Andy Katsaros

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Andy Katsaros (Scenesys ID: 828)
Profile
Name: Leander Katsaros
Superalias: None
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Occupation: Student, Teaching Assistant
Citizenship: USA
Residence: NYU
Education: Graduate Student
Theme: Original (OC)
Groups:
Details
Apparent Age: 23 Actual Age: 23
Date of Birth 14 Apr 1996 Played By Alex Wolff
Height: 6'0" Weight: 160 lb
Hair Color: Black Eye Color: Hazel
Twitter:
Theme Song:


Character Info

Profile

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A graduate student in NYU's Comparative Religion program, Andy Katsaros is the son of Linus and Cecilia Katsaros, owners and proprietors of Katsaros Family Music in Gotham City, an instrument crafting and repair shop four generations old. He is doing his best to avoid his past, however, throwing himself into the University life wholly - all the while also keeping a secret his strange physiology that allows him to create abnormally amounts of a mucus-like substance from any pore on his body.

Timeline

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Timeline:
* 1996: Born in Gotham City to parents Linus and Cecilia Katsaros, owners of the family-run, fourth generation music store in Gotham, "Katsaros Family Music". He is the younger of two sons, his brother Dorian three years older.
* 2001: Given first guitar at the age of five. Starts piano and singing lessons the following year.
* 2004: At age 8, begins performing at small venues and gatherings with his brother (then 11), as 'DLK'.
* 2006: DLK begins to gain some regional notoriety along the Atlantic seaboard independent music scene, and the brothers consider a YouTube channel.
* 2007: At age 11, Leander begins to develop severe 'allergies' that both limit his performing abilities as well as spawn much ridicule and bullying at school.
* 2008: Due his strange affliction, Leander all but gives up on music. While his brother continues to perform solo, his father has him help at the store during any free time.
* 2010: Gains significant control over his 'allergies'. Starts high school with nickname of 'Andy'. Avoids returning to music performance.
* 2011: No-Man's land. Katsaros family devastated as Dorian goes missing and is never found, presumed dead.
* 2012: Andy turns to various religions and even paranormal study in an attempt to make sense of things. A series of poor experiences makes him jaded to the concept of any higher powers or life after death.
* 2015: Andy graduates high school with honors. Moves to New York to attend New York University on scholarships and loans, leaving parents to run store without his help.
* 2016: Declares his major as Religious Studies. Keeps his musical past as well as his strange physiology a secret. Approached by a local paranormal group andd decides to aid the group from time to time with religious expertise.
* 2019: Graduates from NYU with Bachelor's degree. Enters Master's program for Comparative Religion.
* 2020: On the brink of completing the first year of his graduate studies, Andy continues to be active in campus life, holding membership in many various niche groups and also working as TA for more than a few undergraduate intro-to-religion classes.

IC Journal

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{{{ICJournal}}}

Personality

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Curious:
Andy is naturally curious about the world around him, about how things work and the history of people and places that he meets. He likes to learn and is rarely content with answers such as 'that's just the way that it is' or 'who knows?'. While he isn't insensitive to social propriety, he is often one to ask more questions than answer them when in conversation with someone and can easily lose track of time watching odd documentaries or reading esoteric articles on all varieties of subjects.

Open-Minded:
Going hand in hand with his natural curiosity, Andy is quite open-minded about new things and new experiences and easily gives others the benefit of the doubt regarding any differences - whether they be cultural, physical, religous or even political. He may not always agree with others, but he does his best to at least understand their perspective and almost always respects others' rights to hold different beliefs, lifestyles or whatever it is that may set them apart.

Reserved:
In most social situations, Andy is not one to make the first contact with another. He will often wait for others to speak before he responds, will keep to himself in groups, and in fact sometimes goes out of his way to avoid having to make 'polite' conversation with others. It's not that he's socially inept - he manages just fine with those that he actually calls friends and can, if he so chooses to, engage in regular conversations and such. But, when left to his own devices, he often chooses instead to remain more of a passive observer of the world around him than an active participant.

Sense of Humor:
Andy has a singular sense of humor that is both dry as well as quite dark. He enjoys finding the ironies in every-day life, both large and small, and also has a particular affinity towards finding the humor in situations that many might consider off-limits, particularly death and religion. He tries not to be crass with any of his comments, but as he realizes that some of what he finds hilarious may be deeply offensive to others he'll often do his best to restrain himself from commenting aloud unless he's with close friends.

