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Apr. 15th, 2016 11:51 pmAppearance: Nohar is a moreau, a genetically engineered creature somewhere between human and animal. He looks mostly like a tiger trying to be shaped like a person. The arms and hands are almost right, and the legs bend the right way, but other than that he’s very inhuman. He’s also bigger than most grown men, which makes finding clothing that fits him a chore. Nohar can’t exactly afford a tailor.
He does his best to make himself presentable when dealing with humans (or “pinks”, which is morey slang), and clothes are the rule of the day even if he thinks they’re itchy and hot, but Nohar is never quite going to fit in walking down a street outside Moreytown.
Luckily, he got over that a long time ago.
Skills: Firstly, Nohar is fairly dangerous just by virtue of being mostly tiger, with teeth and claws to match. His low-light vision and hearing are excellent, and his sense of smell is better than human, but his day vision is fuzzy.
Nohar’s strain was engineered for combat and his altered fight-or-flight response makes him very fast and strong with incredible pain tolerance, but once the adrenaline wears off it leaves him totally exhausted and probably ready to pass out. Nohar has the genes of a weapon, but not the training or physical fitness regimen.
Another downside is he’s also an obligate carnivore, which makes life expensive. Nohar can tolerate smaller amounts of bread, spices, etc but he only gets real nutrition from meat. As a morey, he also has a shorter life expectancy than most humans. He will be extremely lucky if he reaches 50 years. Nohar’s not complaining though, that’s better than a lot of strains get. You won’t see a rat or a rabbit even hit their late thirties.
Less physically, Nohar has been making his living as a private detective. Before that, he was running with a street gang. He’s a good problem solver, knows how to dig up useful information out of public records, can hold his own in a fight, and is confident in being scarier than anything he might find in a dark alley. He’s usually right.
He’s also a city cat, which means that while Nohar has a lot of raw physical strength he lacks any kind of survival training beyond hard-won experience scrounging the streets. The underbelly of the city has been his home for most of his life, and without a big ugly metropolis he’s at a loss for some very basic things.
Personality: Nohar is bitter, grumpy, and stubborn as a mule. He's proud of being self-sufficient and hates to be pitied or patronized. Nohar's a suspicious cynic about being offered help. Life dealt him a shitty hand, but it's his to deal with and he won't abide somebody looking to make themselves feel better by faking nice to a poor morey. It's almost nicer when people are afraid of him. Almost.
Nohar was born and raised a second class citizen that polite society expects to go savage at any moment, and has constantly had to prove that he’s just another person. This is made worse because half the time they’re right. There are plenty of good moreys, but the population has a significant number of dangerous individuals due to either the genetic work of the military that made them or the strain of living poor in a world that doesn’t want them. On a good day, Nohar can wear a suit and convince somebody mildly important to talk to him. On a bad day, he has to get by on whatever being a big, intimidating cuss can get him and that’s usually not much short of an arrest if he pushes his luck.
Humans frustrate him and other moreys frustrate him, which means Nohar struggles to make and keep friends. He’s used to working alone, wary of the motives of people who try to get close (because why would you want to?) and it leaves him pretty lonely deep down. There are a lot of people who don’t fit into the world, but not many whose dysfunctions match step just right with Nohar’s. He’s brave, loyal when it counts, and prefers to do the right thing (for his own definition of right, anyway) but he’s seldom been able to find people he cares enough for to stick with it.
On the rare occasion when he does, Nohar’s the one cursing himself for his trouble and expecting no good deed to go unpunished as he puts his life on the line. Practical or not, he has a noble streak and even years of bitterness and rejection haven’t been able to destroy his desire to change things for the better when that’s within his reach.
Nohar doesn’t expect things to go right for him. Experience has taught him they almost never do. At the very least, a pessimist is always pleasantly surprised when everything’s not completely terrible.
Background: Nohar is from an 80's-imagined version of the 2050's. Megabytes are still a big deal and data is stored on ramcards. Everyone has a home computer (comm) capable of video conferencing, but nobody has a cell phone. Cars run on induction engines and the wealthy have flying vehicles with rotors. Genetic engineering of humans and animals, while outlawed since the war years that produced moreaus, still goes on in the shadows. Several major cities have been bombed off the face of the planet, along with most of Japan.
