☚ return to table of contents This thing is covered in Homecoming spoilers. Just thought I'd let you know gently.
PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Ashlee
OOC Journal: ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bushyeyebrowsUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?: Nope, I'm over 18
Email + IM: ashtraydentist@aol.com // ashtraydentist @ AIM
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Alex Shepherd
Canon: Silent Hill: Homecoming (come on game logo, put a colon in there)
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: Post-game, Smile Ending (riiiight as he's walking out of Silent Hill, har har)
Number: 008 » 040
Appearance: This dude here, minus the pipe.
Age: 22
Setting: Silent Hill—
Silent Hill in Homecoming.—
Shepherd's Glen (hometown/Silent Hill's dorky cousin we don't talk about)History: Let's start really far back--back in the day 150 years prior, there were people involved in Silent Hill who wanted to create their
own town, being pretty much through with the ways of their old place. So the Shepherd family and three other families created Shepherd's Glen, a neighboring, cozy place on the skirts of Toluca Lake. Of course, splitting away from Silent Hill has certain... consequences. And because of this, they're forced to make a pact for their god that is as follows: every fifty years, the son or daughter of a founding member must be sacrificed in specific ways to appease said pact.
More than a century later, we have Alex, born in 1985 to Lillian and Adam Shepherd. During the next 18 years they would keep themselves distanced from Alex, because they chose him to sacrifice to the pact--by doing this and staying unattached, they hoped to kill him easier. A decade after Alex (and after many attempts), the Shepherds have a second son, Joshua, who they're able to openly love and treat like a
real son. Alex starts to act out, and one of the ways he does is by taking Joshua out on the lake against his father's wishes on the 150th Anniversary of the town.
Cut to four years later. Alex dreams an unsettling (and ultimately prophetic, through Silent Hill's supernatural mad skillz) dream repeatedly as he rests in a hospital, discharged from duty in the army. He feels as though something bad is about to happen--or has already happened--to his brother, so he leaves and hitchhikes back to Shepherd's Glen (with the help of a certain trucker named Travis). When he arrives, he finds the entire place is nearly abandoned and a complete wreck, as is his house. When he finds his mother he questions what's going on, but she offers no concrete answers and seems suicidal. Taking the gun from her, he ventures into the basement and finds it a.) flooded and b.) containing a
monster.
Suffice to say, he beats the tar out of it. Looks like the monsters in his nightmares are kinda sorta
real.
He leaves home and runs into his longtime friend Elle Holloway, who's hanging up missing posters all over town--people have been disappearing and no one knows why. She gives him a radio to contact Deputy Wheeler, they have a chat, and he ventures off to get his gun repaired by Curtis Ackers (who is secretly a douche). Apparentally, all the clocks in town are stopped at 2:06 and no one knows why or how to fix it. After romping through the spooky corridors of the Grand Hotel he finally finds Mayor Bartlett drunk off his gourd and fresh from unburying graves. Alex tries to get something out of him, since his son Joey is Joshua's best friend and
also missing, but he gets nothing all that helpful. Well, except for what boils down to a 'YO' DADDY!' joke. Rude.
Their little talk is cut short when a large monster canonically dubbed Supulcher appears and tells the mayor to talk to the hand, crushing him in the most epic low-five in Shepherd Glen history; this fella' is a representation of Joey Bartlett, who's already been sacrificed by his father via burial. Alex manages to kill the creature, but in a fit of unconsciousness [that happens a lot] he falls through a hole and wakes up alive and well in a prison cell--
wait, what.
Deputy Wheeler appears and asks him what the hell's going on, and after a heated moment Alex admits what happened to Bartlett, and that there are
monsters all over the town. Wheeler agrees and has also seen these creatures; he'd barricaded himself away for protection. Letting Alex go free, he tells him they need to escape, and soon. Unfortunately Wheeler's separated from him in the struggle to escape and he's forced to continue on his own until he's outside. That's where he finds Elle, trying to flee from a large monster known as a Siam. After killing it with the shotgun Wheeler gave him they go into the sewers in an attempt to escape being surrounded.
