Profile
Liam
| Name | Liam Mason Webb |
| Name in previous ID | Liam Bernard Chadwick |
| Name in current ID | Alexander Graham Bell, "Alex" |
| Age | 28 |
| Gender | Male, he/him |
| Nationality | British |
| Species | Human/cyborg (but refuses to call himself a cyborg) |
Overview
A weary, short-tempered man with malfunctioning robotic legs and a vision problem that makes him go blind unpredictably.
Liam is a guy who could've had an academic career, but his big brother chose him a different path. Liam used to kidnap and sell mutants by request for living, until one of his victims paid him back and blinded him. Now Liam is nothing but a poor fugitive, waiting to be found and punished by either mutants or his former colleagues.
Appearance
Liam is 5'10" (178 cm) tall and muscular man, though he has been exercising less lately and he has started to lose some muscle mass and weight. Still, he is physically in a good shape and he has a lot of strength in his body, and he is also very flexible and agile. He is balanced and his movement is smooth and controlled, but his posture could be better; there's some stillness and weariness in his overall appearance that decreases his natural charisma and confidence. His skin is light, even pale and he has freckles. His medium length hair is blond and he has at least stubble if not a short beard; without a beard he would look a couple of years younger than his age. His eyes are light grey around the pupil and the outer ring is pale blue. He rather grins than smiles widely. He has a long vertical surgery scar on his lower back.
Liam has artificial legs that look exactly like normal legs, but the place of attachment just above the knees is visible and scarred. The legs are very durable and filled with technology sensing and adjusting pressure, and they are connected to his spine to make it possible for him to even jump from a building and land unharmed. He feels the legs and a touch on them, but feeling pain was not programmed to them. The legs can even heal themselves if they are damaged; however, that feature needs refreshing and maintenance every now and then, and Liam hasn't been able to do that lately, so the legs are not healing the same way as they used to. Sometimes there are brief moments when the legs are not functioning as they should, or they don't work at all - Liam stumbles and has balance problems every now and then.
Liam dresses casually and doesn't stand out from the crowd. He wears round sunglasses to hide his gaze when he loses his vision, which happens randomly about three times a day, and the duration of these black-outs can be anything from a few minutes to almost an hour. His movement is calm and measured, especially so when he can't see anything. He has a tattoo of gears surrounded by breaking chains on his right arm. Liam doesn't care for his looks so much anymore, and if he just got his will of life back, he could change his appearance significantly with only a little effort.
Personality
Liam is an impulsive person and it depends strongly on his current mood how he's going to behave with people. When he's moody, he can be an absolutely unbearable company. If he has a good day, he can be a very charming, even charismatic guy. He has no trouble approaching other people, and in general he's very sociable. He's talkative, he makes dry jokes and he can perceptively talk about various topics in a reasonable manner. Liam usually has strong opinions, but if he hears a good argument, he can change his mind. He's a good listener, but the way he speaks is often crude. Even if he tries his best to keep his speech correct, he constantly uses inappropriate expressions that come to him naturally. He is smart and especially likes science, but due to chronic lack of sleep, he's a bit slow to understand and learn new things.
Liam is prone to losing his temper, and he's extremely quick to react to provocation. He doesn't tolerate any bullshit from people of whom he doesn't think highly of. When irritated, his language use is strongly inappropriate and his bodily expression challenges directly to a physical confrontation. Once he hits the roof, Liam finds it difficult to cool himself down, and the person who had pissed him off is a complete imbecile in his book, and getting any remotely positive gesture or word out of him is nearly impossible. In his current state, however, he tries to avoid fights, although it's easy to tell when he's about to lose it and that he's trying his best to get a hold of himself.
Although Liam is bad with understanding feelings and he basically only knows if he's angry or not, in his personal relationships he's genuine and gentle person, downright soft. He compromises, gives in, submits and supports his loved ones at his own expense and always does it with all his heart.
Liam has a normal sense of morality and knows what is right, and if it was up to him, he would choose the most peaceful way as possible to do things. However, his loyalty to the people who have earned his trust always overrules his own preferred way. He can easily shut down his emotions in morally questionable situations, even in the most brutal ones. In general, Liam's unquestioning way of following orders seems to contradict with his stubborn and outspoken personality. However, in the end he's quick to become attached to a person and his trust is easily earned, and after that he is willing to do almost anything and it's extremely easy to control him.
