Nemo McCarthy

Nemo McCarthy is an abrasive character that mostly dwells in his mother's basement, posting on the local Usenet newsgroup about various conspiracies.  He's obsessed with the idea that Dawn Metropolis is ruled by an alien Illuminati that replaces humans with alien imposters that subsequently gaslight the remaining humans into complacency.  Needless to say, no one online ever takes him seriously.  He has a pet pigeon named Smitty that he loves very much.

Known Backstory:

Nemo has had his Stand ability for a long time.  Feeling like an outsider, he took refuge in the two other Stand users he could find: Maverick Tonopah (older brother to a player character), and Josiah Jones.  The three were something of an adventuring trio for a while, but then things started falling apart once people in the city began disappearing and holes formed in the remaining folks' memories.  The theft(?) of a superpower-granting meteorite seems to be central to this cover-up, as several friends related to the trio's investigation were the first to go.  Josiah noticed the signs first, still having vague memories of the others, and doubled down on his investigation efforts.  Meanwhile, Maverick wanted out, as he didn't want his sister getting involved, leaving Nemo torn between them.

Nemo ultimately sided with Josiah, but Josiah became fiercely independent, not wanting Nemo to get erased because of anything he might have found out.  Surely enough, Josiah went out one day on a solo mission, never to come back.  Like clockwork, people started forgetting Josiah Jones ever existed.  Nemo turned inward after this, spiraling down into paranoia and depression; his mother tried to set him up with a therapist, where he received a schizophrenia diagnosis, but at this point, he was so far gone that he refused to take his medication.  Being the only one left that remembers your best friend-slash-crush?  Hurts.

In-Game Timeline (Act 1):

Nemo used his Stand to steal the senses of various people it came across in order to see if they encountered Josiah Jones at any point, in order to prove he existed and wasn't truly erased.  Nemo fully believed that an alien force is out to gaslight him.  The players figured it out when they encountered his Stand themselves, recalling various Usenet posts under Nemo's email address that outlined his plan to discover the truth.

They marched over to his house and confronted him; thankfully, there was no real fight, as it was immediately apparent that something was wrong with poor Nemo.  He summarized his backstory and motivations, and said that no matter what the party thinks of him, he knows definitively that there are "fake people" in the city.  His proof?  One day after Josiah disappeared, his Stand started retrieving senses that were completely blank.  This became more and more frequent until eventually, the only senses he could see and hear out of were those of fellow Stand users.  His conclusion was that people in the city have been replaced with alien doppelgangers, or constructs obeying alien superiors, up to and including people like his therapist and his own mother.

While hard to believe, the players don't think they should write him off completely.  It's simply a matter of interpreting and investigating his findings in order to find the truths that may lay underneath.

In-Game Timeline (Act 2):

A mysterious Stand called「Endless Fantasy」overwrote the memories of parts of the city and characters' relationships while simultaneously skipping time forward a couple months.  The players and NPCs were victims alike, and eventually regained varying degrees of knowledge of what had been reset.  The shift seems to have affected his life a lot--he's now in college studying Computer Science!  He still seems very into the concept of "aliens," and yes, he still has his pet pigeon back at home, don't worry.  He hasn't mentioned Josiah, but he does appear to be conducting a more thorough investigation of his "fake people."  He's recently come to the same conclusion that every non-Stand user in the city isn't real, with the implication that this time, the party is who told him to gather the data.  As the remaining mysteries unfurl, it becomes increasingly clear that his findings were correctly pointing toward a conspiracy, but his anxiety sensationalized the data.

Ability: 「Hatful of Hollow」

Autopilot, Artificial Humanoid

Hatful of Hollow is a semi-automatic Stand that can be operated on autopilot.  Normally, HoH can "steal" senses from a target living being, represented by black square-shaped hollows where the target's facial features used to be (depending on the sense stolen).  The stolen eyes, ears, etc. then appear inside the Stand as Nemo can then see, hear, etc. all that the victim had experienced in the past, as if looking through a recording.  In the autopilot mode, Nemo can have HoH target specific kinds of victims as well as specific senses (e.g. "steal the eyes of every Stand user you find"), after which it returns with everything it stole.

It resembles a hollow alien creature, almost balloonlike in texture, with two empty divots for eyes.

Other:

• His first name is both a reference to Captain Nemo and the song "Nemo" by Nightwish.  His last name is a reference to McCarthyism.
• His general fashion sense gives off the appearance of a prepper.
• He has an overbite.  He probably needs braces.  He also has glasses but only for distance vision; he doesn't wear them unless he goes outside, which isn't often.
• His schizophrenia was actually inspired by canon JJBA character Doppio; fans would often confuse the character's DID with schizophrenia (as it so often happens, thanks to pop culture).  Thus I wanted to see an actual schizophrenic Stand user and what that may be like.  He was one of the first characters created for the campaign!
• His Stand was partially designed by Bee.
• Character art album cover background reference