Application for empatheias

[richestduck]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Cybra
Contact: cybrarp or character journal PM
Age: 33
Current Characters: Ben Tennyson


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Scrooge McDuck
Age: 150
Canon: Ducktales (2017 Reboot)
Canon Point: After "From the Confidential Case Files of Agent 22!" (Episodes will be remembered in production order)

Background:
Scrooge McDuck has lived what many would argue to be an impossibly-long life. Born in 1867 Glasgow to Fergus and Downey McDuck, Scrooge first started working at age ten as a shoeshine boy when he earned his famous Number One Dime for cleaning the mud-caked boots of Bert the ditch digger. The coin inspired him to be "tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties" along with giving him the idea to travel to America to seek his fortune a few short years later.

Scrooge mostly grew up on the frontier. His jobs were varied and kept him away from his family for decades. Among these jobs was working as a prospector during the time of the Klondike Gold Rush. While prospecting near Dawson City, he met Goldie O'Gilt aka "The Ice Queen of Dawson" who was a bit of an adventurer herself. During an attempt to find the golden lagoon of White Agony Plains with Goldie, half of their map was lost to a mammoth that had somehow managed to survive to the late 1800s. While attempting to escape, Scrooge and Goldie ended up frozen for five years in a glacier with only their mutual hatred to keep them warm. However, during those long five years, the warmth changed from hatred to affection. A break in the rock allowed sunlight to enter their chamber which melted Goldie's half of their icy prison, but she chose instead to leave Scrooge behind in the ice. This heartbreak would set the pattern for their relationship with Goldie leaving Scrooge for dead (and at times even sold him into slavery) whenever they teamed up on treasure hunts.

After Scrooge made his first million, he hired George Mallardy to take him up to the top of Mount Neverest, wanting to commemorate the occasion by doing something no one had done before. Mallardy mocked Scrooge for bringing so many supplies. When the pair were climbing up a particularly steep cliff, Mallardy ordered him to lighten his load, but Scrooge refused, afraid that they would need those supplies. In response, Mallardy cut Scrooge loose, leaving him for dead as he continued up the mountain and was never seen again. The story would be passed down as the tale of the Neverest Ninny though the betrayal was changed for unknown reasons to Mallardy disappearing after rescuing a less-experienced climber.

He went on a variety of adventures after that: spending time in a timeless demon dimension, being a part of multiple rebellions, uncovering the secret of a chupacabra (actually a shaved bear), defeating a rock monster bare-handed, capturing a unicorn, and even somehow making an enemy out of Santa Claus himself. He grew in wealth and fame, making his name as an adventure capitalist in both the literal and figurative senses. Unfortunately, not all of his financial decisions were good ones such as using discount druid stones to repair Castle McDuck, the clan's ancestral home, resulting in his parents being cursed with immortality and trapped inside the castle which only appears once every five years when the mists of Dismal Downs part.

At one point, he swindled Grandpa Beagle out of the deed to Duckburg, Calisota, after the man had stolen it from the citizens to begin with. As a result, he ended up becoming the city's landlord, renting the land back to the city while keeping the deed. It was perhaps around this time that he decided to make Duckburg his home, building his mansion atop Killmotor Hill and the Money Bin on an island in the Audubon Bay.

During the late 1960s, Scrooge decided to pursue a side career as a freelance spy, working alongside Agent 22 of SHUSH (Bentina Beakley who would later become his housekeeper). Initially, Scrooge and Beakley had trouble working together with him not seeming to care about planning ahead (not to mention his own life) and her being such a stickler for the rules. It didn't help that Scrooge's resistance to spending money cost them the lost page of The Great Book which contained the secrets of the ancients to Black Heron, a FOWL spy who was planning to use the page's secrets. However, they managed to stop her from creating the super bouncing juice which she planned to use on soldiers to cause massive destruction, Beakley destroying the page in the process. The two SHUSH agents fled as the laboratory blew up, seemingly killing Black Heron in the process. The pair would go on to have other spy adventures before eventually Scrooge hired Beakley as his housekeeper.

