fade rift | app

[achievable]

PLAYER

Name: MJ
Age: 32
Contact: circuitry
Other Characters: Alistair, Bastien, Jehan (side), Kostos, Osana (side)
Interests: I would like to build wingsuits please.

CHARACTER

Name: Howard Stark
Canon/OC: Marvel Cinematic
Canon Point: 1946
Journal: achievable
Age: 29

Canon World

A recognizable Earth with superheroes, aliens, a group of villains adjacent to but separate from the Nazis, and a lot of fake science, but which mostly follows the historical trajectory of the real world until the 2000s. From way back in the 1940s, Howard is unaware of the aliens, aware of a limited number of the superheroes and villains, and personally to blame for a lot of the fake science.

History

Howard Stark was born in 1917 and grew up in New York's Lower East Side. His father sold fruit, his mother had a factory sewing job. Howard only ever had a grammar school education, but he shot straight up the great American ladder by (1) being brilliant and (2) lying a lot, and by 19 was hanging around international conferences in Europe.

He founded Stark Industries in 1939, at the age of 22, and in 1940 joined the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Over the next five years of the war, Howard worked on the Manhattan Project (but probably wasn't hugely involved since that's just a throwaway detail and he was also doing all this other stuff) and developed weapons for the SSR.

At some point early in the war, he threw his weight around to save his future butler, Mr. Jarvis, from a court martial, and also save the future Mrs. Jarvis from the Third Reich. Later, in 1944, he attempted to develop a gas to let people function with less sleep that instead caused violent aggression. After a general stole it and attempted to use it despite the problems, resulting in a Russian unit massacring one another, Howard flew in to survey the aftermath, then attacked the general—a fight he lost pretty badly—and walked away from the contract.

In the meantime, he helped recover Dr. Erskine from imprisonment and assisted him with the creation of Captain America. He also designed Cap's shield and uniform (the practical parts anyway) and generally considered him a friend, and he was wrecked when Steve was lost, keeping up the search as long as he could after the war before reluctantly moving on, mostly, kind of.

After the war Howard returned to the private sector, where he engaged in such private activities as dating multiple movie stars, testifying before Congress, being charged with treason, temporarily becoming a fugitive, and nearly dropping his madness gas on New York City after being hypnotized by a creepy Russian. It turned out fine.

He's due to co-found S.H.I.E.L.D. sometime soon, but not right now. Right now he's making movies. Suck on that, Hughes.

Personality

Howard is a flashy, sarcastic hedonist with a heart of bronze—the optimal heart metal for him, because if it were anything more precious he'd have cut it out and sold it years ago. His basic impulses are self-interest and thrill-seeking, with a lot of ambition and minimal impulse control. He originally joined the war effort out of boredom, not patriotism or duty. When he has an idea, even one he knows is dangerous and terrible, he has a hard time not following through on it just to see if he can. He's arrogant and frequently condescending, he drinks too much, he tax evades, he lies as a matter of habit and won't hesitate to be underhanded in business or otherwise.

He's also due to become a mediocre husband and outright bad father. Neglectful, harsh, the works. While at this age, outside of that context, he's more comic relief than haunting source of anyone's emotional damage, it isn't that surprising that he will be eventually. Brilliant, obsessive workaholics fixated on ideas aren't generally known for being great dads even when they aren't dicks in all those other ways.

In short, he’s not a good man. He is, however, afraid of being a bad man, once the scales are balanced. So when he makes a real mess, he cleans it up. Or maybe he sends his butler to clean it up, or hires a really expensive cleaning crew, because cleaning isn’t really his area of expertise, but it’s not about not being willing to get his hands dirty or risk his own skin if he's capable of doing something himself. The devastation his work has caused keeps him up at night, and he’s heavily invested in improving the world enough to make up for it. He's going to spend the rest of his life trying to recreate the serum that made Steve Rogers into Captain America, because he considers it one of the few things he's been part of that was a net good.

He’s decent-ish in a few other ways, too. Despite his cheerful disdain for nearly everyone, he’s fairly egalitarian. Women have the misfortune of being who he’s attracted to, and thus who he casts aside with a bit of jewelry and no explanation, but he considers pretty much equally everyone boring and discardable, so it’s not exactly misogyny. For a while Peggy counts him as the only person who believes in her, in her pursuit to be taken seriously as a secret agent; he's also shown not to share the era's shitty racial attitudes. And when he does value someone and their opinion, for whatever reason, he'll go to great lengths to both protect and impress them, even to the point of being noble (gross) and self-sacrificing (ugh).

Strengths & Weaknesses

Howard is a genius in typical over-the-top comic book style: he's a world-class scientist and engineer who's invented things like death rays and hover cars with (fictional) 1940s science, plus a pilot, and a polyglot, and a rags-to-riches self-made multimillionaire—all accomplished before the age of 30, using only a grammar-school education and a knack for social climbing. So he's pretty smart.

But he's also a powerless human noodle who frequently finds and/or causes bigger trouble than he can fix himself, rather than tagging in someone who knows how to fight while he hides in the backseat of a car somewhere.

Suggested Nerfs

He has no powers, and without electricity and reliable knowledge of Thedas' chemistry and physics and all of that he won't be able to jump right in with the death rays, so hopefully he's fine. But if not he could hit his head really hard when he falls out of the rift or something.

Arrival Inventory

— An assortment of stylish 1946 women's evening dresses, sans women. Maybe the demons are wearing them.
— Like 50 pairs of suspenders, to share.
— A bathrobe.

'Human'ization

N/A.

Fit

He has black hair and a mustache so he fits my personal character requirements, and I think he would be funny. Otherwise: I'm excited to potentially have someone focusing on setting-appropriate R&D and stabbing magic with pliers and coming up with plausible fantasy gadgets that I will of course submit for mod approval.

SAMPLES

and a one and a two