Tim Deacon

Concept: King of the Homeless

AKA: Often goes by “Deke”

Desc: Lean and hard like a steppe wolf. He’s usually stubbly because he shaves periodically. He doesn’t like his beard. But he doesn’t have a lot of razors and tends to go days without shaving.  His hair is longish and stringy. His left eye has gone white with cataracts and he can’t see out of it. His right eye is blue and has a burning anger in it. He’s a caucasian male and in his late 30’s. He looks way older. It’s not the years. It’s the mileage.  He has an Army Rangers tattoo. He still does his PT. Lives on canned fruit, yogurt, and coffee.

History:  Once upon a time, the Army was a pretty decent deal for a poor boy wanting to go to college. Tim was pretty good at keeping his head low and he served in the front end of the Iraq War without getting himself horribly killed. And that probably would have been the end of the story right there. He’d served, even with some distinction as he’d become a spec operator. He wasn't the BEST army ranger. But he was good enough to be ONE of them.

But Tim got stop-lossed. He ended up being stuck fighting a war that was supposedly “Over”. And as things go, his luck ran out.  He and his squad ended up stuck in-country when an IED jacked up their transport. They were able to get out, and those guys were good enough to fight their way out of the planned ambush. But it still meant they were stuck for a ride back. Transpo was on the way...Or so they said.

   We may never know. The squad was trekking to safe ground for evac when they ran across some outback military installation that was WAY off of any map that their higher ups seemed to have. A quick look around led to a bit of shooting, and then the installation exploded and belched forth a cloud of sickly green looking smoke.

   Most of the guys died right then.

When Evac turned up, an hour later, Tim was the only one still twitching. Nobody is really sure what happened to Warren or Shimizu. Maybe they crawled away or something...

   The next bit is all too familiar. If being blind in one eye wasn’t enough, the terrible seizures were enough to get Tim sent home.  He went back, but he wasn’t the same. He couldn’t turn off the readiness.  He would get furiously angry over nothing and he’d get twitchy over things that nobody ever seemed to understand.  His parents tried to help, but they didn’t have much to help with. The VA was fucking useless. Eventually, even his girl realized that she was in WAY over her head and pulled the ripcord.  He couldn’t hold down a job. He couldn’t stop from going 0-to-sixty in a second flat. Booze and the bullshit VA meds weren’t even taking the edge off.  It was only a matter of time before he simply fell off the grid and stayed there.

   And that’d be the whole story really. But for one thing. The seizures were prophetic visions. And they tended to be literal visions with wildly overwhelming sensory input. Not some kind of metaphorical vision which tells you fuck-all until it’s almost too late.  The only problem is, the seizures were pretty terrible and impossible to control at all. You never knew what would cause them to kick off.  

   The event that caused Tim to realize his visions weren’t some kind of insane delusion involved a no-shit vampire preying on Frieda. Frieda was a friend on the street. Not the brightest crayon in the box, but friendly and kind. Tim saw some horrifying fucker with some flappy rash of a face biting her on the neck near the Dansky Overpass and her dying from it.  For some reason, he began staying close to her. Frieda had always been kind to Tim. Had held him when the shakes came. The vision kept gnawing at him. So he kept an eye on her.  One night, she got a call on her go-phone and left the shelter. When he woke up, she was gone. 

   He followed her to the overpass. He knew that’s where she would go. She met the no-shit-i’m-telling-you-for-real vampire and they talked a bit before he grabbed and began biting her.

   Before that dickhead knew exactly what was happening. He found a wooden stake sticking out of his front.  Deke decided that maybe he might want to pay more attention to the things he sees in the seizures.

    Now, things are different.  Deke has a spot out near the underside of the 12th street bridge where he meets with his people. Deke’s people always seem to know where and when good food is about to be thrown out. They’ve gotten pretty good at staying off the cop’s radar and staying out from under the other Nosferatu. Deke even catches the occasional lotto number and hands it off to someone in true need for a small percentage.   Only one guy ever tried to short Deke on his percentage. That guy went to the emergency room.  What does Deke spend the money on?  He’s got a gun or two laid by. Some canned goods and some bottled water. There’s always SOME kind of hammer coming down, right?

