Harry Du Bois

( CONTINUE? ) 

Stubbly face. Damaged by infant polio and six years of intense substance abuse. Crooked jaw and nerve damage, with speech impediment. Has difficulty controlling/making facial expressions. Originally grew out his beard to cover his disfigured face, but shaved after becoming an amnesiac. Is extremely sensitive about how he looks, believes himself to be repulsive. Avoids mirrors.

Raspy gravelly voice. Tom Waits crossed with a British alligator. Favors Suresne (French) as his main language.

6ft. Shot putter build. A big beautiful bear fallen on hard times. Broad shoulders, big arms. Round stomach. Top heavy with thin legs. Shot in left thigh, limps. Is always moving despite his chronic pain, frequently uses a cane. Always investigating and snooping around. 

His myth characteristics include some minor scale growth on his face, back, and legs, purple and iridescent in color. Ibex horns, pointed ears, thick claws, small tusks, and a shaggy tail. Over time he will gain or lose some bodily markings that reflect his experiences.

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Stanwick
Contact: Stanwick 
Age: adult
Other Characters: Wilhuff Tarkin, Ethan Winters

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Harrier ‘Harry’ Du Bois
Age: 44
Canon: Disco Elysium
Canon Point: post game
Character Information: https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Harrier_Du_Bois

Personality:

WORLD STATE INFO

(cw: suicide, mental illness, substance abuse + addiction, divorce, memory loss/neurological damage, police brutality)

xxx



xxx

“I don't want to get better- I want to get worse.”

xxx

Harry Du Bois is a mess of a cop and even worse at being a human being.

A ‘human can opener’ with a reputation for weaseling out confessions and betrayals from suspects with sheer relentless manipulation. A party boy. An unorthodox genius. The prodigal head of Precinct 41’s major crimes unit.

A madman with a leering grin etched into the lines of his face.

The grin is a holdover from the time of disco, an imitation of a singer who was big in those days. It used to be charming. Since then it has warped into a grimace of pain, a mask he simply cannot remove.

Disco, much like Harry, is a has-been in the world of Elysium. It boomed during a brief period of relative economic prosperity in Revachol following the forceful occupation of the city by the Coalition of Nations, in the wake of the communist revolution they ruthlessly stomped to nothing but a bitter memory.

Those prosperous days, and disco are long gone. The occupation continues, the scarred city limps on under its weight. But Harry still loves disco. Harry tries to embody its memory in aesthetics. He clings to it, in big collared satin shirts and yellow bell bottoms. In all ways Harry wants to be disco.

(To be the cool guy his ex fell for.)

But disco doesn’t trash your house. Disco doesn’t come into work hungover, disco isn’t getting piss drunk at the precinct at 2PM. Disco isn’t ranting about how the end of the world is coming. Disco doesn’t punch holes through walls, ram doors off their hinges or beat people into paralysis. Disco is absolutely not apologizing profusely for existing after doing all of the above, verbally beating itself into the ground with masochistic self obsession.

Disco doesn’t crash it’s car into the sea or tell it’s own task force to fuck off because they’re cramping it’s style, only to go on a days long bender and completely obliterate it’s lifetime of memories.

xxx

“I DON’T WANT TO BE THIS KIND OF ANIMAL ANYMORE.”

xxx

How does one completely obliterate a lifetime of memories? That’s a great question and there’s no solid answer for it beyond the simple fact that it was something Harry ultimately wanted. Was it supernatural? The result of years upon years of substance abuse exacerbating an already unstable mind? Radiation from the all consuming nothing (the Pale) that threatens to end all existence forever?

We just don’t know. Neither does Harry.

Harry also doesn’t know where he is, what his name is, or how money works. There’s a lot Harry doesn’t know. He picks himself off the floor of the hostel room he trashed and stumbles out into an unknown world, looking for answers and his left shoe.

(The shoe is easy, he threw it through a glass window that was ‘giving him shit.’)

(The rest is harder.)

Despite his complete disorientation and debilitating hangover he’s gained something else, another chance, a pair of fresh eyes. Not to mention an opportunity to work with a stranger completely unfamiliar with the animal he used to be. Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi of Precinct 57 takes his quirks in stride, with equal amounts of patience and cool professionalism.

(Professionalism Harry enjoys poking at, getting under the lieutenant’s skin. Because that’s what he does, he’s a can-opener. He’s fascinated by Kim’s calm authority that can immobilize him with a single raised eyebrow, his utter coolness. And also by his one-cigarette-a-day restraint. Harry is a creature of indulgence, after all.)

