Jack Ryder
 The Creeper |
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| Jack Ryder (Scenesys ID: 949) | |||
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| Profile | |||
| Name: | Jack Ryder | ||
| Superalias: | The Creeper | ||
| Gender: | Male | ||
| Species: | Metahuman | ||
| Occupation: | Investigative Journalist | ||
| Citizenship: | American | ||
| Residence: | Gotham | ||
| Education: | Bachelor's Degree | ||
| Theme: | DC (FC) | ||
| Groups: | |||
| Details | |||
| Apparent Age: | 35 | Actual Age: | 35 |
| Date of Birth | 06 January 1985 | Played By | Hugh Dancy |
| Height: | 6'1" | Weight: | 195 lbs |
| Hair Color: | Brown | Eye Color: | Brown |
| Twitter: | @RyderDie | ||
| Theme Song: | "Nocturnal Me" by Ghost | ||
Contents
Character Info
Profile
Jack Ryder is a journalist and podcaster well known, especially around Gotham, for his foul mouth and brash attitude. He looks into the weird and the unusual in the world, breaking open conspiracies and corruption. The Creeper is a strange, freakish creature out of Hell that hunts the wicked in the shadows of Gotham's darkest alleys, leaving a trail of blood and the echoes of horrifying laughter in his wake. Only Jack knows that he and the Creeper are the same person...or are they?
Timeline
Timeline:
* 1985: Jack Ryder is born in one of the less reputable sections of Gotham City.
* 1998: After his parents divorce, Jack begins experiencing extreme depression and psychological symptoms. Undergoes the first in a series of psychiatric hospitalizations that will recur well into college.
* 2003: Rather than grow withdrawn, Jack's troubled youth leads him to become outspoken, brash and confrontational. Quickly enters into a journalism program where he excels.
* 2007: After graduating from Northwestern University, where he attended on scholarship, Jack gets a job as a producer and writer for a flagging Gotham talk radio station.
* 2009: With budgets slashed, Jack gets on the air and begins to write his own rants. He soon earns his own show called "You're Wrong". His arguments with callers quickly become popular soundbites and memes when he adds a livestreamed version for the station website.
* 2011: Jack takes a six month hiatus after having a manic breakdown on air, resulting in his show being temporarily suspended. Upon his release, he starts the "Jack Attack" podcast and quickly becomes his own boss. The show mixes the same confrontational content with investigations and exposes of corruption and criminal activity. The show also sometimes delves into conspiracy and fringe content, a trend that increases as years pass.
* 2018: During an investigation of secret research funded by the government, Jack gets on the trail of a mysterious Dr. Yatz. Yatz claims to mingle alchemy, magic and science together. Jack's observation of Yatz's lab leads to him witnessing a break-in and assassination attempt, unknown individuals trying to steal the man's work. Jack tries to intervene and rescue the doctor, only to find himself injected by something the doctor has experimented with. Jack awakens days later, to reports of a slaughter at the lab. Yatz is dead and so are his attackers. Torn apart. Mutilated.
* 2019: Jack's mental health rapidly deteriorates. He began to hear voices, go through fugues and periods of lost time, mostly at night. He would see another face in the mirror, a yellow face, twisted and horrifying, fanged and inhuman. At the same time, in the darker areas of Gotham, rumors of a yellow-skinned monster began to rise. Something that lurked in shadow and laughed a laugh that could freeze your bones. Bones that it would peel and crunch between its teeth. They called it The Creeper. It liked that name. Jack knew because the Creeper was a part of him, but not him at the same time. He didn't understand it. But he was going to find out.
* 2020: Jack Ryder begins to investigate The Creeper, even as the Creeper himself begins to intrude more and more into his host's life. Things are about to get messy in a whole lot of ways.
IC Journal
{{{ICJournal}}}
Personality
Brash:
Jack Ryder is mouthy, opinionated and not afraid of what anyone thinks of him. He's more than happy to have an argument at the drop of a hat. He doesn't worry about manners or hurting anyone's feelings. He can be quite rude at times, but he's never provocative just to be provocative. When he makes people mad, he does it honestly and because he believes it. He just doesn't play nice.
Creeper:
The Creeper is an enigma of unknown motives and erratic behavior. He is predatory, aggressive, tantalizing, playful. He toys with his prey. He likes suffering and fear. He doesn't seem to be afraid of very much and would probably seem quite mad to the average person. He is a monster, unashamedly so, without limits or containment into what he's capable of doing. His motives are mostly unknown, as of yet.
