(no subject)

[sinkme]

Player name: Gels
Journal: bitnotgood
AIM: gelsqkazoo
Email: [See my contact infro]
Other characters: Dr. John Watson, Angelica Fanshawe, and Captain Barbossa

Character name: Sir Percival Blakeney, Baronet
Age: "still a year or two on the right side of thirty", which is olde timey for about 33 or 34
Canon: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Canon point: After the events mentioned in Eldorado - Sir Percy and his band once again manage to save day by rescuing the dauphin. An exhausted Sir Percy decides to take a little nap aboard his yacht, the Daydream.

Totem: Sir Percy's signet ring. The ring bears the Blakeney family crest, but during a fissure the small flowers that make up the crest will disappear.

Weapons: One (single-shot) Ketland Trade Pistol, with a small bag of gunpowder and 10 bullets. Sir Percy will also bring with him a dueling sword, and a small kit for picking locks.

Normally Sir Percy also carries a knife hidden in a cane, but in Limbo he'll be super miffed to find that it's just a regular ol' walking cane. >:D

Abilities/powers: Sir Percy is quite the gifted man in all manner of things. He's a master of disguise - including the everyday concealment of his true personality - and is capable of changing his voice, hiding or disfiguring his face, changing his sex through costume, and even concealing his massive height through trickery.

He's a towering figure that can throw a mean punch, and despite being described as having 'slender hands', Sir Percy can easily wring a man's neck with very little effort. He's an expert swordsman, a proficient marksman with a pistol, and can ride a horse, sail a boat, drive a carriage, climb a rope, and other outdoorsy skills that make him a card-carrying member of the Daring Adventurer Club.

Most importantly, Sir Percy a very competent strategist and deviser of plans. It's a special skill of his to guess his enemies' minds or predict an enemy's next move, and he's quite able to think his way out of any rough spot he may find himself in.

He can also tie a fancy lace cravat in the dark. With his eyes closed. While reciting bad poetry.

Location: The Place de la Révolution in Paris. It's an open-air square surrounded by opulent 18th century buildings. In the center once stood a statue of King Louis XV, but it's since been torn down and now all that remains is an empty pedestal. Near the pedestal is the new focus of the square: a well-used guillotine on top of a wooden platform.

Personality:

Upon meeting Sir Percy, the first thing most people might notice is that he's impeccably dressed. The next thing most people will undoubtedly conclude is that the man is a royal idiot - a nincompoop of the highest degree, and that it's very fortunate that he's wealthy or else he would have never made it to the age of thirty. He's a fop - otherwise defined as dandy, macaroni, fribble, coxcomb, a strutting popinjay, or a man so obsessed with fashion that he forgets to develop an actual personality. He seems only to care for the cut of his waistcoat or the tie of his cravat, and instead of thinking he occupies himself with learning the latest dance step or the occasional game or sport. Oh, and most annoyingly of all, he thoroughly enjoys pretending to be witty and clever, and often punctuations his horrendous poetry or terrible puns with an inane laugh.

Thankfully this personality - the dim-witted English fop that cares more for fancy dress parties than politics - is all an act, and Sir Percy is actually far from stupid. In fact, he's very much a hero in disguise. Though he takes great pains not to show his true self, lest someone suspect him of being the secretive and elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy is actually a brilliant man capable of devising schemes so complicated that he's able to run circles around the revolutionary government in France. Despite how close Sir Percy comes to being outed as the Scarlet Pimpernel, even as the number of people he rescues grows and grows, he manages to hold on to his secret identity thanks mostly to the fact that he plays the fool so very well.

The only truly stupid thing about him is perhaps his complete lack of self-preservation, and his willingness to constantly throw himself into harm's way every time the opportunity presents itself. Sir Percy is dangerously idealistic - he's either half-mad for diving into France's Reign of Terror head-first, or banking on making himself into some kind of martyr. He's disgusted by the cruelty of the Revolutionaries in France, and strongly believes that it's better to die trying to do what's right than sitting idly by doing nothing. His desire to do the right thing is only further fueled by a need to see justice done and an obsession with adventure, which it seems to drive Sir Percy to undertake increasingly difficult and dangerous tasks and plots.

His brazen attitude has earned him the contempt of some, most notably the entire French government and some of his own ilk in English society, but the deep respect and admiration of many, many others for the risks he takes in order to help those who are in need. He's kind of a national hero to some in England - a folk legend, even somewhat of a mythical figure. He's both a saviour and a figure of gossip and speculation, and the people he manages to save even become somewhat famous in their own right just by association.

