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characters:independent:prigwilkins

Prig Wilkins

'Part-Time' Prig Wilkins is a player character played by Hollander.

Prig Wilkins
Species & Gender: Male Mutants
Date of Birth: YE 14
Organisation: Shasta No Sekai
Occupation: Pretty Awful Mech Pilot
Current Placement: Strays

Preferred Plots:

Physical Description

Quick Summary: Anthropomorphic wolf fella with a walker and bad legs. Gray fur, black eyes, black fingernails, scars here and there.

The most current developments in Prig’s mutation-riddled body have left him with an overall theme. He’s ‘wolfy’. Covered in dusk-gray fur, his body is roughly humanoid. He has five fingers on relatively normal furry hands, thick black fingernails, a canine face with black eyes, a thin waist, and a pair of wobbly digitigrade legs. His spine curves inhumanly from base to neck, leaving him with a hunched look, and the way his legs work (or fail to work) leaves him far shorter than he would be if he could stretch out; five feet and ten inches to the tips of his ears is his height when standing normally. Prig wears whatever castoff clothes the can manage to tape together; holey jackets, dumpster shirts, a pair of those pants that zip off into shorts, a boot that's been tied on with baling wire.

Prig’s legs are particularly notable because they really suck and don’t work worth a damn. The mutations inspired by his wrecked DNA led to a canine’s digitigrade legs, which might seem cool at first, but those same mutations failed to actually adapt those same legs for a humanoid walking gait. Instead, they’re basically just long wolf’s legs haphazardly turned downward on his hips. The way they bend, combined with Prig’s own failing ability to balance himself, has made the last ten years a stumbling and awkward hell. He started out using a cane made from an old bone which he did NOT gnaw on from time to time. He upgraded to a wooden cane, and then to a very cool and not embarrassing aluminum walker, complete with a pair of tennis balls on the back legs which he also did NOT gnaw on. The walker he currently uses collapses down into a cane. Over the years of the advancement of his transformation, Prig has manufactured or recobbled hydraulic mechanical exoskeletons to help him walk around. These dumpster-dived devices sometimes work for a short amount of time before crapping out or failing spectacularly. Still, he keeps trying, seeking some way to work through his uncomfortable disability.

Personality

Prig’s been through some stuff, like most Mutants. He’s a reasonable fellow, but he tends to approach situations new and old with acerbic sarcasm. He’s rarely outright rude, particularly because he’s not about to win any fistfights with a walker in his hands and an award-winning case of vertigo, but he can scrap a little if he needs to. He’s slow to trust, but he’ll back up a proven ally with his life, such as it is. Prig’s done enough strange, boring, gross, demeaning things that most of it doesn’t faze him too badly, but he still finds a kind of excitement in new and unusual things, and this includes people. Every new fellow mutant is a new ball of strange thread worth unraveling. He has a kind of bravery, in the way that a person who knows he's going to die from a body-wasting disease can be brave.

History

The Prig of today is a much better lad than the Prig who first grew up in the deepest bowls of Neplesian hives. Born in YE 14 to a soon-to-be-absent mutant mother and a never-met-never-seen mutant father, Prig started developing some surprisingly cool mutations of his own; sharp teeth, pointed ears, and a bit of enhanced strength. Instead of getting mugged, Prig was the one doing the mugging. Instead of being a shivering homeless wreck blanketed with trash, Prig was a homeless wreck that was warm in his covering of fur… and trash. When his face started changing, he started to develop a keen sense of smell. He enjoyed this new ability for about a year, before a tumor or some other kind of growth actually cut off his sense of smell entirely, leaving him with none whatsoever by the age of fourteen. His sense of balance went down the drain, probably due to some kind of imbalance or obstruction in his brain and he’d get dizzy spells out of nowhere. Things got even better for Prig when his legs started bending in creative ways. If there’s one thing you don’t want your legs to be, it’s creative.

