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Player Information
Name: J
Contact Information: PM please
Desired Custom Title: Would you like to see my mask?
Character Information
Real Name: Jonathan Crane
Code Name: Scarecrow
Age: 33
Sex: Male
Height: 6’0
Weight: 160 lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Brown
Distinguishing Features: Tall and lean, Jonathan Crane has learned to hold his lanky body in such a way that he is able to communicates poise and grace – a far cry from his days as an awkward, cowering teenager. Even so, Crane is in no way a physically intimidating individual. He has bright blue eyes that glitter softly and intently with a scintillating intelligence of one taking in, analysing, and absorbing everything that their gaze falls upon. However, Jonathan is not an individual that wears his heart upon his sleeve, and as such he is adept at concealing his emotions, making those same bright eyes unfathomable, like two chips of ice. Due to being slightly nearsighted, he also wears square-rimmed glasses that lend him a certain scholarly air.
His general demeanour is that of someone who is cold and guarded and shows little interest in the world around him. While wide and broad smiles are hard to come by, his mouth is often curved into a variety of empty, close-lipped smiles that more often than not do not match his true feelings. Thin lips conceal teeth that are not terribly crooked, but his bottom row bears a strong resemblance to a fence gone slightly awry. The voice that issues from these lips is smooth like silk and drips like oil, but can cut like little razors at the slightest instance. There is a kind of cold quality to it however that resonates with each deliberate and carefully weighed word.
Avatar: Cillian Murphy
Equipment: Dr. Crane’s signature piece of equipment is undoubtedly his fear toxin. This toxin as the effect of inducing debilitating hallucinations based on the subject’s fears and phobias. Depending on the dosage, the fear can cause anything from generalized panic to crippling fear that will eventually destroy the subject’s mind if left to do its work. Having since gone a step beyond his original fear toxin synthesized from Ra’s al Ghul’s mysterious blue flowers, Crane has now developed other versions that produce the same effects as his original concoction. These versions are not reliant on the blue flower and can be made from synthetic chemicals.
In his Scarecrow persona, Crane wears a poorly stitched, burlap sack over his head with a rope noose hung from his neck. The mask has a re-breather built into it so that Crane doesn’t fall victim to his own poisonous toxins that he releases through aresol devices worn on his wrists and concealed under his sleeves. Now, however, Crane is not completely reliant on the aresol spray and has manufactured versions of the fear toxin that can be released via a hypodermic needle in addition to a powder form which is effective only if ingested. These are most commonly seen in capsule form.
Skills: Crane is well-versed in the study of the human psyche, especially the study of fear. So much so that he uses his vast knowledge of the mind to manipulate those around him. He is also a very skilled chemist and has used his knowledge to create toxins that affect the mind. Having once been a professor of psychology at the Gotham University and given many lectures in his time there, Crane is very articulate and excels in public speaking. An exceptionally bright man, Crane is not only quick-witted, but knowledgeable about a great many subjects outside his discipline. He believes himself to be exceptional in the art of both telling lies and spotting them in others.
Weaknesses: Jonathan Crane, while being tall, does not have the sheer weight of muscle to truly make him a physical threat, and as such he can be easily overwhelmed by anyone stronger or heavier than he is and he has had no combat training. He is also nearsighted so things that are at a distance from him appear blurred. Although he has a relatively mild myopia, he still needs his glasses in order to see letters that are printed far away, i.e. on a school blackboard, or to recognize a face from across the street. However, if he were to lose them he is in no way blind, hence why he often takes them on and off repeatedly throughout the day, as he does not need them all the time. But were he to be caught without them, especially at night, it would be more difficult for him to function in such an environment.
A great analyser and thinker, Crane has a tendency to overanalyse his surroundings and the people within them, often creating a difficulty in making decisions. As well, Crane is well aware of his own intelligence which may lead to him underestimating his opponents and enemies. Despite his previous actions and the state that he is in now, Jonathan recognizes no flaw in his psyche, and therefore no need for change. In addition, though he was able to give himself the antidote in time to avoid having his mind completely fractured, the toxin did leave its own brand of scars on his mind.
Personality: Jonathan Crane’s highest regard and value is for that of knowledge and intellect, and hence, he himself aspires to a greatness of that kind and calibre. For him the pursuit of knowledge and his research is his foremost priority, and he is very much a believer that knowledge is indeed power. He has a true and genuine thirst for knowledge, and reading and study has always been his route to elevate himself over others. But, not only is he an avid devourer of knowledge, who consumes and then simply regurgitates said information, he is an innovator and a creator who is most happy when improving or creating something new. And to that end, Jonathan has little regard for those individuals who merely consume and do not produce and who then leech off the successes and achievements of others.
