Azrael

Jean-Paul Valley (Scenesys ID: 301)
Quote
"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." - Philip K. Dick
Profile
Full Name:	Jean-Paul Valley
Gender:	Male
Species:	Human
Theme:	DC (FC)
Occupation:	Dropout / Avenging Angel
Citizenship:	American / Swiss
Residence:	Gotham City
Education:	College Dropout
Status:	Dropped
Groups:	Batman Family, Gotham-OOC
Other Information
Apparent Age:	{{{PAge}}}	Actual Age:	{{{AAge}}}
Date of Birth	{{{DOB}}}	Actor:	Charlie Hunnam
Height:	176 cm	Weight:	78 kg
Hair Color:	Blonde	Eye Color:	Blue
Theme Song:	Dies Irae: Day of Wrath and Doom Impending

Profile

A computer nerd, reprogrammed and instilled with the murderous intent of the assassin angel, Azrael. Chosen of Dumas, Weapon of the Faith, Flaming Sword of Righteousness. Quite, quite mad.

Sheet

Description

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A young man, blonde of hair, of modest height and build. His hair's overgrown and much in need of a brush. His blue eyes tend towards the bloodshot, indicating a lot of late nights and maybe too much stress. He's cute enough, almost angelic in appearance. He tends to be shy, keeping to himself, sometimes talking to himself.

He's not exactly much for fancy dress. He tends towards t-shirts, jeans, sneakers. He'll wear a jacket if the weather suits. He's more muscular than one might expect, shoulders and biceps showing more development than you might expect from your average keyboard jockey. He doesn't drink or smoke. Around his neck, he wears a simple crucifix on a gold chain.

History

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Jean-Paul Valley doesn't really remember his childhood. He has some memories of the Alps, the cold. His father's face. A desk near a window, overlooking a yard where he did his studies. The laughter of other children playing, although he can never remember their faces. Which makes sense, since most of those memories are lies. When he was twelve, Jean-Paul's father moved his son to Gotham City, placing him in an obscure Catholic school while he often travelled for 'business'. Paul proved to be a prodigy, making minor headlines by graduating at sixteen and going to college at Gotham State on full scholarship. He hadn't seen or heard from his father in a year. Then, in the middle of the night, Paul's father stumbled into his dorm room in a strange costume, bleeding to death, and with a single name on his lips: "Azrael". The word alone began to place cracks in Jean-Paul's soul, cracks that grew wider when a little person appeared the next day, claiming to be a friend of Jean-Paul's father, and helped him escort the body back to Switzerland. There, high in the alps, he was introduced to the Order of St. Dumas, a secret conspiracy of apostate priests, a lost Inquisition that carried on a secret holy war. Their greatest weapon, developed over centuries, with alchemy and indoctrination and training and brainwashing and dark science, was the Avenging Angel, Azrael, their assassin that they sent out into the world to cleanse the wicked. The mantle of Azrael had been passed down, father to son, for hundreds of years. And now that mantle had fallen to Jean-Paul. When he put on the costume, the angel within him awakened, the dark and wrathful thing created by the Order's cruel experiments. They immediately hated one another.

He spent a year there in the Alps, growing accustomed to what dwelt within. Because his father had never properly completed the indoctrination, the System, as it came to be known, was incompletely designed. While Jean-Paul, as Azrael, possessed the same martial discipline and furor as his predecessors, he had none of their stability, his mind cracking under the weight of the torture and experimentation he'd endured, along with the violent, savage presence in his head. When his father's friend revealed another truth - that Jean's father had been trying to escape the order, that he rejected the mantle of Azrael, that he had been gathering evidence of the Order's corruption and wickedness to bring them low - Jean-Paul knew he had to escape. For once, Azrael agreed. Before leaving, though, Azrael convinced Jean-Paul to don the mask of the Avenging Angel and, with Azrael in control, laid waste to the Abbey and the corrupt monks that dwelled there, brutally slaughtering them to the man and pitching their bleeding, burning bodies to tumble down the snowy mountainside. Only his father's friend was spared. Now he's returned to Gotham, determined to try and do something good, something valuable, with the merciless angel's soul that dwells inside his skin. Even as he does so, his sanity cracks, more and more every day, consumed by visions, memories, voices. Jean-Paul knows he is going quite mad. Azrael believes that these are merely the ghosts of the damned, trying to distract from his mission. Punish the wicked. Send them to hell. Let them burn.

