player.
NAME/HANDLE: Lady Vincira
PERSONAL JOURNAL: oldsoulai
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Yep!
CONTACT: LadyVincira
OTHER CHARACTERS: None yet!


character.
CHARACTER NAME: Cecil Gershwin Palmer
SERIES: Welcome To Night Vale
Official Site
What is Night Vale like? A visitor's pamphlet (and events that impacted Cecil as a person)
CANON POINT: Post "Cassette"
AGE: Approximately 26
APPEARANCE: In canon, the only descriptions we have for certain about Cecil are that he's not tall, not short, not thin, not fat, and he wears a tie in one of his photos. Otherwise, much is inferred from bits of his broadcasts, and there is a general (and alarmingly shared) consensus among the fandom that he is blonde, with a third eye (see below for one possible source-cited explanation), and strange tattoos covering his arms that move from time to time.

He is also cited in the series as having a...unique sense of fashion, wearing his "best tunic and furry pants" to his first date with Carlos.

Putting a finer point on his appearance for RP purposes, Cecil is, despite what one might think sometimes, a human man. He's a youthful-looking man, with a very animated (if dorky) face and lovely, thick blonde hair. His bangs cover his forehead much of the time - in part because, hey, he likes this hairstyle, and also in part because it hides the functional third eye that has grown in the center of his forehead. He doesn't talk about this very much, but it's more than likely a result of him having listened to sounds that he shouldn't have. In "The Candidate," there's mention of people in Old Town Night Vale hearing "extremely noisy sunsets" that caused some of them to grow third eyes - and Cecil, being a devoted reporter, is more than likely to have gone out of his way to find out what they sounded like.

His arms are covered in weird, arcane tattoos - lots of eyes and tentacles in purple, white, black, and silver ink - that move. Not at will, mind you, they just do what they want all over his arms. He has a few odd arcane symbols carved into the flesh of his stomach, but they don't seem to bother him very much. Business as usual.

He's of average height and weight for a man of his apparent age, not built of lean muscle, but not precisely overweight, either.

His PB is Gabriel Mann.

PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY: Cecil is not coming pre-installed with any game history.

PERSONALITY: Cecil is, despite everything he goes through, a very good-natured and cheerful man. He's remarkably optimistic for a reporter in a town where horrifying occurrences happen on the regular, and that carries through everything he does. His sensibilities are almost cartoonishly goody-goody sometimes; as dark as topics can get, you have better odds of him getting totally naked in front of you than cursing. He's not unflappable, mind you - he gets scared, upset, angry, and quite emotional on the regular. Just not about the things you might expect. He can sit and watch a man be vaporized right in front of him and shrug, but he will work himself into a froth over someone like Steve Carlsberg, who, as he repeatedly asserts, is a REAL JERK.

He's a reporter at his core, through and through, and he's going to report on whatever needs to be reported on, damn the consequences. In the show, this has gotten him into trouble with Station Management - horrific Eldritch terrors that have never been seen except through the frosted glass door of their office - and also with the Secret Police. He's mentioned being punished before, as well as being called in for "re-education," so it's clear that he doesn't always toe the line as well as he possibly could. He says too much sometimes, interjects more of his opinion than the powers-that-be would like...but attests that it's just what he has to do. He's open and forthcoming to a fault, and just looooooves to talk. He knows this, and he embraces it, figuring...well, why fight it?

Night Vale is a town run by a draconic, all-seeing government force. The citizens are regularly faced with the arcane and the disturbing and are expected to know how to deal with these situations - and Cecil is no exception. He's probably been brainwashed a few times, and it shows sometimes when he speaks. He contradicts himself a great deal - talking about backpacking in Europe (to fictional countries) in one show, but talking about how he doesn't believe in mountains in another. It's likely because of some degree of mental programming...once in a while, he even seems to slip into strange monotones while broadcasting that he may or may not remember afterward. He's not DUMB, but he HAS been programmed to believe what he hears from government forces. He doesn't believe in mountains, for instance. They say they don't exist. he takes this as fact.

He's head over heels in love with a man named Carlos. He's been in love with Carlos since the moment he laid eyes on him and his perfect hair, and he can be affectionate to the point of sounding like a high school girl whenever he talks about him. He's reached the point in their relationship where he has settled down somewhat, and he knows that not everything about Carlos IS actually perfect, but he's still excitable if someone gets him going. Being without Carlos is going to be hard for him, but he's not really one to mope for too long when he has things to do. Still, heartbreak is a deep wound.

It's probably worth noting that Cecil will appear to most people as completely, unabashedly insane. He's not actually crazy - it's just that his reality is much stranger than most. That won't stop him from speaking point blank and unblinking about the strangest topics you could imagine. Never mind that heartbreak can make a man do crazy things.