Several years after the Black Heron case, Scrooge's younger sister Hortense and her husband Quackmore had a pair of twins: Donald and Della Duck. Scrooge was quite fond of his nephew and niece, the three of them going on numerous adventures when the twins were older. They traveled all over the world and even made visits to Ithaquack, home of the Greek gods where Scrooge bested Zeus in numerous contests, Donald gained a friend/fan in Storkules, and Della became friends with Selene, the goddess of the moon.

At some point during this time, Scrooge ended up in a fight with Magica de Spell, a sorceress with a centuries-old blood feud with Clan McDuck. She attempted to trap him within his Number One Dime during an eclipse, but he somehow managed to turn the spell around on her, trapping her inside the Dime instead with the Liberty head on the Dime being replaced with Magica's. After the fight's conclusion, Scrooge got an unbreakable enchanted quadriamond chain to hang the Dime around his neck with its face turned into his chest so no one could see the face of its prisoner. He also placed a dime near-identical to how it had looked prior to Magica's imprisonment on prominent display in his office as a decoy for anyone who might have found out Magica's fate and might want to try and free her.

When Della found out that she was expecting triplets, she decided to give her children the stars since there was basically nowhere on Earth she, her brother, and her uncle hadn't set foot. To do so, she designed a ship she called the Spear of Selene in honor of her goddess friend. She and Donald fought over the idea even after she'd laid her eggs and were waiting for them to hatch. Scrooge decided to build the Spear in secret, intending to present the ship to Della to commemorate her boys' hatching. Unfortunately, Della uncovered the ship's existence and decided to take it for test flight, leaving Scrooge an apology note which he found shortly before she took off. Things took a tragic turn as Della ended up flying into a cosmic storm, Scrooge losing connection to her when the Spear was struck by a bolt of energy.

Donald took the boys to raise by himself on his houseboat while Scrooge drove himself towards bankruptcy. He built dozens of ships and sent them to the stars, hoping one of their crews would find Della. His Money Bin, once near-full with precious memories, was emptied to the quarter-full point. It was around that time that Scrooge's board of directors physically dragged him away from the computers and forced him to stop his mad search.

All of Scrooge's life, anything he'd lost he could earn back with interest through hard work and determination. Too late, he realized that some things that, once they were gone, they were gone forever.

After that, Scrooge stopped adventuring and became a depressed old miser who pushed everyone away. Even when Beakley brought her granddaughter to live at the mansion with them, he kept her at arms' length. This went on for ten years, becoming more and more of a recluse with each passing year. He never once spoke to Donald or met Della's children during that time. With family having abandoned him, Scrooge swore that family was nothing but trouble and that he didn't need them every time Beakley insisted that he needed to reconnect with them.

Things would've stayed that way had it not been for Donald needing a babysitter so he could go to a job interview. The first meeting was, quite honestly, rough. The boys barraged Scrooge with questions including the rather painful question of why he'd stopped adventuring, so he had them shut up in a dusty room with a bag of marbles. However, Louie saying that he used to be a big deal jabbed at his ego, and he decided to show the boys and everyone that he was no has-been by making a trip to the lost city of Atlantis. However, the boys and Webby unleashing not one but four different ancient evils that he'd kept locked away in his garage resulted in not just him showing the kids what he was capable of but them showing him that they were adventurers in their own right. He decided to take the kids with him to Atlantis in order to retrieve the Jewel of Atlantis. While in the sunken city, the family fought against Flintheart Glomgold, Donald's new boss, and his minions. Not only did they escape with their lives but also the Jewel which they brought back to Duckburg, Scrooge upstaging Glomgold at his own press conference. When Donald's houseboat exploded due to the engine having been left on for at least a day, Scrooge offered to let Donald and the boys live in his mansion which Donald took him up on...though Donald ended up living in the houseboat as he repaired it in his uncle's pool.

Scrooge took the boys and Webby on many adventures following that fateful trip. It was during a failed trip to reach the summit of Neverest that Scrooge learned of Mallardy's fate: the man had starved to death on the mountain due to getting lost because of the portals littered all over the mountain. In Scrooge's eagerness to try and do the impossible, he put the kids in grave danger. Fortunately, Huey talked him down from foolishly wasting all their lives, and Scrooge finally learned to properly walk away when something just couldn't be done.