Character Sheet

Powers

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Adhesive:
At it's thickest and most viscous, Andy's mucus has the adhesive properties of the highest-rated epoxies or superglues, with a tensile strength rating over over 5,000 pounds per square inch. In addition to using the thick variety of his mucus to perform his wall-crawling stunt, Andy is able to generate amounts of mucus both large and small to perform other abilities as well, such as gluing doors shut, coating a floor with adhesive to 'stick' someone in place, or even throw large globs of the adhesive at a person in order to entangle/ensare them in the thick adhesive and prevent them from free movement until the mucus dries (unless they are strong enough to break it).

Frictionless Slick:
By employing low-viscosity, ultra-slippery mucus on the ground underneath an individual or group of people, Andy can create a near frictionless 'slick' that can easily disrupt balance and make it difficult to move around without falling over, much like a glassy-smooth ice patch. While individuals with spikes, cletes, or other means of piercing through the mucus to grab traction in the surface below may be able to retain their balance, anyone with regular footwear (or no footwear at all) will find themselves in an environment not unlike wearing fuzzy socks on a highly polished wax floor, or trying to walk across a field of greased ball bearings.

Mucus:
Andy has the strange and singular ability to generate a mucus-like substance from anywhere on his body. The mucus is secreted from his skin pores at such a rate that he can generate quarts of the substance in seconds, using it to either coat parts of himself (such as his hands or his feet) or throw it forecefully at a nearby target. The mucus is generally clear in color, looking not unlike unflavored gelatin or, to those with a more uncouth persepective, runny snot.
At the time that Andy creates this mucus, he is able to control the surface tension and viscocity of the substance so that it can be either abnormally slick and slippery, or conversely can contain thick, adhesive properties like glue. By varying the properties of the mucus as he generates it, he is able to perform a number of 'power stunts', such as wall-crawling, speed-sliding, and ensaring opponents, amongst other tricks. Once it's left his body, the mucus will typically dry up and become brittle after about thirty minutes to an hour, depending upon the ambient heat and humidity of the area (warmer and wetter environments will slow down that process).

Speed-Sliding Me:
By generating slick and slippery mucus, either directly from his feet or by his hands and then throwing the mucus infront of himself on the ground, Andy is able to create a super-slick path on which he is able to 'slide' almost as if he were speed-skating, able to reach speeds around 25-30 miles per hour. He is able to control his movement in this manner with a great deal of accuracy and dexterity, subtly manipulating the viscosity of the mucus as he generates it in order to better navigate tight turns or inclines as he moves. The mucus trail that Andy leaves is usable to a moderate degree by others, though due to the thin and less-viscous nature of the mucus, it deteriorates much quicker than the adhesive variety and typically discorporates after only a few minutes.

Wall-Crawling:
By excreting thick and adhesive mucus from his hands and feet, Andy is able to climb vertical surfaces with ease, using the glue-like mucus as an adhesive that allows him to literally stick to walls and even ceilings. Typically when he is performing such a stunt, he needs to have at least three points of contact to maintain his balance, as he is still fighting gravity when scaling a vertical or inverted surface, though with effort and a slow rate of speed he can navigate with just two points of contact - such as walking sideways along a wall, for example. While Andy is able to use his mucus in this manner, once the mucus has left his person it is typically too sticky for others to 'follow in his footsteps' without becoming ensnared in the goopy adhesive on contact.

Skills

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Gaming:
Andy is an experience gamer, of both the table-top and computer variety. He not only knows his way around a set of polyhedral dice, he's also familar the operation of console controllers and the basic precepts of shooters, platformers and RPGs. While he's not on the level of die-hard gamers (he does get out and get some sun after all) he's still competent enough to at least hold his own in multi-player environments, without looking like a stereotypcial newbie.

General Education:
Having graduated from High School with honors and also earning his Bachelor's of Arts degree at NYU, Andy has a general liberal arts education that affords him a passing knowledge of most academic topics, including US and world history, the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry, as well as more artistic studies such as literature and visual arts. He's also minored in Philosphy and as such is well read concerning both historical philospohers such as Plato, Socrates and Confucius as well as more modern ones like Kant, Nietzche and Sartre.

