The Pines

PLAYER

NAME: DJ
CONTACT: biomagnet / biomagnet#1925 @ discord
OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE PINES: N/A

CHARACTER

NAME: Cain ("Jacob Kane") {Romulus}
CANON: Original Universe
CANON-POINT: A few weeks after returning from Texas.

DOSSIER

HISTORY: Born sometime in 8th century BC, Romulus and his twin Remus were originally from a settlement found in Eastern Europe. Since birth, both twins could see how much time someone had until they died; it wasn't until the raid on their homeland that they understood what it meant. Remus told Romulus that he had more time than could possibly be counted, many times over even newborn babes, and Remus assumed that his time was similar. Romulus was too scared to tell him that Remus' clock would only last to their twenty-fourth year. At a very young age, their homeland was ravaged by war and the twins were taken by the victors as part of the spoils. They were sold early on to Greek nobles for their exotic and rare nature as identical twins, where they were treated as property rather than people for the next three years. When they were near to nine years old, they were presented to an Etruscan family as part of a dowry for the family's daughter. As slaves without citizenship, they had no hope of purchasing their freedom. They were treated properly as slaves in their new home, commodities rather than tools, but resented their position in the world and did not trust the new outlook on their position.

As the two grew, it did not escape the notice of their masters how impossible they were to separate from each other. That was strike one. Strike two was when they entered their late teens and inadvertently became some very blatant objects of lust to their master's daughters. They refused advances as often as possible. Desperation to be free from the degradation led them to plan something crazy: escape. It would take years to build their idea enough that both would be satisfied it would work, eventually leading to the idea of founding their own village where they could stay and be safe as citizens and leaders. No one could touch them there.

Remus' time continued to tick away. On the night of their escape, they took as much of their master's money as they could squirrel away and ran. With pure determination, they managed to lead their master along for near the entire night before they were caught by a pack of dogs. Remus volunteered to distract them and had Romulus go ahead with their loot to ensure it would not be taken. Distraction turned into sacrifice as the dogs rent Remus apart while Romulus watched from afar. Pure fear kept him from running in and suffering the same fate. He continued to run south, managing to shake the dogs and their captors after running nonstop for two days before he collapsed. He was taken in by a shepherd couple who thankfully did not know he was a slave on the run. With their aid and his stolen treasure, Romulus was able to put into action the plan he and Remus had worked so hard to achieve: Romulus founded Rome.

Despite the shock and trauma of losing his best friend and only family, Romulus buried himself in the work of maintaining an entire city (and later an empire). It became natural for Romulus to emulate his brother's active and protective personality, at first to cheer himself up and eventually becoming the King's natural bearing. Romulus was incredibly progressive for the time, allowing both free men and slaves to become citizens while also forming one of the first steps to organized democracy. After nearly forty years of rule, it was more than apparent that nothing was changing. Romulus had not aged at all and any injury he sustained was gone within seconds. His patricians were increasingly cagey and suspicious of his unaging nature and planned to have him removed in whatever way necessary. Romulus beat them to it, staging his own death for their benefit and absconding with as much of his personal wealth as he could manage.

He started over. North of Italy, he found a small village where the residents were destined for long lives and settled. He fell in love, had children. He still did not age. He left once again.

He started over. Over and over and over. Romulus had no place to call home, no place to settle himself down where he was not eventually met with suspicion, greed and hostile accusations of black dealings with creatures from hell. There was nothing he could do to explain it and no way to rid himself of the curse. For it was most definitely a curse to live forever where he failed to save his brother from his fate. Until about 300BC, anyway. Then he gained some new perspective on the matter.

Romulus witnessed a man cheat death. His timer had hit zero and still he stood among the living. It was obvious the man was on the run, equal parts terrified and elated, yet soon after a specter appeared with weapon in hand to right the wrong. A specter with Romulus' own face: Remus. The deed was done too quickly for a shocked Romulus to react and Remus was gone. Despite having years left in his current life before anyone would notice his lack of age, Romulus left once again. He suddenly had a point to his existence, some reason to push forward: he had to seek out more people who had cheated their deaths and see if the incident would repeat. He had to know why Remus had appeared. It did not take long for Romulus to realize he could induce it himself by helping someone change the course of their fate when their clock was about to run out.

