Application: Exsilium

[itstotallyaliens]

» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Ang D.
Current AGE: 30
Player TIME ZONE: EST
Personal JOURNAL: chartharsis
IM & SERVICE: AIM: chartharsis
Player PLURK: chartharsis
Current CHARACTERS: Artie Nielsen (Warehouse 13) and Charles Ofdensen (Metalocalypse)

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Fox Mulder
Canon & MEDIUM: The X-Files (TV series)
Canon PULL-POINT: 3x1, "The Blessing Way", before returning to his apartment from his mother's house.
Character AGE: 32 - Born 10/13/1961.

Character ABILITIES:
Due to his training and experience as a field agent, Mulder is skilled in marksmanship, defensive and/or off-road driving, photography and photo developing, psychological profiling, and... standing around in the rain for extended periods of time. Hey, in Exsilium, that's important, okay?

His education at Oxford has also given him a rudimentary knowledge of human biology and basic chemistry, and, of course, he is a ridiculous wealth of information when it comes to abormal or supernatural phenomena, as well as trivia related to the history of these phenomena. You know how the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding was fond of playing the game of "Give me any word and I will tell you how the root of that word is Greek"? Mulder is fond of "Give me any unexplained phenomenon and I will tell you how it's totally aliens".

In terms of a lack of ability, Mulder is also noted to be red-green colorblind. Canon doesn't say whether he has been his whole life, or if it was a result of something done over the course of one of his disappearances ... so I will be playing him as though he has had it his whole life and adapted to live with it.

Character HISTORY:
In 1973, when Fox was twelve, his 8-year-old sister Samantha was abducted while the two of them were home alone watching television. She was never found, and with no evidence to support Mulder's claim, no one believed what he had to say. Determined to help others avoid the same fate, he applied himself to criminal studies. Since the abduction, in his own words, "tore the family apart", he felt free and unattached enough to attend school abroad in England at Oxford, where he pursued a degree in psychology, with a focus on criminal profiling. A monograph he wrote as a student on the occult and serial murders helped authorities catch a killer named Monty Props in 1988, and caught the attention of the FBI.

After attending its academy, he initially worked in conjunction with VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Project, until he learned of the X-Files: a division of cases limited to unexplained phenomena. His success as a field agent gave him a certain amount of leeway to pursue his own interests, and he spent as much time with the X-Files as he could, reading their contents and absorbing all the information they contained about paranormal and extraterrestrial occurrences, from aliens to voodoo. Over the next six years, he became an expert on the Files, and while every file got him a little bit closer to the truth he sought about Samantha's disappearance, it also ostracized him farther and farther from his colleagues, until he earned the nickname "Spooky" and fell out of favor with the Bureau, who began to label him as a crackpot and a joke.

The closer Mulder got to the truth, the harder he began to find it to get to the information he sought. Only his connections with certain members of Congress kept him involved with the Bureau and within access to the X-Files, and he began to realize that he was actively being kept away from the answers he needed ... that the government was, indeed, hiding things from its people. Every piece of evidence he could find would either disappear, or be confiscated or destroyed. He began to become paranoid and distrustful of those around him, putting up a sarcastic facade to keep people out. This only got worse when the death of his initial contact, a man who Mulder knew only as "Deep Throat", led to the disbanding of the X-Files and the loss of the first substantial evidence he and Scully had found that alien life existed.

Shuffled off to office duty as a sort of punishment for coming so close to exposing the truth, Mulder spent the next six months doing wire taps and other menial tasks, but he was soon contacted by another colleague of Deep Throat's who called himself simply Mr. X, who began to alert Mulder to the existence of other mysterious cases. He would find his own legitimate reasons to pursue them, using Scully as a consulting contact while she resumed her teaching work at Quantico. He was assigned to another rookie field agent, Alex Krycek, in Scully's absence, and the two of them worked together on a few cases, until Scully was kidnapped by a former FBI agent named Duane Barry. While trying to hunt Barry down and rescue Scully, Mulder was double-crossed by Krycek, who knew Mulder was getting too close to government secrets again, and bought enough time for someone - or something - to abduct Scully from the kidnapping site. By the time Mulder got back, Krycek had disappeared. He did, however, discover that he still had one ally: his director, Walter Skinner, who could only support Mulder in an unofficial, off-the-record capacity. In light of the circumstances surrounding Scully's apparent abduction, the X-Files were officially reopened, and Mulder went back to working on them solo.