Although he attempts to be cool and formal, he can become very passionate and speak with great eloquence about things that he is fond of. However, he deals in great self-censorship and it is a rare thing that may cause him to shed his stony demeanour. A liar and a manipulator, Jonathan uses his knowledge of the human mind and behaviours to control those around him. Pragmatic as well as sceptical, Jonathan usually only concerns himself with facts and actual occurrences, and has little regard for nonsense tales; he is forever a doubting Thomas, always needing evidence to support the unbelievable. However, despite the fact that he is a scientific genius, Crane lives and conducts his work only on the basis of his own moral and ethical code. The pursuit of knowledge and science rank above every other concern for him, and thus he has been branded as immoral and unethical by most of the world’s standards. A person for whom the ends always justify the means, Jonathan will go to any lengths to achieve his goals, and the pursuit of his research is usually always at the top of his list.
Perhaps it is a result of having spent most of his childhood in what he would consider to be savagery, but Crane is polite almost to the point of primness and considers himself to always be courteous, even when his cutting remarks are doing inestimable damage to his opponent’s self-esteem. That said, Crane is a very repressed individual who takes the utmost care to control his emotions, which makes him come off as cold and unfeeling. If he does lose his cool though, it is done in a dramatic, and almost childish way. A frequent target for bullies in his childhood, Jonathan believes that this method allows him to conceal vulnerabilities and weaknesses from his enemies. If there is always a little bit of insanity inside every genius, then Jonathan has it in spades. Though seemingly sincere, intelligent, and even charming, Jonathan is largely without empathy and the face that he shows to the world is largely an elaborately constructed mask.
History: Born as the result of a one night stand between a teenaged Bethany Crane and her one time nameless lover, Jonathan Crane was dumped on the door step of his grandmother’s house while Bethany melted back into Gotham’s underworld to join the multitude of other runaways. Pearl Crane took in her grandchild, though not lovingly. A fanatically religious woman, she believed from the beginning that Jonathan was tainted with the devil for having been born out of wedlock – a product of the grievous sin of lust. A tyrant of her house, she abused her grandson trying to expel the evil in his soul when he broke a rule; a common punishment was to lock him in the drafty attic. Though at first he was terrified of the dark crows that lurked there, he soon learned that they meant him no harm, and he even sometimes deliberately misbehaved in order to sleep in the attic, despite the chill and the discomfort, it was still far superior to being locked in his tiny room at his grandmother’s disposal.
If Jonathan thought that school would offer him a respite from the abuse that he suffered at home, he was proved to be quite wrong. Tall, skinny, socially awkward, and an A student, Crane quickly became a target for bullies who pursued him all through high school and tormented him with the name of the cowardly “Ichabod” from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Nevertheless, Crane was able to make a very different impression on his teachers and knew how to act the part of the bright, wholesome little boy scout. After being rejected by his high school crush, Sherry Squires, Crane came up with a radical plan to exact revenge upon his tormentors. During senior prom, he came into the parking lot brandishing a handgun and dressed as ghoulish scarecrow and succeeded in frightening the bully that had tortured him the most, Bo Briggs, he terrified him so badly that he ended up crashing his car with Sherry inside it. The accident killed Sherry, and left Bo paralysed from the neck down. Instead of being horrified at what he had done, Jonathan revelled in his newfound discovery that it was very possible to kill people by frightening them to death. Though he had always known it to be true, he now had concrete evidence that the power of his mind was far more superior than any man’s brawn.
His interest in psychology sparked, Crane grew up to earn his doctorate in the field, specializing in the psychology of fear. Becoming a university professor in order to have access to the impressive facilities that the university offers, he often clashed with the dean of his faculty over the question of more funding for his experiments and his work. While teaching, his class on fear quickly became popular with the undergraduate students as he became known for his outlandish demonstrations as he tried to communicate the meaning of true fear to his classes. One day, however, Professor Crane took his demonstration a step too far when he brought a loaded gun into the classroom and fired it without warning at a vase of flowers to prove his point. Though he succeeded in severely frightening his students, and probably proved his point, he also managed to injure one of them as a girl sitting in the front row was struck in the cheek by a shard of glass. Dismissed from his position, Crane was devastated and furious at what he considered to be a grave injustice. He murdered the two regents responsible for the decision to fire him with an early prototype of his infamous fear toxin. The police were ultimately unable to link their deaths to Crane, and the crime went unsolved without even a finger being pointed at him.
Shortly after Crane applied for and was granted the position of head psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum – a position he gained simply because no one else wanted the job. It was at Arkham that he started down the path of a career criminal. Becoming corrupt and sadistic, Dr. Crane used his position of power to continue his experiments, often at the cost of his patient’s lives and remaining remnants of sanity. Crane had learned his lessons from Gotham University well, and so when he started at Arkham with the clear intention of continuing his controversial research, he knew better how to cover his tracks. He played the part of the bright, and helpful young doctor to tee. He was contrite when he needed to be, and was able to obfuscate his true intentions very well. He learned also who he could fool and who couldn’t though. So, due to the intensity of corruption in every level of Gotham’s infrastructure, Crane was easily able to bribe or deal with anyone who opposed him, and so he continued his pattern for a time, uninterrupted and unbothered by the outside world. However, when he was approached by a man with an interesting proposal for the kind of experiment that Jonathan had previously only ever dreamed of conducting, the good doctor jumped at the opportunity.