Scrooge became more mindful of the kids' safety after that. He watched over Huey, Dewey, and Webby while Louie spent time with Donald and Gladstone Gander, Donald's lucky cousin, at Toad Liu Hai's casino in Macaw. He also inspired the people of Toth-Ra's pyramid to rise up and overthrow their tyrannical, mummified leader in order to save Webby and Louie when they'd been separated from the group.

Of course, he wasn't a perfect guardian. After all, he was quite relaxed when his butler Duckworth, raised from the dead on his 150th birthday, scared the boys half to death while the ghost chased the villains invited to the surprise party Huey decided to throw for him despite him not wanting it. He also did slip when his pride as a top golfer was stung by Dewey's natural talent trumping even his decades of skill, nearly getting the children plus Launchpad turned to stone while playing the Druids Cup.

He met up with Goldie again at a museum event of Glomgold's, Glomgold having uncovered the skeleton of the mammoth that had guarded White Agony Plains. (Goldie had survived for so long thanks to a fountain of youth in Wrongway.) Scrooge accompanied Goldie back north alone, both of them disarming various traps they'd laid for each other on the path leading to White Agony Plains. Even though things seemed to be going well, Goldie attempted to distract Scrooge by lighting a trail of gunpowder she'd been making, confident that he'd be able to stop it before the entire cave came down on them. He not only stopped the explosion but convinced a grizzly bear to help him capture Goldie, tying her to the bear's back. As Scrooge tried to figure out where they had to go next, they ended up back at the glacier they'd been frozen in for five years. While they were talking, they heard noise coming from the other side of what they'd thought was a solid wall. Having reached the golden lagoon, Goldie betrayed him a second time, revealing that she'd been working with Glomgold the whole time...though she'd been very irritated with her true partner for following them when she'd told him she'd take care of Scrooge. Scrooge and Goldie fought, but the fight ended abruptly when Goldie fell into the molten gold. Glomgold captured Scrooge, intending to give him the same fate by tying him to the oil well-like pump which he was planning to use to retrieve the liquid gold only Goldie had double-crossed Glomgold as well: She'd had a medallion to protect her from burning so she'd survived the gold, rerouting Glomgold's piping to fill her ship instead of his. Though she left him behind to deal with Glomgold, Scrooge watched her fondly as she left and even kept the token she'd left him in his room back in Duckburg.

Not long after, Webby and Scrooge discovered that Beakley had been kidnapped by Black Heron, the evil spy having survived the lab explosion and wanting not just revenge but also to get Beakley to reveal the formula for the super bouncing juice. Scrooge initially refused to bring Webby along, knowing that it was very likely that he would die during this latest confrontation with Black Heron and not wanting to let his former partner's granddaughter share the same fate. However, Webby snuck aboard the submarine Scrooge was having Launchpad pilot to Black Heron's island. Together, the duo passed through the same traps that Scrooge and Beakley had faced about fifty years before, Scrooge learning more about Webby over the course of it. It made him realize that he had in essence wasted the ten years he could've gotten to know her following his family abandoning him. Unfortunately, the duo ended up captured by Black Heron, the evil spy using Webby as leverage to get Beakley to reveal the formula she'd memorized decades before. Using old SHUSH plans, Scrooge got the message to Webby to drink the juice herself, not only allowing Webby to escape but for her to free Scrooge and to fight Black Heron herself. Meanwhile Scrooge freed Beakley from her cage, the old spy duo working together to save Webby when the power of the juice wore off. Black Heron fell and vanished into the ocean, seeming to die a second time. As they headed home, Scrooge told Webby to call him "Uncle Scrooge", her calling him "Mr. McDuck" up until that point.

It was while on that trip home that Scrooge ended up in Verens.

Personality:
Scrooge is brave, bold, and quite the adrenaline junkie, him enjoying being in the thick of things. However, rather than activities like bungee jumping or hang gliding, Scrooge prefers real danger such as dodging death traps, fighting monsters, and searching for things people believe to be nothing more than fiction. As important as board meetings are to running a business, he'd much rather be out doing something rather than just sitting around talking about how to get others to do it for him.

