curriculum_fictae | [OOC] VoidTrecker App

Player Information

Name: Rho
Age: 30+
Contact details: ishidaaaugh@gmail.com or katoptron @ plurk!
Other characters: None at the moment.

Character Information

Name: Martin Blackwood
Canon: The Magnus Archives
Canon Point: Post Series
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: 30, probably

World Information: The wiki is quite extensive! But to summarize briefly, it’s basically a Mostly Normal World with spooky shit around the corners, with said spooky shit intruding more and more on reality until oops the world ends.

Personal History: Wiki again! Martin tends to be a stabilizing force in his canon, being the voice of reason and/or suffering.

Personality: Martin is a soft nerd in a cosmic horror story that really, really enjoys making its characters suffer. Soft characters don’t live as long as he has, of course, so that means he’s developed (or, in some ways, always had) sharp edges underneath all that delicious marshmallowy goodness. But - softness first. Martin is an incredibly kind and compassionate invidual who is devoted the people around him, often to a fault. That may sound like of those job interview flaws that’s secretly a strength, but no. The phrase “lighting yourself on fire to keep other people warm” is used to describe him and it’s both a) deeply accurate and b) not a compliment. This is a guy who spent most of his life devoted to other people, starting with him dropping out of school at seventeen to care for his ailing mother (who hated him for no fault of his own) and continuing to being the one who cares most for the other characters in the Magnus Archive, particularly Jonathan “Bad-Plans-And-Worse-Consequences” Sims. It stems from a truly abysmal sense of self worth, which is really just a black hole in his heart instead of a functioning and positive sense of self. But he manages to make it manifest as kindness. He’s the sort of person that’s always there with a cup of tea right when you need it; he takes great joy in taking care of people in small ways, even if it’s just asking how they’re doing and whether they’ve gotten enough sleep. (Please get more sleep, Jon, he’s begging you.) He is blisteringly devoted to the people he loves, whether they want him to be or not. Jon in particular is the centre of Martin’s life in a lot of ways, both romatically and platonically. There isn’t much that Martin wouldn’t do for Jon - or anyone else who manages to work their way deeply enough into his life.

It probably comes as no surprise that Martin is a profoundly emotional person in general. Being in tune with the emotions of himself and others is a flaw and a strength rolled up into one. On the one hand, Martin’s emotional intelligence allows him to work with most people very well, to read their needs and slot himself into said need. It makes him one hell of a support type! As mentioned above. But while he reads emotions well, he’s not always good at coping with his own emotions well. Martin is extremely high strung and anxious, which isn’t the best thing to be in a horror story. Eventually he gets to the point where he can just sort of endure the crazy shit happening to him, but he never rises to the level of being happy about it. Oh no. The shouting will continue until morale improves. (The morale never improves.) He’s naturally a very fearful and cautious person, not generally prone to taking risks (although his coworkers do comment on his lack of self preservation instincts). Late in the series, Martin complains about how no one takes him seriously, how the asshole he’s talking to thinks that he’s useless and should just lie down and have a good cry and make tea or whatever. The thing is? That’s honestly pretty true about Martin in some ways. He is the type of person to make tea, and cry, and doesn’t appear to know the least bit about what he’s doing.

The keyword, however, is appear. Martin Blackwood is all of the things I’ve just described: soft, caring, emotional, nervous. But underneath it all Martin is also powerfully stubborn and very clever. This gives him a profoundly manipulative edge that, while not always actively in use, is always potentially present. He uses his bumbling soft edges to hide a sharp intellect that takes in everything he sees and files it away for later. After all, who would you rather confess your secrets to? The kind lad who makes you tea or his grumpy gremlin of a boss? Martin also leans hard into the way people underestimate him, especially people like the boat captain (Peter Lukas) he’d made a deal with. Yes, it 100% ended poorly for him. No, he did not 100% have control of the situation. But what he did do was manipulate Lukas into thinking that Martin was an easy mark for being eaten by an eldritch terror, who would just go along with Lukas’s gaslighting because poor Martin Blackwood Is Just Too Pathetic To Live. No. Martin played him, instead, by reading the man and spitting back exactly what he wanted to hear.

Underneath all of this is a Martin Blackwood who is profoundly, achingly lonely, even before making a deal with the Avatar of the Lonely and winding up with his own set of spooky powers. Canon implies he has no friends outside of his frankly awful job, and even those friends all die or stop talking to him by the time the world literally ends. He nurses a crush on Jon for nearly three years with the expectation that there’s no way Jon can possibly return it (until Jon does anyway). Martin is the sort of person who loves people, who desperately desires friends, and yet still can’t seem to form real connections outside of Jon. He assumes that all love is conditional and that no one really has any interest in him. This has … gotten a little better with Jon’s attention, and also teh world LITERALLY ENDING, but it’s always going to be a struggle for him. Probably the biggest struggle of going back to any kind of normal-adjacent life. (And yes, being stranded on a weird train counts as normal. The apocalypse owas REAL ROUGH.)

