Lowell Whitman
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Beast Hunterheart |
|---|---|
| Court | Autumn Court •• |
| Freehold | Ring of Roses |
| Player | Edward Boudreaux |
Player - Edward Boudreaux (US2002022444)
NOTE : Without express permission from the player, the information contained on and linked from this page is classified as OOC Knowledge.
NOTE : Everything on this page is subject to change prior to the Chronicle Go-Live date of 01-Jan-08.
NOTE : This character is registered to the Atlanta Lost VSS, "In Media Res".
Contents |
This page still very much in flux.
Overview
Alias(es): Lowell Whitman, Repo-man, Foirgim
Real Name: Eugene Pallin
Age:
Concept: Pinocchio, if Pinocchio liked tattoos and hard liquor.
Entitlement: None
Physical description: Lowell is rough around the edges. Skeevy even. A canine Beast, Lowell displays sharp teeth and a feral nature.
Mien Lowell has dark red eyes and canine fangs. There's a tangible, predatory aura to him. Babies cry and animals snarl or hiss when he comes near.
Relevant Mechanics:
Character Information
Known History
Basic Timeline:
1952
- Eugene Pallin born.
1974
- Eugene and friends are taken across the Hedge.
1974 to 2004
- Eugene is trained as a hunting hound in Lord Luath's kennels. It is a time of instinct, violence, and blind loyalty to an uncaring master.
2004
- September - Eugene returns to the mortal world. Spends time at the farm getting adjusted and learning what's happened to him.
2005
- January - Eugene selects the name Lowell Whitman as his alias to avoid his past with the law.
- March - Learns of the local freehold. Is convinced to aid in the battle against the Unseen Beasts. Joins Spring Court.
- June - Demonstrates to Holly Poppet the power of fear as an emotion.
- July - Leaves Spring Court. Lives on the streets for a few months while he figures out what to do with himself. Attends a few changeling related functions and makes a mess of his relationship with the city.
- September (early) - Fyorg confronts him over his actions and lack of care for the freehold. He learns that they've been tracking and watching him. Lowell agrees to leave the city.
- September (late) - A year is almost gone since he returned, and he knows what will happen if he fails to uphold his oath. He lures away three street rats to the farm. He is made to take them across the hedge himself. The trip back to Luath's estate is torturous. Once there he's forced to watch Luath inspect the children and send them to the kennels, and his memories of his early life at a hound come flooding back. He is "escorted" back to the farm where he spends the winter in a mix of terror and relief. Most of his memories are stripped away again, but he remembers exactly what kind of life he has subjected those children to.
2006
- March - Lowell returns to Atlanta and starts making connections in the low rent districts. He befriends the owner of the Bent Pipe, a run down dive on the south side of town. He hangs out and keeps fights and other trouble down when he's around, and in exchange the owner let's him crash in the back from time to time. Lowell stays off the radar of the other changelings.
- July - Finding it necessary to make nice with the Atlanta courts, Lowell slinks back during Summer's reign. No smiles at his return, but he makes his apologies to those that need to hear it and is accepted back into the freehold. Fortunately he's able to be useful in recovering some Lost that got caught in the Hedge. Later he tracks down an escaped loyalist, and finds the body drained of life in a rose bush.
2007
- October - Attends the Fallen Fair and participates in the Hunt of Leaves in Nashville, TN. Learns that Camilla Venery is the real target. Takes his hunting party to seek her. She disappears, and later turns up dead. Befriended Pedey, Nothing, and Hush by persuading them to join his hunting party.
- 11/09 - Lowell visits the court of Auburn. They are suffering attack from some sort of arachnids that stole a child for an unknown purpose. He helped track the child and discover who kidnapped him. As the night progressed the north star grew brighter and brighter, and eventually a star fell to earth somewhere in the hedge. Supposedly this is the sign of the coming of hellhounds. Lowell got to hang out with Pedey though, so that was a positive.
- December - Visits Auburn again. They trade stories and share memories. Later that month the traveling goblin market visits Atlanta. Lowell wins some memories playing blackjack.