Not long after, Scully was inexplicably returned and brought to the hospital, badly beaten and in a coma. Mulder tried to investigate where she'd been taken, but ultimately found nothing, and when Scully awakened, she had no memory of her abduction. This made Mulder even more determined to find the truth and uncover what the government was trying to hide from them, despite repeated warnings that he was getting in over his head.

Once Scully regained her health, the pair went back to their usual routine of investigating the X-Files, until an anonymous informant brought a particular case to their attention: one where three identical victims were found murdered in different locations. Following the bread crumbs led Mulder to something he'd never expected: his sister, Samantha, alive and well ... or so it seemed. The truth of the matter was that she had been cloned by the aliens who abducted her, and they were cloning abductees in an attempt to try and form a colony on Earth. Unfortunately, the clones were being hunted by a bounty hunter from the same region of space, sent by someone who did not want to see them succeed. In his efforts to protect his sister's clone - and find the real Samantha - Mulder risked his life and chased the bounty hunter all the way to a UFO crash site in Alaska, where he lost his quarry and nearly died of an alien viral infection. Ironically, the severe cold he was exposed to was the only thing that kept him alive until a cure could be found, and in the face of what could almost be considered a complete wash, Mulder clung to one scrap of positive news: his sister was still alive, somewhere, and he now knew that if he persevered, he could find her.

Over the course of the investigations that followed, Mulder and Scully kept getting tiny glimpses at just how far the corruption and conspiracy within the FBI went. Even their informant, Mr. X, was found to be unsavory, willing to kill innocents involved with cases in order to keep things secret from the public ... or in one case, willing to subject someone affected by supernatural phenomena to government research that essentially equated to torture. While Mulder threatened to break ties with him because of their differences of method, he continued to contact him for tips and information, as he knew Mr. X was too valuable a resource to just let slide ... especially since he could just as easily sell Mulder down the river, himself.

Things begin to come to a head when a hacker breaks into the Defense Department's computer system and downloads all its alien-related files. He brings the disk to Mulder, who goes to open the data and realizes that it has been encrypted. At the same time, knowing that Mulder has likely become involved with or connected to the data, the Smoking Man arranges to have hallucinogens introduced into the water system in Mulder's apartment building. He begins acting erratically and irrationally, sleeping less than usual, and attacks people with little to no provocation, including Assistant Director Skinner. While hiding out from the consequences of his actions, he's called to his father's house in Martha's Vineyard, where his father tells Mulder that he regrets some of his past actions, but that they will become clear soon enough. When Fox presses his father for answers, William Mulder mentions something about "the merchandise" and retreats to the bathroom, in need of medication. By the time Mulder comes to find his father, he's been fatally shot, and dies in his son's arms, asking him to forgive him... and leaving him with even more unanswered questions.

Enraged, Mulder heads back to his apartment, only to find that he's been stalked by Alex Krycek. Believing Krycek to be his father's murderer, Mulder attacks him, and nearly shoots him ... only to be stopped by a gunshot to the shoulder from Scully. He loses consciousness and wakes up several hours later ... on a Native American reservation. Scully explains that shooting Krycek would have only made Mulder look worse, further incriminating him as a suspect in his father's death, especially with the attack on Skinner in his file, and that she needed an excuse to bring him out to the reservation, where she had enlisted a Navajo codetalker from World War II to help decrypt the Defense Department file. She leaves Mulder in the care of the codetalker, Albert Hosteen, and goes back to DC to try and finish clearing her partner's name. A younger relative of Hosteen's tells Mulder that he knows why he is there, and offers to lead him to the place where an omen was found. Hours later, Mulder crawls into a boxcar that he's found buried in the bottom of a canyon, and finds it filled with alien corpses, each bearing the marks of smallpox vaccination: the "merchandise" his father referred to before his death. He barely has time to call Scully and tell her of the discovery before the Smoking Man arrives with a SWAT team in a helicopter ... and blows the boxcar to bits, which pissed off a whole bunch of fans and made one hell of a cliffhanger for the end of Season 2.

Naturally, Mulder is alive - he survived by somehow making his way out of the boxcar and taking refuge under a pile of rubble. Headcanon is still being concocted for this bit of Miraculous Hollywood Magic, and will be added once I can come up with something that I'm satisfied with, since they never really explain just HOW it happened. What matters, though, is that it DOES (hooray), and Albert Hosteen and his family bring Mulder - really badly dehydrated and heat poisoned and pretty much nearly dead - to a ceremonial hut in the reservation. There, they perform a ceremony known as The Blessing Way to strengthen the ties between Mulder's spirit and his body... but not before he communes briefly with the spirits of the dead who've influenced his life: specifically his father and Deep Throat, both of whom encourage him to go back, not give up, and keep fighting to find and expose the truth.