They sit for a breather and Elle reveals that her sister Nora, too, is missing--of course neither realize that it's because their mother sacrificed her through suffocation, as decided by the pact. Also rude. Despite their best efforts, Elle and Alex are
also split up. Wheeler contacts Alex when he's above ground and tells him to find Dr. Fitch, the resident doctor of Shepherd's Glen. Unfortunately, he's not in very good shape--physically
or mentally. Alex finds him outside covered in self-inflicted cuts holding a scalpel, and wanting to help pursues him into the clinic. Probably to tell him he's doing this whole 'doctor' thing wrong. When Alex finds the doctor's daughter, Scarlet's, replicated room inside, he's dragged into the Otherworld and has to trek through Dr. Fitch's warped mindset come to life.
He finds Dr. Fitch in the middle of a pool of blood, still inflicting wounds "to repent for his sins", and Alex tries to talk him down, offering him Scarlet's doll in the hopes that maybe it means
something. Of course that doll just manifests into a representation of Fitch's daughter, who he sacrificed via "the blade", or dismemberment. She kills the doctor by biting off his head like it's a twinkie and then attempts to kill Alex. She falls to Alex, too, and soon after he wakes up in the daughter's room as if he'd never left it. As it turns out, there's a key hidden in Scarlet's doll.
He runs off to Town Hall and finds/unlocks a secret passageway, where he finds a ceremonial dagger--as it turns out, this is a special key his father used to use to unlock special doors across Shepherd's Glen, one of which was his special hunting room. Backtracking to that hunting room, he finds a key to his own attic and eventually stumbles across a ring with his family crest on it in there. Along with the ring is a note by his father, saying he's gone to Silent Hill. It mentions that he had 'to choose one son'. Thanks dad. Thanks for making it so hard to find you.
When Alex confronts his mother on the letter, soldiers of the Order interrupt and drag her off as the entire house becomes the Otherworld. Alex realizes, upon waking up, that there's a door that's appeared that can only be opened by solving four different puzzles (all of which make up the family's past and guilt). When he solves the puzzle his house returns to normal and he leaves, finding Elle and Wheeler. They all decide to venture to Silent Hill by boat in the hopes of finding out the truth of what's going on. As they get close, however, they're ambushed by the Order and Alex falls off the boat, leaving Wheeler and Elle to be kidnapped in the same fashion as his mother (I'm noticing a pattern....). It takes some detours, but eventually he finds himself in the Overlook Penitentiary, where everyone had been taken.
Including his mother. She's strapped to a torture device and begs Alex to put her out of her misery, as she's being ripped in half by the machine. He gives into her begging and kills her with his handgun before continuing onward in his search for Joshua, Elle, and Wheeler. He finds the latter in the Otherworld and they rescue Judge Holloway from Asphyxia, a representation of Nora Holloway. Alex kills the monster by giving her a piggyback ride, but not before Wheeler is sucked through the walls by it. Unable to find Elle there, he changes course and 'follows' Joshua's figure into a church--it's there that he forgives his father's spirit in a confessional, before finding Adam Shepherd in the flesh tied up and unable to move. Adam apologizes for everything and reveals that Alex was
never in a war, and was never a soldier. The dog tags Alex wears aren't his, but his
father's old ones. He claims that Alex delusioned himself into thinking that after an "accident". Before he can say any more than that, the Bogeyman--a creature more than likely created from Alex's psyche--appears and cuts Adam down the middle while his son watches on in horror.
Jesus.
He follows the path of the monster down a flight of stairs, but is knocked unconscious by Curtis (remember that asshole?) and dragged off to a small torture room where Judge Holloway is waiting for him. She tells him about the pact and how Adam Shepherd had effectively broken it, causing Shepherd's Glen to erode into what it was when Alex arrived. She admits to murdering her daughter Nora as well, claiming everything she did, she did for family. She also admits that in order to survive, they would have to return to the Order--and that anyone who opposed it would be killed. Curtis leaves to torture and kill Elle while the judge begins to drill into Alex's leg, but luckily he's able to break free and kill her first. Whadda' rude lady. After finding and killing Curtis, he and Elle flee and find Wheeler
post-torture, fatally wounded (it's not clear if he lives or not from the ending, but considering how it all goes down I'm gonna say he died from his wounds later on--dude he had like 10 knives in his chest, you don't just limp away from that).