Overall, a strong duality characterizes Liam's personality, which has been molded into something that isn't solidly anything. An inconsistent upbringing, an emotional dependence on his older brother and an accident that almost killed him have shaped Liam into a person who lets people think for him. He either feels strongly, or feels nothing at all. At the end of the day, Liam has more good than bad in him, but his codependency - that he calls loyalty - makes him do things he probably wouldn't do if he ever listened to himself.
Before Vect, Inc.
Liam was born in London in 2040. His childhood wasn't secure, his mother was a poor drug addict trying to stay clean, and every day was a struggle. His nine years older half-brother Lewis was the one who mostly took care of him, but later on in his life Lewis started building a criminal career. Even though Lewis chose to work on the other side of the law after his army years, he never wanted the same life for his little brother. Liam was a smart kid, got excellent grades in school, and he was accepted into university. Though he didn't have a clear vision about what he wanted to do with his future and no real dedication for anything, it started to look like he could get himself a good, normal life.
Then he was in a car accident and lost both of his legs and nearly his life. Lewis bought him modern, technologically advanced artificial legs that were worth a fortune, and once Liam was recovered from his injuries, Lewis asked Liam to join Vect, Inc. to help to pay the debt. Vect, Inc. was an international criminal organization that specialized in human trafficking, more precisely on people with abilities (mostly mutants). Liam dropped his studies and became a professional criminal, and Lewis was able to keep an eye on him every minute.
After Vect, Inc.
Liam had no regrets, he was good at his new job at Vect, Inc. and he didn't mind his brother thinking for him. His new artificial legs were a valuable asset, and in - usually unwanted - close combats he was a dangerous opponent. When Liam accidentally killed a person for the first time in his life, his devastation made him want to quit. Lewis was able to talk him out of his plans, assured the dead guy was better off dead, promised Liam that it wasn't going to change anything between them or it wouldn't damage Liam's mental health; it's just a job, shit happens. Liam believed him. After the incident he learned to shut down his emotions, and if encounters got more brutal than intended, it didn't affect him anymore.
A few years after starting to work for Vect, Inc., Liam met a girl called Denise, and they fell for each other quickly and passionately. Unfortunately Denise's father was on Vect, Inc.'s list, and Lewis made a plan to get the job done nice and easy with Liam's help by using Denise as a leverage. After the successful kidnapping of Denise's father, Liam chose to break up with Denise because he knew he had to tell her about him working for Vect, Inc. sooner or later, and possibly reveal that he and Lewis were the ones who sold her father to some shady organization. Liam never found out that Denise was a mutant too, and that she had started her personal, vengeful quest to find her father.
Dresden, Germany
About a year later after the Denise incident, Lewis took the biggest contract yet in his career. He made a careful plan to trace and capture a menace of a mob boss, a man with a very powerful and wanted ability - Theodor Novak was able to tell if people had abilities and was able to modify person's physiology just by touching them. About ten years ago Novak had escaped GKZ, a research institute specializing in mutants, and GKZ was willing to pay very handsomely to get Novak back. Lewis formed a team and Liam was honored but quite nervous to play a very important part in Lewis's plan: Liam's job was to distract Novak so Lewis and the rest of the team could neutralize Novak's bodyguards. Liam's improvisation skills were put to the test - there wasn't going to be second chance if he failed.
On paper the outcome was successful: Liam was able to distract Novak, Novak's bodyguards were neutralized and Novak was brought to the custody of GKZ. The unplanned part was that Liam's technologically repaired nervous system had an unusual response to Novak's touch that usually made people feel intense pain: what Liam felt was euphoric pleasure. The distraction plan worked, but it got out of hand, and Liam's unprofessionally seductive methods made Lewis very unhappy. The brothers got paid well, but they never talked about the events in Dresden again.
Downhill
Theodor Novak didn't forget. Once again he escaped GKZ, and eight months after his imprisonment in GKZ's test lab his posse tracked Liam down. Novak didn't kill Liam, but made him blind with his ability, and after the unhappy mutant crew had roughed Liam up, Liam was tossed to the streets. Blind, beaten-up and alone in an unknown location, Liam was more frightened than ever before. It took a couple of days before Lewis found him.