Once he has regained his strength, Mulder returns to the East Coast, first visiting his mother to console her after his father's funeral (which he kind of missed because people thought he was dead, too). He comes to Exsilium as he's about to re-enter his own apartment, ready to get back in touch with the real world and blow the lid off the truth ... or so he'd hoped. Sorry to disappoint you, Fox.

TL;DR: Mulder's life is an eternal cycle of ____ gets abducted, Mulder flips his lid, shit gets real and no one can be trusted, people lie like cheap rugs, there is a lot of running around with flashlights, Mulder finds the truth, Mulder loses the evidence, ____ sometimes comes back, and sometimes it is just STILL ALL MADE OF LIES. And yet, he keeps on going because The Truth Is Out There.

Character PERSONALITY:

"Our friend from the CIA is about as unbelievable as his story. As is everything about this case. I mean, whatever happened to 'trust no one', Mulder?"
"Oh, I changed it to 'trust everyone'. I didn't tell you?"

That exchange sums Mulder up in a nutshell - or, more aptly, one of the sunflower hulls he's fond of constantly cracking while he does paperwork. He constantly walks a fine line between the madness of the cases he pursues, and the composure required to professionally handle whatever he might uncover. Samantha's disappearance combined with his years of psychological research and FBI training have put him through an emotional crucible that's made him nearly unflappable. While he is still quite capable of shock and wonder in equal capacity, most of the time, he can keep his initial and external reactions to things watered down. Even when Mulder is excited about the nature of a case or mission, he behaves like a pot constantly on the edge of boiling - the bubbles are there, but they aren't rolling, just quietly, steadily active, with a sense of greater energy waiting to build. This, combined with his habit of speaking mostly in monotone to conceal his reactions, can give people the initial impression that Mulder is somewhat unfeeling, or even jaded and cynical. Such assumptions could not be farther from the truth.

In some situations, Mulder can care too much, and when this happens, his blinders go on. He becomes hyper-focused on whatever is driving him, to the point of ignoring any danger to his life. These instances are where his greatest downfalls and darkest moments tend to occur - he will overlook a detail that will lead to a loss of information, or be driven by anger or over-determination to do something rash that he regrets once it's all over and done. For the most part, wearing his heart on his sleeve has taught him some very hard lessons, and he can manage to keep a lid on his so-called bleeding heart... but there are still a few things that can set him off. The biggest hot buttons for him are his sister's abduction and the closest person in his life: Agent Scully. Close behind is the manipulation of truth in the name of "protecting the public": when information is blatantly withheld that he feels should be shared for the benefit of others.

All of these triggers have one common thread that clearly proves how much Mulder wants to be a protector, to care for the people around him ... whether he knows them, or not. He's been shown on several occasions to have a soft spot for children involved in cases, in particular: he believes they have a right to grow up with their innocence and wonder, and not have it twisted up with fear in the same way that his was when Samantha was taken. If he is unable to protect the person or thing that he sets out to save, his guilt hits him hard, even if it is only temporary. Again, though, this is something that he will keep close and quiet, only mentioning it briefly to the very small number of people he trusts, before letting it go. He knows that failure and casualties are not only a possibility, but occasionally a necessity to get to the heart of a matter. As he tells Scully on one occasion: "Those are the risks we take. You either accept them, or you don't. We all draw our own lines." Mulder knows his own lines, and can recognize when to step away ... or at least to isolate himself so that he doesn't hurt anyone else. He also knows how to respect others' own lines, and will not force anyone on a mission to do something they're uncomfortable with, to the point of taking on both their duties to keep them from feeling threatened.

Hand-in-hand with his protective nature is Mulder's paranoia: which was bad enough after Samantha was abducted, but got even worse over his years with the FBI. Case after case of coming within inches of - and even actually discovering - the truth of something, only to have it snatched away, have convinced him that Someone does not want him to know the whole story, and whoever it is, they'll stop at nothing to keep him from it. His faith in his mission is almost unshakeable - and while he does have crises of doubt from time to time, they come in waves, and at his current canon point, his faith in his beliefs about conspiracy and the search for truth is stronger than ever. It will take either a lot of time and work or a substantial act on someone's part to earn Mulder's trust, and even then, he is very slow to trust completely. He will hardly ever take anything at face value, even if he may act as though he has for the sake of making it easier for him to investigate further.