Alex leaves Elle and Wheeler to go face-off the truth, where he realizes
he was the one who was supposed to be killed. A repressed memory of him and his brother returns to him as well: that during the 150th Anniversary, they snuck out in a boat at night. Alex had done it out of resentment for his father, and when he teases Joshua, the little boy reveals that their father gave
him the family ring. Alex takes the ring and taunts Joshua with it, and when his brother tries to pull the necklaced band out of Alex's hand he slips, breaking his neck against the side of the boat before falling into the waters.
This broke the pact, as Joshua was not the child chosen.
Still in Dramatic Flashback Mode, Adam Shepherd finds his son's body while Alex goes into shock--eventually a delusional shock that makes him think Josh isn't dead--and is sent to a mental institution by his father; when the town asks where Alex had gone, Adam never told them the truth. It appears that Adam also hid the fact that Joshua died as well--probably to further protect his family from the judgement of the other three families. Alex, finally remembering what he'd done, fights against a representation of Joshua and kills the creature--it 'births' Joshua's lifeless body, and Alex apologizes to it, leaving the family ring and his flashlight with the corpse.
He escapes through the sewers and finds Elle alive and well; they help support each other as they walk away through the city.
Alex is probably filing for therapy sessions as we speak.
Personality: (Warning topics--Talks of mental institutions, shocktherapy, partially physical and mental/verbal abuse from family, delusions. Usual Silent Hill topics.)
... Okay.
Alex had a lot of issues by the time he was 18--his folks certainly wouldn't win any 'Parents of the Year' awards. He was mostly reserved and tried to keep to himself, leaving the sibling to garner the love and support from their folks while he tried to scrape up any scraps of acceptance he could find, wherever he could find it. As a child he'd spent a lot of time trying to find a way to gain his family's attention, but unfortunately none of his efforts spawned anything more than the usual impassive parenting. After Josh was born, he just sort of gave up on those chances for acknowledgement and stuck to 'me myself and I' for a long time. The only two 'close' people that really
impacted his life [positively] was his friend Elle and his brother, even despite the favoritism. He would try to play brother's protector and wanted to be someone strong and safe and capable, so he often went out of his way to try and prove those capabilities. But he was often hit by bouts of bitterness and sometimes took it out on the people around him--verbally, mostly, and especially toward his little brother, because as much as he loved him, he also hated a lot of things surrounding him. He's Brother Tsun, in a sense--at one point he impatentialy snaps at his brother for being loud in the bottom bunk, but soon after solves the boy's problems by letting him borrow his flashlight for the dark. It's not an entirely unhealthy sibling relationship, but one dampened by circumstances.
He had a stretch of time where he was particularly defiant toward his father, who'd constantly reminded him he'd never amount to anything--his father also often tried to turn Joshua away from Alex, so often times he'd feel like an unwanted stranger. As someone with few attachments, he didn't particularly care if he was a jerk sometimes, as mentioned with his brother. He makes a pretty clear change from age 18 to 22, and even though a lot of it is spawned from a non-reality (becoming a soldier), he's still softened and gotten better from that unfortunate moment on Toluca Lake where he temporarily lost touch with reality.
Alex is one of those guys who's nice and trying his damnedest where and when he can, while still being very withdrawn and quiet--half from awkwardly developed social skills, another from powerfully manifesting guilt and trauma. It's also probable that he's withdrawn from an authoritarian family who were particularly harsh (when he's physically and verbally reprimanded for entering his father's hunting room against the rules, for example). It was more than likely a source of embarassment for him, knowing how strong that hold was over him, especially in the presence of Elle or Josh, who saw his unusual treatment first-hand. His father also made it a point to try to suck all the joy and compassion out of his life, so he felt life was worthless. So treating him like crap mentally and physically was the norm.
The death of Josh and aftermath of it strengthened his desire to want to protect people and act as a sort of guardian, and he's fine with going out of his way to do something for someone (as he did with Carol in the Grand Hotel). Some of his desire to do good is the lingering want from the past to make people
like him, but for the most part he's genuine and is easy to stir sympathy in. On the other hand, if he thinks someone deserves to die, he'll kill them with his own hands if it means protecting himself or someone else. His compassion only runs so deep. After killing the judge he's hardly remorseful, especially knowing she tortured and caused the deaths of many people from his town (including her own daughter, and almost Elle).
