The First Age
Drayson Mccullough - Printable Version

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- Drayson - 07-20-2013

Drayson Mccullough
Age: 36

Origin: Castletown, Isle of Man, British Isles.
Current Resident: Arbatskaya district.

Occupation:
Custody Domestic Protection Service.

Psychological Description: Drayson had always been a man of few hobbies, and fewer friends. Growing up in a small town on the Isle of Man, he had always stood out as being far too mature for his age, and the only times he was seen as being aggressive was in a good rugby scrimmage. Drayson considers himself an easily angered person, but it is rarely seen by others. Instead, he is described as having almost supernatural levels of patience.

Physical Description: Drayson is a large man. 6'2" and heavily built, he has a penchant for somewhat dated wool suits, well tailored of course. A bit of a pain in the height of summer, but the rest of the year is usually pleasantly cool. A strong exercise routine is evident in his build, although rarely made obvious thanks to his chosen style of suit and jacket.

Powers and Supernatural Powers: None.

Bio:
Although just a boy when the King of England and the elected government made the fateful decision to bow to the CCD, Drayson still identifies himself as a Brit. The Royal Family are still a remembered and respected tradition, and now defunct United Kingdom still exist as a fond memory in his mind. But Drayson's a realist, not lost in the glory days of the past. Britain would rise as a powerful contributor to the CCD, and it was the men and women of those once isolated Isles that would bring it there.

As a boy, Drayson was the eldest son of five boys, raised by a single mother who did all she could to make ends meet. With the dying economy, she failed. Drayson, aged 9, watched his youngest brother die of pneumonia before his first birthday; funding for public healthcare was steadily cut as the government's coffers dug deeper and deeper into the red. After that, the young boy's entire view of the world changed. Gone was the carefree child, and Drayson quickly took up the mantle of being the man of the house.

He cared for his younger brothers, helped with the chores, and did odd jobs to earn money, food, or odds and ends that the family needed. Kerosene for a heater, blankets, some loose change, a bag of sugar. He was up early and to bed late every day, a diligent student and a common face around Castletown doing whatever he could to help his family. Drayson finished his public schooling and won a scholarship, which he used to pursue a degree in criminology and criminal psychology. Three years of schooling achieved him his Bachelor's degree, and he was quickly accepted as a police officer.

His loyalty to the CCD is more a carry-over of his loyalty to his homeland. So long as the CCD flourishes, so too will Britain. He served with distinction in the DVII Capital Region police department, with a sizable portion of his uncomfortably small income going to his mother and younger brothers, to help cover their ongoing education. It was during his time in London that Drayson drew the attention of the Custody Domestic Protection Service, and after five years as a police officer, he received his transfer notice to the DVII CDPS, based in Scotland Yard.

Another eight years of distinguished service there saw him transferred to the Moscow branch as a Chief Investigator.

-----

The investigation had gone in circles for far too long. They had their third copy-cat killer in the stockade, and their third one that claimed that 'something made them do it.' It was a load of bull; the department's psychologist was guessing they suffered from a mix of split-personality syndrome and schizophrenia. An easy enough story to buy; drugged out, desperate, and crazy, was the best way to describe the homeless population in the slums of London. Even under CCD rule, things had been slow to recover, and the social security net needed to help so many of the forgotten and lost simply wasn't in place yet.

Something wasn't adding but some of them had it figured out. Some new drug must have been making the rounds. It wasn't unheard of for the smaller 'chemists' to test their new product in the shanties. All three killers had been known to live around Gallions Hill, and that was where the three detectives were headed to get to the bottom of things. The three men parked their car in a gravel lot near the base of the hill and climbed out. All three wore wool suits of middling quality. Off the rack sort of stuff, with at least a passing nod from a seamstress to get them fitted. They weren't wealthy men, but they would stand out where they were going.

They mingled around the car for a moment, one of the police detectives discreetly tucking a short-barreled shotgun under his coat, the other two checking their revolvers. Then they made their move. The shotgun was loaded with bean-bag rounds; they didn't want to kill anyone, but they were ready, just in case. Nearly two dozen bodies in two weeks was simply too much to ignore.

Over the next two hours, the three men moved through one of the city's largest shanty towns. At last census, near 3 thousand people lived in the area, squatting in abandoned or condemned buildings, in decommissioned metro stations or lines, or in tents and lean-toos in what was once a rather nice park. The area was once home to the upper-middle-class before the economic collapse. People that were well off, but not independently wealthy. As factories ceased, mines closed, and companies went other, these were the managers, the bankers, and stock-brokers. Now it was the homeless (and probably more then a few of those once well-off folks who hadn't fared well in the change of times).

With the coming of the CCD, there could be no denial that things were better, and improving every day. But it was slow, and some places saw the affects sooner the others. They asked questions, even roughed up a few people from time to time. Punks and runners, mostly. You would think that a place like that, word that the police were skulking about would spread fast, but these people had clammed up. Everyone was a possible murderer now, and most folks stayed huddled alone or in small groups, around fires or radios, and kept a wary eye out for who-ever was going to pop up as the next killer.

At one point in their journey, they came across a young man, a priest. An Irish priest. The man was doing God's work among the lost and forgotten, but Drayson was almost certain that the young man gave the three detectives far too bold an eye.