To help offset how much he internalizes everything and focuses on protecting the people around him, Mulder is actually a very upbeat guy with an active and almost constantly functioning sense of humor. He loves playing off his reputation with the FBI as "Spooky Mulder" to troll fellow agents: if they give him a hard time, he will start to spin them bullshit stories about aliens or other phenomena with a straight face and see how long it takes for them to get disturbed. He's also fond of giving skeptics a taste of their own medicine and mocking them, from time to time, as well as the occasional bout of self-mockery. In the face of grisly, disturbing, or serious situations, he often uses puns or wit to break up the atmosphere and keep things at relative ease ... though some of those puns are pretty horrible, and can just serve to make things worse.

In terms of being off-duty with the general public, Mulder is a pretty affable guy, friendly and approachable, but guarded about his personal life. He comes across as that goofy Nice Guy next door who never quite completely grew up... the sort of person you'd enjoy hanging around with, but only for an hour or two before he opens up about his hobbies and starts getting sort of weird and creepy. So, really, once he stops thinking everyone in the general population is out to get him and that it's all a gigantic conspiracy set up by the Smoking Man, he'll take to Exsilium like a fish in water.

» EXSILIUM INFORMATION

Chosen WEAPON:
His insight. Fox's ability to cold-read an individual's personality and nature based upon their patterns of behavior is already strong. Over time, the more he interacts with his fellow Transports and other people in Exsilium, this will grow to something bordering on and eventually becoming precognition: he will be able to not only predict what someone will do from looking at them, but be able to tell from the smallest of cues when they are lying to him.

Character INVENTORY:
- A black flannel Navajo fetish bag, full of sunflower seeds
- Flashlight
- Watch w/ compass
- 9mm handgun (his father's, not standard FBI issue)
- Wallet w/ Virginia driver's license
- ID & Badge (#JTTO4710111)
- Dress shirt, jeans, trenchcoat, glasses

» PREVIOUS GAME INFORMATION ( IF APPLICABLE )
N/A

» SAMPLES
First PERSON: Here is a list of all his test drive threads from the meme:
Test Drive Threads:
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | X.


Please let me know if you need more!

Third PERSON:
Before they locked him up, they'd called him "belligerent and uncooperative". As he slumped down on the thin cot in the corner, Mulder tested his split lip with his thumb, gingerly, and gave the compliment some thought. Of course he hadn't bought a word of it, beyond what was disturbingly clear: after decades of hunting for proof of conspiracy, he himself had finally been abducted. He was hardly surprised: as far as he'd figured, it was only a matter of time, honestly. The only problem was that it raised more questions than it answered. Why cover up the obvious with a story about the future that even he found hard to believe? Clearly, the military had appropriated technology from a recovered craft, and was trying to further divert him from what he'd found in New Mexico, or even up in Alaska. The rooms and corridors looked pretty "standard military base", and he'd seen no hint so far of the colonists' laboratories or the smallpox project - scant as his knowledge of the latter was.

He flopped back on the cot and stared at the ceiling, wishing Scully was there. Her input on the whole situation would be invaluable: not just because she could compare it all to her own abduction, but because she always had an uncanny ability to be the yin to his yang. She'd be calm, more observant, and less likely to want to beat on the bars of the holding cell, which he was tempted to do while yelling at the top of his lungs until he got some answers. Mulder wasn't sure he could do calm, not when there were so many crucial things that had been interrupted ... but observant? That he could manage.

He spent the next half hour making a slow, thorough mental inventory and map of his cell, first just by looking, then checking every possible place that surveillance might be hidden. When he found it, then realized that it couldn't be disabled, he vaguely satisfied his frustration by making faces and rude gestures before returning to his cot to think. He'd have a full situational overview once he could observe the guards, he decided. Then, he might be able to come up with a plan. There was, after all, always something he could work with ...

» ADDITIONAL NOTES
- He's totally unphased by little things like massive airplane turbulence.
- Insomniac; either watches TV to fall asleep or goes for runs
- Has a fear of fire due to having to keep watch over the ruins of a friend's house after it burned down when he was young. This has gotten a little bit better since a case where he was forced to confront it, but he's still not 100% okay with fire, by any means.