Wednesday 8 February 2012

Initial Character Idea



Name: Captain. Laslo Bravestar AKA  Dilbert Duggan
Age: 35
Occupation: Monster Hunter/Exterminator

Influences: Buzz Lightyear, Harry Crumb, Jonny Bravo, Commander Riker, Zap Brannigan. Moby Dick.

“An egotistical bounty hunter space-ship Captain that travels the galaxy hunting monsters.”

If his name sounds ridiculous and fake it’s because he made it up. His real name is Dilbert Duggan.

He is captain of a small ship, the Goliath, which travels the galaxy offering monster hunting and extermination services. He takes on bounties to capture infamous monsters for a big space zoo at the Washington centre on Earths moon and deals with local monster threats on planets throughout the galaxy in order to fund his real goal-Finding and hunting the legendary monster that took his previous crew. He and his crew are often in competition for these bounties with other monster hunting crews.

He comes the slums of a futuristic Earth where as a child he spent his days watching TV shows about fictional space heroes. He always dreamed of escaping to the stars and living a life of exploration, excitement and adventure.  

Earth of the future is much the same as it is now but more extreme. The rich are way richer and the poor are way poorer. Corporations are giant and in competition with each other. Technology advances changed the way advertising happened. It’s all a lot less ethical/moral. It’s very much an anything to get ahead environment.

His parents were both poor and barely had enough credit to get by. His mother died in labour, which was quite common for the poor as they had hardly any access to medical care. He was brought up by his father. His father died of natural causes when Dilbert was 11 years old. At a loss and needing to survive he wandered around and by chance found himself at the space trade docks in the city. He climbed onto one of the cargo ships to have a look inside and accidentally got taken with them. On finding him the crew decided they could put him to work cleaning the ship and doing odd jobs.

The crew of the ship treated him quite badly. Basically like a second class person. He got all the rubbish jobs and constantly mocked. This was sort of all a game to Dilbert though, he was living his dream and he acted and conducted himself like an officer even in the face of the ridicule and mocking of his crew mates.

Well, one fateful day, 22 years later, he was going about his daily duties of donning a space suit and scrubbing all the waste shoots on the ship, when suddenly there was a loud crunching noise. The rending of metal. He opened an airduct hatch in time to see the rest of the ship in the jaws of a gigantic space monster. The stuff of legends. There had always been rumours of a beast of this size but no one had ever seen it first hand and lived to tell the tale.

He was left as the sole survivor floating in a space suit for days hoping that his distress signal would be picked up before his oxygen reserves ran out.

Luckily again, his ship was on an established trade route. He was rescued by a passing trade ship. No one believes his story and most are skeptical that this creature exists. Especially when he re-tells it in all its exaggerated glory.

He decides to prove it to everyone and makes it his goal to catch and kill the monster and stop that from happening to anyone ever again.  Mostly because he wants to be famous.

He used his savings from his 22 years as an airduct scrubber on the cargo ship to buy his own small ship. The Goliath. Despite it’s intimidating title. It’s a tiny ship. All he could afford.

He’s quite delusional. He thinks he is professional and experienced where really he is incompetent and clumsy. A bit of an imbecile. Most of his missions are solved by his crew or dumb luck rather than him although he takes all the credit. He is seemingly oblivious to his own ineptitude.

He always gets excited about installing and testing out new monster hunting gadgets of which none work the way they are supposed to.

When he doesn’t know what to do, he’ll fake it and put on a show of confidence rather than appear to not know.

His crew consists of a large brutish alien woman, a small sentient repair robot, ship artificial intelligence and an enthusiastic child prodigy girl pilot, all of whom are much more adept at their jobs than the captain.

Their ship is tiny and cramped and not really very well suited for monster hunting. The other hunters all have bigger fancier ships and often mock him about the size of his ship.

He actually believes that his put on confidence and bravado is real. He often gets in over his head but talks through it and confuses people with his gibberish. He thinks he is a hit with the ladies but really he comes across as cheesy and not genuine. He just believes they are playing hard to get though.



Hopes and Fears

He wants to be famous one day for catching the biggest existing monster – No one has ever caught it and very few have witnessed it and live to tell about it.  He often retells the story of how he was the sole survivor of the attack exaggerating it to a ridiculous degree to make himself look good.

His biggest fear is being thought of as a joke and he copes with this with his display of bravado and willful ignorance of him actually being thought of as a joke by most people.

He wants to be taken seriously but believes the only way for that to happen is to put on this act he maintains about being an important, respected ship captain and monster hunter.

Relationships with others

The kid on his crew looks up to him and is really knowledgeable about the ship, monsters and everything in general. It irks him a lot to never be right and he ends up making things up and taking credit for the kids ideas a lot.

He always tries to teach the kid why the kids ideas and plans won’t work or are wrong even though they are right because he wants to be the one that knows everything.

He always refers back to earlier adventures when he’s talking to anyone who’ll listen and grossly exaggerates the scale, danger and importance of his involvement in the events.

He has to ask the AI to do a lot of the things on the ship because he doesn’t have a clue to the point where it’s just his go to thing to get the AI to do it.

He doesn’t have any family ties any more. Both his parents are dead. He considers his crew his friends even though they can barely stand him.

He doesn’t have much of an education and is generally a bit of a moron. It’s miraculous that he is captain of his own ship.

He takes his business of monster hunting very seriously, often quoting regulations and spouting technical data that is in most cases irrelevant and ridiculous.

Personality

He’s not a bad person. He sees himself as doing good but doesn’t shy away from capitalising on events if it will suit him even if it’s morally dubious or illegal to an extent.

A bit selfish, delusional. Condescending. Oblivious. Sees himself as one of the good guys. Very fake. Lots of bravado and bluster. Runs his mouth off about how much of a big shot he is and tells lots of exaggerated stories. Exaggerated, fake extrovert.

Deep down, he knows he is putting forward a lie about who he really is but I think this is repressed by his subconscious. He is aware deep down that he’s not very successful in most pursuits and feels generally quite sad about his failure to achieve his goal of being someone important and of catching the monster that wiped out his former crew.

Over the top.

He’s quite obsessive about catching the monster. All other bounties are a means to an end.

Physical Description


Story Notes

View is of the small spaceship bridge, with a large viewscreen/window in the background. There will be a captains chair and some small work stations.

He is doing something at the start like drinking coffee or spinning in his chair slumped when the lights go out on his ship. A panel at the side sparks a bit to coincide with the lights going out.

He goes to fix the panel but after some fiddling about it sparks again and a panel flies off the wall near his head. Another one flies up with a jet of flame at his feet. He moves to the side to avoid it but still has his hand in the panel.

He’s awkwardly posed now and tries to fix the circuit from this angle. He ends up getting his hand jammed in. He pulls on it a bit but has no leverage from his awkward angle then thumps the wall above it with his free hand.

This action causes a bit of ceiling panel to come loose and sets the artificial gravity off so he starts to float off the floor.

At this point an alarm sounds signaling a collision proximity.

He sees the monster on the screen and starts to panic then frantically tries to free his trapped arm. The force of him freeing his arm sends him across the room into a wall panel at the other side which restores the gravity as he hits it. He hits the floor with a thud but there’s no time to waste. He darts to the nearest work station.

He’s about to fire some weapons when the ceiling panel that came loose before collapses completely into his work station rendering it useless.

He does the Darth Vader “Nooooooooooooo”  scream as the monster eats the ship in one bite.

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