He has a strong streak of recklessness as a result though it was worse when he was younger. He has no issues risking his own life for some sort of perceived gain either towards his reputation or in filling his Money Bin. However, the kids have been a positive influence in that regard, encouraging him to rein it in for their safety if not his own. This reckless streak gets even worse when his pride comes into play.

Speaking of pride, Scrooge has a lot of it. Very often Scrooge will assure others that he can do something because "I'm Scrooge McDuck". He has a lot of confidence in his experience and the skills he's honed over the past century and a half. This tends to be a double-edged sword in either giving him the courage needed to take a risk or making him overconfident which leads back to his recklessness depending on the situation.

Like his nephew Donald, he also has quite a temper. When backed into a corner, he will often times react in anger, lashing out at whoever put him in that position. While he hasn't struck any members of his family, he will strike objects with other objects (such as the dining room table with his newspaper) to express that anger physically. However, he can say things in a fit of anger that he will deeply regret later.

As can be expected by anyone who's ever heard the name "Scrooge McDuck", he's also greedy and a tightwad. Scrooge takes pride in the fact that he doesn't spend a penny more than he has to and will quite shamelessly do things such as take extra food from a free buffet so that's a little less food he has to buy later. When the money in his Bin somehow came to life and formed a giant money shark with legs (him not knowing it was Magica's "niece" Lena's doing per her orders), his immediate concern was in losing that money with the damage being done to Duckburg by it coming second. However, in this particular case it might not just be greed as a motivating factor but also sentimentality: The money in Scrooge's Bin he earned himself and he knows the story behind each piece in his collection.

However, at his core, Scrooge is a family man even though he has no wife and children of his own. He loves all his nephews plus his honorary niece very deeply and would risk life and limb to save them if they were in trouble. However, this is a double-edged sword for him given that as happy as family makes him, they also have the power to hurt him the worst. He spent ten years in a deep depression after not just the loss of Della but the loss of Donald and Della's unhatched children. Scrooge needs family in his life, the color in essence draining out of everything when they're gone.

While Scrooge is capable of being soft and gentle, it's a bit hard for him to express it at times. He doesn't really understand children (him asking on first meeting the boys if kids still played with marbles, for example), likely because he had to step up and start working at such a young age. He also seems to keep his vulnerabilities as much to himself as possible such as not telling Goldie for a hundred years that "you're Scrooge McDuck" wasn't always a good enough reason for her to throw him under the proverbial bus. Most likely, this is partially because of Scrooge having suffered so many betrayals over his long lifetime.

One positive thing that can be said of Scrooge is that he's an honest sort in that he plays by the rules. This is something else he takes pride in, making sure to add to his proclamation that he's "tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties" that he made his money square. As a result, he greatly disdains others who would try to bend the rules or outright cheat their way to the top.

Abilities:

Tougher Than the Toughies: Despite being 150, Scrooge's body isn't showing signs of slowing down. He's incredibly strong, able to open and close the massive door leading to the main vault of the Money Bin by hand unassisted along with other feats of strength like pushing aside a boulder by himself or hanging onto the back of a dragon attempting to throw him off. He can also support his own weight while gripping onto the shaft of his cane while using its crook to swing himself somewhere. He's able to sword fight and use other weaponry such as a crossbow. He can also run reasonably fast and is quite agile for an old man. He also has abnormally high endurance, able to take a beating from that aforementioned dragon yet still being able to maintain his grip for at least a few extra minutes.

Smarter Than the Smarties: Not only does Scrooge have a strong head for business, he's also quite intelligent to boot. He knows several languages including ancient ones and the ability to speak to some animals. (He could speak bear after all.) He appears to have a strong knowledge of the occult as well given that he knew so much about The Great Book when even well-prepared-and-informed Beakley had known nothing about it and how he was able to turn Magica's spell around. He's also quite clever, convincing Liu Hai to take Donald instead of Gladstone after Donald won the challenge to free the family from the luck demon's grasp, knowing that Donald's bad luck would likely encourage Liu Hai to free him rather quickly.

Money Affinity: Scrooge can recognize the source of every treasure in his Money Bin. He also is able to dive into and swim through money as if it were water when others would likely crack their skulls open.

