Player Name: Brat

AIM Contact: SavvyRumPirate

Character Name: Richard Davenport. Rich or just Davenport, never Dick.

Date & Place of Birth: 22 October, 1969, Naperville, Ohio

Character Type: Psychic Human

Character Occupation & Skills: Detective, Second Class, former Army Infantryman. Richard is a decent enough shot, a smooth talker and has an eye for details and behaviours that escape the average person. Like any good law enforcement veteran, he can stay up for days on end, has no more taste buds when it comes to coffee, thinks best on his feet and has the highly-toned instinct of someone who knows real danger. Most of the core disciplines the Army installed remain with Richard. Meaning he doesn't call in sick, still folds his laundry and he can fall asleep just about anywhere or wake up and be immediately coherent.

The more physical bits of his Army and police academy training have fallen to the wayside. He can't run a mile in 10 minutes and he sure as shit can't do sixty push-ups without his arms turning to jelly. Richard isn't a fighter and only rolls his eyes at all the kung-fu-hop-along-special-forces-training hoopla the younger generation seems so fond of. Experience has taught him none of that means jack if the other person has a gun or just wants you dead. Instinct is the only way to go in a brawl.

Abilities: Richard is a powerful clairvoyant. He is capable of limited viewing of past and present. These visions tend to manifest themselves as dreams, though Richard also has waking visions that play in his mind's eye at any given moment. He has no real concept of time when either is happening, though he has never lost more than a couple of minutes with his waking visions. Ghosts are also very familiar to Richard; he sees them plain as day without any prompting and in comparison to his visions they are easier to ignore. If he bothered, Richard could predict a good many number of things from lottery numbers to murder. He has no focus, no training and sort of blunders through with what he does see with purposeful ignorance.

Appearance: Plain and shabby. Richard has never been the sort of boy or man that stuck out in a crowd. His lips are too thin, his nose terribly indistinctive and his blue eyes too small to be of any notice. This combined with his not too dark/not too light brown hair make Richard terribly average, mundane to a fault and easily overlooked. He's whipcord thin, as any muscle he put on during his time in the service has long since disappeared. Sometimes he shaves though most of the time he doesn't, as Richard is overly fond of his scruff.

The perpetually tired and hungry look is what gets Richard noticed more often than not. Which is a shame as when Richard bothers to smile it's downright amazing. His whole face lights up with an impish, infectious glee and is devastatingly boyish in its charm.

Personality & History: Born in the middle of five children, Richard had the great distinction of being the only boy. It was sheer torture from the start, his sisters never once letting him forget that he was outnumbered and his father had long accepted there was just no winning in a house full of women. So Richard grudgingly put up with the hair clips they insisted he wore and could only put up a minimum amount of resistance when they used his face as a canvas. He drew the line at putting on dresses. Just because a man couldn't fight, didn't mean he couldn’t maintain some dignity.

Life continued this vein for some time. Everyone got older and eventually Richard's sisters left him alone in favour of boyfriends. School years came and went and nothing of real note happened until the middle of Richard's twelfth year. He started getting headaches. Blinding, all-encompassing affairs that lasted the day and left him useless for the next two. The headaches came without any warning and struck at any moment. The doctor attributed them to growing pains, coupled with the stress of living in a distinctly female environment.

This resulted in two changes. A shed was built out back for Richard to have his own place and he and his father took a monthly fishing trip for some male bonding. The frequency of the headaches increased at first and the doctor maintained his stance. His parents efforts were deemed a success when a year later they dramatically decreased and Richard was once again spending more time in school rather than out.

Richard kept quiet on the real reason for his headaches. He never told anyone that his first headache was the day before the accident on Route 203. That nine times out of ten he knew when Mom would win at Sunday night bingo. It was all little, inconspicuous things at first, easily hidden and sometimes forgettable. Richard found it all to be both frightening and embarrassing so he did his best to act like it wasn't happening.

As he grew older, his headaches became less of a concern. They still happened, but everyone had started to accept them as just part of Richard. So long as the doctor told his parents he was fine, they didn't worry and Richard was content to keep his secret. Of course nothing lasts forever and during the summer of his 17th year Richard nearly blew it all to hell.

It was just after Thanksgiving. His mother and sisters had gone out shopping, leaving a grateful father and brother behind. Richard had been dozing in his room while his father was content to pass the quiet time in front of the television. To this day Richard can't explain exactly what happened but he was up and quietly calling the paramedics even as his father grumbled at the idiots on the local news.

Richard's father heard the wail of the ambulance siren only seconds before his heart attack. Even during the shock and pain he only had eyes for his son and would never forget the guilty look on Richard's face. Eventually Richard's father recovered with no real complications. He had been lucky, so lucky to have gotten the medical attention he needed so quickly.

Father and son couldn't look each other in the eye after that. Richard's mother tried everything to close the growing gap between the two, only to make it worse. The day after his 18th birthday Richard signed up for the Army and went to boot camp two weeks later. He spent the next four years there and while his headaches persisted, the training and discipline the Army enforced helped Richard suppress things further. When he got out he was twenty-two, was something of a cocky, likable asshole and had no intention of returning home. He went to New York City instead and joined the NYPD not long after.

Richard started out as a beat cop but moved his way up the ranks through hard work and sheer determination. He was well-liked. A mouthy little prick who could make you laugh even as he insulted you, he didn't put on airs and madeof fun himself just as often. It didn't matter that he could be a little strange and was intensely private because he was a good listener and people loved that more than anything.

After a decade, Richard made detective. His instincts were top notch and he had offered a unique perspective that had helped solve more than one case. No one knew that the newly-minted detective spent his days off drinking himself into stupors or that he didn't sleep very well and kept himself awake with enough pep pills to speed up an elephant. It seemed that Richard could fool everyone except himself.

That was until Amanda. She was a waitress at a bar favored by the local cops and their relationship just sort of happened. It was easy, effortless and more importantly it felt right. For two years everything was picture perfect. Richard found himself drinking less and sleeping easier because Amanda was there. He even took her home for Christmas one year, much to the delight of his mother.

Then it all fell apart as quickly as it happened. Richard's drinking started again and Amanda was full questions. Why did he talk so much in his sleep, what did he see in his dreams, did he love her and why did she keep finding Jack Daniels in his coffee thermos every morning. Richard reacted poorly. He couldn't handle the questions or the concern in her eyes when she asked them. He loved her, of course, but he couldn't tell her much more than that and the relationship ended in a screaming match that left Richard's heart and most of the glassware broken.

The next morning he put in a transfer to New Orleans. He did it in an unthinking stupor that ended in regret as soon as it went through. The NOPD was still hurting bad from Katrina and they weren't about to pass up a seasoned detective who was requesting work. Richard went, of course.

He hasn't heard from Amanda in the four years he has been in the city and he's only called his mother once to let her know of the move. Right now Richard is still getting used to the southern lifestyle. He's doing well for himself in the sense that he's well-liked at the PD and he doesn't have to feel guilty about the empty beer bottles that have since over taken the kitchen.