ooc: questions about your character
To be updated as I write more.  Questions from this site, whose use of Comic Sans I grudgingly forgive.


Mandatory Questions
1. What about you is heroic?
Not a terrible lot, to be frank.  I believe quite firmly in self-preservation.  Should I chance to do something heroic - it wouldn't be with heroism in mind. 

2. What about you is social? What do you like about people?
Again, not a terrible lot.  I can make myself comfortable with people, but that is far more a matter of training than a natural inclination to be sociable, much less a natural liking of people taken generally.  To be cynical - I like people who like to talk, as they make things much easier for me.  To be less so - I like people who can understand my sense of humour.

3. Of what benefit could you be to the current group?
Surely there will always be a need for stabbings.

4. Why would you choose to join the current group?
The question of what the group is, for me, is happily irrelevant.  I would choose to join it if it seemed to be both entertaining and profitable in some way.

5. Invent an adventure/plot that your character would actively undertake (as opposed to just tagging along)?
Stabbings?

Personal Questions
1. What is your real, birth name? What name do you use?
Marie-Pierre Armans Duclos.  I generally use it unless there is a reason for me to go by another temporarily.

2. Do you have a nickname? What is it, and where did you get it?
Hans calls me Kase.

3. What do you look like?
I am 5'10 and of relatively slender build; my hair is of that shade of very dark brown which looks black except in direct sunlight, my eyes a lighter brown.  I would be more or less unremarkable and without distinguishing marks if certain other people were less skilled with knife-work; this not being so, my forearms (left more than right) bear a litany of fights gone by, as does my left bicep from a time when I was less lucky in my blocking.

4. How do you dress most of the time?
I favour grey wool suits, which I rarely bother to have pressed.  I wear a hat - a black snap-brim of the type the English call a trilby - in cold weather or simply to avoid having to look at my hair, which is inclined to unruliness which I rarely bother to discourage.

5. How do you "dress up?"
I will press the suit.  I own appropriate evening wear for occasions when it is called for.

6. How do you "dress down?"
Shirtsleeves, or, if it is extremely dress-down, an undershirt - the short-sleeved type the Army issues.

7. What do you wear when you go to sleep?
As little as possible.

8. Do you wear any jewelry?
No.

9. In your opinion, what is your best feature?
I am quite fond of my eyebrows.

10. What's your real birth date?
3 June 1904

11. Where do you live? Describe it: Is it messy, neat, avant-garde, sparse, etc.?
For this I will count only the place that has apparently become "The Ducks' Nest."  The others are merely places that I stay.  It's sparse and neat (all of my places are relatively neat; I always know where things are, and I leave a few calculated spots of un-neat-ness so that I will be able to tell if someone else has touched things - if a once-neat thing is messy, that is obvious, and an overzealous person would be likely to straighten that which was messy to begin with).  Less sparse, perhaps, than it once was, but still spartan.  It is an upstairs suite in a very old building in an out-of-the-way part of the city, but not so very out-of-the-way that going to it at all is inherently unusual; the walls and floor are thick, the ceiling rather low (though not to the point of bumping one's head on it, of course), it contains a desk, a chair, my bed, the no-longer-leaking coal stove, and a cabinet with drawers below and shelves above which hold clothes and dishes, respectively.  It has no separate kitchen, but there is running water in the bathroom and the stove to cook on, and I maintain the habit of doing marketing daily no matter what - my other two places have iceboxes and cupboards containing the sorts of things one would expect, in case unexpected company arrives, but I supplement this with whatever I find, and do most of my dining out, anyway.

12. Do you own a car? Describe it.
I own a Peugeot 201, which lives in a garage outside of the city awaiting need.  It's black.

13. What is your most prized mundane possession? Why do you value it so much?
That photograph they took the morning of the great demonstration.  It reminds me of things.

14. What one word best describes you?
Close.

Familial Questions
1. What was your family like?
My parents died when I was four.  I was raised by my aunt and uncle - my father's brother - as an only child.  Tanta Elodie and Oncle Pasqual were very good surrogates.

2. Who was your father, and what was he like?
His name was René.  I don't remember him much.  He was very tall - but then I was very small, and such things are relative.

3. Who was your mother, and what was she like?
Née Heloise Fabre.  She smelled like lilacs.

4. What was your parents marriage like? Were they married? Did they remain married?
They were married, and I was four.

5. What were your siblings names? What were they like?
Only child.

6. What's the worst thing one of your siblings ever did to you? What's the worst thing you've done to one of your siblings?
Not applicable.

