User Name/Nick: KaOS
User DW: known
AIM/IM: also this
E-mail: this too
Other Characters: Rorschach, Sabretooth

Character Name: "Sarge", real name Sergeant Asher Mahonin
Series: Doom (the movie, not the game, with the movie novelization incorporated into it for backstory and character development purposes)
Age: 33
From When?: after getting infected with chromosome 24, fighting Reaper, and then getting shoved through the portal and exploding with Olduvai.

Inmate/Warden: INMATE -- while he generally seems like a fairly decent guy for the bulk of the movie, the fact that chromosome 24 affects him the way it does (that is, turns him into a monster once he's infected), not to mention some of the questionable choices he makes around that time, points him in this direction. Sarge is the Ultimate Marine, loyal to his superiors and his men to a fault, but it's fairly apparent towards the end that it can be to the detriment of innocents, that he has very little regard for those who get swept up in the darker side of what they do. He accepts the mission under the basic pretense that they're going to eliminate the threat "with extreme prejudice", that is kill everybody and everything who might be a threat, which he later chooses to interpret as "everyone's a threat" even in the face of fairly compelling evidence that it's really not the case. A case could, theoretically, be made that he's only acting in what he believes are the best interests of the people planetside, that he is firmly convinced that the only way to ensure the infection doesn't spread is to kill everyone who stepped foot there; it's clearly what he seems to think at the time, or at least in the same vein of what he tells the remaining members of his squad. Except he tells one of them to kill a room full of people who are clearly not infected, and then shoots him for insubordination when he refuses. So...the words might sound reasonable in context, but his intentions aren't necessarily in the right place.

There's also the matter of "chromosome 24 turns him into a monster," which the movie fairly solidly establishes means he's a terrible and violent person under the swagger and charisma and ooh-rah attitude because he has the warrior gene and that makes him a Bad Person. Apparently.
Item: n/a

Abilities/Powers: At baseline, Sarge's only ability is being a Really Good Marine. He's as strong as you would expect a man of his size and build to be, and as fast as you would expect. He's proficient with just about every weapon you could put in his hands as well as a few hand to hand combat disciplines, has enough basic medical training to competently manage a patient in the field, and is accomplished at managing and co-ordinating teams in military settings. He's good with machines/computers but not exceptionally so, intelligence is about average, and his real aptitude is weapons so that "proficient" mentioned above really translates to "intimately familiar with standard US military arms, plus whatever others he can get his hands on, and is a really good shot".

Except he also comes from the end of the movie, after he's been infected, which makes things a little different.

For the purposes of the game and his place in it, upon his arrival he'll be stripped of any enhancements gained from chromosome 24. Ordinarily it imbues the infected with superhuman speed, reflexes, strength, agility, and healing, but in his case it also brings with it a complete breakdown of morality and degeneration into your standard zombie drives of "kill and infect all the things" just with some added intelligence.

...honestly the movie can't seem to really decide if it wants to explain the monsters and how infection affects the host with science or religion and seems to try to tread the line between both, with varying levels of success; Reaper manages to get it under control and take advantage of only the good side effects because he's a "good person" in spite of all the things he's done with RRTS, while another member of the team, Goat, manages enough presence of mind and morality during the change to kill himself again to prevent it from taking full hold, a couple scientists go whole hog without stopping go, and Sarge manages to mostly hold it together until the end with only increasingly violent and morally questionable behavior until the actual change at the very end. In order to smooth over the kinks in the movie's explanation, and to put canon a little more in line with the original source canon, I'm going with the stricter interpretation of "chromosome 24 turns bad people into monsters and good people into supermen"; this also gives me something of an interesting litmus test to play with should a warden decide to have the chromosome re-unlocked, since it then makes the effects dependent upon how much progress Sarge has made in his rehabilitation.

Personality: Sarge is, at his core, loyal. A Protector. He wants what's best for the people around him, wants to keep the most people safe that he can. It isn't that he's an entirely bad guy; he tries to keep Reaper from going to the compound because he knows it will probably be difficult for him on a personal level, tries to keep Portman and his ignorant and offensive comments and opinions under control, tries to ensure the innocents get somewhere safe (at least at the beginning). RRTS is, generally, comprised of a collection of really accomplished soldiers and the bottom of the barrel of humanity, morality-wise, men who either have nowhere else to go in society or who really truly believe in the work they do. But that doesn't make them all bad, doesn't mean they're all immoral, violent sociopaths or moral degenerates.