Even when Kim has every reason to believe Harry is simply hazing him (bad blood exists between their precincts) he treats him with a sympathy few would ever bother to give him.

So Harry now walks Revachol as a somewhat new man, approaching people with a kind of innocent curiosity. He pokes around at people, at their lives and personal affairs with no real ulterior motive. He brings in youths from the cold, sets up a dance club in a derelict church, hunts for cryptids. Still every bit a manipulative can-opener, but with a softer purpose.

(And it's not like he can stop the can-opener act, anyway. Like Dora said, he can’t really have normal conversations anymore. It’s always questions, always prodding.)

But it’s not just people he’s seeing with fresh eyes, he’s highly receptive to new ideas as well. Finally free of decades of internalized homophobia he can even begin to question his own sexuality. (After he learns gay people exist. That’s an important step.)

He can examine what little he recovers of his past in bits and pieces. He can now step outside of himself and look in at the mess inside.

The view isn’t pretty.

As he travels through Martinaise, he retraces his old footsteps from the days prior and finds a path of destruction, of property and attempted suicides. His missing badge is in the trunk of the car he drove off into the sea. His missing gun was simply pawned so he wouldn’t shoot himself.

xxx

YOU: “Wait, what kind of name is ‘Harrier’?”

KIM KITSURAGI: “It’s a wartime name. Revolutionary. The kind mothers give their sons during troubled times. Like ‘Undying’ or ‘Boxer’ or ‘Ironside’.”

ENDURANCE: It’s meant to keep you safe.

REACTION SPEED: …from bullets, hunger, shrapnel, kidnappings, and worse.

xxx

Harry was born during the final year of the commune of Revachol, in a hospital where people usually went to die. He survived polio, which left him with partial paralysis that he’s mostly recovered from since- save for some distinct vocal quirks. He grew up in the aftermath of the Coalition’s invasion, as a wild youth in a petty street gang.

Before he was a human shaped can-opener of people Harry was a simple high school gym teacher. But you know how it goes. Boy meets girl. Girl convinces the boy to do something ‘worthwhile’ with his life. Boy volunteers to join the Revachol Citizen’s Militia. Girl’s family pays for his training because there’s a fairly significant class divide between them. Boy attaches entire identity to the idea of Being The Best Cop and starts cracking under pressure, deluding himself into the belief that he’s some kind of Super Cop, a Detective God.

And in all fairness, as a cop, Harry’s service record is objectively extremely impressive. Placing him among the RCM’s most statistically accomplished officers with 216 cases solved in his 18 year career accompanied by an extremely low fatality count of 3 deaths.

In retrospect it seems like Harry’s mental state had been deteriorating on some level ever since he joined the RCM. His substance abuse didn’t spiral into Recklessly Suicidal until about six years before the events of the game, when his longtime girlfriend/fiancé, Dora left Harry for good citing aforementioned deteriorating mental state. Their relationship lasted at least 12 years.

xxx

DOLORES DEI: “You get sad, Harry. *Too* sad. People can’t get that sad. It’s impossible to watch…Other people get sad too, but not like you, you stay down for too long. Until you start giving your thoughts *names* and talking to things.”

DOLORES DEI: “In conclusion— you’re ill. You’re an old, insane man.”

xxx

Four months prior to the game, Harry’s already very slippery grasp on himself had taken a sharp lurch downwards, the result of intense overworking accompanied by a steady regime of alcohol and drug abuse to cope. His goal, achieving the rank of lieutenant double-yefreitor was achieved but he burnt out hard in the process.

(The title of double-yefreitor indicates that he twice was offered a promotion to captain and twice rejected it.)

Harry’s behavior at work became increasingly volatile, with multiple officers leaving the unit as a result. Only three stayed behind, including Harry’s long suffering partner, and co-founder of the unit, Jean Vicquemare.

At some point- probably the result of all this behavior- substantial suspicion grew among his precinct and on the streets that he was in the pocket of Jamrock’s drug lord, La Puta Madre. Jean is quick to shoot down amnesiac’s Harry’s fear, pointing out that no criminal would want an actively suicidal dumpster fire on their payroll.

xxx

ENDURANCE: The pain in your chest tells you, you were working yourself to death to earn that rank.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: The case created a lot of *edge* you have to *take off* the death march really gets us going.

INLAND EMPIRE: A lot can happen in four months. Especially in winter. The winters are never easy on you, of that you are sure.

HORRIFIC NECKTIE: I remember that time…that was a good time. We had a good work/drink balance going. What happened, man? Pump it up.

xxx

On the outside Harry may be physically degrading at a rapid pace but on the inside his mind is a vibrant whirlwind of internal chatter and exhausting debate.