He's trusted implicitly by those who know his secret - so much so that the men who follow Sir Percy call him their 'chief' - though such blind faith and devotion Scarlet Pimpernel extends to just about anyone who's had an encounter with the League. In fact, many of the people rescued by Sir Percy become unofficial members of this band, and swear to keep the Pimpernel's secret and assist him in whatever means they can. And in turn Sir Percy demands unconditional loyalty from his men, continuously testing their faith (sometimes in arduous, life-threatening ways) and at times being obtuse and purposefully vague about his plans. He does care deeply for the League and their well-being, but the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel isn't a democracy - he's their leader and expects them to do as he says.

Sir Percy is definitely far from perfect. He's a frustrating man to be around, even to those who have earned his truth, as he keeps his secrets - his thoughts, his schemes - close to his chest. Sir Percy does have one very powerful weakness though, and it takes the form of his wife, Marguerite St Just. He is deeply, madly in love with her, but just like with his foppish act, the true nature of his relationship with her is concealed by the outward appearance of a cold and loveless marriage. Normally calm and collected in all manner of things, Sir Percy only ever seems to 'lose his cool' and break character when his wife is threatened. Though Sir Percy is willing to risk life and limb to save others, it's only when his wife is in danger that he'll actually react without thinking.

Despite the new setting Sir Percy will find himself in, he'll still be inclined to hide his true self away and decline to speak or refer about the Scarlet Pimpernel. Though he'll probably find himself bewildered and at a complete loss for what to do with himself, his immediate reaction will be to cope in the only way he knows how - pretending to be a complete idiot so that no one pays much attention to him. Eventually he'll probably form some sort of band, as the adventurer in him wouldn't be able to sit still for very long, but in the beginning he's just going to annoy the hell out of everyone with fashion talk and bad poetry.

History:

Sir Percy was born to Lord and Lady Blakeney in the latter part of the 18th century. Unfortunately not long after his birth his mother came down with an unknown mental illness, which was (to lift a passage from the book), "looked upon as hopelessly incurable and nothing short of a curse of God upon the entire family." Sir Algernon, Sir Percy's father, took his young wife and son away from the prying eyes of English society, retiring abroad to live virtually anonymously and simplistically. This is where young Percy spent his youth, for the most part keeping company with foreign nannies and tutors until his parents passed away.

Because of this simple existence abroad, the Blakeney fortune increased nearly tenfold in their absence from England. Upon the death of his parents, Sir Percy became the Lord of Richmond, the Blakeney estate, and reentered society as a fashionable young lord in the Prince Regent's circle. It was around this time that the citizens of France began their revolution, and Sir Percy, his reputation as a fop and an imbecile steadily increasing, secretly formed the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel in order to rescue people from the horrors of the Reign of Terror.

And a summary of the first book is here, which includes an explanation of his relationship with his wife, the league, as well as his rival, Citizen Chauvelin.

Sir Percy's canon is over a hundred years old, and it's been done a thousand different ways. While I'm taking Sir Percy from the novels and short stories, I do like to fill in the gaps with the various movies and miniseries done of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The 1982 movie specifically does a better ending than the original book, where Sir Percy takes on a kind of racist disguise to escape from Chauvelin. :| Also there was a more recent miniseries done (that was mostly terrible ssssh) that went into more detail about Sir Percy's Parisian contacts and the anti-revolutionary movements in France, which I also incorporate into the background of the character to round him out a little.

In short, I am a canon-hog. :c

3rd person sample: ....4th character, what what.

1st person sample:

[Sir Percy's nabbed somebody's phone while they weren't looking. (He'll give it back, honest.) For about ten minutes there's intermittent broadcasts of someone messing about with a camera - a few seconds of some shoes, a wall, the view outside a window....

And then Sir Percy himself appears - a nice, lazy grin on his face. He starts with a bit of a yawn.]

Sink me. And all this time I was writing out my demmed messages. [He shakes his head reproachfully, tutting.] And all of you were deprived of the sight of my fine, Mechlin lace, what. Look you here. [He raises his wrist to the camera, not quite understanding that shoving the lace against the lens makes the picture blurry.] Is that not fine? Such quality!

La. [Back to Sir Percy's face. He sighs.] You should be ashamed of yourselves, hiding this sort of...thing from the rest of us. Leaving us to bits of paper and quills like we're some sort of....of...

[The thought sort of ends there. Quick, throw some outrage in there, Percy!] I ask you!

[The fop sets the phone down, and you can just catch a glimpse of him pinching some snuff.] I hereby request that anyone mired in the old-fashioned methods of communication be given one of these miraculous devices. I'll pay handsomely for it.

[He sniffs, then shuts off the phone.]