It happened again. Romulus went to try and speak to his brother, but was stopped by an unnatural being in a black robe. It warned him away, saying that Abel had no memory of his living days, that Abel would surely blame his brother for leaving him to his death if he were reminded of their circumstances, that Abel was nothing more than a spirit with consciousness. That Abel was lost to Romulus forever. Guilt and shame crushed Romulus' heart, reminding him of all the doubts and self-recrimination that rightfully belonged to him. He did not deserve to reunite with Remus if his brother was in some other, better existence without his cheating, coward of a little brother trying to drag him back into the mud. The Reaper left Romulus with what it probably thought would be encouraging words, that Romulus should continue to live his life as he had been and let Abel sort himself out. It was a death sentence to the man who could never know death.

Determination led Romulus to keep tabs on Abel from afar. Even if he could never be together with his brother again, he would be damned if he did not at least make sure of his personal safety. It crushed him to see his brother as a blank slate, and it made him ill to consider mixing that with his own issues. In honor of who his brother had become, however, Romulus moved away from the name he had held onto and began going by Cain to finish the religious reference the Reapers had started. He had, after all, been the one to lead his brother to death and his current situation as an Enforcer. Life continued on for Cain where he could eke it out, learning as many languages and skills as necessary to fit in whatever community he happened to settle upon. More and more incidents of people cheating death occurred and Cain spotted more and more Enforcers there to fix it. As the idea of cheating death became more widespread, hushed whispers of a man who had yet to be taken by his Reaper, people became terrified of death. They began to do all sorts of crazy things to try and outlast their time. One time, this resulted in reanimated corpses and Cain put a quick end to those shenanigans once he caught wind.

While his life was far from boring and Cain had long since put his angsty days behind him, instead choosing to live life in the moment and take in everything only he had a chance to experience all at once, his days were more or less pretty normal. Sometimes he lived a lifetime on his own, while others he would find someone to love, get married, have children and eventually move on without them. Most recently, Benjamin Jacobs was married to Lisa Davinch in 1973 and had two children with her. As all of Cain's children were capable of seeing death timers as he was, they grew up resentful and scared of their father's immortality. For the sake of the kids, Benjamin and Lisa were legally divorced; emotionally, they remained together and still managed to fit some dates in when they could.

In 2012, Cain was abducted by an unknown organization who spent the next month poking and prodding at him until his use was apparently run dry. Unknown to him, the organization had planted a subliminal obedience command phrase in his head should they need to bring him back in or otherwise make Cain useful toward their ends: Hellhound, heel. They dropped him off in Nowhere, Alabama and let him work his way back home from there. Cain was obviously not going to stand for that and began investigating. Over the next two years, he dubbed the organization the Death Erasers: they had managed to somehow remove death clocks from small subject groups around the country and were working on refining the process. Cain had no further leads on where to locate them, but that would never stop him looking. They had made it personal.

Two years later, in early 2014, he was still no closer to any actual answers. The year previous, Cain had moved to Arizona to stay closer to Abel, who had settled down in Phoenix with an adopted daughter, Holly, and taken on the last name Fletcher due to internal Enforcer politics. Often Cain would find traces of the Death Erasers' operations and by the time he could investigate more thoroughly, they had moved on. In one such case, Cain followed a lead into a base that had only recently been abandoned and ran into something he couldn't have possibly anticipated: his brother, Abel. Having no recollection of his brother, Abel presumed Cain to be some sort of Death Eraser experiment and shot him on sight. Cain stood back up and explained in some very bare bones facts that they were brothers. He didn't have much choice after Abel had been so poorly confronted with Cain's existence. Thankfully, Abel retained most of his brotherly instinct despite his amnesia and came to reluctantly accept the fact when he couldn't deny the possibility. Cain's clock tied with his story made sense. With their awkward reunion out of the way, Cain decided to make the most of things and moved in to join forces with Abel in their investigation of the "Clockless". Another pair of twins, Angela and Robert Yates, were also living with Abel under his protection as they had been tricked into losing their clocks by the Death Erasers. It made them possible suspects to watch and victims to protect at the same time.

Only a few months after the brothers were learning to live with each other again did the Death Erasers make another move. They rigged Cain's car and took him to a nearby facility. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, Cain got a message out to Abel and was rescued only a scant few hours later. After that particular fiasco, Cain began to experience blackouts where he would lose hours at a time thanks to the activation of the command phrase in his mind, only really becoming aware once he returned home from who-knew-where. As they became more often, he actually began to notice them and brought the matter to Abel, who started investigating the situation on his own. Holly's birthday came and interrupted their worries, with everyone taking a momentary break to celebrate her 14th birthday. However, the Death Erasers took advantage of their distraction and abducted both Cain and Abel right from the Fletcher family home using unknown technology to separate Abel from his spiritual powers and body. It was a week of bloody experiments before the brothers had an opportunity to escape, which they did, and the two of them used their ingenuity and smarts to roadtrip from Texas back to Arizona to inform the Enforcers what had happened. During which time, Abel learned of Cain's unwilling involvement as the "Test Zero" for the Death Erasers' current scheme of removing clocks and attempting to grant immortality, which kind of set a rift between them because Cain avoided thinking and speaking about the incident from two years ago in general due to an embedded order.