For the first half of the movie Sarge slots pretty solidly into the more altruistic categories; he approaches the mission with a determined focus because there are lives at stake, shows concern for the well-being of his squad, treats those around him with respect (for a given value) and decency (comparatively, anyway), is nothing but professional. And okay, so he's more than a little rough around the edges, so he barks orders and snarls at his men when they protest, so he outlines the situation in about the bluntest and most callous ways possible and curses them out from time to time or implies they're cowards when they balk, but that's part of his job too. Keeping them on track, making sure they've all got their heads where they need to be, keeping them focused. RRTS is a rough post, you have to be able to count on the rest of your team to pull their weight and do what they need to do, and if you need to knock them around a little to keep them focused on the mission instead of shaking in their boots, if you need to take a shot at their fortitude to remind them of the stakes, well. That's the culture. That's the job. He takes his job seriously when not all of the squad does. He is the one who shoulders the responsibility, the one who decides which missions they can handle and which ones they can't. He is steadfast and confident, sure of his actions and willing and able to make the decisions others can't. Make the calls that are unpleasant because they need to be made, takes on the blame to spare others.

Except this isn't the whole of it.

Yes, it's true, he does have a fair bit of regard for the people under his command, and some measure of affection for them, if halting and formal in most cases. Reaper and he seem to have a level of camaraderie that goes beyond that, a friendship that's mostly only hinted at sidelong, in the amount of voiced concerns and the fact that he seems to know more about him than his position necessarily requires, in the more relaxed demeanor he allows around him; he's a confidant at the very least, more likely an actual friend, such as the job allows. He appears invested in Reaper's well-being over and over, from telling him to take the leave he's supposed to at the beginning, to checking in on him throughout the mission, to subtly intimidating another marine into avoiding asking about things that Reaper would either prefer not be made known or would likely not approve of. ...Of course, there are certain elements of this that could just as easily fall under the header of "not the time, not the place" and a general interest in keeping his squad around, however he doesn't appear to hold as much personal interest in some of the other members. But the relevance here is that he's capable of making friends, of recognizing the need for them even in the sharply defined constraints of position he seems to construct for himself. He can be charming and pleasant, if sparing with his words and abrasive in his demeanor, because he has a job to do, a rank to fill, which brings with it a certain level of necessary distance between him and his command. He's dependable and a solid, constant presence, makes a point to follow through when he makes a promise because a man is only as good as his word. As good as how surely he can be counted on, both in and out of battle. He loves his job, loves his country, willingly takes dangerous missions other branches won't because he knows his people are capable. He takes pride in this knowledge, pride in being able to shape recruits into something just as deadly and just as specialized. He defines himself as his job and shapes everything else accordingly.

Except then there's Olduvai to factor in. There's the fact that when the infection started to spread measurably into the civilian population his initial course of action was to kill scientists and civilians rather than only quarantine them, to wipe all of them out rather than separate the infected from the uninfected. Even after they pinpointed the vector, the idea that it was only the ones that were bitten that were a threat, and even then not always, he continued to treat them as if they were all infected already, going so far as to shoot and kill a member of his team because he refused to follow through on the orders. His loyalty to a cause is complete, which is all well and good until it's followed through to its conclusion. He decides on a course of action and follows through if it kills him, except they aren't always the best courses of action. They are the ones he thinks will accomplish the goal with the most efficiency; admittedly yes. Wanting to contain the threat completely, ensure none of the infected make it to Earth, is a laudable goal. His dedication is to be commended, if taken by itself. But his methods, his decision that it necessitated mass murder of non-combatants in cold blood, is not.

This is where the disconnect lies. He is, quite simply, a soldier, through and through. A man who follows orders from men higher on the chain of command than he without stopping to consider them. Without deciding for himself if they are sound or necessary, or even morally or ethically right. He follows them to the letter; he gets the order to scrub a research facility, he does, and nothing but death can prevent him from completing it. It isn't his job to think about it, is his justification; they aren't paid to think, to play philosopher. They are violent men, they are trained to be so, and it is their job to unleash that violence on whoever it is their bosses decide requires it. To assume it is necessary, and so rationally he knows they're really just mercenaries, guns hired to whoever pays and the missions aren't always the cleanest, but it is what they do.