In recent events (his canon point), Cecil found some tapes from when he was a kid, testing for the radio. He found out through these tapes that he had a brother he can no longer remember, his mother left him, he was an intern at the radio station (and was FATED to be the radio host for the town, it was literally written in stone), and some horrible fate befell him while he was looking into a mirror. All of this has left him disquieted, though he doesn't show it very much. He IS likely to cover up mirrors around him, though, and while he would never cross the government or the Secret Police, he is starting to go against his programming and question who he really is and what happened to him.

ABILITIES: He doesn't really have special powers, per se, so much as weird things happen around him. His tattoos move and are apparently sentient, but they don't do anything otherwise. This is purely cosmetic, and is not mentioned in the show at all - but it's a common mass headcanon held, and I would like for him to retain it for purely cosmetic reasons. Moving tattoos wouldn't be at all out of the way in Night Vale, and Cecil has been "reconditioned" by Secret Police often enough to suggest that there are some anomalies with his system.

He has a third eye, but it's a perfectly normal eye other than being in the middle of his forehead. In one episode of the show, there were strange noises in Old Town Night Vale that lead to some people growing extra limbs and third eyes. Given Cecil's curious reporter nature, it makes perfect sense that he would have gone to listen and suffered the circumstances.

He knows a lot of arcane rituals, but any spells he can cast are little domestic tasks or tiny parlor tricks. It's perfectly reasonable to think Cecil would know how to do some ritual magic, given as in canon it is stated you have to perform a ritual to order a Subway Sandwich. None of these spells will be enough to do much of anything, and they'll all be very specific. Harmless. Lighting a cigarette, for instance - the spell wouldn't light anything else, just a cigarette. He has no idea how to start a magical fire. So on.

Does silky-smooth radio voice count as a power? It's one of Cecil's best abilities...the gift of gab, and a voice that comes across as honest and earnest. He does some sweet mimicry. His valley girl accent? Top notch. Kinda. Well, he likes to mimic people, anyhow, and at least he gets the emotions and cadences right. The other upshot of his career is that he's fantastic with sound equipment, and he can actually rig some interesting set ups to subvert sound systems given the opportunity and materials.

He's got a keen investigative mind, and he loves to report on things...but his reports are more often than not a little off. His tendency to throw himself into things headfirst and believe things he is told by positions of power makes him a little unreliable, but he is decent at digging up information.

Cecil is reasonably domestic - he knows a lot about a lot of things, but it's knowledge that would be typical for a young guy living alone. He's looked up life hacks, he knows how to cook, he can do his own laundry just fine, so on. Some of these tasks were much more...unusual back in Night Vale (see above comment about Subway), but otherwise he's a remarkably average guy with a remarkably normal set of skills.

His fashion sense is actually so dubious that it may as well be construed as an ability in and of itself. He is completely oblivious to how ridiculous he looks when he picks out clothes, and you're not going to have any luck trying to point this out to him.

POSSESSIONS:
His clothing: Upon arrival, Cecil is wearing a bright purple off-the-shoulder tanktop, yellow and orange plaid bell bottoms, a Night Vale Community Radio nametag, a white bow tie, flip flops, and a fanny pack.

In his pockets: A small pouch full of bloodstones and a couple unnameable bits of bone, a comb, some spare change, a flip-top notepad, an old-fashioned tape recorder, a few very old cassette tapes, and a wallet containing sixteen dollars, identification, and a photo of a dark-skinned, square-jawed man with beautiful hair (that was probably taken while he wasn't looking).


samples.
INTERACTION SAMPLE:
VIDEO:

[The feed clicks on to reveal a young man with bright eyes - three of them - smiling and looking right into the lens. His voice is very, very nice...smooth, sure. He's used to talking. That will never change.]

Good evening! I have a question for you all. Now, you don't have to answer right away - why would you? I can't even hear you until you turn on your feeds!

Anyhow, my question. Really mull it over. Do any of you have tattoos? And if you do - have you really sat down and talked to them about what being here MEANS for them?

[He has all the seriousness of a man telling people to have a serious talk with their children. He leans forward, as if confiding deeply to the camera.]

I mean it, I really do. You might not have the same kind of lotions available here. The climate may be different. They may see more light, they may see less light...maybe they'll see hardly any light at all. Are they cold? Are they too hot? Is it too humid for them? Too dry?

I mean, hey. It's not my place to tell you how to treat your tattoos, right? I mean, I'm just some guy! What do I know? Well, I'm here to tell you, it is worth the time and effort to make sure your tattoos are okay. You'd be upset if they were unhappy, right? I had the talk with mine right after I got here - and look!

