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Duke
- Duke is not very tall, his hair is almost white, a very light purple. He is skinny, but not underweight. Duke tries to take care of himself and wants to look nice, despite any living situation he is in. He'll especially focus on his hair.
- His pupils are long like a cats, and can get real big and round, haha.
- He's got freckles!
- (Will ad more when I think of it)
Duke is 28 years old, he was born May 7th. He travels the wasteland playing his banjo and singing...
Duke has some psychic-type powers and can make things explode with his mind. It's very limited- He can use his power only so many times before he has to recover, and if the target is moving he isn't always accurate. If the target is a person(or anything large), he can only choose a part of them to target, it can't be their whole body as his ability is not that strong. He usually aims for the head if they are aggressive/a threat. Otherwise he'll aim at the ground near their feet to scare them off.
If he over-uses his abilities it gives him a sort of migraine type issue (His eyes will be very sore and he can't keep them open easily, so makes aiming near impossible. Along with throbbing headache and sometimes vomiting if he really pushes it too far.) In the most absolute extreme cases he's had seizures. Of course, he tries not to do this, he just figured it out the hard way, haha. So knowing his limitations, he keeps a knife in his back pocket and a small gun in his banjo case for backup. Though, funnily enough, he's not too good aiming a real gun.
Sadly the worst part of his ability is that it is slowly killing him. It's slowly eating away at his brain, dumping memories and causing lack of sleep, and eventually the later stages will cause increased seizures and motor impairment. Eventually, death.
It also gives off other weird side effects such as 'hearing voices' though he is actually aware that the voices are coming from his own brain, but chooses to converse anyway. And to be clear, the voices he hears are never hostile. His banjo, Mercy, is the main voice he converses with and she is more like "the little angle on his shoulder" type of deal. Like his superego.
He pretends to use his hand as a gun when he uses his abilities, and makes the sounds himself like a dork.
He can speak both English and Spanish, he will often phrase things awkwardly in both/either languages, haha.
Duke used to travel with his sister, her partner and his own partner. But he now travels alone, and now only runs around with other people rarely, and for a limited time. He's on a bit of a "mission" now, but it's not totally clear what that is.
When dealing with strangers, he tends to be cautious in the very beginning, but may quickly/abruptly shift to being very overly-familiar at only the slightest sign of friendliness or even just tolerance. He likes to get people talking/rambling, but if they won't speak he's got plenty of pointless stories and thoughts stored up in the bank.
I wasn't sure where to put this random info, but I just get bored easily so I have all kinds of AUs with my OCs. I'll have multiple galleries and tabs of the different ways his story will go, just because it's fun and I go with different plots depending on my mood.
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These songs remind me of Duke, I thought I would post them somewhere on his page.
Unwed Henry by American Murder Song. AMS was one of my inspirations when creating Duke because I like their creepy songs, I feel like it's the kind of music Duke would love. Plus I like to think Duke's singing voice sounds like Saar's(the second singer in the song) haha!
Satin In A Coffin by Modest Mouse. It's a good song with some good banjo. I think Duke would like lots of Modest Mouse songs though, they are kind of unique and interesting and I can imagine him enjoying them.
Aim For The Head by Creature Feature. Duke loves songs about the apocalypse haha, even though he isn't living in a zombie apocalypse specifically, I still think he'd still enjoy this SO much.
I wanted to use this little section to describe (Or really, just ramble about) his ability a little more in detail. I imagine it's comforting to Duke. He likes to make it seem more powerful and impressive than it really is, just to scare people, you know? To make it less likely someone might try to mess with him. But it is just as limited as a physical weapon in that he doesn't have "unlimited ammo" he has a limit to how much he can use it at one time. Overuse has consequences. And I think that aiming it is tricky in it's own way, the way I've been imagining how it feels to use it is as if you were trying to shoot a rubber band from your finger, trying to guess how far you need to pull back or aim upward to make the full distance.
Also, even though he pretends it's like a gun, it is more like a small explosion and it triggers from the inside of the target, rather than impacting from the outside.
Just going to put some quick notes of background here, might actually update someday.
Duke and his sister grew up as descendants from experiments. They lived in a little community that the scientist had turned into an almost cult-like living situation. Everyone mostly just did what the scientists said was right and didn't question much. But the experiments weren't going so well and by the time it got to Duke and his sister's generation it was failing.
