u/Commissar-Kodiak

How can I best describe Caliban?

Caliban...just doesn't care.

Caliban doesn't care about status, or loyalty, or such poultry concepts as *kings* and *gods*. Caliban holds no mind for human values such as morals or decency, he is merely concerned with that which he embodies.

To his faithful, who kneel at the alter of his absolution, he is fated oblivion. He is finality incarnate. The cold indifference of a vast cosmos, ambivalent to the whims and worries of those who inhabit it, adrift in it's indescribable emptiness. Entropy given shape and thought.

But in truth, he is also something much, much darker...

He is the grim thoughts that disturb our slumber in the dead of night. The eerie, ephemeral shadow that lingers at the edges of our vision, waiting for us to turn our backs so it may slink back into the darkness. He is nothingness made manifest, the nothingness that awaits us when we are all made equal.

He is the prophesied herald, the promised child, born from the sanctimonious union of ingenuity and violence, his audacious form crafted to mirror a long dissecated god. The Dark Messiah, tempered in the forges of depravity, sanctified by the grisly artistry made by his monstrous congregation.

He may be a prophet, but only in the same way lightning proceeds a thunderstorm. He does not speak in possibilities, he speaks in assurances, and he can assure this:

He is the Sword of Unmaking, and he falls where he pleases. Wherever he falls, famine and decay will follow, and close to their cavalry shall be the pale, unflinching, unyielding face of your undoing.

Caliban is not human. Caliban is not a being. Caliban does not truly exist. The thing we so salaciously call 'Caliban' is merely the container, the vessel, the flesh fettered cage to a darker force. He is the mask behind which true darkness festers and writhes, eager to harken us into its hungering jaws. The darkness has teeth, and it does not care what it devours.

All our legions will wither and crumble with his mere presence, our seemingly innumerable arms and unshakeable monuments shall rust and shatter with a simple glance, the immortal deities we venerate will grow sickly and frail, and their bloated carcasses will drift along the indifferent currents of causality until they too are not but dust.

And there, upon some vast battlefield, when the last resilient atom has finally sputtered out and given way to that familiar nothingness, Caliban will be there. He will be there and he will grin. A vicious, joyous grin, exuberant beyond measure in the face of his murderous comedy, as the eternal truth he embodies swallows up another false idol. Another failed civilization. Another billion lives freed from the shackles of a fruitless existence.

Such is the charity of The Promised Child. In time, we shall come to know his embrace and we shall share in his joy as we are, all of us, devoured.

While passing by a condemned parking complex, your OC catches the sound of...shattering glass? Or perhaps China? Maybe both, mixed with the profane tune of some garish street rap. Should they decide to sneak past the police tape to get a closer look, they would find two teenage boys with a truly alarming amount of plates and glasses surrounding them, at least five stacks of cheap, dollar-store chinaware.

One was a young, lean hispanic man dressed in a blue fur-lined flannel jacket, white tanktop, and black jeans. An odd choice for the heat of a mid-June, but he didn't seem too bothered.

The other was a tall, stocky, almost frighteningly pale caucasian boy, dressed in a flat red beanie, matching bandana, grey sport-coat, torn jeans, and beat-up Nike's. A curly, disjointed mop of long black hair marked with fiery red highlights hung loosely over his shoulders.

The boy in red quickly removed his jacket and tied it around his waist, revealing his right arm to be a prosthetic. He then brought forth an aluminum bat and glanced at the other boy with a devious grin, to which his companion reciprocated. He took out two pairs of safety goggles and tossed one over to the boy in red.

Then, just when they thought they were alone, the boy in blue would take one of the cheap plates and toss it at his friend, who obliterated the stingy piece of cutlery with one, powerful swing.

They both cheered in audacious excitement as the shards hit the floor, readying themselves to do it all over again.

How would your OC react this scene?

A few days ago, Your OC was going about their business, running their usual errands or doing some chores what have you, when they caught sight of a rather... disconcerting article.

The night before, at approximately 10:32pm, the body of a young man was dredged from the shallows of the Chicago canals, riddled with bullet wounds. A mob hit.

The article describes the victim as a young man of Latin-American descent: light brown skin, spotty freckles on the face, dark oak hair, blue eyes, covered from head to toe in various scars and marks. He was of lean build, standing at six foot two.

A daredevil of some sort that got in over his head? A gambler that ran afoul of the wrong people? Or maybe just a poor young soul, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The police weren't able to identify him, surmising that his killers had stripped him of all personal identification to cover their tracks, so he had to be left in the morgue overnight while they worked to identify the victim so they could notify his next of kin.

That's when things got weird...

Reading deeper into the article, it describes how the body mysteriously vanished. When the security staff went to review the camera footage to confirm a potential break-in, they found only static on the feed, as if they had been tampered with. Nothing else had been taken from the morgue, no other bodies, no medical equipment, not even any chemicals. Only the victim and his clothes vanished that night, left without a trace.

The search for answers is still on-going.

Then, a week later, your OC would find another news report, one detailing a potential arson case downtown. A harrowing affair if ever there was one, in which the seven story complex went up in smoke. But miraculously, all of the residents and their pets made it out of the inferno otherwise unscathed before the fire department arrived to contain the situation. All those willing to submit an interview claimed that a young man, about 6'2, with light brown skin, dressed in a royal blue hoodie and sunglasses, came to their rescue.

"He was like a wizard or something, cuz he like—sprayed water from his hands or somethin'. It was crazy, man."

"I saw him rip out a chuck of the wall without even touching it! Like it was paper mache!"

"We tried to take the emergency exit, but some rubble feel in front of the door. The roof almost came down on top of us, but he was there. He caught it...got us to safety. I honestly don't know what we would've done without him."

Curious...it seems Chicago has a new hero. One fresh from an early grave.

How does your OC react to this information? What do they do about it? Will they attempt to find this mysterious vagabond? Or will they return to their normal, everyday lives?

Be they genuine counter-culturalists, avid freedom fighters, or just dudes in raggedy clothing that like to break stuff and say "F#CK THE SYSTEM" the punk archetype is a prevalent and powerful type of character, even if they turn out to be just...some dude with a bat and a bad attitude. So I'd like to know who are some of your favorite Punk characters?

Pictured above, we have:

Jackie Wells, Cyberpunk 2077

Casey Jones, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Billy, The Punkgoat, Deadlock