, charity work, self-indulgence, monastic contemplation, even rage and revenge -- had all failed him because Donovan had never confronted the one essential truth. That it was never /supposed/ to mean anything. Defining one's self by the effect one had on the world, whether for good or ill, was the wrong path. The world was the illusion. The self was what mattered. The purity of excellence. The calm clear serenity found in focus. Enlightenment was the target, and the arrow, and the bow. Enlightenment was knowing what your greatest talents were, and exercising those talents under conditions of challenge. The law, the police, superheroes... they were the thorns on the path to enlightenment, nothing more. Enlightenment was everywhere. Its truth was found not in any one thing, but as incomplete glimpses among many things. His initial life and its intended end were there to teach him of the living death that was life without challenge. His period of charity work was there to teach him of the futility of a life of self-sacrifice in the name of others, as if a cup of water could be poured into an ocean of blood and thus claim to have purified the ocean. His time of wanton self-indulgence was there to show him the soft and honeyed trap that awaited a man who lived only for gratification of the senses, but also of the surcease that could be found in such gratification, as an occasional rest from hard labor and deprivation. And the monastery? The monastery was a valued and treasured place in his heart, for it taught him the skills and tools he would need to reach true enlightenment, and true mastery of self, and thus at long last find the meaning of life. Even if the monks were /so/ far away from the truth, because they were /so/ close -- and yet never any closer. And so meaning could not be found in the monastery, either. It could only be found in the sheer, simple purity of holding the bow. Looking down the shaft. Aiming at the target. And releasing the arrow to do its work. And so Satori, master archer, philosopher, and aspiring mercenary assassin, began his new life. Current Status: After having achieved the first awareness of his philosophy of dark enlightenment, Donovan Blaine claimed his inheritance, sold his father's company, and set about teaching himself some of the skills that a professional assassin would need to excel in the business. (While enlightenment may be found in doing what one does well, avoiding jail is necessary to be free to continue practicing one's enlightenment. And professional assassins tend to much longer careers than serial killers.) Although he's still learning the ins and outs of the underworld, his first few "jobs" have gone well enough that he's starting to be known in criminal circles as a man who can get your job done for you, without fear and without fuss. Furthermore, while he's generally entirely indifferent to human life, his rep is that of a mercenary who insists on a certain... calmness... to endeavors he's going to be a part of. Any psychopath can go on a shooting spree in a schoolyard and enjoy his brief moment of un-glory before being gunned down by a massive police response. Satori intends the end of his life to come in a more peaceful manner, after a full completeness of his progress to enlightenment. After all, being awakened to the truth is only the beginning. True satori is to be attained by living one's entire life. Donovan Blaine currently has a clean criminal record, and is a new young socialite who has moved to Freedom City. Just wealthy enough to afford living and socializing in North Bay, but hardly anything noteworthy there. Stats: Str: 14 (+2) Dex: 20 (+5) Con: 18 (+4) Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 26 (+8) Cha: 16 (+3) BAB: +10/+14 bow BDB: +8/+12 (+4 flat-footed) Initiative: +5 Saves: Toughness: +4/+8 Fortitude: +4 Reflex: +8 Will: +10 Skills: Acrobatics 10 (+15), Climb 5 (+7), Craft/Mechanical 9 (+10), Diplomacy 2 (+5), Disable Device 9 (+10), Drive 3 (+8), Escape Artist 5 (+10), Intimidate 9 (+12), Knowledge/Tactics 4 (+5), Knowledge/Theology & Philosophy 9 (+10), Language (Japanese), Notice 7 (+15), Sense Motive 7 (+15), Stealth 11 (+16), Survival 5 (+10) Feats: Acrobatic Bluff, All-Out Attack, Attack Specialization 2 (Bow), Assessment, Attractive, Defensive Roll 4, Dodge Focus 4, Equipment 1, Evasion, Fascinate (Intimidation), Fearless, Hide In Plain Sight, Improved Ranged Disarm*, Luck 2, Power Attack, Precise Shot 2, Quick Draw, Ranged Pin, Takedown Attack, Ultimate Aim, Ultimate Save (Will), Uncanny Dodge (auditory), Wealth 2 Powers: Device 2 (Blast 5) (Bow & Arrow; Easy To Lose), Super-Movement 1 (Wall-Walking) Equipment: Normally Cell Phone, Night Vision Goggles, Binoculars, Lockpicking/Security Tools, and Rebreather. Occasionally changed as per mission loadout. Drawbacks: Costs: Abilities (46) + Combat (36) + Saves (5) + Skills (24) + Feats (33) + Powers (8) - Drawbacks (00) = 152 total points *Improved Ranged Disarm eliminates the -4 penalty for making a ranged disarm.