Has the Devil Trapped You?

PLAYER
NAME/NICKNAME: Jayde
AGE: 24
PERSONAL LJ: mordoriannazgul
TIMEZONE: CST
EMAIL ADDRESS: Jaydepuff@aol.com
IM SCREENNAME AND SERVICE: Jaydepuff on AIM

CHARACTER
NAME: Torque; he has no last name, as far as the player knows. His ex-wife Carmen calls him T.
AGE: His birthdate is listed at March 12, 1974. Assuming the game is set in the year it was released (which is what I’m doing, to make this easier), Torque would be 30.
FANDOM/MEDIUM: The Suffering/Video Game
CANON PULL-POINT: After the first game but before he reaches Baltimore in the second; this is also assuming he gets the ‘Good’ ending in the first game
ABILITIES: The Creature: The most obvious and iconic abilities that Torque possesses is that he can turn into a form known simply as “The Creature”. It is essentially a manifestation of his rage and madness – so much in fact that no other person in the game sees him turn into a beast (according to the good ending). All the other characters see is Torque more or less going nuts and ripping the malefactors (the ‘demons’ of Carnate) into pieces with his bare hands. In Dr. Killjoy’s diagnosis he suggests the Creature’s strength is due to extremely high levels of adrenaline. I have been debating what approach to take with the Creature’s visibility to other characters, and have tentatively decided that only psychic/supernatural characters will see Torque actually transform if it happens.

In order to keep the Creature from becoming a major hazard, it’s being assumed that Killjoy’s treatment of Torque at the end of the game stunted his rage – and subsequently it. Torque will only be able to turn into the Creature once every ‘game period’ (i.e. the four months between starting off on the trail and when the entire party dies to ‘reset’ at the start again). As well, if he stays in the form of the Creature for too long (4 or so minutes, probably about five to six reply comments) it kills Torque. If its actual strength needs to be diminished, please let me know!

Temperament: Torque is an odd duck. While he’s subject to the intense, violent rages that bring on the Creature, he’s also cool in the face of combat. Even in the face of Carnate’s demons he hardly bats an eyelash. The supernatural is almost old-hat to him. Little girls bursting into flames and attacking him at speed? Ghosts of deranged psychiatrists on 9mm film trying to cure his psychosis? Must be Tuesday.

Combat: Torque lived on the streets and in prisons for the vast majority of his life, and he’s accustomed to fighting – whether it’s to get what he wants, to protect his family, or in self-defense. He’s skilled with a variety of weapons, from axes and knives to pistols, shotguns, and flamethrowers. He’s also surprisingly strong and tough – in the second game he frequently bashes pieces off of Malefactors with lead pipes and baseball bats, while in both he seems to easily shrug off the lethal injections of Mainliners and the shotgun blasts of Marksmen, not to mention the deadly gas of antagonist Hermes Haight in the first game that kills many other characters in the game.

Non-combat: Torque has some amount of artistic skill; in one of the extras in the second game (Carmen’s Diary) is a picture that he drew of his cell in Eastern State Penitentiary and it’s fairly good. Also, he’s apparently allergic to shoes or something. He doesn’t wear a single pair of them throughout both games and it can be assumed that he’s going to continue not bothering to wear them.
CHARACTER BACKGROUND: In the interest of thoroughness, I’ve included the game’s Wikipedia entry as well as Torque’s entry for The Suffering Wiki, as well as several YouTube Videos for the curious.
Torque’s Suffering Wikia Entry
The Wikipedia
A Walkthrough of The Suffering (Good ending)
A Walkthrough of The Suffering: Ties That Bind (Good ending)
Suffering Extras: Clem’s Notebook - a complete listing of all known Malefactors and Carnate spirits, with additions relevant to Torque personally at the end
Suffering Extras: Consuela’s Journal - a complete listing of places and the history of Carnate
Suffering 2 Extras: Carmen’s Diary - information related specifically to Torque, pre-game
CHARACTER PERSONALITY: Torque is a complicated man, though not through any fault of his own. Deep down, he’s a generally a good guy, and bless his heart he tries to do the right thing. He did his best to help those that he met in the attempt to escape Abbott, leading them to safe places or in two cases giving other people the opportunity to escape at his own expense. And, as per the ending being used, he really did love his family – his ex-wife Carmen and their two sons, Cory and Malcolm – and tried to do right by them… even after Carmen divorced him when he went to prison.

There’s just one major issue in his way – that he knows about, anyway: he has a terrible temper. His fury has, in the past, been responsible for his frequent blackouts. One specific instance of this appears in the second game, Ties That Bind; a drug dealer threatens and insults Torque’s family, which leads to a blackout that ends in the dealer’s utter mauling and Torque – along with his best friend, Miles – being sent to Eastern State Penitentiary. In the first game, the majority of characters familiar with Torque seem to assume something similar happened when his family was killed. As well, one of the other death row inmates mentions in the beginning that he had taken out a large number of the Aryan Brotherhood at Eastern State Penitentiary. Carmen’s diary reveals that these incidents were certainly not unusual, as she mentions that he beat someone to a bloody pulp at a gym.

If that was his only problem, it might not be too bad. Unfortunately Torque is a lot more damaged than he – or even Carmen – had realized. Killjoy delivers his diagnosis to Torque towards the end of the first game, stating in plain terms that Torque has hallucinations and delusions, symptoms typical of schizophrenia. The hallucinations tend to be visual, auditory, or a combination of both (though how much of what he hallucinates on Carnate Island is debatable, as he often sees ghosts that other characters – particularly Clem – have seen, or visions of the past that led to Carnate being the hell shown in the game), while the delusion is linked to his anger management problem and explained in more detail in the abilities section. As well, Carmen makes mention in her journal (an extra archive in the second game) that Torque has nightmares about his childhood at Garvey’s Children’s Home; whatever happened there could have led to his other prominent mental disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, though Dr. Killjoy calls it Multiple Personality Disorder. He has two personalities that surface during the two games. The first is the Creature, the personification of his rage and the apparent protector personality, as well as the perpetrator of some of his blackouts.