The wolf-like Prig began earning his nickname, ‘Part-Time’, during his teen years. Being a stick-up man or a burglar was tough when you were hobbling around with a bone-cane, so he started taking on odd jobs to get by. He was bad at most of them, and terrible at the rest. Excluding his first dozen jobs where he showed up late, stole or but customers, he really did try at others, but bad luck, physical handicaps and a general inability to be stable. It would be exhaustive to list each little job he’s tried and failed at over the years, so a few of the most notable can be cherry-picked to give an idea of the breadth of his experience. He’s been, in no particular order…

A Cooking-Grease Recycler
A Paper Taster
An Ice-Cube-Tray-Bender
Hose-Down Technician at Ulceric Al’s All You Can Eat Raw Chicken Buffet
A Substitute Teacher for a Public School
A Substitute Vocalist for a Band
A Substitute Sex Worker
A Leech-Feeder
An Organ Grinder (Not the musical kind)
A Freelance Compost Diver
A Paint Stripper
A Painted Stripper (You read that right)
A Shampoo Salvager
A Worm Grunter

And many more. Ask about them, the answer will NOT be boring.

A few years ago, Prig was suffering from yet another in a long string of medical disasters, and after laying half-conscious in a puddle of muck for a few days he had the good fortune to get picked up by some organ harvesters. These kindly surgeons snatched one of his kidneys before realizing that Prig had a degenerative disease which made all of his organs completely worthless. Chances were high that he was destined for a slow and wasting death in about eight years (five years as of the present YE 46). They had the decency to sew him back up ‘for practice’, dumping him AND his removed kidney in a pile in a back-alley along with a written note that said, effectively, ‘Sorry, you’re going to die in maybe eight years, you have Guppy’s Disease’. Even the name of the disease he was going to die from couldn’t sound cool.

Eventually, by positioning himself under the dripping condensation on a drain pipe to rehydrate himself and by scarfing on rats who were lured by the scent of his dried out kidney, Prig worked on getting his strength back up. The alley was trash-filled and wretched, but on the wall across from where he lay on most days there was a poster. It was a wanted ad, basically. Red and yellow and black, with big bold letters. “Mutants Wanted”. He was a mutant. “Strays Are Hiring”. Hiring usually meant some kind of compensation. He then saw an even smaller bit of text. “Terror Wolves of Freehold”. Well damn, he was pretty wolf-y. Prig knew, just from social osmosis, about THE mutant. The Idol. The Psychopomp. The InterNep Superstar and the commander of those very same Terror Wolves. It was a long-shot, surely, but… What else was he going to do? He was already kind of a mech, right, piloting his own Gods-forsaken legs around. Why not give it a shot? Maybe they’d let him clean the toilets in exchange for some not-so-moldy-bread.

He showed up in the Slug War engagement, teaming up with the gang to take down a Pretty Damned Big Bug.1)

After Slug War and back on the Avatar of Clang, Prig was inflicted with the presence of Yamog in the lounge he was trying to build. They got to know each other, sorta.2)

Social Connections

Prig is connected to:

  • His Mom? Sorta? She wasn't around much to begin with, and he lost track of them by age five.
  • His dad is unknown. Mom said he had green eyes? Or did she say he had three eyes? Who knows.
  • Yamog is a… friend? Enemy? Frenemy? Fellow mech pilot, at least.
  • Your character? Their name could be here!

Inventory & Finance

A sweet aluminum four-legged walker that folds down into a cane. Has tennis balls on the back two legs sometimes.

A Fairy Ai named 'Gunk' that is dour, sarcastic, and dreary.

A super-cool SnS Power Glove.

What Others Know About Prig

At this point in February 2024, Prig's only served in one mission (Slug War). Other mech pilots might've seen his Lancer in combat or they might've spotted him acting like a janitor aboard the Avatar of Clang. He doesn't have a reputation to speak of yet, or a callsign.

Prior to joining the Strays, you might've met this chill, messed up mutant somewhere in Nepleslia's worst slums and hives. He's worked hundreds of strange jobs here and there, so it's possible you might've met!

Writing With This Character

Prig's writing opportunities are pretty limited to his fellow Strays, and to his past living in Nepleslia's slums. But he has spent some time on the internep, so maybe he was a net-friend! An internep pen pal. Why not?

OOC Information

  • Character approval thread link Here.
  • Prig's speaking color is Vivid Tangerine: ffa089
  • This article was created on 2024/01/19 10:27 using the namespace template.

In the case hollander becomes inactive:

  • Can this character be used as an NPC by a GM or FM? YES
  • Can this character be adopted after I've been gone for a year? YES
Character Data
Character OwnerHollander
Character StatusActive Player Character
PlotsStrays
Harm Limitinjury or death

Quality:
characters/independent/prigwilkins.txt · Last modified: 2024/04/23 21:03 by hollander