Instrument Repair:
Though he's not nearly as skilled as his father (who is actually renowned for not just repair, but actually building instruments by hand), Andy has been trained in basic instrument repair for most styles of guitar and bass guitar (including both acoustic and eletric) as well as the piano. This includes routine tuning, re-stringing, bridge repair and replacement of frets and nuts for guitars, and routine tuning for pianos along with fixing stuck keys and re-aligning hammers, among other tasks.

Music:
Andy is a gifted musician, able to play the guitar and piano at professional levels, though it has been some time since he has performed or even practiced regularly. Still, he has a natural talent for it and should he decide to again pick up an instrument it wouldn't take him long to get back into the proverbial swing of things. When he was younger, he and his brother were in a local band together that had started a fledgling You Tube channel and were talented enough to have possibly inked a recording deal, before Andy stopped performing.

Religious Studies:
Having earned his Bachelor's Degree in the study of world religions, Andy is well versed in both the major and lesser known tenets of most of the major religions of the globe as well as quite a few of the lesser known ones. This ranges from Catholicism and other sects of Christianity to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Shinto, among others. Although he is not an ordained priest, he is familiar enough with the teachings and precepts of both the Roman Catholic church as well as Buddhist practices that he could effectively serve as a congregational leader for either, or many other Christiany branches (Baptist, Methodist, etc). He has also spent time studying many historical religions, including but not limited to the pantheons of the Greeks, Norse and Egyptians.

Retail:
Having spent more hours than he would care to tally assisting at his family's music store, Andy is familar with most front-line retail practices. This includes working a basic cash register, operating a multi-line phone system, navigating financial spreadsheets, invoicing and purchase orders. He also posesses basic customer service skills, though prefers to escalate 'problem' customers to someone higher up the command line if at all possible.

Singing:
Aside from being able to play musical instruments, Andy is also blessed with a naturally gifted singing voice. He has near perfect pitch and a multi-octave range, and while his voice is best suited to popular rock and 'Top 40'-style songs, he's also able to easily match more niche styles such as operatic singing, the twang of country music or the deeper rasps and growls of traditional blues.

Urban Survival:
When his family opted to stay in Gotham during 'No-Man's Land', Andy underwent a crash course in survivalism, quickly learning the basics of urban stealth and where to best go to forage for food and supplies during the chaotic months after the tidal wave. While his mucus generating abilities helped him get in and out of places that he may not otherwise have had access to, he still learned more than he would have cared to have known about living in the closest environment to a post-apocalyptic world that he could have imagined. This also includes fortifying the home and business, defending it from looters and the like.

Resources

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Apartment:
Andy rents a modest studio apartment just off the NYU campus. It's small and doesn't have the best view, but the price is right and perhaps most importantly it's in good repair and the super is pretty quick to stay on top of any maintenance issues. While the apartment is only one large room (along with a separate bathroom), Andy makes the most of the 'open design' as he prefers to call it, and enjoys finally living on his own after having bunked with room-mates and house-mates over the last four years of under-graduate study.

Basic Belongings:
He doesn't own anything really high-end or exciting, but Andy does have a small collection of personal property that matches what one might expect from any graduate student. He's got a pretty impressive book collection, mostly focused on philosphy and religious texts, but also containing a fair amount of modern thrillers, speculative fiction and fantasy. A desktop computer that's a few years old (but still plugging along), a small collection of table-top games (D&D, Pathfinder, Champions, World of Darkness...) and small TV and DVD player to go with. He's got an old-model Samsung phone, a commuter's bicycle and - though he's barely touched it in years - a hand-crafted acoustic guitar made by his father.

Family:
Despite the fact that he doesn't keep in steady contact with them these days, Andy's mother and father are still there for him should he ever need to call upon them. They run the Katsaros Family Music instrument and repair shop in Gotham City, a fourth-generation establishment that sells and repairs all manners of musical instruments, from guitars and pianos to drum sets, saxophones and tubas. The shop earns enough to keep the Katsaros family in a good standard of living, though Andy has been making a point of putting himself through college and grad school rather than relying on his family. His mother plays woodwind instruments, specializing in double-reeds such as the oboe and bassoon, while his father is a guitar maker of some renown. His father has made custom guitars for more than a few professional musicians over the years, and should Andy *really* want to lean on those connections, he has the possibility of doing so.

Income:
It's not a lot, but Andy does pull in a small paycheck working as a Teaching Assistant for various religious studies professors, often doing the grunt work of printing off study materials, grading tests and scheduling office hours for the professors. The work isn't glamorous, but every so often he does get to assist in a lecture and more importantly, the work actually pays him money. It's enough to support the rent on his apartment as well as allowing him to afford minor incidentals beyond the basics (you know, food and such).