Some weeks after returning home from Texas, the blackouts started back up again.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S STRENGTHS? Cain is an incredibly strong-willed person. He has a strong mind, quick wit and plenty of energy. Having lived for far too long, he is very welcoming of any walks of life that don't go against the natural order (in his case, people running from fate, etc.). He is very adaptable, quick to catch on to new trends and keeps up to date on modern conveniences; fitting in has never been a problem for him.

He's a very loving and open person. Even to people he doesn't care much for or doesn't know a whole lot about, he doesn't quite see the point of keeping a lot under wraps when life is too short for that, anyway. He is an honest and friendly sort, one who can appreciate how the world keeps changing and growing and getting worse and better all at the same time. Can't have one without the other, you know. Cain's got a knack for seeing what people need and how to help them that comes from his natural leadership abilities — while he's pretty loathe to step up and take the spotlight for the time being (he's on vacation this century, okay?), he can still use those skills in order to help the individuals around him should he find a reason to.

From all of that springs a well of eternal loyalty. Only a betrayal of that would make him give it up, and then be it upon their own heads.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S WEAKNESSES? For the most part, Cain lacks motivation. He has no overarching point in his life other than to survive (because destiny says so, not because he especially wants to), and this can come off in an extremely lackadaisical attitude. Things that are important to others can become important to him, but ambitious is not a word generally used for Cain at this point in his life.

He can be incredibly callous about people he has no attachment to. They're just a drop in the ocean where he's concerned and getting emotionally invested in everyone would have burned him out centuries ago. That said, he can go all the way to the other extreme and lose all sense of personal safety if people he cares about end up in trouble. It's a knife's edge he balances on, wanting to be cool and collected at all times but allowing himself to be pulled in so far that many times he doesn't pause to think.

That is, of course, allowing that Cain knows he's physically disposable as he always comes back to life eventually. If he were in any actual danger, he would place himself above those things and preserve himself first and foremost, telling of his nature as a survivor who eased into a protector when he learned it could be done at no personal cost. The only one even higher on his list is his brother, Abel, who means the absolute world to him. Anyone else had better hope their issues don't supersede Cain's self-preservation. This is at odds with his lack of forward momentum in life, but it's hard to stop living for real once you've made a successful three thousand year go at so far.

WHAT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR CHARACTER'S PAST HAVE IMPACTED THEM THE MOST?: Remus's death, by far, has shaped everything Cain has grown into being. Without his brother any longer, Romulus grew into someone very independent and strong.

The countless lives of his partners and children have also impacted him. He's learned to love, lose, love again and lose again, ad nauseam. It's so beaten into him that rather than being able to close himself off from people he cares for, he's permanently on and can't help but let those connections in.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CHARACTER?: Mostly the people around him. He's unambitious in recent times, having seen the top of the world and come away with it scorned. Now it's just the smaller things, the friends and family and a desire to see what tomorrow brings over the horizon. If there's one overarching thing that leads him to put one foot in front of the other, it's the need to be there for whenever Abel will need him even if that seems impossible at this point in time.

WHAT IMPRESSION DO OTHERS TEND TO HAVE OF YOUR CHARACTER?: A young adult who has too much time on his hands, carefree and always willing to lend a hand. Not very selfish, open to a fault, but doesn't actually talk about himself much. Bright and probably wasting all his potential.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES THAT IMPRESSION DIFFER FROM WHO YOUR CHARACTER REALLY IS?: Basically everything, although Cain does still genuinely have a feeling of wonder for the world. He's cynical, but not jaded. His actual maturity comes out in often unseen ways, although most wouldn't know of it without reason to be around when he drops the shell and sometimes acts... well, not his age but older. Let's go with that.

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER HANDLE CRISIS OR ADVERSITY?: Rather calmly, all told. He takes in the facts, learns who's involved, assesses the situation he's in, and moves on from there. His panic instinct has been worn down to almost nothing by now and he retains control of himself with an iron grip.

Keep in mind that this doesn't count things that involve dogs. Dogs ate his brother and almost ate him. Fuck that rationality shit. He'd much rather remove himself as swiftly as possible.