Personality

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Jean-Paul Valley has a gentle disposition. Intellectual, quiet, and shy, his sheltered upbringing shows through his difficulties talking to and relating to other people. When he's most together, he can seem quite sweet, even, those rare smiles rays of sunshine through the clouds. But the clouds lay heavy upon him, and Jean-Paul's personality is marked by sharp mood swings, hallucinations, voices only he can hear, vocal outbursts and bouts of mania or paranoia. Devoutly religious, he spontaneously breaks into prayer at a moment's notice. His only peace seems to come at a computer screen, with a pair of headphones on, retreating from the real world into the language of code and math.

Then there is Azrael. Azrael, the Avenging Angel, the Burning Sword of the One True God. The Dragon of St. Dumas. Azrael is a merciless killer, a religious zealot and madman with a psychotic penchant for violence and a sadistic ability to inflict pain. He is relentless, cruel. He fears only God, whom he knows has chosen him. He is extremely distrustful and sees most other people as sinners bound for Hell. Jean-Paul, however, continues to try and temper the angel, to hold back his murderous hand and judgment. Perhaps, in time, he can become something more than a weapon forged in pain and horror. For now, though, Azrael keeps his blades sharp, to better cleave the flesh of the damned.

Abilities

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GIFT OF MADNESS
While his fractured, damaged, and splintered psyche has many disadvantages to it, there are certain benefits from being completely insane. The Azrael persona is impossible to intimidate or frighten, believing wholly in his own holy purpose. People will often underestimate or dismiss Jean-Paul as just crazy, seeing the young man talking to himself or pulling at his hair, never imagining that he might be any more dangerous than the normal, but troubled, youth he seems to be. More than once, Jean-Paul has stumbled into a den of iniquity, to be laughed and sneered at, toyed with for the amusement of others until he placed a mask on his face or they tried to truly harm him. Because he's already been brainwashed, mind controlled, and tortured, the attempts of others to do so simply fail. A telepath would find his mind a tangled, savage nest of barbed wire, gibbering, flame, torment, Scripture, and scenes that would make a horror maven blanche. Staying out of his head, whatever persona is in charge, is highly recommended.

HOLY WARRIOR
Azrael possesses incredible fighting capabilities, the result of a thousand years of refinement by the Order of St. Dumas and hardwired into the Azrael persona. Azrael's combat skills often exceed those of normal men, not only because of his physical capabilities, but because fighting requires no thought, no reason, no strategy. He has no hesitation, no questions. His movements are automatic, faster than human and designed to be savagely efficient, without an ounce of wasted motion. Azrael's fights with intense brutality, breaking bones, targeting weak spots and trying to put enemies down as quickly as possible. This includes outright murder - Azrael was intended as an assassin and, when that persona is in control, he kills without hesitation (or, at least, he did - Jean-Paul's personality continues to try and interfere with that). Combined with his genetically engineered physical advantages, Azrael can fight hand-to-hand and compete with almost anyone in the world. Oh yeah. When he wears his armor, he augments his punches with nearly three foot long flaming blades that pop out of the back of his gauntlets. So he cheats, too.

PAIN TOLERANCE
When Azrael burns within, pain means almost nothing. Pain is only just punishment for sin, earned through failure and suffered justly, even if at the hands of the wicked. Azrael will continue fighting through almost unimaginable levels of pain, including broken bones and limbs, gushing wounds or severe concussions. The pain will not distract or reduce his performance in any way. Azrael would laugh in the face of physical torture, all of which he bears the scars to prove. Jean-Paul does not have this ability. While Azrael would take over in a combat or torture situation, if Jean-Paul just, like, slips and breaks his ankle, it's gonna hurt like hell and he's gonna cry about it. Jean-Paul also has to deal with the aftermath and will suffer greatly whenever the Azrael persona recedes and leaves him with the physical legacy of the Angel's maniacal devotion.