If the situation is manageable, he doesn't cling quite so tightly. He can joke and relax, for a given value, can entrust pieces of the mission to others without much problem. Can pass command along to a member of the squad instead of assuming more direct responsibility for the mission itself, can take a step back and consider the pieces and how to proceed. This is the way he responds to the situation in the first part of the movie, with a calm demeanor and surety of purpose, with a reasonably open mind and a rational outlook to things. He asks about the situation, listens when it's explained, and proceeds with the new information worked in. As long as he believes he has some measure of control over the situation, as long as things operate according to how he expects, as long as things are still in their favor, he's fine. Rational. Reasonable. He's a stickler for protocol, for doing things By the Book, and so the Book for the RRTS is a little grittier than standard, but it's still the guidelines for how he operates, particularly in new situations.

It's only when things start to spiral out of his control that he begins to behave erratically. When things don't go his way, when the losses start to accumulate and the situation changes, the rules change in ways he doesn't and cannot anticipate, that calm and rational demeanor disintegrates. Becomes harsher and colder, all of his focus bent towards survival. Finishing the mission. No matter what the cost, no matter whether it follows human decency or not. There is nothing but the mission for him at that point, nothing but the orders, and he falls back on that as guiding directives because he does not handle loss of control well. It's a means of trying to re-establish it, find a way to deal with the situation on his terms. Marines are trained to adapt to any situation that they find themselves in, to roll with the punches and keep going, and this is his way of doing that; buckle down, focus on the goal to the exclusion of everything else, do whatever it takes to complete it. Useful, when it gets down to it, because this is really just an extension of his personality the rest of the time, a need to follow through and be dependable, to keep whatever promise he makes regardless of what roadblocks come his way, just cranked up to eleven. But push him far enough, throw him into a no-win scenario where there are no good options, where everything's gone to hell in a handbasket and it's just a matter of trying to survive, and he forgets that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed. That sometimes you just can't follow through on what you promised, no matter how hard you try, and it's not a challenge to figure out how when that means breaking every other rule in the book.  In these situations he can't be reasoned with, no matter how hard you try, his obstinacy is so great; there is no way but his, and while ordinarily this might be his perspective in general, when he gets like that there's no way to get past it that doesn't involve a thrown punch at the very least, if not worse.  He won't budge.

Because his men, his command, are his responsibility and his alone, and failure, in his eyes, is not an option.

When he got infected, the influence of the C24 only ramped this up further; it's laid out in the novelization as not so much an imperative, a guarantee, as a temptation. A voice in your head that tries to talk you into following the darker impulses inside everyone. That tries to monopolize on weakness and fear and violent tendencies and push the infected into acting on them, in turn accepting the side of it that turns people into monsters. In Sarge's case, took advantage of his ingrained habit of obeying orders, of following the directives of whoever outranks him, of the stress of the situation pushing him past rational responses and the adrenaline in his system keying him up for a fight; he'd already started killing civilians and scientists who probably hadn't been infected by that point because of the potential for them being a threat, it didn't take much to push him into being sure they were, that Grimm's sister was, that Grimm was, and if it ever dawned on him that maybe he was too, by the time he realized it was already too late to go back, if that had ever been an option in the first place. It's likely he would have succumbed even if he hadn't been in that situation; the indicators are all there, from his taste for violence to his short temper to threats of harm (he bullies one of the men into dropping an inquiry about the exact nature of the threat at Olduvai by threatening to either kill him or punch him out, comments which the marine in question takes seriously), but the state of things when it happened just pushed him there quicker.

Barge Reactions: As mentioned above, Sarge doesn't really handle new and different situations with rules he can't anticipate well. The inhabitants he can identify as "normal", or at the very least humanoid, he'll handle the same as he does everything else, with a stoic and measured regard and a respectfully friendly exterior. Anybody who demonstrates a level of weirdness he'll be more receptive to than he would have been before Olduvai, because he's started to have his sense of the world expanded, but he'll be suspicious and critical as a default, slow to warm to the idea of the new Normal.

His initial response to the whole thing will be defining it in terms he knows. Prison is a familiar enough concept, even if it's not one he's ever experienced personally, the general infrastructure close enough to military for him to fall into without a problem. He'll most likely choose to view the whole thing as akin to a sentence by court martial, because this too is a context he understands; his behavior did not conform to what is acceptable and appropriate, so he needs to do his time before he can get back to his job. ...granted, there's the whole Olduvai situation to reconcile, which will take some doing, but the general idea of the Barge and how it works is within his general realm of understanding. The Admiral will make for some interesting conversations, given the longstanding Marine-Navy love-hate relationship, but he'll get past that too.