Weaknesses

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Dehydration:
As a part of his unique physiology and the mucus that he's able to generate, Andy is pretty much always thirsty and is constantly at risk of dehydration if he doesn't drink enough water - especially after heavy use of his abilities. While an average person may need to drink upwards of three and half to four liters of water per day, Andy typically needs to drink at least 8 liters of water, or about 2 gallons per day, minimum. He needs to drink even more after heavy or prolonged mucus generation. If he is not able to drink sufficient amounts of water, he is at risk of severe dehydration which can cause headaches, nausea, muscle cramps, dizziness, general weakness and even unconsciousness.

Family:
Though he's able to draw upon his family for certain benefits should he need, his mother and father can also be a bit of a drawback for Andy. Primarily, this is because they are expecting him to take on ownership and running of the family music store and do not understand or fully accept why he has gone to college - and is even take graduate classes - for an unrelated field like Religious Studies. The more time he spends at NYU, the more vocal his parents become about their expectations of him, and the more strained the family relations become. His parents are also not getting any younger, and are increasingly at risk of minor medical issues which could become major if not attended to properly. Furthermore, as they get older, his parents are able to perform the same physical tasks as before and often ask Andy for his help. He has been forced to take long weekends on more than one occasion to travel back to Gotham to help move heavy displays at the store, assist with physical repairs of the building itself, and other such matters. Finally, Andy's brother Dorian has been missing and presumed dead since No Man's Land, and the lack of closure is still a bit of an open wound with him.

Student Debt:
Though he's been able to finance his higher education in part with a number of grants and scholarships, Andy has also needed to take out some student loans. While not as large as some, this debt is still hanging over Andy's head and is a financial burden upon him that makes it difficult to build up any kind of savings account or 'safety net' financially. Accordingly, he's living hand-to-mouth and beyond his inability to buy anything really nice or extravagant, he's also only one unexpected large expenditure from either needing to crawl to his parents for help, or gaining an address at the proverbial poorhouse.

Truancy:
Not a truant in the respect of skipping school, but in the broader sense of shirking responsibility, Andy is one who, when he has too much put upon his proverbial shoulders, is often overwhelmed to the point where he simply doesn't do what is asked of him. This is best seen in the case of the fate of his family's music store resting with him, and instead of dutifully learning the retail business of the shop, has been at college studying comparative religion. This flaw crops up in smaller ways, however, like being asked to co-ordinate dinner reservations for a few hundred philosophy club graduates during Homecoming, and just completely putting it off and dropping the ball. He's been trying to work on this, but anyone who knows him well knows that while Andy may be dependable for small things, he's absolutely not reliable for anything of significance or importance, at least not without someone else babysitting him on it.

Role-Play

Logs

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Andy Katsaros has 9 finished logs.

Title Date Scene Summary
Banana Boat Paper September 17th, 2021 With Andy's help, Karita begins to make reason from nonsense.
Cats And Curses August 16th, 2021 While helping a ghost out, Karita discovers a zippo that belongs to -- someone else -- and this is the resulting chaos with her boyfriend, Andy.
Karita's Birthday Celebrations January 24th, 2021 (Back dated to Karita's Birthday) It's Karita's birthday! Andy has dinner and ice-cream plans, Karita has others. They meet in the middle.
First Blush January 3rd, 2021 Please note, this deals with adult situations, though it's all done in a PG-13 manner. If you are offended by innuendos, it's best not to read. After a New Year's indulgence, Karita and Andy talk things over and realize, things are going to be a lot more complicated between them.
Burying The Button December 9th, 2020 Andy and Karita bury a button to allow a spirit to find peace.
The Proper Way To Set Up November 20th, 2020 Andy and Karita prepare (in the proper way) for a night of gaming.
Corn Maze of Doom October 25th, 2020 The New York University Paranormal Society Goes a Ghost Hunting.
Back to the 'Para'normal October 21st, 2020 Marly, Andy and Karita discuss what they plan to do on Halloween.
A Lot Of Catching Up March 13th, 2020 Karita and Andy catch up on new members, spirit and upcoming investigations.

Cutscenes

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Andy Katsaros has 9 finished logs.

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Entertainment Credits

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Gallery

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