Attitude: “The seizures are pretty bad. I haven’t bit my tongue in half yet...But even if I did...It would be a small price to pay. I was willing to serve my country. But my country hasn’t given me fuck-all back...But MY people?  My people do.”

Skills: Socially, he’s only really good at empathy and streetwise. Mentally, he’s not more than average at anything that doesn’t involve tactical knowledge or understanding. Physically, he’s strong. fast, and has more stamina than anything else.  He’s got Danger Sense, Toxin Resistance, and fast reflexes. He’s got dots of survival out the YANG. and a spec in Urban survival.  He’s got a pretty good knowledge of small unit tactics, and now, as a direct result, so do some of the homeless people under his banner.  (Also, in addition to his precognitive abilities, he's developed Unseen Sense(Ghost) he just doesn't know exactly what that's all about yet. He thinks it might be hallucinations because it kind of seems connected to his visions...but not actually a part of them...per se.)

Gear: His shotgun is old but still functional. He’s got a pistol, but bullets and shells are always in short supply. So those arms are for ugly surprises, but he’s got a machete that has seen plenty of use, and it never needs to be reloaded. He’s got a go-phone (many homeless people do so they can do factory work on a daily hire basis.) He’s got a wallet, but it's mostly just to house his most necessary possession. His library card. He’s often at the library trying to come up with some kind of plan to help his people or study up on vampires and whatnot. He’s gone to some trouble to be friendly to the librarians there so they don’t freak out when he gets the shakes real bad.

He’s got a good set of bump keys that bought online with a visa gift card. He’s become pretty conversant in their use.

Home: One of his people found a spur tunnel that connects to the boiler room of three of the older buildings of the university medical school. Mostly, it enables him to move around in the hospital section pretty easily. But he doesn’t like to linger there very often. The spur is buttoned up pretty tight when he’s away and he gets by swiping small things from the cafeteria line. He’s also snagged a couple of sets of scrubs and a lab coat. You know, just in case.

Circle: Tim knows a few people outside the homeless people. A couple of them were helped by his timely intervention. He’s a known face at the library of course, and nobody seems to look at him twice near the hospital, but he’s not sure that he can settle in there exactly. One really bad seizure there and the balloon would go up for him. While he could probably sneak into one of the rooms where the interns sleep and sack out there easily, it’s simply too risky. He does brave the shower room very early in the morning every chance he can get. Frieda is his personal secretary/aide-de-camp and has pretty sharp people radar.

Story Uses:

* “Catch you fuckers at a bad time?”

Depending on where your characters fall down on the good/evil scale, He could be a timely bacon saver or the monkey wrench in your carefully laid plans. He likely won’t get involved with you or your people unless there is a direct benefit to his people...But you never know. You may have a larger role to play than you know.

* “ Look. I know you have no reason to care, but it’s my people I'm thinking about here.”

That hammer? The one that’s always coming down? It may be that the characters have been shown to Tim in visions as a possible solution. So maybe he reaches out to them. 

Connections:

*Was forced to step in once and intervene when some neighborhood punks were hassling Miss Virgie Hawkins. She never got the chance to thank him before having to flee. If she sees him again... Lord only knows what strange twist their lives will take.

* Occasionally, Tim sees John Patmos in his visions, he still has NO idea who this guy is.

* Joseph Cartolano is always good for a box of donuts and occasional loaves of bread. In return, Frieda calls him anytime the homeless people hear anything about vampires moving around.

* It didn't start out to be personal, Tim knew he needed to allow a person an opportunity to get out of the limo, so he showed up with his Bucket and went to town on the windows at exactly the right time. But Lambrose Karanikas was such an utter shitheel about it, that now they look for opportunities to fuck with him.

* Dr. Dennis McMurtry is also a person who comes around every once in a while to drop some cash on the community in exchange for open eyes and ears. Every month, they get a visa gift card in the mail for about a 100 bucks. The Doc is good people.

* Ain't a person down here who wouldn't kill or die for Dr. Ronnette Franklin. Errybody knows that.

* Charlie "Funny thing about that old man. He sees stuff too. but he sees it different. When he comes around, though, If he's got things to say, I sit up and pay attention. He sees things I CAN'T. "