PHYSICAL SUPERIORITY
Jean-Paul Valley is the result of a millenia-long program of eugenic human breeding and, over the last century, cutting edge genetic engineering and gene-splicing. Fertilized in a lab and gestated within the womb of a captive gorilla, Jean-Paul's body, even without exercise, remains constantly at the peak of human phsyical capability in terms of stamina, dexterity, agility and recuperative power. His strength, in fact, slightly exceeds the human maximum, enabling him to lift approximately half a ton, due to genetic engineering incorporating primate DNA into his genecode and accessing the more primal strength of our ancestors.

PROCESSING SPEED
Jean-Paul Valley has been genetically engineered to not only be superior physically, but superior mentally, to ordinary men. While much of the intellectual capacity and memory of this enhancement has been consumed by The System, his enhanced mind primarily displays itself with incredible processing speed. Put simply, Jean-Paul thinks about five to ten times faster than an ordinary human, allowing him to perform incredible feats of intellectual puzzle-solving, intuition or understanding. His processing speed also incorporates as part of his physical capabilities in terms of reflexes. His reaction time can be startling, allowing him to catch arrows, duck blows and even, on occasion, dodge a bullet or two.

THE SYSTEM

The Order of St. Dumas, over the course of nearly ten centuries of existence, refined and perfected a method that became known only as The System. The Order combined elements of alchemy, brainwashing, religious indoctrination and, as time went on, increasingly advanced technology, medicine and psychological torture. The System only works if installed almost from birth, the developing brain of the child subjected to rigorous, terrifying and often quite painful treatments dedicated to altering their brain chemistry and transforming their consciousness. In a subject like Jean-Paul, properly genetically engineered, the result is the creation of a sort of mental operating system, utilizing the incredible intellectual capacity of the engineered mind, especially its processing speed, all for one, singular purpose: to create Azrael. Put simply, the System created the persona of Azrael within Jean-Paul, installing the Avenging Angel within Valley's subconscious until properly activated. Only Azrael can access the full benefits of the system: the incredible fighting skills and reaction speeds, the weapons mastery, the acrobatics and understanding of anatomy, the utter lack of mercy, the relentless resistance to pain - all the things that make him the Burning Sword of God. The System has specific triggers to unleash Azrael, notably physical danger, the recitation of apocryphal Scripture unique to the Order of St. Dumas and the smothering feeling of a mask being placed over his face. Once unleashed, Azrael will withdraw only once his task is complete or his body requires sleep. It should be noted that, with his rebellion from the Order, the barriers and structure of the System within Jean-Paul's mind have begun to devolve, the wall between the two personas beginning to bleed.

Skills

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AWARENESS
Azrael has an incredible awareness of his surroundings, constantly analyzing every scrap of sensory information, whether it be a heel scraping on a rooftop, a sharp intake of breath or the scent of diesel in the air. While his senses don't possess superhuman acuity, his ability to process the data from those senses is much greater than that of an ordinary man, so the information collected can be interpreted and intuited from with much great alacrity. He's extremely difficult to take off-guard, can usually tell where everyone within his vicinity is in a fight, and can often see through disguises simply by analyzing body language or the sound of a voice. Jean-Paul Valley possesses none of this awareness and is, in fact, very unaware of his surroundings, often living inside his head and not noticing even simple occurences. Both Azrael and Jean-Paul suffer from hallucinations which can also be distracting to such advantages.

COMPUTERS
Before Azrael consciously entered his life, before the blood and the fire and the pain, Jean-Paul Valley was a rather brilliant young man with a gift for computers. While he has some proficiency in hacking, he'd be considered moderate at best in that arena. Jean-Paul's greatest gifts lay in software programming and design, enabling him to whip up new applications and programs in mere moments, parsing complex code as if he were born to it. His own enhanced processing speed assisted, but he also studied hard and simply loved what he did. Socially awkward as he was, Jean-Paul found a certain peace in the digital world of numbers and language and hard drives. This is also notably one of the few abilities which is unique to Jean-Paul and that Azrael cannot access.