Nohar is a second generation tiger moreau, an animal-soldier with genes engineered for a war he never saw. Nohar's parents were part of a unit that defected from the Indian special forces in the Pan-Asian conflict of the 2020's. They fled to the United States shortly before he was born. He was raised by his mother, and then their former unit's medical officer after she died.
His father, Datia Rajasthan, was a charismatic sociopath and had been the unit’s leader. While he sired several children, it was only Nohar who tracked him down later. By then, Datia had become the central figure of a violent moreau uprising in the US. Nohar, who was 15 years old (barely fully grown for a moreau) and running with a street gang at the time, was shaken by seeing exactly how dangerous and insane his father was. He distanced himself from the old tiger, left his gang, and began trying to clean up his life. When Datia was gunned down by the National Guard, Nohar was the only one around to inherit his rifle. He kept it in a locked box and didn’t touch the thing for another 10 years.
As an adult, Nohar lived in a moreau ghetto in Cleveland. Being the only private detective in the city willing to work with moreys kept him off the street with meat in the fridge. It was an uncomfortable, but maintainable status quo for Nohar. He had two rules: Never get involved in pink (human) business, and never work a murder case.
It was all going so well until, with rent due and no options, he broke those rules to investigate a possible political killing.
The dead man was Darrel Johnson, the campaign manager for a far-right (and therefore anti-moreau) politician. He had been killed by a sniper in his own home. Nohar's job was to find out if an obscure diamond importing company, MLI, had any connection to the killing and the $3 million in campaign finances that had gone missing around Johnson's death. The police had been pressured to seal the case and move on, and the trail quickly turned strange.
Nohar's first lead was Johnson's girlfriend Stephanie Weir, who wasn't his girlfriend at all. She'd been paid to appear with him in order to mask that he was gay, and his real partner was the campaign's finance manager Phil Young. Upon heading to Young's house to get answers, Nohar found that it wasn’t really his home. The place was a dump and, when Nohar broke in, appeared to have been vacant for years.
I another minute he would’ve noticed the smell of burning kerosene and gone back out to discover Neil Young burning campaign finance records out back, but instead he encountered the anomaly that dragged him out of his world inside the empty house.
Perhaps that’s lucky for Nohar. That encounter would end with him hospitalized with a bullet in his shoulder. The trail was only going to get weirder from there, and he was going to be very glad he’d inherited Datia’s rifle.
He does his best to make himself presentable when dealing with humans (or “pinks”, which is morey slang), and clothes are the rule of the day even if he thinks they’re itchy and hot, but Nohar is never quite going to fit in walking down a street outside Moreytown.
Luckily, he got over that a long time ago.
Skills: Firstly, Nohar is fairly dangerous just by virtue of being mostly tiger, with teeth and claws to match. His low-light vision and hearing are excellent, and his sense of smell is better than human, but his day vision is fuzzy.
Nohar’s strain was engineered for combat and his altered fight-or-flight response makes him very fast and strong with incredible pain tolerance, but once the adrenaline wears off it leaves him totally exhausted and probably ready to pass out. Nohar has the genes of a weapon, but not the training or physical fitness regimen.
Another downside is he’s also an obligate carnivore, which makes life expensive. Nohar can tolerate smaller amounts of bread, spices, etc but he only gets real nutrition from meat. As a morey, he also has a shorter life expectancy than most humans. He will be extremely lucky if he reaches 50 years. Nohar’s not complaining though, that’s better than a lot of strains get. You won’t see a rat or a rabbit even hit their late thirties.
Less physically, Nohar has been making his living as a private detective. Before that, he was running with a street gang. He’s a good problem solver, knows how to dig up useful information out of public records, can hold his own in a fight, and is confident in being scarier than anything he might find in a dark alley. He’s usually right.
He’s also a city cat, which means that while Nohar has a lot of raw physical strength he lacks any kind of survival training beyond hard-won experience scrounging the streets. The underbelly of the city has been his home for most of his life, and without a big ugly metropolis he’s at a loss for some very basic things.
Personality: Nohar is bitter, grumpy, and stubborn as a mule. He's proud of being self-sufficient and hates to be pitied or patronized. Nohar's a suspicious cynic about being offered help. Life dealt him a shitty hand, but it's his to deal with and he won't abide somebody looking to make themselves feel better by faking nice to a poor morey. It's almost nicer when people are afraid of him. Almost.