[He holds up his arms, rolling back sleeves - to reveal shifting violet, silver, white, and black tattoos of various strange designs. The tentacles are writhing across his skin, the eyes are blinking, the arcane symbols are...arcaning. He doesn't seem to think this is at all odd.]

See?

Look how happy they are!

INTROSPECTION SAMPLE:

The glass was cold under Cecil's fingers - it didn't move, shift, or yield, but part of him still thought it could take a bite out of him. Maybe it had...maybe when he was fifteen the mirror had devoured him, just like his Mother implied it would. Or maybe it didn't. He would never know for sure. The only answers he had were the ones recorded all those years ago, and they were incomplete. They would always be incomplete.

He had kept the tape. He had wanted to destroy it when he had first heard it, crush it for all to hear on the airwaves, but...truthfully, it was much harder than that to just crush a cassette tape in your bear hands. Besides, part of him didn't want to, if it was the only trace of that forgotten bit of his childhood that he had. So he'd crushed the case for the cassette on air, and he'd pocketed the actual tape. It was across the room now, sitting on his dresser, equal parts old friend and mysterious stranger. He couldn't see it. His eyes were shut, all three of them. Cecil pressed his hand flatter against the glass, feeling how cold it was under his palm.

His other hand was up above his head, holding the bottom of the cloth he had pinned over the mirror. For a moment, he had thought to himself that it would be an interesting idea to actually take a look at his own reflection for a change. For years, he had no idea why he had covered the mirrors - and now that he did, he was even more conflicted about it. Now he was standing in front of the glass, all three eyes shut, feeling like a nervous child confronting one of the monsters in his closet.

Of course, the monsters in his closet usually turned out to be Secret Police monitoring him for dreaming banned dreams. So perhaps this wasn't all that frightening either? Maybe a mirror was just a mirror, despite what his mother had said, and those tapes were just stupid, false memories caught on a C60.

Cautiously, he opened his third eye first, then his other two, staring straight into the set his reflection had before pulling back to glimpse more of his own image. It was...him. Just him, standing there in his lime green sleeveless turtleneck and gray gaucho pants. His tattoos roiled over the surface of his skin, antsy over his nervousness, no doubt - pulling the hand away from the glass, he rubbed at them, making a soft little shushing sound to try and comfort them.

Cecil stood there for a long moment, staring himself down...before dropping the curtain back over the mirror, shaking his head a little. "Nice try, Mirror Cecil," he chuckled, turning his back and walking straight out of the room.

"Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, shame on me. Although...hm. Maybe this outfit could use a belt."

❖ OOC
Backtagging? Please! I'm kinda slow.
Threadhopping? Sure!
Fourthwalling? That would be great, actually, given Cecil's canon.
Offensive subjects: It's pretty damn hard to offend me. I'd say ask if you're worried.

❖ IC
Hugging this character? Cecil loves hugs!
Kissing this character? Sure, but his reaction is situational.
Flirting with this character? Why not?
Fighting with this character? God yes, that'd be fun.
Injuring this character? Go ahead!
Killing this character? Actually, YES. Check with me for the situation but it falls right in line with my headcanons about Night Vale.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character? I'm going to say yes, but if you do, you get a whole lot of loud static and radio noise overlaying anything you get.

Kinks are going to be in a separate post, located HERE. If it's not on the list, ask me! Dub-Con and Non-Con are case-by-case.

The past is in the past. The future is in the future. The worms might be in your body. Welcome...to Nigh- to the Turtle.

[There are a few notes that sound...rather like a xylophone, poorly played - and then the voice begins speaking again.]

I hope I'm reaching all of you fine listeners all right. I understand that this...is a new thing, this radio station. And to many of you, I am a new voice. So to start, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Cecil! I've been a radio host for some time back in my hometown of Night Vale, and I am happy to - for now - be your radio host here. I'm here to read you the news. We have a lot of news saved up! Soooooo, without further ado, today's stories:

We are all living on top of a giant turtle. Right now, there is a gigantic, living, and breathing creature - right there, under your feet. Or talons. Or paws. And hey! That's pretty great, isn't it? But there are a few things we all need to know about our shelled friend.

For starters - this realm isn't the only one! Duh. I mean, it seems pretty obvious, when you think about it. I mean, we all came from other places, didn't we? And hey - this isn't the biggest turtle I've ever seen. You have to know there are others, right? Well, I am here to tell you that Dreaming and Death are, apparently, both realms that exist. A mainland, too! And there are other cities! Recently, Asti - you know, the turtle? - popped down underwater to visit with Sinbrilee. Which - apparently - was a city populated by ghosts. Ghosts who can throw a great party! Many of you enjoyed this party, I'm sure, and I would love to hear about it, as I was not there and cannot comment on what it was like.