Ra’s al Ghul, going by the pseudonym Henri Ducard, gave him a sample of a rare blue flower, which Crane was able make into an incredibly potent fear toxin that caused his victims to suffer hallucinations of their fears. Ducard had told Crane that he was to make vast quantities of the poison in order to taint Gotham’s water supply, so that Ducard could hold the city for ransom; Crane had little idea that his true intentions were actually to destroy the city, though, he probably would have still cooperated as the opportunity to see what his fear toxin would do on such a grand scale would have been too great to pass up.
In order to finance this endeavour, Jonathan struck a deal with crime lord Carmine Falcone for his services in smuggling the toxin into Gotham, in return Crane would testify in court and declare Falcone’s thugs insane and have them transferred to his asylum, thereby saving them from doing hard time in prison. Unfortunately, his antics caught the attention of the assistant district attorney, Rachel Dawes, who insisted on investigating his asylum. Knowing that she couldn’t be bribed to keep her nose out of his business, Crane asked Falcone to get rid of her for him, which he failed at due to the intervention of Batman. When the same mysterious figure caught wind of the Crane’s toxin hidden amongst Falcone’s drugs, he began investigating as well, but Crane was ready for him and managed to hit him with his fear toxin, set him ablaze, and then push him out of a building. Having seemingly solved his bat problem and knowing that Ducard’s plan was coming to fruition, Crane turned his attention once more to Rachel Dawes who had turned up at Arkham after Crane had used his fear toxin on Falcone himself to ensure that he did not ruin any of his employer’s plans. He poisoned her, but Batman returned once again and this time he was immune to Crane’s poison having developed an antidote that would protect him so when Crane attempted to poison him a second time, Batman turned his own toxin on himself and Crane got a taste of his own medicine. Exquisite fear gripping him, Crane divulged the name of Ra’s al Ghul to Batman, but was unable to say anything more about his employer’s plans.
Incarcerated in his own asylum as an inmate, Crane is left muttering about “Scarecrow” and tied up in a straight jacket. His stay though was short-lived, as he is released and given his scarecrow mask back as part of Ra’s al Ghul’s plans. He joined the multitude of other escaped inmates in terrorizing the city of Gotham, taking down a mounted policeman and stealing his horse, thereby completing his transformation as the ghoulish entity of the Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. While attempting to run down the assistant DA, Rachel Dawes, she surprised him by shocking him with a taser. Disoriented, Crane regained enough of his senses to flee the scene, and when the madness ended he had enough of his wits to keep himself from being re-captured and sent back to Arkham.
Plot ideas: I’m not entirely sure what the previous Scarecrow player had planned out, but I’d be open to continuing what he had going on.
Sample Post:
"You have a visitor, Crane, you know the rules, no funny stuff."
Slouched in a corner, his head pressed against the wall, and a curtain of dark, tangled hair swept across faded, unfocused eyes, Jonathan Crane resembled very little the young accomplished psychiatrist that had run Arkham Asylum with an iron fist in a velvet glove, and yet a cracked voice that said: “That's Doctor Crane," still managed to follow the older man out of Jonathan's cell. The old man, even when Crane was at the top, had never treated him with the respect that he deserved. Never. And he felt now that Arkham had been waiting for this day, the day when he would have Crane locked up in a cell of his own and under his thumb. But, in the field of psychology, that was called paranoia. For never in Jonathan's illustrious career at Arkham had the older man given him a hint that he had even disliked him. But all the same, Jonathan had known by the look in his eyes. And after all, to be in a position of power and not be paranoid, was to be insane. There were always people waiting in the wings and in the shadows who coveted your seat of power. Even in a psychiatric hospital.
Jonathan remained slumped against in the corner until the door had closed safely behind the older doctor and the footsteps retreated slowly away down the hall. The eyes retained their glassy, faraway look as they seemed to stare past the walls and barriers of the cell. Of course, he already knew who his visitor was. In fact, he had been expecting her for quite some time - ages ago to be precise. When he had been apprehended by the Batman all that time ago - just before the Joker's murderous rampage - he had expected that his stay at Arkham would be brief. His new employer would come for him. She needed him. But it was not so, there was no midnight breakout, no great escape. He had been trapped for months.
He was being punished for being a fool and getting himself captured after successfully eluding both the Batman and the police for so long. Perhaps he deserved it, but he had long ago ceased hoping night after night for a break out. But, then again, when news filtered down into the cells of Arkham about the madness and chaos reigning in Gotham thanks to the Joker, Crane had been satisfied to have been isolated in a semi-safe "haven" of sorts. But now it was over, and the madman occupied the same wing of Arkham that Jonathan himself did.
It was time to end this little "vacation."
Admin edit: password correct
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Dr. Jonathan Crane, Scarecrow