Like any video game character Harry is in possession of skills that aid him throughout his adventures, to reason, interrogate, or simply brute force his way through obstacles. These manifest as distinct voices within his internal processes. INLAND EMPIRE, for instance, is something of a dreamer, all gut feelings and groping in the dark for answers.

HALF LIGHT is Harry’s trigger happy fight or flight response. AUTHORITY demands to be taken seriously at all times. VOLITION urges Harry from giving into his desire for total self annihilation. EMPATHY strives for understanding and communication. And so on.

Nearly all of the twenty four voices, like Harry are far from infallible, easily lead astray and will bicker in his mind amongst themselves, often during crucial moments. So on one hand he has an eye for human frailty that borders on (and frequently crosses the line into) the supernatural, on the other, he may find himself paralyzed with indecision.

SHIVERS, is something of an exception, and an eerie one at that. It demonstrates that Harry is, on some level, physically wired into the city itself. It goes even further than the psychic glimpses of present happenings offered by ESPIRIT DE CORPS, beyond the boundaries of time, and even into communication with the very spirit of Revachol herself. She tells him that she loves him. She tells him that in 22 years she will be wiped off the face of Elysium by atomic fire.

They’re not the only presences residing in Harry’s head. ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN and LIMBIC SYSTEM are voices Harry tends to only meet beyond consciousness, his cruel innermost thoughts that would really appreciate it if he stopped having friends, slipped off into the release of death (a forever sleep) and stopped trying to be a person.

(SPINAL CORD keeps to itself for the most part.)

…and then HORRIFIC NECKTIE is exactly what it sounds like, Harry’s remarkably ugly tie that loudly encourages him to drink and live it up. It’s purchase pretty much heralded the end of Harry wearing normal clothes as well.

xxx

DOLORES DEI: The only thing inhuman about me is this. This *thing* you’ve made me into. I’m sorry for saying so, but I just *hate* it. What is this? This is so far gone, Harry, I don’t even…”

xxx

Harry may not look like a spiritually minded or existential person at first glance, and that’s fair. What he looks like is a walking dumpster fire in badly stained pants. But even as an amnesiac there’s a lingering fixation. He calls the world by its old Dolorian name, Elysium. Not often used by the general population and not frequently encountered elsewhere in the game.

Harry has obsessively deified his ex-fiancé to the point that his battered mind can no longer distinguish between her and the religious figure, Her Innocence Dolores Dei. He throws himself at their feet in desperation for forgiveness. He beats his knuckles bloody on a public telephone after dialing her number with pure muscle memory. He verbally self flagellates, he plays out the same scenario again and again in his dreams, trying and always failing to win her back.

And while he may have the excuse of amnesia affecting his memories of the past when it comes to Dora’s identity-erosion, it's impossible to miss that Harry perceives his new partner, Kim Kitsuragi, with a literal halo. From the simple white halo that crowns Kim’s in-game portrait to an observed halo in the shape of a ceiling fan as he stands over his barely conscious body after saving his life.

But beyond his religious fixations Harry’s interests stray into much more unsettling territory. The Pale. A phenomenon so existentially troubling that it borders on taboo for many. The Pale is an encroaching force of entropic nothing. It is growing at an unknown rate and the unmaking of the world is now an inevitability, not a question of if but when.

Kim is reasonably afraid of Harry learning about it, talking about it or even thinking about it in the condition he’s in. But Harry’s actually been here before. Long before he bludgeoned himself into oblivion, the Pale occupied his thoughts. In another life he sat around with friends and speculated that the Pale did not simply close inward on the Isolas as commonly believed, but that it grew like a fungus or cancer.

And he was right. There’s a two millimeter hole in reality, enclosed in the rafters of an old Dolorian church, an absent space that devours light and sound. Someday it will grow to consume Revachol.

xxx

YOU: “Off we go, into the wild pale yonder.”

JOYCE MESSIER: “One and all.” She closes her eyes. “They say pale is death but for the universe.”

INLAND EMPIRE: Why should we just leave and leave -- and the world get left behind?

xxx

(Pull point is post game, during the drive out of Martinaise.)


5-10 Key Character Traits:
Empathetic
Erratic
Hedonistic
Innocent
Manipulative
Masochistic
Obsessive
Self destructive
Spiritual
Violent


Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits.

Opt-Outs:
-nymph
-slime
-faerie
-lich
-simulacrum
-pooka

Gargoyle (Ethan)
Arachne (Tarkin)

Roleplay Sample:

TDM
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