CRYPTOGRAPHY
Jean-Paul's processing speed, facility with numbers and Azrael's experience with the codes and markers of being programmed by a secret cult make him a particularly adept cryptographer. Puzzle-solving has always been soothing for Jean-Paul, a place he could lose himself and find respite from the darkness inside him, whether it be a crossword, a Rubik's cube, or the communications code of a criminal organization intent on blowing up Gotham. Admittedly, the latter is a more recent application.

LANGUAGES
Jean-Paul is a Swiss citizen and grew up there until his father moved them to Gotham when he was twelve, in order to try to begin their escape from the Order. Switzerland is a crossroads nation, and so multi-lingual fluency is common. Jean-Paul can speak English, German, French, Italian, Romansh, Ancient Greek (from his academic studies), and Latin. Azrael contributes several arcane medieval dialects of German, French, and Italian, along with the codified language of the Order of St. Dumas.

MEDIEVAL WEAPONS
Because the System's origins lie in the Dark Ages, the weapons mastery included within its methodology remains almost exclusively specialized in European medieval weapons. Azrael's specialty is the medieval broadsword, a weapon with whom he could match the greatest of knights (except with far less honor). With a sword in his hand, he's a whirling dervish of death. In addition, the System includes most other forms of medieval weaponry, including axes, maces, morningstars, flails, bow and arrow, and polearms. He's also adept at using a shield as a method of defense.

THEOLOGY
Jean-Paul Valley and Azrael alike are extremely well verse in Christian theology, in various ways. Jean-Paul was raised in a strict and traditional Catholic environment, including schooling, and received daily catechism along with going to chapel multiple times a day. He is sincere and devout in his faith. Azrael has been programmed with the version of Catholicism unique to the Order of St. Dumas, an apostate faith with an elaborate mythology of demons and angels, gnostic secrets and mysticism. Azrael is a psychotic religious zealot. Sometimes, given the long history of the Church and its history and involvement with the occult, such knowledge can come in handy.

TORTURE

Azrael was created by an off-shoot of the medieval Inquisition of the Holy Catholic Church, an organization which practically invented the modern conception of torture. He understands pain deeply, is intimately acquainted with it, both how to inflict it for maximum effect and how much can be afflicted and leave a man alive. Azrael learned these things, of course, by having them inflicted upon Jean-Paul as a child - and then having that same child inflict them upon others. Those memories are among the most broken of all for Jean-Paul.

Resources

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ARMS & ARMOR
Azrael possesses several suits of armor as well as a large cache of weapons recovered from the remains of the Abbey of St. Dumas. The armor, combining both medieval and modern technologies, has heavy bulletproofing, able to take even heavy caliber arms fire and leave only a bruise. It reduces the cutting power of ordinary blades, making him difficult to stab with normal human strength or conventional blades. The suit is, naturally, fireproofed in the extreme, enabling him to literally walk through a bonfire and come out the other side unharmed (although the metal pieces, including parts of the mask, will become searing hot to the touch - Jean-Paul has found himself awakening with second degree burns on his face more than once). He possesses a significant amount of medieval style weaponry, notably swords and axes, along with caltrops and similar accoutrements. Two swords, both English-style broadswords have been designed with an igniting capacity, generating a thick napalm which will run along the length of the blade so that it burns constantly. (Fortunately, the method of making the napalm is locked within the System.) Wounds inflicted with this blade will be instantly cauterized, or, if he keeps the sword in the wound, will continue to burn until he withdraws the blade.