Highly Experienced: Scrooge has acquired a variety of skills over the years due to all of his past jobs. Some of them include shining shoes, treasure hunting, prospecting, and spy work. He also seems to have a rather good riding skill since he was able to ride the same bear he ended up tying Goldie to and the aforementioned dragon.

Alignment: While his adventurous spirit would likely make someone expect him to be bound to Thras, Scrooge is actually bound to Peromei. Scrooge had enough hope from a young age to risk going to another country all on his own in order to pursue his fortune even though he likely didn't succeed in making that fortune until he was well into his thirties at the earliest. However, he also spent his past ten years in depression and despair following Della's disappearance and Donald's abandonment of him. Even now, he's holding onto the hope that he can at least be able to make things right with all his nephews...or as much as he can given he can't bring the boys' mother back.

Other:

I'd like for Scrooge to still have his Number One Dime on its quadriamond chain. However, rather than it actually containing Magica's imprisoned body, the Verens version of the Dime only shows her face where it should be. That way if a Magica wants to app in, she doesn't have to be restricted to only being a shadow. When he's canon-updated through "The Shadow War" in the future, the face will revert back to the Liberty head just as it does in canon.

Also, Scrooge is shown to limp on occasion during the show. Given it's inconsistent, I figure that the limp itself is likely from a bad past injury that never healed quite right but it tends towards being psychosomatic, getting worse the worse he feels emotionally.

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉

General Sample: Nothing wrong with a little domesticity from time-to-time.

Emotion Sample:
"Oh, I am not liking the look of this at all," Scrooge muttered.

Giant mystical mazes ordinarily didn't bother him. Usually, he'd be the first to start working on trying to solve the giant mystical maze. Mazes always protected something valuable at the center. When you didn't have the means to create a high-tech security system, a maze filled with traps always worked in a pinch.

This maze, however, didn't seem to end. If anything, he had the distinct impression despite the logical system of placing his hand on one wall and not removing it as he walked, he'd yet to hit a dead end of any sort despite all the twists and turns he'd already made. He wasn't so arrogant to believe he'd somehow picked the exact right direction on the first shot either, experience having taught him that he should've made at least one mistake by now.

It grew steadily more difficult to walk as time went on. His limbs felt unresponsive, and his bad leg began to ache something fierce, forcing him to rely more and more on his cane. The world grew darker and more grey as the stone walls changed to plaster and wood paneling like from the mansion.

...The mansion!

He stopped, now seeing that the path ahead looked far too familiar. Not because he'd been this way before in the maze, no, but because it looked like one of the many hallways in McDuck Manor. Only it was dusty and empty, his breathing the only disruption in the all-consuming silence.

He hated that silence, for this wasn't just a copy of his mansion; this was a copy of his mansion as it had been for ten years.

"So...this is the trap, eh?" Scrooge asked aloud, hating how his words echoed twice before the silence swallowed them whole. "Not your traditional maze at all despite outward appearances."

But even as he thought this, the oppressive silence made him lean heavily on his cane, feeling every one of his one hundred and fifty years. He kept walking down the featureless hallway, more details coming into view as he struggled to remember that this place wasn't real and that it was his own hopeless memories being projected all around him.

"They came back to me," he reminded himself, hoping that Peromei could hear him through the crystal hanging around his neck on a chain separate from his Dime. "Della's gone...but Donald and the boys came back. You should hear the mansion now. It's full of noise; I love it. I like tombs but hated living in one. There's life in it now though."

His voice grew softer with each word as doubt clawed away at his insides as nothing but silence answered him. They had left him once before. What was to stop them from doing it again? The boys hadn't known he'd been related to them at the beginning. They likely didn't know his role in what happened to their mother...

"It's going to be okay," he told himself, gripping his Dime tightly. "They're safe and sound back home. And this time...this time I won't make the same mistakes. I'll keep them safe. Nothing bad is going to happen to them!"

He clung to that hope with a death grip, the same grip he'd held onto the hope that one day he'd earn his fortune and be able to return home. He was Scrooge McDuck, and he was nothing if not stubborn. He refused to just give in to the despair again when it wasn't even real this time.

One of the doors along the hallway opened. He took a deep breath to calm his heartbeat and walked through it and into the unknown.


Questions: I'm good!