Defender:
For as nasty and foul as he can be, Jack wants to make the world a better place. He wants to protect people. The people he yells at need to be yelled at, either because they're powerful people making the world worse or because they need to wake up to the realities of the world around them. He grew up dirt poor and mentally ill, watched his parents nearly rip each other apart, barely scraped through college way too expensive for him. He's on the side of the underdog. He knows, messed up as he is, that he's one of the lucky ones.
Stubborn:
Jack doesn't tend to let things go. He goes his own way, doesn't take orders from others and isn't deterred by usual setbacks. He keeps sticking to his guns and going after things, whether it's a job or a story or a person he wants to know. He's got a hell of a strong will and won't be bulldozed by anyone, no matter how powerful they might be.
Unstable:
Even before the Creeper entered his life, Jack was prone to savage mood swings and sudden bursts of temper. He has a flare for the dramatic, yes, but he's also genuinely mentally damaged and ill. He takes medication sporadically at best and usually with booze, which isn't exactly healthy. He will sometimes behave in unpredictable or toxic ways and isn't always capable of controlling it. Having a demon-monster in his head hasn't helped.
Character Sheet
Powers
Creeper Form:
Jack Ryder physically transforms into a monstrous entity called The Creeper. Yellow-skinned, green haired and horrifying in appearance and movement, the Creeper possesses superhuman physicality well beyond a human. The Creeper's strength is capable of ripping a human being apart, tearing limbs free from the body. He can smash through walls or drives his claws into solid brick with sufficient force to pierce it and enable him to climb with rapidity and ease. He can leap up to ten stories in the air or across a multilane highway with a single bound. His upper limits are probably around ten tons, give or take a bit. Beyond that, his agility, reflexes and physical speed are similarly enhanced, especially in bursts, like a superpredator striking with a sudden explosion of force and ferocity. Each of these attributes is about ten times the human norm. In addition, Creeper's body is hyperflexible and capable of obscene contortions, with joints that bend the wrong way and bones dislocating to accomodate strange postures. Doing so does create a bit of pain, but Creeper also possesses an incredible tolerance for his own suffering - as well as that of others.
Regeneration:
Creeper possesses extraordinary healing powers. Simple cuts or stab wounds will seal in seconds, bullets wounds fully healing in less than a minute. Broken bones and the like will repair in a matter of minutes. He can regenerate lost fingers or facial structure, although full limbs would take time, days at least, and would require him to stay in his Creeper form to complete the healing. He will not heal in his Jack Ryder form, although any injury to Jack more serious than a papercut or a stubbed toe may trigger his transformation into the Creeper at inopportune times.
Tooth and Claw:
Creeper's physical traits can very from manifestation to manifestation, but he frequently develops some form of fang or claws as part of his physiology. The claws can usually pierce through thin plate steel and are more than capable of slashing through flesh and bone like butter. His fangs vary from traditional large canines, like an animalistic predator, to a mouth full of gnashing needles reminiscent of the worst nightmares. These, like his claws, are more than capable of ripping and tearing through an ordinary human and most forms of simple armor. His digestion is such that he can consume raw flesh without harm, but his appetite is not so endless as to allow him to consume an entire human - at least, not in one sitting.
Vocal Effects:
Creeper's voice can perform a variety of eerie effects. He can mesmerize with his voice, momentarily pinning people into place with fear and paralysis, a hypnotic trance which can leave them vulnerable to his predation. He can cast his voice like a master ventriloquist, seeming to come from almost any direction, even simply a low whisper in someone's ear from thirty yards away. Most notorious is his laugh: Creeper's laugh triggers intense and primal feelings of terror and panic in people who hear it. They sometimes freeze in place, as when mesmerized, or they'll run blindly, desperate to escape. His laugh even causes a certain amount of physical pain, creating headaches and requiring victims to cover their ears to try and mute the effect.
Most of these effects can be mitigated, at least, by strong wills and psychic ability, although only the very strongest will be entirely immune.
Skills
Charisma:
Like him or not, Jack Ryder has an audience. He knows how to entertain, can craft his words to receive maximum attention and has impeccable timing, comic and otherwise. He's developed a rather hardcore fan following for a reason and, to his devotees, his harsh words ring like wisdom.