FATHER'S SECRETS
Jean-Paul's father had intended for them to escape the Order of St. Dumas, to free both himself and his son from the awful mantle of being Azrael. While Monsieur Valley was murdered, falling dead at his son's feet, an accomplice within the Order related both his father's truth and his secret resources to Jean-Paul, just before the Angel laid judgment on the Order. As a result, Jean-Paul has access to a Swiss bank account (naturally) which contains three-quarters of a million dollars, completely anonymous and untraceable. With it, he purchased an abandoned church in Gotham, refurbishing the basement to his needs for both life and war. He has a computer set-up of advanced specifications (although still on-market, as he lacks the more advanced resources of a Bruce Wayne or a Barbara Gordon). It also gives him space to store his weapons and a basic medical set-up, although he has to treat his injuries using the internet and his own grit at this point. His father had other secrets - allies, sources, contacts - but Jean-Paul has yet to uncover or encounter them as of yet. He only knows that they exist. Perhaps someday he'll find out. (OOC note: The latter part is to allow other PCs to potentially have been contacts for Jean-Paul's father, to open up RP and tinyplot possibilities).

GAUNTLETS
Essential to Azrael's costume are his gauntlets, titanium alloy weapons with thick bracers going almost up to his elbow. The gauntlets themselves are deadly, with retractacle claws at the tips and razor-edged knuckles that can draw blood on a backhand. Though he wields his sword more often, the bracers contain backup in the unlikely event he is disarmed, or needs to fight in closer quarters - blades nearly three feet in length, wedges with an incredibly honed edge. Using a device within and the same specialized napalm recipe as his swords(a signature thankfully locked within the System's tangled web), Azrael can coat these blades in constant, burning flame, making them weapons both terrible and terrifying. Wounds made with the blade, as with his flaming sword, will cauterize almost instantly or continue to cook as long as the blade is in the wound. Both gauntlets also contain grappling lines which, when launched, can allow Azrael to rappel up the sides of buildings.

MASK

While any mask, the sensation of having his face enclosed, smothered, can trigger the awakening of Azrael within Jean-Paul, the masks designed to go with his costume have extremely beneficial technologies. The Avenging Angel masks have both night and thermal vision capabilities, along with measurements of wind speed and temperature to allow calculations of trajectory or an understanding of just how far a gap one must leap. The masks also provide a filtration system, protection Azrael from inhaling poisonous or harmful gas, as well as analyzing particulates that catch in the filter and identifying them (an application that Jean-Paul actually programmed and installed on the mask's hard drive, letting him gather forensic data that Azrael will dismiss and ignore in favor of the Lord's guidance, but might be useful for someone else).

Weaknesses

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CONFLICT
Jean-Paul and Azrael do not get along very well. Azrael could care less what Jean-Paul thinks of him. Jean-Paul is terrified of Azrael. But Jean-Paul is trying to stand up, most notably by trying to stop Azrael from murdering people. His efforts have been mixed, so far, but outright murder and execution has become more difficult, resulting in a hesitant hand and an internal conflict. Sometimes, Azrael will spare the wicked just to save himself. Because hesitation, he knows, can cost him. Who knows how and where this war within Jean-Paul will rage as time goes on?

HALLUCINATIONS
Both Jean-Paul and Azrael hallucinate on a regular basis, seeing, interacting and talking to figures only they can see. Jean-Paul sometimes realizes they are hallucinations - Azrael believes them to be spirits and true visions. Jean-Paul's father, St. Dumas, the Burning Angel - any and all of them may appear at any moment. This can, quite obviously, be VERY distracting, especially when it happens at inopportune times.

INSANE
Any psychiatrist would put Jean-Paul in Arkham Asylum within ten minutes of conversation. Not only is Jean-Paul insane, with several dozen intensive pathologies including schizophrenia, paranoia, delusional behavior, anti-social personality, but he is likely autistic and has undergone extensive trauma resulting in the kind of PTSD that can erase literal years from his conscious memory. He talks to himself or figures only he can see regularly. He punishes himself, speaks in multiple voices (while Azrael and Jean-Paul's voice can be identified as the same through voice analysis, it almost breaks the barrier, only the simple sharing of vocal chords and structures allowing for the match), and can be spontaneously, senselessly violent to himself and others. While he can have periods of lucidity that last days or even weeks, he can also fall into dysphoria and decompression for just as long. He is a puzzle piece that does not fit, whether he wears the mask or not.