The three cops spent hours scouring the camp, and the answers they found weren't quite what they were looking for. Sure there were new designer drugs floating around; there always were. But everyone they spoke to said the same thing. The killers didn't do it due to some drug. There was a ghost. It possessed people, and made them go around killing folks. Skinning them alive, breaking their bones. Torture.

Then the big break. A woman came running towards them the three detectives. Weeping, sobbing, hysterical. But desperate enough to actually come to them for help, which was saying a lot. Her daughter had been taken from near the tent they shared. A man with a knife, crazy, babbling in some language she didn't know. That was a common trend among the killers so far; they had been babbling, probably gibberish according to the specialists. Just another side-effect of whatever drug was making the rounds.

She led them to her tent, and from there the hunt was on. Other squatters pointed them in the right direction, and the three cheap-suited men were soon pounding the steps into one of the abandoned subways in the area. Torches were pulled from pockets and guns jumped into their hands; the city had shut down the electricity in these parts of the public transit system to save money, and it was pitch black.

It took days for him to fully understand what happened next. The three fanned out in the metro station, before the detective sporting the shotgun spotted the culprit, already at work on the now dead girl. No more then fifteen, the girl hadn't stood a chance. The coroner was sure she was already dead before the bastard had started cutting, so that was one small favor. The detective fired, but the beanbag didn't seem to phase the man much. He took it square to the face, then came running. Two more blasts of the shotgun, one of which went wide, and the knife-wielding maniac fell on the detective.

The two were already on the ground struggling when Drayson and the other detective found them. The attacker's knife was already biting into their comrade's throat when they opened fire. Rounds peppered the crazy man, but it was already too late for their friend. The knife gouged through his throat in their death-throws. What came next was the hard part to explain. Just before they opened fire, something seemed to rise out of the knife-wielding maniac's body. A spirit, or ghost perhaps. Neither man really understood what they were seeing.

Most of what came next didn't go in the report. The thing, the ghost, surged towards Drayson's partner. Both men fired at it, but there was nothing to hit. It seemed to wrap itself around Drayson's partner, who let out a terrified scream as it seemed to sink into his mouth, his eyes. The man seemed to struggle, staggering back against the wall and sobbing in pain and terror, babbling for it to 'get out of his head.' It ended quickly, the babbling stopped, as did the shaking and weeping.

Both men were silent for a long moment, Drayson's gun aimed at his partner, the only sound in the room the dying gurgles of the other detective laying on the dirty floor. His partner looked at him, then his gun came up far too quickly. One shot, a second, and Drayson was staggered back against one of the concrete pillars by the impact of one of the two shots that found their mark.

The possessed detective advanced, and began rambling some sort of gibberish. Actually, it almost sounded like a language. There was an accent to it, and a structure, like he was actually saying something, just not in English. Or anything else Drayson could readily identify. The man fired again, another round striking Drayson in the chest, getting a pained grunt from the large man.

Then that Irish priest came out of no-where, a long slender spike in hand. He came up behind the possessed detective, who was distracted with the gun, as if trying to figure out why it had stopped firing. The priest grabbed the detective's collar and drove the spike deep into the base of his skull, up into the brain and gave it a good wiggle as it sunk in. The detective shuddered once and dropped hard.

Had the Atharim priest played his cards right, it could well have been a start to a good relationship between Drayson and their secretive organization. Instead, the priest tried to lure Drayson into a false sense of security. As he tried to come to grips with what had happened, he shrugged out of his overcoat and unbuttoned his jacket and shirt to eye the bullet proof vest underneath. Two revolver rounds were buried into the new cracked impact plate. The priest tried to explain a little of what had been happening. A creature, a thing called a Wefuke. A remnant of something called the Godswars...

The Priest took a stab at Drayson mid-conversation, an attempt to kill the only witness. Drayson was quicker. The two struggled, but Drayson was the stronger of them. Bone snapped; the priest's arm broken at the elbow. Again, the priest's knee. The man dropped like a sack of bricks. Trained to hunt monsters, but the man was no good against another human it seemed.

In his report, Drayson put forward that the priest might have known something about the drug in question. Perhaps was the source of it. There was no mention of horrible ghosts. No mention of what the man had told him, before trying to kill him. It was all mundane and logical. The priest managed to kill himself in the hospital before the Custody Domestic Protection Service could get their hands on him, their interest having been peaked when reports of the Celtic tattoo on the man's wrist made it's way into the medical report.

With a dead Atharim on their hands, they looked more closely into Detective Drayson's report. One thing lead to another, and he was quickly transferred from the police to the CDPS, where he has served ever since, being transferred to Moscow just two years ago.


Edited by Drayson, Mar 30 2014, 07:16 PM.


- Drayson - 01-23-2014

Important NPCs:

Task Force Domovoi:
Captain Stamen Viktor Aleksandrov. Team CO. Bulgarian man, late 50s.
Officer Konstantinov. Ukrainian man, late 20s.
Officer Sokolov. Ukrainian man, late 20s.
Officer Kira Zinoviya. Russian woman, late 20s. Prosthetic leg. Armoury.
Detective Jérémie Favager. French man, early 30s. Grey hair.
Detective Hedy Köhl. German woman, early 30s. Short.
Lieutenant Ignác Jáchym Chmela. Czechoslovakian man, late 20s. SPMU IC.


Privilege Borislav Alkaev, Dominance II
Rurik Alkaev
Mr Artair Nevin
Edited by Drayson, Nov 11 2015, 10:08 PM.