While Duke was still young, one of his tests revealed that he had a flaw in his ability and the scientist decided he'd fit in better with another group who had similar flaws. Mina, his sister, was very distraught at the news. She wanted to get them out of there but was afraid to run away.
Duke ended up having some surgeries and alterations done to him that ended up being quite traumatizing, but it gave Mina the extra encouragement she needed to bust them out of there. She waited for her brother to heal up first-
But when the time finally came, their escape went completely wrong and things got pretty messy. Mina tried to only use her abilities to slow others down, while Duke aimed to be fatal. Although, even as an adult it's not something he would regret, but his sister did not approve.
They did escape, though. They just had nothing and no idea how the world worked.
Being out in the wasteland alone was pretty scary, but they also felt an exciting thrill of adventure from it, even for many years after their escape. It did finally become more normal and they found a rhythm to daily life. Because Mina took on a sort of leader role and took care of decisions, Duke became pretty carefree and sometimes even careless, which would drive his sister nuts.
Duke loved music and would try to memorize EVERY old song they ever discovered. And it would be especially annoying when he could only remember part of one. Before his banjo, when Mina and he were still traveling alone, he did once find an in tact guitar. But he accidentally smashed it while he was retreating once. He is still very upset about that, haha!
Duke was pretty jealous when Mina met Duncan, because he was accustomed to having her full attention for so long. He drove them out of their minds for a while, signing songs about murder, or other things like that. Of course, that did pass eventually and they became friendly with one another.
While they were staying in a settlement, Duke discovered Knox. He liked him immediately because Knox had quite the sense of humor. They hunted some mutant creatures together for a while, helping the settlement keep them out of it's limits. Duke eventually started to romance Knox a bit. Sometimes he would sing to him, which Knox was such a sucker for. So when Mina and Duncan decided they wanted to travel further west, Duke convinced Knox to join them. (Not that it took a lot of convincing.) While they were traveling, Duke got really sick and they had to slow down. But all of a sudden he woke up to falling, and realized that he and Knox had fallen down the side of a cliff it seemed. The next time he woke up he was with Sparrow, who saved his life and took care of him until he could leave. Sparrow was only able to share very little information, but revealed he hadn't found anyone else alive. When Duke recovered, Sparrow and Momma helped him Bury the bodies(or, the parts that were left), but Duke only found Mina's arm in the carnage. He ripped off part of her jacket from the arm and buried it, but decided he was going to bury the piece of her jacket somewhere else.
He decided he was going to take her somewhere special, he'd complete their journey on his own and bury her there. He plans to join them right after, only things go a bit differently than planned.
I'll add more later.
Mercy is Duke's banjo, she is his best friend. She is nothing but helpful, and only has positive things to say. Duke is aware that she is not alive but he feels like she is none-the-less. More info soon.
Duke's sister. They were extremely close growing up and Duke was pretty jealous over her, especially because the two had spent probably too much time in isolation. He definitely relied on her a little too much. Even after he fell in love with Knox, he couldn't stand to be away from Mina for more than a day or two. Another reason being, he felt she was the only one who understood their upbringing, seeing as how they were raised in such a strange cult-like environment.
Knox was Duke's boyfriend. They loved to hunt monsters/mutants together, but also to make up stories together and talk about their " theories " of the universe, aliens, and the future. Knox was a tad on the needy side, which was great for Duke because he's the same way haha!
Mina's husband and Duke's friend. Although, even after Duke accepted him he found Duncan to be unbearably annoying. He hated that Duncan was 'useless' and didn't know anything.
Sparrow saved Duke's life, he was extremely kind and helpful. He also helped bury the dead. Duke visited Sparrow a couple of times after he'd left and brought supplies as a thank-you gift. Duke even met Momma, and although he was terrified of her, he tries to be respectful to her as well.
Duke found Tobi almost dead, with a hole in his guts. Ended up helping Tobi get to a doctor in the nearest settlement. He joked around the whole time about how Tobi was going to die, BUT Tobi did survive, they became friendly. Tobi hired Duke to help him find the rest of his group that he'd been separated from. They bonded while traveling together, Tobi was an excellent listener, and Duke loved their long conversations. Duke rarely finds people who will so fully engage with him. They also bonded over their similar losses, and spoke a lot on their personal views on death and such. However, Duke still chose to leave once Rose and Paisley were found, feeling that he needed to accomplish his own goals. But before leaving, Tobi made it clear Duke was welcome to stay. Duke remembered this, and would someday seek Tobi out once again.
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