MEDIEVAL THINKING
Azrael's personality and mindset have been designed from the viewpoint of an archaic, Dark Ages perspective, the creation and distillation of a warrior angel. While he is terrifyingly formidable, that specific viewpoint has limitations. He isn't particularly familiar with firearms or advanced weaponry of any sort, and would bypass them even if they were the most effective option. He'll often choose to chase someone on foot rather than steal a car or forget that something could be sent electronically, sending messages face to face. Jean-Paul, of course, doesn't have those problems, but the conflict mean that Azrael does not always hear (or simply listen to) the voice of Jean-Paul in his head. Or Jean-Paul may just be cut off from sensory input and not know what's actually going on.

MURDERER
Azrael has killed quite a few people, most of them in the Swiss alps, but more recently in and around the confines of Gotham City. While Gotham certainly has plenty of unsolved murders, the flaming sword is a fairly unique weapon and he could certainly face legal consequences for his actions.

ORDER OF ST. DUMAS
While he destroyed the Abbey and central research facility of the Order of St. Dumas, the Order itself lives. The Order is a worldwide conspiracy, with agents in many guises, not only priests and nuns, but scientists, politicians, policemen, and more than their fair share of assassins. Azrael is special to them, yes, as not only a weapon, but as a part of their belief system and theology. They don't want him dead. They want him back. The Order continually plots ways to return their errant angel to their custody and to condition him into obedience, so that he may return to their Holy Mission. They will stop at nothing, especially now that he has begun to emerge from seclusion.

RELIGIOUS ZEALOT
Azrael believes himself to be the Avenging Angel of a wrathful, Old Testament-style God who demands blood, sacrifice, and death as punishment for crimes. Jean-Paul, while far less violent, is equally quite devout and a true believer, although his God is more of the traditional Catholic variety. Both will show respect for religious institutions and religious people, especially nuns and priests, though a priest or nun who has betrayed their vocation will incur his full wrath. They can be prone to surprising superstitions or duped by those who claim miraculous or divine source for themselves. By the same token, they may ascribe demonic or Satanic qualities to things that merely resemble or remind them of such things. In an age of tolerance, they are not. And in an age of intolerance, they are perfect targets. Pretty much, it screws them up in all kinds of ways.

TRAUMATIZED

Now that he looks back, Jean-Paul has begun to realize that there are many gaps in his childhood. Everyone has hazy days, but he has days, weeks, months of blanks. He can't remember having friends or even going to elementary school for the most part, although he knows he graduated from his Catholic high school on an accelerated course. The more he's probed those memories, the more he's found horrors. Flashbacks. Pain. Torment. Sometimes at the hand of his own father, sometimes strangers. Scientists and priests, murmuring. Animals gibbering and rattling cages in the background. These images come to him at night or when something in the environment reminds him of them, creating debilitating moments of disassociation and panic. He rarely sleeps more than three or four hours a night unless physically exhausted.

Logs

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Title	Date	Scene Summary
Nerd Alert	March 13th, 2021	Jean-Paul Valley and Willow cross paths at a mini-con and manage to avoid witch-burning.
Feeding Time	March 12th, 2019	Catwoman does a good deed in the 'hood. Azrael encounters her.
Na Na Na Na Bat Lunch	March 9th, 2019	Summary needed
Helping the wounded	March 8th, 2019	Summary needed
A Prayer for Hell's Kitchen	March 4th, 2019	Summary needed
On Deconsecrated Ground	March 2nd, 2019	Summary needed
The Subway Isn't The Greatest	February 28th, 2019	Jean-Paul and Morrigan meet at a subway station that's seen some murder recently.
New Moon Menaces	February 26th, 2019	Azrael and Snake Eyes end up tracking the same villains, then moving in to finish them off.
Welcome to the Jungle	November 27th, 2018	Summary needed
Who the heck is Cobra!	November 25th, 2018	Summary needed
One Size Fits All	May 14th, 2017	South Hinkley's been especially peaceful recently--but why? The answer is revealed!

Cutscenes

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Gallery

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