The biggest hurdle for him will be the floods and breaches, the periods of time when everything changes and there's no possibility of any kind of control to be had over the situation. This will prompt the same irrational buckling-down of behaviors, after the fact anyway, as Olduvai did, with about just as healthy of fall-out, except there won't be any orders to fall back on which should make things even more difficult.

Path to Redemption: The main crux of Sarge's problems are his anger problems (or at least his extreme willingness to resort to violence as problem solving), his commitment to authority, his wholehearted belief that those above him in the chain of command know what they are doing and it is not his place to question them, and his inability to deal with the stress of a situation that is out of his control without falling back on it. He is the Ultimate Soldier, loyal and unquestioning to a fault, and it is this trait that was, ultimately, his undoing. It isn't that he is uncaring; he takes on the mission because he cares, because he wants to do the right thing and prevent the threat from spreading. His heart is in the right place, and unlike some of the others in his squad he initially joined the military because he wanted to do good and protect his country. Except in his dedication to that, somewhere along the way he forgot to think for himself, forgot that it's just as important to question decisions as it is to carry them out. That there's a certain degree of decency and ethics that are important to maintain in order to avoid becoming the very thing you're fighting against, and it's this lapse that ultimately pushed him down the path he ended up on by the end of the film.

In order to prevent history from repeating itself, Sarge needs to learn and accept that it's okay to question authority, that just because they have a higher rank it doesn't make them infallible. That just because someone gives you an order to kill if necessary it's not a suggestion, or an expectation, and that situations change, and what seemed necessary at the beginning might not be later on. That it's okay to take a step back and reconsider, that it's just as important to think about the ramifications of your actions as it is to carry out what you're told to do. That sometimes the better path is rejecting those instructions. And, above all, that the answer to a situation beyond your control is not to try to find a way to force it to conform. That sometimes things happen and it isn't anybody's fault, really, that you can't predict everything and it isn't healthy to try to accept responsibility for those things, or to try to fix them by punching or shooting them into submission.

Coming to these realizations will give him the tools he needs to fight the darker side of the genetic augmentation he's been given; it's described in the novelization as an impulse towards violence, something that can be worked past if the infected is strong enough not to give into temptation. As things stand right now he's incapable of it, he doesn't have a stable enough independent moral compass or sense of identity beyond his place in the military machine to do anything but operate within that context, but once he's learned some measure of autonomy and that it's okay to operate as something separate and that disobeying orders isn't the end of the world and shouldn't be a deterrent for critical thinking, he should be able to.

In terms of what he needs in a Warden, the answer is much less clear-cut.  Anyone younger, anyone most immediately identified as "inexperienced" regardless of actual capability or experience level, will probably be dismissed almost immediately for the simple fact that he won't be able to see them as competent right off the bat.  That's not to say he won't change his mind, particularly if they are able to prove themselves in his eyes, only that it will be something of an uphill climb until he recognizes that they might actually know what they're doing.  He'll be coming into this with a set idea of how it's going to go, with a pre-conceived impression that it's going to be set up like a military prison, filled with other hyper-competent military types, and, well.  That's not especially close to the way things are.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; all Sarge really needs is someone to drag him out of his shell, to try to instill some kind of independence in him and some better coping mechanisms rather than someone only putting him on a different schedule with different expectations and a stricter set of rules to adhere to.  Other soldier-types who have overcome similar issues themselves, or are at least familiar with working with people who do, would probably work best, since they're in the best position to get through to him, but they're not the only type who would.  So long as the warden is an Understanding type with a pretty firmly ingrained moral code themselves, so long as they're patient and have some kind of back-up plan if they're not directly capable of getting him under control if it comes to it, so long as they're capable of out-stubborning him (or at least outlasting his streak), so long as they aren't easily intimidated, they should get along just fine, sooner or later.

History: For a general overview of the movie, please slide on over here.

In terms of pre-movie, there's really not much to go off of, but given his full-throttle gung-ho "SEMPER FI" attitude it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume he comes from a pro-military, pro-Marine family in which service to your country was pretty heavily emphasized and seen as something to aspire to. It's likely he's a career Marine, jumped in with both feet right out of high school and worked his way up, and military life is pretty much the only thing he's ever known. Given that he's got some rank, specifically a rank which can only be earned rather than given on commission, implying he's good enough at what he does to get multiple promotions and be put in charge of groups of people, but the chromosome turned him into a monster, he likely has a history of violent tendencies that's largely been kept in check due to the regimented lifestyle the military provides.