Fighting:
Jack isn't much more than an average bar brawler, able to throw a punch but not likely to handle anyone more skilled than him. The Creeper, of course, has significant physical advantages that make fighting style less relevant - it is an ambush predator, prose to terrorizing and snatching victims from the dark. In a straight fight, he's a little less effective, but still potent enough given his superhuman attributes.
Fringe:
Jack is deeply versed in fringe science, conspiracy theories and the paranoid undercurrents of the world. Even with so much wonder and impossibility out in the open, with mutants and aliens abounding, there are secret things and secret places. And people who want to keep those secrets. Jack wants to expose and talk about such things and he keeps a close eye on the pulse of the weird and the conspiratorial in the world.
Investigation:
Contrary to what some of his critics might believe, Jack Ryder is actually an excellent investigative journalists. He knows how to ask hard questions and to whom he should put them. He can see patterns in seemingly disparate pieces of evidence. He's dogged and organized in his work and gifted at seeing through lies and obfuscations. People just underestimate him because he often does it while cussing them out and being a bit of a jerk.
Stealth:
Jack's pretty good at tailing people, going unnoticed, sticking to the shadows. Creeper, on the other hand, is a savant. The monstrosity has a gift for finding just the right darkness, for moving silently, enabling him to stalk and terrorize his potential prey.
Resources
Fame:
Jack's got a certain degree of fame, especially in Gotham City itself. He can get reservations at good restaurants and often gets invited to relatively nice gatherings where his presence won't actually be wanted because most of the people there secretly hate him. He's okay with that. It makes him more likely to show up. Many of the perks of celebrity are his to partake, although there are downsides, too.
Income:
Jack's podcast is fairly successful and he has a pretty busy merchandise store. He produces two podcasts a week and, through advertising and sales, makes a steady income of around 250K per year.
Podcast:
Jack's podcast, "Jack Attack", came in the wake of his highly successful radio program "You're Wrong." The podcast is a chance for him to give his own opinions, do his own stories and investigations without editorial interference and generally show the dark underbelly and the weird corners of the world with those with the guts to take a real look.
Weaknesses
Monster:
The Creeper is a monstrous entity. Fearful and dangerous as it is, it will naturally attract those who hunt and fight such things. Creeper tends to prey on the wicked, on those who victimize the innocent, but that distinction might be hard to draw. Plus, Creeper likes playing with hunters anyway.
Recognizable:
Jack's face is known, especially in Gotham City. If Creeper gets him into bad circumstances or leaves him in a compromising position, he may be seen and put in bad circumstances as a result of it. And, thus far, Creeper hasn't shown much interest in protecting its alter ego's well-being.
Split:
It isn't entirely clear if the Creeper is another aspect of Jack himself or a demonic entity that possesses his body. Maybe a little bit of both. Nonetheless, there is a distinct separation between the two, at least as far as Jack is concerned. While the Creeper seems to know about his life, Jack remains in the dark about his alter ego's thoughts, motives and activities. He's taken to investigating on his own, trying to keep track of what he does, but he often wakes up after blacking out in strange places and circumstances and it's both not good for his mental health and leaves him at constant war within himself.
Visage:
The Creeper form is extremely and noticeably inhuman. He will not blend or fit in, not even a little bit. He tends to have loathesome yellow skin, greasy green hairy, thick tangles of red hair spilling down his back. He is repulsive and mad, with a wide green often full of jangled fangs. Nobody's going to mistake him for a lawyer.
Role-Play
Logs
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Jack Ryder has
2 finished logs.
| Title | Date | Scene Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Fangs, Fakes and Freaks | May 31st, 2020 | No description |
| The (Not So) Public House | March 16th, 2020 | Shaw meets with Lorna and makes her and offer she can't refuse; Maxima discovers the HFC |
Cutscenes
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Jack Ryder has
2 finished logs.
| Title | Date | Scene Summary |
|---|---|---|
| No logs submitted yet. | ||
Entertainment Credits
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Jack Ryder has been credited in
0 shows.
| Title | Date | Scene Summary |
|---|---|---|
| No shows submitted yet. | ||
Jack Ryder has been credited in
0 albums.
| Title | Release Date | Artist |
|---|---|---|
| No music submitted yet. | ||
Jack Ryder has authored
0 books.
| Title | Release Date | Synopsis |
|---|---|---|
| No books submitted yet. | ||
Gallery