Now, Tu Vishan is surrounded by a barrier. And I don't like to be a Debbie Downer, buuuut...barriers keep things OUT. Like the Jiangshi! Which are, basically, zombies. We all know what a zombie is, right? I'm also told that there are Llothi and Daemids, which...do not sound like fun conversational companions. Well, maybe the Daemids, if they mimic a good conversation! But that is a long shot. I probably wouldn't risk it, but hey! That's just me.

We've also got a few key players here that I have been told I should mention. There's Eshai - our lovely emperor! She did the magic that brought us here. Now, listeners, let me tell you...I know a little bit of magic. Standard issue magic, much like plenty of you know, I'm sure. Magic big enough to bring us here? And possibly to have created some of our Kedan neighbors? That. Is. Impressive.

Then there's Evandeau! Big, strong commander! You really have to respect that kind of thing. No, really, you have to. You wouldn't want to get in trouble with the Secret Police.

Last one I've been told to mention for now is Lieuen. He's the richest merchant around, and he's...apparently a very nice guy. Good for him! In a place like this, it's important to be nice. We can all learn from him. And how nice he apparently is.

Now.

There is a being, citizens. A being who has a name that we cannot speak or utter or communicate in any form. I've encountered beings one must not speak of before. I've spoken about them. I've learned MY lesson - vicariously through the intern who was vaporized directly in front of me. I can't...tell you who I'm talking about. I can, however, tell you that you can refer to it as...Mally.

Next, let's touch on a delicate topic. We are all clones! Yes, that is a thing. More on that later in the broadcast.

Jobs. Everyone needs one, and you may be asking yourself - where can I get one? How? Well, folks, I am here to tell you that it is actually very easy to find work around here. Go work on a farm! Find a Kedan to assist! Lots of them need your help, and lots of them do NOT hate that you are here. Help keep the turtle clean, maybe. Fish! Care for livestock! Be a courier! There's lots to be done, dear listeners, and who can do it?

You.

So! Back to the whole "we are all clones" thing. Anonymous tips from a scientist.... [His voice actually hitches for a second. He then continues.] ...Have told us that, yes, we are clones. If you check the radio console network, just as soon as you can break away from my dulcet tones, you will find some information about the whole thing, provided by our very own Clark Kent.

Now, the cloning is not a perfect science. There is the chance - and I'm just reading the copy, folks, I haven't decided what I believe yet - that Eshai figured that most of us were going to die. Apparently, there was a cloning facility that was destroyed that some of you may have been grown in. More of us came, though, so there are, clearly, more facilities out there! Also, Eshai says so. Jury is out on whether we would all stop coming if all of them got destroyed - we will report more on all this as we find it out.

Feeling a little confused about knowing you're a clone? Don't know how to cope? Well, rest assured that while these might not be our original bodies, these are our original minds. So it's you! Just a you made up of separate but identical atoms from the old one.

My sources say that some turtle eggs were found down in Sinbrilee. Eggs! Baby giant turtles! Isn't that cute? Some of you out there have some of these little guys - so here are just a few reminders about how to take care of them, furnished by one of our resident dragons:

Keep it warm! Not hot, not cold. Blankets will be juuuust fine. Don't move it around too much, and talk to it! You'd be lonely, stuck in an eggshell with no one paying attention to you, right? Maybe play it some music! Read it a story! These are intelligent creatures, and if you give them a good chance, they might not grow up to be jerks.

Back to the entity mentioned earlier in the cast, who will always be referred to as Mally. We've already touched upon how you should not. Say. The full. Name. Evandeau has launched a few missions against him, and even after, it seems like people are still trying to ally with him. Even some of us foreigners! And someone has said Mally's real name, so he WALKS AMONG US. He is ON THE TURTLE.

Listeners, Mally is bad. News. Do not ally with him. Do not communicate with him.

Do not. Talk. About Mally.

And now....the weather.

[The broadcast falls silent...until a squeaking, halting sound of some kind of wind instrument comes over the speakers. Cecil is playing it. He has no idea how to play it. This goes on for a couple of minutes before he stops, pants a little, and resumes speaking.]

Just a couple more parting notes for this maiden broadcast:

The consoles do NOT run on technology! They run on energy. Easy to understand, right? And the satellite - I'm told - wasn't the first technology the turtle has had. They actually had quite a bit more technology than was previously thought...and more than we even know about right now. Keep listening to our broadcasts for more information as it's handed to me on a slip of paper.

Stay tuned next for a list of people who have departed from the turtle until this point.

This is Cecil Baldwin. Good night, turtle...good night.

((Got a problem with Cecil? Have a question? Concern? Ask here!

Comments are screened.))