Post-canon he's even more frustrated by his inability to protect anyone, as he ends up having to mercy-kill his mother, and watches in horror as his father is killed in front of him--that coupled with the realization that he'd failed Wheeler and his brother makes for a
lot of pent-up guilt and frustration that are generally kept to himself, despite how unhealthy that is in the long-run. Yeah, it's a lot of stuff underneath a pretty stoic facade. He pulls it off well from years of doing it. Without a
lot of prompting and trust, it's very unlikely he'll ever bring up the more intimately awful events of Silent Hill.
And don't tell him he's useless or incapable or 'not good enough'. That will earn negative points right out of the gate. It's one thing to admit most of them are helpless in situations. It's another to tell him he's not cut out for it, or worthless to do anything. It mainly depends on the way it's phrased and the emotions behind it, but it's just one thing that gets under his skin.
He can lose his temper if pushed enough or triggered by things important to him, and likewise he may be easily depressed if certain topics are brought up, but these moments are rarer than they probably should be for what he's got under wraps--often he'll be cool, calm, and collected, or at least tries really really hard to be. He still carries over some of his 'yes sir, no sir' personality thanks to his old family life, but he's far harder to push around than he was as a young teenager. On the flipside of the coin, he's easily suspicious that a person is, possibly, a bag of buttholes. Trusting people is really hard to do when you've just realized almost EVERYONE in your life blatantly lied and kept things from you. Things like "oh by the way, we're planning to drown you this year". He looked at Judge Holloway as a mother figure more than his actual mother, and in the end she put a drill through his leg and planned a lot worse than that.
So his trust meter is a little broken.
He's kinda' surly-lookin' a lot of the time, too. He'll get better once he gets to know you, it's just--he's used to being introverted and keeping his circle of friends pretty damn small, so meeting so many new people will be an interesting development he won't be sure how to handle. Believe it or not, he's got a pretty healthy sense of humor, too. A lot of trollin', if he knows someone particularly well. Where his teasing as a teenager could be borderline bullying (if not bullying), it's particularly harmless as an adult.
Considering his relationship with his brother and the events surrounding his canon, he'll be more prone to helping children and keeping a particular eye on them above the other people trapped on the ship.
Also, he has a thing for nurses.
NURSES TRYING TO KILL ME WILL NOT DAMPEN MY LOVE FOR WOMEN IN NURSE OUTFITS.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:Abilities: Despite the whole "not really a soldier" thing, he's pretty well-versed in a lot of it. He really wanted to live up to his father's expectations for a while (and eventually just gave up and decided to be
better than his dad) so he did a lot of learnin'. He knows how to use guns and is pretty good at hand-to-hand combat. He can even probably talk forever about military, even if he probably won't thanks to the whole 'delusion' fact. One could say he's also pretty good at keeping calm in the face of Very Scary Stuff, and is pretty good at manuveuring and plotting. He escapes an asylum on his own after mapping out the routes and guard points.
Also he's pretty spry (he can hop across HUGE HOLES), and he can swing things and hit things and run for long stretches of time.
And he can roll backwards. Can
you roll backwards? Didn't think so.
Weaknesses: He's still recovering from being very unwell after accidentally killing his brother sent him into a severe psychosis. While he's affirmed that what his delusions were
wrong and can tell what's reality now, he's still pretty messed up and in need of time for recuperation. He went through an ungodly amount of crap in a very short span of time, so snapping or having a moment will probably happen on ocassion, considering the nature of the game (ain't no paradise vacation, man). He'll also suffer from memory lapses from the past four years of his life--his psychosis was probably worsened by ill-used Electroconvulsive therapy (thoroughout the game it's elluded to that he's been getting unethical shock therapy). ECT can have the effect of erasing memories months before the therapy's done, though in a lot of cases those memories do trickle in slowly. The last four years are pretty jumbled now that he's got a grip on his brain.
He's also just a normal human guy. No magic or anything special here. As such, no power limitations either, since he's got none to limit.
Inventory: • An old brown journal full of clues, memos, scary kid drawings, photos (he had a lot to collect, okay)
• A mighty axe for his locker.
• Black shirt, jeans, shoes, the usual
• Father's dog tags
• Really Nifty Jacket (now includes Useless Walkie-Talkie!)
• A spiffy empty Mk 23 Handgun
• Insecurities about life and the universe
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