Sample Journal Entry: Thrown at the Voice Testing Meme here!
Sample RP: There's a rage burning through him. A growl in his throat, something inhuman, and Sarge has never been a slouch in terms of intimidating sounds but that one, he can guarantee, has never been one of them. It's the roar of something damned, something enraged and uncontained, and there is a small part of him, somewhere, that is afraid, that knows it is wrong, this whole thing is, but the majority of him only echoes its fury. It was never supposed to be this bad, it was never supposed to get this far out of control, they were supposed to handle it, and now there are six dead marines and a facility full of dead scientists and civilians and all he's got to show for their efforts is the taste of blood in his mouth and a rage that consumes everything. This is how to fix it, this is how to end it, teasing fingers of consciousness that promise he can solve it so long as he agrees. Accepts. They are his orders, nothing needs to change, he will only have the tools. Be a part of a bigger mission, the one that had always existed.

By the time Reaper catches up, the tide's already starting to turn, body starting to twist and change with the loosened resistance. Raw, all-encompassing rage licks at the corners of his mind, pries under reason and logic, something that screams for violence and blood, for pulsing organs and chaos, and it borrows his voice, fracturing pieces of his mind further, bit by bit as it wears him down, but by the end of the fight there's nothing left of him, not really.

The next thing he's aware of, really, consciously certain of, is the stiff mattress under his back, the grey ceiling over his head, and the sensation of being stretched, like someone else was wearing his skin, walking around in it. Which is ridiculous. He's in the infirmary, he thinks. Something in the air, a hallucination; he remembers going back through the Ark, like watching a movie through the eyes of one of the characters, remembers the grenade thrown after him. Remembers the explosion. Except people don't live through that, he's seen what happens when you're within a few feet of one when it goes.

Maybe it was a dud. Maybe he just expected the bang, maybe it was a dud or a percussion grenade, maybe UAC had a cure for whatever the fuck they'd created up there and he was in the infirmary while they got the paperwork together to court martial him because you don't shoot your own men for sedition. No matter how much they're jeopardizing the mission by losing their spine. But he can accept that. So long as none of it got to Earth, he can accept it.

He glances around the room, and is both relieved and unsettled to see his own quarters. It confirms part of what he suspected, but doesn't answer the rest. Not unless the whole damn thing was a hallucination, which is always a possibility. He reaches up to probe his neck, checking for the half-remembered bite, but there's nothing there.

Except his gear's torn up, more than it should be against the standard firefight. There's places it's been slit open, stained around the edges, but there's no sign of injury underneath. He's covered in partially dried blood, streaked from sweat and necessity, and gore that's too sticky and slimy to have come from a human, blood that's got dark, almost coffee ground-like chunks in it. He remembers something latching onto him but there's no sign it ever did, and you don't hallucinate something you can remember that vividly.

Gotta do the debrief, he thinks, like he's in a haze he can't quite work his way out of, mind clicking away at slotting the rest of the pieces into place. And it's probably not his job anymore, probably not his squad anymore, not that there's much left of it, but it's what he focuses on because the rest of it is just so damn crazy.

So he gets to his feet, strips off the vest and blouse, finds a clean shirt, but when he turns to make his way into the bathroom to get the gore off, there's no door. The wall's still there, the space where it should be is still there, but the door itself isn't.

Right.

He pulls the shirt on over his head anyway, because partially clean is better than nothing; he'll use the public showers. Worry about disappearing doors later.

But when he opens the door to the rest of the Squad 6 bunker, there's a hallway he doesn't recognize.

Just what the hell happened after Olduvai?

Special Notes: BECAUSE I FEEL FULL DISCLOSURE IS NEVER A BAD THING. The way I'm approaching the extra genetics boost is that the Admiral has deactivated it in a manner not unlike a dormant virus. It's still there, because it's altered genetics and therefore you can't really pull it back out (or rather, the goal is to get him to a point where it WON'T turn him into a monster), he only can't access the side effects unless it's re-activated. However, because it's still there he's still a carrier, and therefore if he were to, say, swap blood with somebody, or get bodily fluids (including saliva) in an open cut where it can gain access to the bloodstream (which is the super important part), there's a possibility of the other person becoming infected as well. For Barge purposes I will suggest limiting the potential for a BARGE WIDE DOOMMONSTER PLAGUE by proposing that directly infected parties will only keep the effects for a week, and are not infectious themselves, if this sounds reasonable to you. It's also worth repeating that people who are actually decent human beings and can resist the siren call of their darker natures will ONLY get the superhuman aspect, it's only the people who can't who turn into ravenous monsters also.