2008
- February - Met Tristan, a beast who's a former boyscout and lives in the countryside. It was a very clear city beast/country beast split between the two, but they got on quite well. Lowell and Tristan watched as the rest of the crowd examined a doorway into the hedge. Lowell told Tristan how it would go down. "One of them fools is going to walk into that door and not come back out. Maybe five minutes after that they're going to holler for me to come and track the fool down." Tristan wouldn't believe that anyone would be so stupid as to go into an unknown area of the hedge, but only moments later the crazy fire lady darted through the door. Roughly five minutes passed before Gilded called to Lowell to come help them track her down. Tristan handed Lowell a nickel and the bet was satisfied.
They followed the trod to a cathedral owned by a Rose worshiper who was humiliated by David Burke and Gilded and then killed by Jocasta. Lowell could understand the killing, but not the cruelty.
Current Activities:
Merit Details:
Background:
Birth
Robert Whitman was a brute of a man. He lied, cheated, robbed, and fought his way through life, and every penny he earned was a dishonest one. Many said it was by the grace of god that Robert had only daughters to marry off rather than a son to pass his legacy to. In his later years, Robert's one regret was the loss of his youngest daughter. Perhaps she would have been the one child that wouldn't have completely forgotten him, but he would never know since he abandoned her in a steel mill in Atlanta when she was five.
Mary Whitman was adopted by a steel worker named Howard Pallin who worked with her father, Robert, before he disappeared after botching a backroom money scheme. Howard told Mary her father was killed in a milling accident. She went along with the story out of sympathy, never revealing her perfect memory of her father's final words to her: “I'd sell you if I had the time, but you're really not worth the piss on my heels. Get along now, girl.” At seventeen Mary was raped behind the restaurant she worked at. It was the bitter pill of her sorrowful life along with Robert Whitman's genes that she passed to her son, Eugene, as he fought his way out of her womb. Whether she died on the delivery table due to childbirth or just abject despair, no one knows.
Howard bid the doctors give the child his own last name of Pallin in the hopes that Eugene would have as little connection with his grandfather as possible. It was a noble but futile attempt, as Eugene took to fighting and stealing as naturally as a whore to syphilis. He was never close to his adopted father, and never reflected any of the love or respect Howard tried to show him. When he was fourteen he left home and drifted across Georgia, taking what he wanted wherever he could get it.
Growth
By sixteen years of age, Eugene had a small posse that rode with him. They lied, cheated, robbed, and fought their way through life. The law was close on their heels, and they thought it was fortune smiling on them the night they met Lester Lampwick outside of a seedy bar on a deserted highway. Lester knew a place where they could gamble and drink all night without fear. Eugene and his boys rode with anticipation to this promised land while Lester drove with a knowing smile.
The farm was far out in the country, and was just as Lester promised. Everywhere were children and teens smoking, drinking, gambling, and partaking in other pleasures. Eugene and his crew received a handful of tokens, the currency of the place, then dove right into the party.
It was only a few days later that the nature of the place became clear. The farm was a place of social reform. Shelter was free, but the tokens, which ran out quickly, were the only method of purchasing food, drink, and cigarettes. Those that wanted more tokens had to work for them, and working became an attractive option compared to returning to their former lives. Eugene, on the other hand, had no intention of working. He gambled for tokens, and when that failed he coerced them from the other kids with threats and violence.
A new social order formed. Those kids that were dominant before Eugene's arrival found themselves bloodied and bruised, and there was no punishment or retribution from the overseers. Eugene picked up new flunkies that were ready to take this easier path to power, and cast aside those boys that were ready to labor to make their way.
Service
Not two weeks passed before the overseers suggested Eugene and his new friends try hunting wild boar in the woods behind the farm. It was an irresistible opportunity to hunt and kill, and soon Eugene and his hunting party disappeared into the woods. To all appearances they emerged, bruised and defeated, later that day, and afterwards lost their tendency to violence. In truth, they crossed the hedge, not in pursuit of boar, but as the prey of briarwolves.
Out of fifteen that entered the woods, only eleven emerged on Lord Luath's estate where they were quickly rounded up and presented to Lord Luath himself. He inspected each one, checking teeth, hair, and muscles. Eugene spat at him, but Luath merely laughed and struck him, knocking him yards away and leaving him breathless. Luath spoke then, accepting the newcomers into his estate and binding them to the contracts that would sustain them.