Key themes: The limits of self-sacrifice. Mundane horrors being just as awful as the supernatural ones, if not moreso. IThe importance of working together instead of assuming no one can possibly want to help you. Learning to assert yourself and self-actualize. Even if you think you’re the most pathetic person in the world, there is someone who will love you just as you are. Antichrist’s +1.

Main Motivation: Martin really just wants a quiet life away from all this eldritch horror nonsense. Which isn’t to say he didn’t also want to undo the apocalypse ruining the world? He wanted that very much and he was willing to do nearly anything to fix things. Nearly anything. Martin would burn the entire world down and stomp on the ashes if it were a choice between the world and Jon. He is ridiculously loyal to him and will do almost anything to keep the man/idiot safe on the train. This is his primary motivation throughout the series, which will continue unabated in this context. (If Jon is unavailble, Martin will show similar devotion to anyone he makes solid friends with.)

Skills: Martin is … ssssort of a half avatar? Monster thing?? Of a domain called the Unseen. It’s really not clear, given Martin hasn’t been in a normal context since the world ended, but in the context of the apocalypse he has his own hell/domain that feeds him power and gives him a couple of tricks. That being said, he’s not nearly as strong as literally any other actual avatar in the series, and does not get the usual suite of benefits like fast healing, etc. He is just a normal human who can choose to burn some of his remaining humanity to do spooky shit.

This breaks down into two primary categories/eldritch horrors:

The Lonely: Martin’s strongest influence; he nearly fell directly into it at the end of the pentultimate season but was mercifully dragged back out by his boyfriend. The Lonely tricks are as follows:

Vanishing: Martin can disappear into (a pocket dimension version of) the Lonely, leaving no trace of himself behind. Technically, he ceases to exist while this effect is active, though obviously this doesn’t result in him actually leaving the train in any way. While in this state, Martin can travel short distances (up to about ~100 feet max) and reappear instantaneously, as if he’d teleported. That being said, he can only traverse terrain that he can access normally on foot without undue difficulty. So he can’t go through a locked door (or bypass an obstacle course), for example, but could, say, teleport through an unlocked door that can be easily accessed and has a window to show him his endpoint. The distance restriction is from the the initital starting point to the destination point, regardless of how long the actual footpath would have been.

If Martin vanishes in front of someone, they may forget that they were talking to him. The effect is mild and completely resistible, though. The effect works best when Martin can Batman it: you turn away and whoops, he’s gone! Who were you talking to again? Nobody, right? Vanishing is a strain on both Martin’s energy levels and his humanity. It’s not healthy to stay vanished for more than ten, fifteen minutes tops, and can only teleport two to three times per day. Generally speaking, this works best when he does it (you guessed it) while alone, though he could take up to one person with him if they’re holding hands. It won’t be pleasant if he does, though: anyone who comes along will get a direct look at an infinite expanse of feeling like no one ever loved you (or ever will) and may lose sanity points as a result. He could, in theory, use this effect offensively, and leave someone behind in the Lonely by letting go of their hand, but the effect is extremely short. Sixty seconds max, and less depending on how emotionally resilient the character in question is.

Colourless: Being touched by the Lonely has made Martin even paler than his ginger complexion would normally allow for. He’s frankly kind of blotchy and grey in spots, with his red hair having faded to a very dull roan. Intimate physical contact restores colour to him wherever said contact is made. This also applies to any clothing he wears long enough. Even the brightest neon pink jumper fades to grey given enough time.

In addition to the above, Martin’s Lonely influence means he essentially has a fragment of this awful eldritch fear god along for the ride, which will interact weirdly with telepaths, empaths, etc. And probably have other unexpected cross-canon interactions. Don’t stick your fork into the eldritch horror socket, kids, or you’ll get electrocuted. Mostly this fragment will be quite dormant, save for the occasional munch on Martin’s humanity. (It can also be staved off/counteracted by positive social interactions, which will naturally reduce the Lonely’s power over him and also reduce the efficacy of his vanishing powers.)

The Eye: A much weaker influence, mostly eclipsed by the Lonely at this point. Martin doesn’t really have powers from this one as much as he has a hodge podge of unusual side effects:

- Reads statements (or regular books!) flawlessly, with full acting and emotional range.
- Can’t feed on statements like Jon, but does know what they taste like, and feels a bit like he had a coffee after.
- Is metaphysically bound to Jon, the Archivist. Since Jon apped this won’t be an issue, but if he ever were to leave, Martin would have a bout of sickness (before the general handwaving of being on the train stabilises him.)
- Has a very, very slight compulsion effect when asking questions, 100% resistible. Basically, most people feel more at ease telling him things than they would normally do with some random person. (So, in other words, the standard level of “RP makes strangers dump info at each other for no discernable reason except that it’s fun.”)

Also, Martin makes the best tea. He’s also quite a good cook and generally capable of most domestic tasks (cleaning, knitting, minor sewing, etc.)

Item: A tea set in a nice little case with a couple tins of tea from home.

Sample: TDM Thread

Notes: Nothing in particular!