Lewis desperately tried to find a way to restore his brother's vision. Lewis went so far he stole a huge deal of money from Vect, Inc. to hire the best doctors to cure Liam, but even they couldn't completely restore his vision. Nevertheless, both Liam and Lewis had to flee in a hurry, because Vect, Inc. wasn't known for its forgiveness.
Currently
Soon~
Fun Facts
- Liam went studying biomechanical engineering, but he dropped before he got his bachelor's degree. He has always liked math and natural sciences, and he is smarter than people think. (Despite his blind loyalty and him letting people think for him.)
- He has lived most of his life in London and he has a distinguishing cockney accent. His manner of speech and use of slang words and rhyming can make his verbal expression difficult to understand for a non-native English speaker.
- Liam is trying to stay incognito, and - purely for his own amusement - he goes by various aliases that take after some famous scientists. Currently he uses name Alexander Bell, Alex for short.
- Other names he occasionally uses are e.g. Alex Fleming, Will Harvey, Craig Venter and Roger Penrose.
- His previous life was erased from every system when he joined Vect, Inc. His chosen last name, Chadwick, is after physicist Sir James Chadwick, and he kept his first name just to humor his brother. Lewis was unsure if he could remember Liam's new name.
- He rarely drinks alcohol and doesn't do drugs. When he was about fifteen, he dealt drugs for a while, but Lewis, who has always been aggressively against drug use, got so mad at him that Liam quit dealing.
- It was the first and last time Lewis threatened to kill him. Lewis's behavior made it very clear that he wasn't joking, and Liam was scared shitless and promised to quit. They never spoke about it again.
- Liam and Lewis have the same mother. Lewis's father died of drug overdose before Liam was born.
- Liam doesn't know anything about his father, and has never been eager to find out who he is.
- Liam has a hay fever.
- He feels uneasy in open areas, and nature makes him feel even more uncomfortable. He has lived in a crowded city all his life, and a park is more than enough wilderness for him.
- Liam was slightly taller before the accident: the legs were designed to not give or take height, but he shrunk a bit nonetheless.
- Currently he's roommates with Dũng, who's Ly's little brother. Liam calls him Zoom because it's his best effort to pronounce his name, and Dũng's name confuses Liam when he sees it written down.
- Liam's relationship with Zoom is fairly good and they get along quite well. Zoom doesn't ask too many questions and Liam appreciates it. However, Ly who drops by every now and then is another story - Liam doesn't really trust her.
- Liam's alignment is most likely chaotic neutral.
Creation facts
- Created in 2016 as a player character for "Kei", an RPG project my friend Sykomori started years ago.
- I've been developing Liam's character since then. I started fleshing him out in 2018 and again in 2020. I RP'd him for the first time in 2021.
- Liam is very dear to me and he's one of my favorite characters. He's an intelligent dumbass, complex but flexible, tragic and comical at the same time. I can basically do anything with him. Make his life more miserable and complicated, for example...
Lewis
Liam's half-brother. Liam has let Lewis think for him since childhood, and Liam feels lost now when Lewis isn't with him. Their bond is very strong, and Liam always does whatever Lewis wants him to do without question.
Zoom
Liam couldn't ask for a better roommate. Dũng, or Zoom as Liam calls him, doesn't ask too many questions, is friendly and harmless and most importantly, doesn't annoy Liam. Zoom's big sister Ly gets on his nerves, though.
Denise
Liam's ex-girlfriend and the love of his life. Sometimes Liam wishes he could go back and change things so they could still be together, but he has decided to move on. When they broke up, Liam made sure Denise would hate him so there could be no turning back.
Ly
Ly is Zoom's big sister. An enigma, annoyingly so, and involved in some criminal activity Liam would rather know nothing about. Liam doesn't trust her, but admits Ly can be cute sometimes. Until she becomes an annoying enigma again.
Teddy
It's complicated™. Liam tells himself it was just Teddy's stupid mutant power and his own stupid tech body that escalated things so quickly between them, so there's really nothing to talk about. Absolutely no feelings at all. No need to talk about how intense euphoria he felt when Teddy touched him. Nope.