7. When's the last time you saw any member of your family? Where are they now?
I saw Tanta and Oncle a few months ago, and they remain in the house in which they raised me, outside of Toulouse.

8. Did you ever meet any other family members? Who were they? What did you think of them?
I have another aunt and uncle, also on my father's side, who have a son named Nicolas - somewhat younger than I.  Nicolas is in the Foreign Legion.  They did not live near enough for me to have grown up very familiar with them, but I never found anything objectionable about any of them, and Nico is a good man.

Childhood Questions
1. What is your first memory?
Very vague.  Picking oranges, sitting - it must have been in my mother's lap - as my father cut it up.  Fitting that my earliest memory, however unclear, should involve a knife.  You'll be thinking I have a sort of fetish.

2. What was your favorite toy?
Ah, but I do not answer "my first knife" here (that knives do not count as toys was something I understood implicitly by the time I was old enough to have one of my own).  I had a stuffed rabbit.  I named it Téo.

3. What was your favorite game?
Make-believe - playing that I was a pirate on the high seas, or an explorer in the wilds of Africa, things like that.

4. Any non-family member adults stick out in your mind? Who were they, and how did you know them? Why do they stick out?
It was a small village; by the time I left it I knew all of the adults, which makes it more difficult to say who stands out best from my childhood as opposed to later days.  Boucard, the butcher, I knew most well as a result of my not-brief-enough apprenticeship in his shop during the waning days of the War.

5. Who was your best friend when you were growing up?
I don't believe I had one.  All of us children sort of grew up as a flock, like particularly bothersome geese, and if I wasn't playing with them en masse I was off on my own.  I suppose I was closest to Pierre - a year younger than I, and usually first mate on my imaginary pirate ship.

6. What is your fondest childhood memory?
Ah, here is where we mention the knife.  But it was not the knife itself so much as it was Oncle Pasqual teaching me how to use it.  (To carve things.  Out of wood.  The rest came much, much later.)

7. What is your worst childhood memory?
My parents' death, I suppose.  I was really too young to properly understand it; they went out one day, leaving me in Tanta's care, and did not come home.  I remember the funeral, and wondering why everyone else was so sad - I was more uncomfortable than anything else, in a stiff little suit and a hard-backed pew.  It wasn't until some time afterward, when my parents had still not come to pick me up, that I began to be truly upset.

Adolescent Questions
1. How old were you when you went on your first date?
16.

2. It is common for one's view of authority to develop in their adolescent years. What is your view of authority, and what event most affected it?
Heh.  My view of authority changed drastically when I was in my early 20s, following the failure of the Movement.  My adolescence?  Not much effect.  I believe authority should be worked with enough to give one the freedom to do as one wishes; it's certainly not worth working AGAINST it.

3. What were you like in high school? What "clique" did you best fit in with?
I'm certain I was an insufferable ass; I'm certain this hasn't changed much.  My commentary on the lesson plans was rarely appreciated. 

4. What were your high school goals?
To leave.

5. Who was your idol when you were growing up? Who did you first fantasize about in your life?
I adored Oncle Pasqual, perhaps the more so because he was away during the War, certainly the more after he returned.  If the fantasies referred to are sexual, then - Mireille. 

6. What is your favorite memory from adolescence?
Leaving for Paris when I was 16.  I hadn't really been unhappy at home, but Paris - ah, Paris was something else.  I didn't learn to hate the city until I had been there a while, so that first rush - all of the people, the new friends I made, shoving the pig down into the Metro...

7. What is your worst memory from adolescence?
Working in the butcher shop.  I would come home smelling of bacon, with duck-grease on my shoes.

Occupational Questions
1. Do you have a job? What is it? Do you like it? If no job, where does your money come from?
I have an occupation; it isn't quite a job in the normal sense.  I have been an agent for various employers for quite some time.  I do like it - if I didn't like it, I wouldn't be good at it, and in that case, I would be dead.

2. What is your boss or employer like? (Or publisher, or agent, or whatever.)
I don't particularly care for him.

3. What are your co-workers like? Do you get along with them? Any in particular? Which ones don't you get along with?
Well, currently, they're Nazis.

4. What is something you had to learn that you hated?
Where, exactly, bacon comes from.

5. Do you tend to save or spend your money? Why?
I keep enough in reserve to allow for emergencies, but I see no point in hoarding it in this temporary life.