Nohar was born and raised a second class citizen that polite society expects to go savage at any moment, and has constantly had to prove that he’s just another person. This is made worse because half the time they’re right. There are plenty of good moreys, but the population has a significant number of dangerous individuals due to either the genetic work of the military that made them or the strain of living poor in a world that doesn’t want them. On a good day, Nohar can wear a suit and convince somebody mildly important to talk to him. On a bad day, he has to get by on whatever being a big, intimidating cuss can get him and that’s usually not much short of an arrest if he pushes his luck.
Humans frustrate him and other moreys frustrate him, which means Nohar struggles to make and keep friends. He’s used to working alone, wary of the motives of people who try to get close (because why would you want to?) and it leaves him pretty lonely deep down. There are a lot of people who don’t fit into the world, but not many whose dysfunctions match step just right with Nohar’s. He’s brave, loyal when it counts, and prefers to do the right thing (for his own definition of right, anyway) but he’s seldom been able to find people he cares enough for to stick with it.
On the rare occasion when he does, Nohar’s the one cursing himself for his trouble and expecting no good deed to go unpunished as he puts his life on the line. Practical or not, he has a noble streak and even years of bitterness and rejection haven’t been able to destroy his desire to change things for the better when that’s within his reach.
Nohar doesn’t expect things to go right for him. Experience has taught him they almost never do. At the very least, a pessimist is always pleasantly surprised when everything’s not completely terrible.
Background: Nohar is from an 80's-imagined version of the 2050's. Megabytes are still a big deal and data is stored on ramcards. Everyone has a home computer (comm) capable of video conferencing, but nobody has a cell phone. Cars run on induction engines and the wealthy have flying vehicles with rotors. Genetic engineering of humans and animals, while outlawed since the war years that produced moreaus, still goes on in the shadows. Several major cities have been bombed off the face of the planet, along with most of Japan.
Nohar is a second generation tiger moreau, an animal-soldier with genes engineered for a war he never saw. Nohar's parents were part of a unit that defected from the Indian special forces in the Pan-Asian conflict of the 2020's. They fled to the United States shortly before he was born. He was raised by his mother, and then their former unit's medical officer after she died.
His father, Datia Rajasthan, was a charismatic sociopath and had been the unit’s leader. While he sired several children, it was only Nohar who tracked him down later. By then, Datia had become the central figure of a violent moreau uprising in the US. Nohar, who was 15 years old (barely fully grown for a moreau) and running with a street gang at the time, was shaken by seeing exactly how dangerous and insane his father was. He distanced himself from the old tiger, left his gang, and began trying to clean up his life. When Datia was gunned down by the National Guard, Nohar was the only one around to inherit his rifle. He kept it in a locked box and didn’t touch the thing for another 10 years.
As an adult, Nohar lived in a moreau ghetto in Cleveland. Being the only private detective in the city willing to work with moreys kept him off the street with meat in the fridge. It was an uncomfortable, but maintainable status quo for Nohar. He had two rules: Never get involved in pink (human) business, and never work a murder case.
It was all going so well until, with rent due and no options, he broke those rules to investigate a possible political killing.
The dead man was Darrel Johnson, the campaign manager for a far-right (and therefore anti-moreau) politician. He had been killed by a sniper in his own home. Nohar's job was to find out if an obscure diamond importing company, MLI, had any connection to the killing and the $3 million in campaign finances that had gone missing around Johnson's death. The police had been pressured to seal the case and move on, and the trail quickly turned strange.
Nohar's first lead was Johnson's girlfriend Stephanie Weir, who wasn't his girlfriend at all. She'd been paid to appear with him in order to mask that he was gay, and his real partner was the campaign's finance manager Phil Young. Upon heading to Young's house to get answers, Nohar found that it wasn’t really his home. The place was a dump and, when Nohar broke in, appeared to have been vacant for years.
I another minute he would’ve noticed the smell of burning kerosene and gone back out to discover Neil Young burning campaign finance records out back, but instead he encountered the anomaly that dragged him out of his world inside the empty house.
Perhaps that’s lucky for Nohar. That encounter would end with him hospitalized with a bullet in his shoulder. The trail was only going to get weirder from there, and he was going to be very glad he’d inherited Datia’s rifle.