WHICH 5 THINGS WILL YOUR CHARACTER REMEMBER UPON ARRIVAL, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?: Not his name, tbh. Any of the ones he's used. If they end up suggested to him, they'll ring without any familiarity.

1. The existence of his brother, and the death of said brother by the hands of their master's dogs in gory detail. Allows him to vaguely understand where he comes from and what he's lost, giving himself some kind of focal point even if it's a really downer one.

2. That he is a father, numerous times over. He still has family even after knowing his brother is very dead, and this allows him to understand why he can still open his heart and not be an intensely cynical bastard at all times.

3. His immortality; that he is very old, and very hard to kill. Context for the emotional maturity and tangled reasoning for more difficult matters as well as making it difficult right off the bat to deal with the "don't talk about your past" thing when there's so much to uncover.

4. His most recent family: Lisa, his wife, and his children Kenneth and Ariel. Still living, Cain visits Lisa often as he can and keeps in contact; he's still desperately in love with her no matter where their lives have taken them. Currently divorced due to tensions between their children and Cain, who resent him for his immortality and the curse of the sight he's given them.

5. The existence of Reapers, supernatural spirits that organize the collection and movement of deceased human souls. They're intrinsically linked to the existence of Cain and his family, making the eternal man constantly followed by literal specters of death. He knows for a fact that the Reapers are not out for him and his own immortality is something considered natural by them, and that any of his descendants are automatically recruited to help the Reapers once they pass.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER?: Since there's no "world" section, it's worth noting that Cain (along with his brother) are basically the linchpins of his reality, thus he can't cease to exist by dying and Abel can't pass on without him. Of course, those abilities will still falter and get incredibly sluggish and near non-existent if he tries to go to the fence.

SKILLS, ABILITIES, & PHYSICAL WEAKNESSES: Having lived for really fucking long, Cain has picked up numerous skills and languages. Although many of them are not the best use, they still sit in the back of his mind and he could probably pick them back up if given the reason. He has about ten languages he actively uses and keeps at a native level (having fluency in over forty) and most of his practiced skills tend to be indicative of a modern mindset instead of things like hunting your own food or rigging a boat. While not explicitly an ability, Cain and Abel are mirror image twins: Cain came out as the mirror, meaning that he is left-handed and one of the very rare cases of having mirrored internal organs to match.

- Immortal and ageless. Cain does not age. He cannot remain harmed. If any damage is done to him, it simply reverses: blood lost will seep back into the wound and it will pull back together as if nothing happened. The same thing happens for lost limbs or organs. Pain still exists as long as the wounds are there, but subsides once they have been healed. He does not experience death, so much as indeterminate unconsciousness when violently incapacitated.
- Deathsight. Cain can see the time left that someone has to live. This manifests as a timer in front of someone's neck — gold indicates a living person, while silver means a spirit of some sort. My assumption is that this timer will only read the time of a character's canon death (whether they live to old age, die in season two or have arrived past their death), and will not be moving while in Waking Pines. This sight also allows him to see supernatural phenomena such as spirits. If accepted, there will be a permissions post allowing people to specify times, otherwise it will just be an unspoken, meaningless backdrop.

INVENTORY:
- Casual clothes
- Smartphone
- Wallet ($25, AZ license for "Jacob Kane" born 1984, some debit and credit cards)
- Keys
- Leatherman
- Switchblade

SAMPLES

PROSE-HEAVY: It probably said a lot about Cain that even in the face of his brother stabbing him near to death while they were on the run from death-defying, tantrum-throwing children, he still couldn't possibly be mad at Abel. It was definitely Abel who had done it, not the young man he had been back in life, but the man he had become under the Reapers' thumb for three thousand years. And who was to blame for that? It was Cain: everything had been Cain's fault, from the very moment Romulus had shied away from telling Remus his time up to the present point of never mentioning his abduction by the Death Erasers. He had let Remus be chipped away little by little because of his own self-feeding loop of fear.

It had been almost a week since they made it back from Texas. Cain was still living in-house with Abel (and Holly and Angie and Rob), and yet he had hardly seen hide or hair of his older brother. Any steps they had taken toward coming together again had been put on hold — they weren't gone, and Cain knew that for a fact or... well, he was sure he wouldn't be allowed under the same roof as Abel's adopted daughter and the Enforcers' current pair of pet hostages. He couldn't appeal to the Enforcers to speak to Abel, either, even if they were his sons, daughters, grandchildren he had seen grow from the shadows, descendents entire generations removed. They knew him even if they didn't know Cain, and yet Cain had fucked up. It was something about himself, his very existence, that now put the balance of life and death on the edge of a knife.

