Richard the Imp - Character Bio

This is a character I threw together in about 15 minutes during a break in my studies. He's my character at NIMH-muck (once I actually remember my password...). The bio itself is FAR from complete; I haven't done anything beyond the initial steps, and haven't even recorded his history yet. Nonetheless, he does exist, and is an unorthodox character for me. He was inspired by the idea of combining the best of both worlds in Justin and Mr. Ages, and...well, this is the unfinished product. I also threw a little bit of Arthur from Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH in there and toyed around with the personality traits. Still haven't decided if he is a mouse-rat hybrid (not even sure if that's possible, but you never know with NIMH).

Anyways, I digress. Here's Ricky.


NIMH-Muck Character: Richard the Imp

Name: Richard

Alias: Imp, Ricky

Species: Rat

E-State: NIMH-altered

Age: 1 year, 2 months. (Adult)

Weapons: 2 oak rods, half as long as the outstretched arm.

Appearance

Imp is short for a rat, being only half as tall again as the average mouse. He has light-grey fur with seemingly random splotches of dark brown. He has a crooked nose (a product of a brawl with a fellow escapee) and brown eyes. Like most NIMH-altered rats, Imp feels it is necessary to wear clothing, and thus dons a red vest over a white long-sleeved shirt. Around each forearm is a leather bracer with thin metal scales on the outside. He carries a leather quiver on his back in which he stores his wooden rods. His tail is long and flexible, and his forearms are thick from metal-working. A brown belt pins his vest and shirt to his waist, though he wears no pants.

Personality

Richard is, in short, abrasive and short-tempered with a scathing wit; he relies too heavily on first impressions and despite his jump-first attitude has a very defensive personality.

Richard is the type of person who takes first impressions to heart, and since he is always defensive he tends to feel that others give off bad first impressions. The only friends he has are those who have succeeded in forcing Imp to give them a second chance; most are driven off by his abrasive attitude. It should come as no surprise, then, that Imp is somewhat anti-social, given to lowering his walls only when surrounded by those closest to him.

Richard is predictably a tinkerer. Like other rat metalworkers he has a fascination with the way things can combine and create on the macro level. In his own right he is a successful technician, having created things like puzzle rings and complicated locks in his spare time. He attributes this to not thinking in the same way as humans; rather than try to “shore up any holes in his wall” he thinks of everything in terms of functioning cooperative systems, where each piece works to hold all the others up and vice versa. It frustrates him when people cannot solve his puzzles, and rather than ask why he can understand it he asks “Why can’t anybody else get it?”

The Imp is inherently mischievous, and when he is not in his workshop is often seen harassing other rats or his co-smiths. He is also ‘harmlessly’ sadistic, and enjoys setting up prank traps for others in the community (his favourite is the ever-classic water bucket propped above the doorway, though how he gets the water up there with his height is a mystery even Nicodemus would have had trouble solving). When with his more outgoing friends, he is often seen egging them on to do stunts that he (as a runt) is able to do. Within his academic circle, he is often arguing with his friends on the superior significance of macro metalworking compared to micro-level chemistry.

Richard sees his purpose in life as being an agent of subversion against NIMH and an agent of invention for Thorn Valley. Many of his independent projects include elaborate traps in the area surrounding Thorn Valley, most of which involve reflecting lights to create the illusion of the area immediately around the Valley, thus attempting to prevent any humans from entering their domain. Should these fail there are myriad ‘skunk traps’, in which a trap is triggered and skunk spray is released into the air around the invading people. He has also worked metal to reflect and condense light into the greenhouse, providing as much possible concentrated sunlight for the plant specimens inside.

Imp’s personality is augmented by an almost irrational hatred of the humans, justified only partly due to his sufferings at the hands of NIMH. Despite this, however, he puts the knowledge he acquired from the human experiments to good use, reflected not only in his traps but also in his innovation and exploration in metalwork. To his mind there is no greater act than using the knowledge that NIMH gave him against them.

Fighting Style

Despite his attempts to wheedle out of guard duty, Richard has been ‘conscripted’ a number of times and has, therefore, constructed his own style of fighting. He uses two thick wooden rods in the same way one might expect someone to wield knives, in the reverse grip, but varies his grips on the rods from reverse-grip to full-grip to grips at any space between either end. As such he is able to vary his assaults and his defences, able to switch from a defensive position to an offensive position and anything in between with ease. His size and flexibility also make him a strong close-quarters fighter, so much of his style involves getting in close and inflicting as much damage as possible before getting out. As his rods may suggest, his intent is not to kill but to incapacitate; he prefers to use the rods to smash or bludgeon his opponent into submission (or, in the odd case, into unconsciousness). The size of his forearms allows him to wield the rods effortlessly and effectively, able to deal damage with something that he barely feels any weight from. While no stranger to offense, Imp tends to begin in a very defensive manner, wearing his opponent down before moving in for the win. When faced with an opponent of similar defensive tactics, he switches primarily to in-and-out guerilla tactics. Imp has a flamboyant whirling style that uses his body as much as his weapons; his rods are never motionless and he uses his body to block or attack as much as he does with his rods, and is thus able to change tack very quickly.

Profession

Richard is best known as a blacksmith, though he insists that he is a “metal crafts-rat”. During his official shifts he is a diligent and chatty worker, and is often in his best moods when he is hammering or welding metal. He does do other work, however; one of the crafts that he has plied from his experience as a blacksmith is the craft of ring-making and gem-setting (his preferred method makes use of the prongs, but he varies between gems). Currently he only has a single ring that he has deemed a proper success: a ring for his beloved, whom he has yet to meet but knows he will one day find.

From his blacksmithing, Imp has also become an accomplished weaponsmith. Many of the daggers within the Thorn Valley community have been crafted by him, as have several swords. Recently he has been experimenting with gun frames and black powder, attempting to (and so far failing at) create a form of gunpowder that is more effective than human methods. To that end, he blames the chemists for providing faulty material.