go where there is no path

Name: Rizzy
Age: 27
Contact: varymydays at plurk
Characters Already in Teleios: Peter Parker, John Young, Jeremy Gilbert
Reserve: Right here

Character Name: Duke Crocker
Journal: nopath
Age: 34
Fandom: Haven
Canon Point: season 4, episode "The New Girl" where he discovers Lexie is really Audrey
Debt:

Class A: 6 years
Class B: 4,476 Years (stealing since high school nearly everyday on the regular, multiple accounts of assault, robbery, burglary, breaking and entering, and fraud)
Class C: 189 years 5 months (so much infidelity though, vandalism, aiding and abetting, bribery, public indecency, disorderly conduct, escaping custody, bullying, impersonation, selling alcohol to minors as a minor)

Bullying

Selling alcohol to minors as a minor

GRAND TOTAL: 4671 years and 5 months

History: Don't go where the path may lead you, but instead go where there is no path and leave a trail behind you.

Personality:

Duke Crocker is a mischievous criminal with a heart of gold. He is a smuggler, a pirate, a restaurateur, and a weapon against the Troubled.

Duke Crocker grew up in a town called Haven, Maine where every so many years, Troubles exist. Troubles are curses/powers/abilities that run in families. These Troubles can run from anything to manipulating the weather to making drawings come to life to having machines come to life and kill people. When the Troubles are around, the city descends into chaos, and it is one of those unspoken myths between families in this small town that most people know about and most wish weren't true. The Troubles were around one other time when Duke was alive. He was a child, and he was with Lucy Ripley the day it all ended but he can't remember the day or what happened on it. Now Audrey has come, and the Troubles have never been around as long as they are now. The town is reeling from it.

He has intensely acted for most his life like he doesn't care, like he's selfish, like he only looks out for himself, but this is far from the truth. It's more of a means of armor than anything else to protect himself. If he doesn't form connections, he can't lose those connections. If people expect nothing more of him than to be a petty criminal, they don't get close and he can't let them down. Over his time in Haven with getting to know Audrey and becoming friends again with Nathan, he has started to let go of that armor. It's chipped away, and it's much more difficult for him to hold fast to this idea that he is a selfish criminal when he is there with the cops, helping out when he doesn't have to, trying to protect people whenever he can and prevent further loss of life or injury. Duke clings a little less to that armor since he has grown and been so involved in taking care of the Troubles in the town.

When he was a child, his mother was an addict who abandoned them except to take the checks the government sent, and his father was never around. He'd come home beaten up and drunk, and Duke would take care of him. Until one day his father died, the only thing Duke ever promised him was that he'd come back to Haven when the Troubles returned without knowing the reasons why his father would have him make that promise (if he knew, maybe he never would have come near the town again). In the end, the mystery of why his father, who had never been there for him, would ask him to come back to Haven is the reason Duke returned after leaving to become a smuggler all around the world.

Duke is openly rebellious and doesn't get along well with cops or authority (except when he works with them as a consultant and they become his friends. He's still not sure how this has become his life). Duke tends toward sarcasm, joking, and being witty. It's part deflection and part his natural way of being. If the situation is getting dire or scary, clearly, he can diffuse the situation with a well timed zinger. He is also a giant flirt. He'll flirt with anyone, and there is something very charming about him. He is protective of those he cares about. In general, Duke is protective of people, but if he cares about that person, he is that much more protective (doesn't mean he hasn't made mistakes and made some betrayals especially when it comes to Nathan but he's learning).

After Duke discovered the truth about his own family's Trouble, his life changed dramatically. Duke experiences regularly that loss of his agency. He had two separate sides trying to tell him what he is, and he has insisted and fought against being anything like his father or grandfather. The preacher insists that Duke is meant to kill and to end the Troubles by killing Audrey as well as anyone else who might suffer. He doesn't want to kill even if it means saving more people. There has to be another way. Audrey regularly helps people with their Troubles without requiring anyone to be killed except one time. There is one time where even Audrey needs to manipulate him into killing someone. It's a man whose family is dying because of him. He needs to steal organs from the many children he has made as a sperm donor, and some of those children, they have had their own Troubles activated when the man came looking to collect the organs. The only way to save those children from death or a similar fate, it was to kill the man. It's still something Duke was pissed about. He had been lead up to that moment with the man without any idea of what Audrey had in store for him, but in the end, he knew the only option was to kill him. It's still something that weighs heavily on Duke with guilt to take a life and to start down the path of his father which he has sworn to himself he wouldn't go down. The guilt of it was terrible, and he felt very betrayed by Audrey at that time even understanding there was no other way. He just hates that is his destiny and his path... that there's no other way.

Beyond that, there are at least three Troubles which have also greatly threatened Duke's agency and taken it from him. One woman, she has the ability to seduce men, and after they have sex and impregnate her, they start to die slowly. She set her targets on Duke, and like Duke says, he couldn't say no even though he probably wouldn't have but still the choice was ripped from him that day. Another man runs into Duke's knife to make sure that Duke kills him and ends his Trouble of bringing the dead back as ghosts. Much more recently, a young boy takes over his body completely, and Duke has no control over what is happening. He is kissed and becomes very violent while having his body hijacked. Agency is incredibly important to him because of what Duke's Trouble is and how other people have tried to manipulate/use him because of it as well as these experiences it. He values it more than the average person, and he will fight for it for himself and for others. Naturally, this doesn't stop him from being manipulated and used in the future, but it's something he is very aware of.

In Teleios, Duke will assume the city is the product of some elaborate Trouble. He will be there to help Audrey try to get to the bottom of whatever Troubles might be behind it all even if a part of him will be grateful for the escape from Haven with the Troubles, with the only apparent way to end the Troubles is through Audrey killing Nathan which is nothing he would ever want to happen or let happen. It's why he will settle in to the city well, make friends, flirt, and when he realizes the city (or Trouble) has to do with guilt and repaying ones crimes, Duke will have to face up to his own crimes of which there are many. He has a lot of guilt especially when it comes to the people that he has killed and to the items he has smuggled which may have been used to create more danger for people. He never asks questions so he doesn't know, but he definitely regrets not asking those questions.

Powers/Abilities: Duke has the ability to kill a family's curse/Trouble if he kills a member of the family that the Trouble runs in. It's less relevant in a place where Troubled people don't exist but it is a power that he has. When Troubled blood touches him, he briefly gains super strength which is strong enough to rip a car door from a car or throw a big, muscular man into the water.

Troubled blood actually gives him a rush, which is why it's really dangerous for him to overuse it or to give into that feeling, because he could easily become addicted like his brother ends up though that isn't something Duke has lived through yet.

Appearance: Duke looks like a pirate and a crook! In all honesty, Duke does look every bit the part of the smuggler/pirate that he can be. His hair is generally kept longer and messy like he hardly touched it, and he always has facial hair going on as he is the complete opposite from the clean cut, polished type.

Duke tends to wear long shirts which he doesn't generally even bother to button. He has dark, intense, brown eyes and an all too charming, mischievous smile, which shows that he has the tendency to get into trouble.

CR AU

Game You’re Transferring CR from: n/a

How has your character changed from their canon self? n/a

Are they gaining any abilities from their time in game? Did the game setting take something from them?

n/a

Samples:

Actionspam Sample:

I will turn myself into a gun, because it’s all I have, because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own.

Prose Sample:

If you must leave, leave as if fire burns under your feet and If you must die, remember your life