The second personality is known as Blackmore, who first made himself obvious in Torque’s childhood at the Garvey’s Home for Children. Blackmore is the Tyler Durden to Torque’s Narrator, if Tyler was a drug kingpin and completely evil. He is charismatic and ruthless and practically runs the whole of the Baltimore underworld… just from the shadows. It wouldn’t do to have your underlings know that you’re only one-third of a person, after all. For all intents and purposes, however, he will not be appearing here in any form beyond ‘that guy that destroyed Torque’s life’. The reason for this is – aside from making Torque extremely difficult to play from an OOC standpoint – Torque closely associates Blackmore with Baltimore. This could be construed as a canon reason that Blackmore didn’t appear in Carnate Prison; unlike with Eastern State Penitentiary, Torque couldn’t subconsciously find a reason for Blackmore to be present, and therefore he can’t be there. The Creature, on the other hand, is subject to showing up if Torque ever becomes too enraged for his own good. Though, thanks to Killjoy and his unusual methods of curing mental issues, this is likely to be an extremely infrequent occurrence.
WORLD: Torque hails from Baltimore, Maryland, in the year 2004. Aside from being part of Baltimore’s criminal underworld and the prison system, the world was pretty tame for him. He dealt with criminals and ex-convicts of every stripe – and more than a little with the police and correction officers – and life was pretty good. The most disturbing thing he had to handle was Carmen’s relationship with him running extremely hot and cold.

Then he went to Carnate, and things went to hell. Literally. The island has a terrible, sordid history, full of witch-burning, deadly court marshals, sadistic experiments to heal damaged minds, and countless murders. After Torque’s arrival, Carnate let all of its demons free. He’s dealt with insane-looking and demonic malefactors, fiendish ghosts, and a few of his own personal demons made (apparently) manifest. Horrible monsters – whether their backs are covered in guns, their limbs are really knives, or they’re wholly human – don’t faze him in the least. He’s not even bothered by a ghostly psychiatrist trying to cure his madness with a quasi-scientific/quasi-mystical energy lightning device. Now whether talking cats and giant robots and other things you’d expect in cartoons will get a reaction is another story entirely… After all, his life is a horror, not science fiction, and there’s only so much he can handle before things get ridiculous.
OCCUPATION: Given his lack of stated occupation in the games (besides ‘convict’ and a couple potential allusions to him working at a gym) and his apparent affinity for firearms, Gunsmith is the best choice for him.

SAMPLES
THIRD PERSON: He was supposed to serve out his sentence quietly, when he got to Abbott. That much he knew. He couldn’t remember what had happened back home, exactly, but he was certain that he’d deserve whatever he got. Not like he had anything left, with Carmen and his sons… gone, for lack of a better word. Torque didn’t want to think ‘murdered’ or ‘bludgeoned’ or ‘drowned’ or ‘dropped out a window’. He didn’t particularly want to think really, but out here, what else could he do? There was no one else out here but him and the dead.

Which would be easier if the dead weren’t talking to him.

The doctor looked inside my head and took the bad out…Sometimes I think you only brought me suffering…Dr. Killjoy made the voices in my head go away. Now all I hear is his voice. Well that would be useful, if it didn’t sound insane.

Torque could hear the storm brewing before it ever hit, the constant deep rumble of thunder present over the soft hiss and crunch of his bare feet on dead grass. The rain finally started falling as he approached a large, walled-offed area with a Victorian building prominent. This must be where the one on film wanted him to go. What did the voices keep calling him?

Dr. Killjoy made it all so… easy.

Killjoy. Well that didn’t sound evil or dangerous or anything. Still, Torque didn’t know where else to go. So he might as well head onto the grounds. He unstrapped the Tommy Gun from his back and grabbed his last stick of dynamite, just in case. The last thing he wanted was to get into it with more of those buried motherfuckers, but he could take care of them just fine.

FIRST PERSON: [There’s a great deal of banging and thumping noises coming over the connection for quite a while, before someone starts mumbling, tone frustrated.] How the fuck does this thing work…

[Eventually the speaker seems to figure it out… sort of anyway. There’s a couple more thumps before he starts talking again.] This isn’t Baltimore. Is it? How do I get there?

[He’s leaving out the part where he woke up in a barn with an ox sniffing at him. That’s just… a bit too odd, even for him.]

NOTES: In the game, Torque apparently has infinitely large pockets, as everything from scraps of paper to a flamethrower get stuffed down his pants. In the interest of realism, he will no longer being employing “Hammerspace”. As far as weapons, he’s bringing with him a fire axe, a Ruger Security Six pistol (with 99 rounds), and a Tommy gun (with 204 rounds in classic barrel cartridges). The reason for the relatively high ammo count is that he runs through bullets extremely quickly; even the pistol ammo runs out swiftly when he’s faced with opposition. If you would prefer him to have less ammo or to have the characters to not start off with firearms, I am more than willing to tone it down or limit him to the fire axe.

He has a couple flash/bang grenades on his belt, a flashlight attached to his shirt (with two extra batteries), and three bottles of Xombium – a medication described in the game’s instruction booklet as a mood stabilizer, though in-game it’s used to restore health. Also coming with him is a photo of his family, and Killjoy’s diagnosis of him.

And if blood counts as inventory, it’s all over his clothes and him.