The Death Erasers had turned Cain into their tool and he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone until it was far too late.

Grunting forcefully, Cain swung his legs over the side of his bed and trudged out into the hallway. He wasn't one to go binge drinking and he had more than enough practice to go without sleep for a few days until his body was too tired to pretend anymore, but he could really use something strong right now in the face of no presenting solutions. When he entered the kitchen, the light over the stove was on and he saw Rob sitting at the island with a cup of coffee and an old book of kiddy puzzles.

Cain tilted his head, then added some weight to his steps so that Rob would hear him coming. He'd been walking lightly recently as if some invisibility now would help save him from events already passed. Rob looked up at the footfalls and canted his head, unintentionally bringing sharp attention to the empty space at his neck. Cain couldn't help but stare as he moved to the cupboard and began searching around for something good; any alcohol in the house would have to be the Yates', as Abel didn't eat or drink and Holly was too young for his brother to have considered even keeping up the appearance.

"Couldn't sleep, either?" asked Rob, attention turning back down to the maze asking him to help a bunny slipper find its mate on the other end.

Having found something strong enough that wasn't going to make him leave snobby looks in the Yates' direction come the morning, Cain got out a glass and poured a generous finger before he sat down opposite Rob. "Sleep's overrated. What's keeping you up?"

"Nothing, just don't sleep well every now and then. There it is," he muttered to himself, apparently actually invested in his work.

"Coffee helps with that," Cain said mildly, unable to keep his eyes off what he could see of Rob's neck. That was his fault. This whole thing was his fault and now he had been locked out of trying to fix it. Abel was furious, the Enforcers beyond his reach in their current tizzy of fixing the problem, and Cain could only sit back and watch. "Does it freak you out to know you're an abomination to death?"

Rob paused, put his pencil down, slowly looked up at Cain. "Not as much as you'd think," he said slowly. "It's what they're doing by keeping us here and away from, you know, living that bugs us."

Cain sipped at his drink, hand clenched about the glass precariously. It didn't matter if it shattered, save for the sound that might wake someone, and at this point he'd almost relish bringing someone into the misery with him... unless it was Holly. She was only a few generations removed from him and he didn't have the heart to fuck up another part of his family right now. "Sorry about that," he said into his glass.

"Yours isn't the sorry we want." Rob spoke for Angie, too. That was how those two worked, trusting each other to speak for themselves on the whole but respecting each other to have their individualities, too.

Cain wished he even had that much with Abel right now. His hand came down a little too hard on the countertop, and Rob grimaced at the sound. Cain stared at the book between them, already tracing out the three different solutions to pair bunny slipper with bunny slipper before he looked back up to Rob. "Yeah, it is. They want me to keep you out of the loop because blah blah paranoia, but this one's pretty big: if those Clockless assholes hadn't taken me two years ago, you wouldn't be here. That part is my fault."

Rob suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Is that what you two have been fighting about? Whether you're guilty for being abducted?" he asked. The touchy-feely thing was more Angie's side of it, and Cain could tell it was making Rob uncomfortable to have some feelings thrust upon him, as well. Tough. Rob walked into the Death Erasers' trap and had his clock erased, so he could deal with some fucking responsibility for currently throwing the world into an unhinged, under-the-surface chaos. "Because... that's bullshit."

Wait, what?

Cain looked at Rob for a moment, searching, and saw what he was afraid of. He shook his head, abandoned his drink, and stood. "'Fraid not, kid," he said. "You've still got time, plenty time to learn, but here's the thing: no one else was in control of that but me. Maybe not the kidnapping, but I chose to deal with it on my own when I shouldn't have, even after I saw what they were doing. I'm going to go get some air. Tell Abel you tried to stop me if he gets mad," he added, not really wanting to cause more complications in the house than there already were.

With that said, he grabbed his shoes and jacket by the door and left. At least they'd found his car by now.
DIALOGUE-HEAVY: Nice as our fair little town is, has anyone considered leaning in further and setting up... more? Like a bowling league or a baseball team or a chess club. Maybe I missed them.

My point being, there's a lot to do but I don't see a lot of incentive to do it. Or maybe I'm just Lawful Good all the way through, like my little plans and schedules and all that.

... No, but for real, I'm bored. I can only see Johnny Go Love Me in theaters so many times before I go nuts. Takers on anything more exciting?