Then the training began. Eugene was placed in Arms Kennel, and later in Hawthorn Kennel as he learned to track, scent, seek, and kill. Time passed, and his humanity faded and was replaced by a feral, canine form. He fought and bullied his way through the packs, accepting lead hunt position when offered and taking it by force when not. He ended his training as alpha of Red Kennel after slaughtering the former alpha over the spoils of a hunt.
Lord Luath took a liking to him. He was loaned in service to other fae from time to time, but never sold. He spent more than a year protecting (need Jocasta's keeper info)'s land before things went sour, and was pressed into hunting or defense elsewhere for years at a time. Eventually he joined Lord's Kennel, and Luath named him Foirgim for his brutality.
Return
After more than two decades in the fae realms Eugene was pulled aside by his lord and shaped back into human form. His mind still numb and recovering, Lord Luath asked him to join his Brotherhood and protect his estate. Luath promised unimagined strength and the freedom to roam the hedge. Eugene was eager to accept, still full of instinct and loyalty to his master. He took the Brotherhood's oath of secrecy, and was released into the hedge on his return trip to the mortal world.
His return was brutal. Luath's briarwolves chased him, tormented him, and drove him like prey toward the outside. He tried to fight back, but lacking his fangs and claws and struggling with his human form he was no more than a rag doll to them. They battered him and ran him, crying "Run, Brother!" and "Join us, Brother!" until at last he stumbled out of the hedge, torn down to nothing by the thorns and claws. Delirious, he glimpsed a farmhouse in the distance before passing out.
He woke to a kindly woman humming softly and dressing his wounds. She introduced herself as Matilda Perth, one of the overseers of the farm. His instinct was to fight and run, but her song held the power to sooth and so he slept and stayed. Weeks passed while he regained is strength and Matilda explained his purpose. He stayed on the farm, helping where he could and watching over the latest batch of children. His aggressiveness waned with Matilda around. She too was changed by the hedge and working off a debt to her keeper, and Eugene learned much from her.
By January, Eugene was prepared to reenter the world. He changed his name to Lowell Whitman, the last name an ironic coincidence that went unappreciated and unlamented. His task in the Brotherhood of Luath was to seek out wayward children, much as he had been, and bring them to the farm for reform and perhaps to become new hounds in service to Lord Luath. He knew that a great reward awaited him, but he could not recall its nature or extent. Decades of hunting and obedience drove him to it though, and he set out from the farm ready to serve his master.
Motley
None. Lowell sees a few locals as "his people" and takes a territorial stance about their protection, but this is a fairly one-sided attachment.
Allies
Enemies
Character Inspirations
- Lucas Buck from American Gothic
- Burke from Aliens
Soundtrack
Quotes
- "I'm kinda surprised he went the booga-booga route. Guess the taste of Fae power drew in...kinda like that Star Wars movie...Dark side, quick to power *makes scuba regulator noises* Some folks just think its cool." *shrugs* - Gilded
- "One day he's gonna learn where that damn line he keeps crossing is..." - Renn
- (Whispered) "Not sure what you want me to say about him." Sighs and looks around. "He smiled at me...but the smile didn't reach his eyes. I've seen that look before but those people were strapped down so they couldn't be dangerous." - Aurora Kippelin
- You know, I think I like you. - Dr. Krieger, former Nazi vivisectionist
- If he doesn't learn, so help me, I'll shoot him. And when nice people have to draw their guns... - Jingle
- "Say what you will about him, he has good taste in cigarettes. I'd recognize the smell of a camel unfiltered anywhere."" - David Burke
- "Lowell's a solid tracker. If you need someone or something found, you could do worse than to ask him." ~ Holly Poppet, at The Sepulcher's 2007 Summer Tournament.
- "No.. I'm not going to say anything else about him. We've all been through a bad place, and to talk bad about any of us for how we act now is to be unkind." ~ Holly Poppet, to several courtiers later that day.
- "....." <equine shiver> - Yew
Rumors
Though no one can confirm the Contract used to seal it, it's said that Lowell is Motley Pledged with his tow truck - he'll breathe out her exhaust instead of his cigarette smoke and she'll never run out of gas or break down on him.
Don't ask Lowell to share Stone Soup with you ... Just. Don't.
