Tanelorn app
Mar. 12th, 2013 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coldcoder♔ Player Information;
Name: Crystal
OOC Journal:crystalshard.
Are you over 18?: Very definitely yes.
Preferred Contact Method(s): IM to player account; Plurk: crystalshard
Other characters currently played at Tanelorn: N/A
♔ Character Information;
Name: Alan Bradley
Canon: Tron universe, specifically Tron: Legacy.
OU, AU, OC?: AU, mirrorverse version (i.e. evil). Mirrorverse is fan-created, not a canonical AU. Also CR AU.
Canon point: 2012, just after his death on the Free Grid.
Setting: The Tron universe is very much like our own. Alan is from Los Angeles, Earth, in 2012, and everything is pretty much the same as the world we live in . . . save for once vital difference. In the Tronverse, a man called Kevin Flynn was digitized into a computer when he attempted to destroy a computer program called the MCP. In there, he found that programs walk and talk like humans, and after escaping he created a computer system of his own, called the Grid. The Grid is a digital, sunless version of our own world, if somewhat pared down – there's only so much room on a hard drive, after all. There are no known plants on the Grid, nor any 'animal' programs save for the Gridbugs, pests which occur whenever major changes occur on the Grid.
The heart of the Grid is Tron City, home of the Disc Wars arena and the lightcycle stadium. The Games – gladiatorial matches which began as non-fatal contests – are the main entertainment of the masses of ordinary programs who inhabit the city. Outside of Tron City, the ISOs, or isomorphic algorithms, have two named colonies, Arjia and Bostrum. The ISOs are a type of program that spontaneously generated on the Grid, having no writer and needing no commands to exist.
The world that this particular version of Alan Bradley comes from is the Star Trek-like mirror of the normal Tron universe. Characters who were good in the original are primarily evil in this - including Alan. This is a full-universe alignment-swap AU, with events progressing along a similar overall pattern.
History: In 1982 in this mirror universe, a genius programmer called Kevin Flynn decided that he had been unfairly fired from his job at a major software company, ENCOM, and set about getting revenge. He recruited his ex-girlfriend, Lora Baines, and her boyfriend Alan Bradley, both of whom worked at ENCOM. Alan's pet project, a security monitoring program called Tron, had recently been blocked from his access, so Alan was more than willing to cooperate in bringing down the vice-president of the company, one Edward Dillinger. The three decided that destroying Dillinger's Master Control Program, the admin program that oversaw the ENCOM servers, would be the best way of going about it. They sneaked in late one night, Alan going to his desk and Flynn taking over Lora's station in the tech lab.
Not all of what ENCOM did was software. In the basement, there was a laser lab set up with the express intention of being able to 'digitize' objects into a computer and bring them back out unharmed. Due to a successful test on an orange earlier that day, the laser was pointing at Lora's workbench, and hence right at Flynn's back. In self-defense against Flynn's tampering, the MCP digitized Flynn into the ENCOM servers. After rescuing Tron and another program, called Ram, from the MCP's holding cells, Flynn went on to help destroy the MCP along with Tron and Tron's partner Yori. Yori was Lora's program, part of the digitizing software that brought things in and out of the Grid. Ram, alas, died during their adventures.
Alan knew none of this, for a while. All he knew was that their plan had worked; the MCP was gone, Dillinger had been framed and discredited, and ENCOM was theirs. There was a certain amount of celebration that night.
After a month or so, Flynn came to Alan with a 'surprise'. The surprise was the Grid, a private digital world all their own to play with. It was hidden in the basement under the games arcade that Flynn owned, which meant that no-one else could ever interfere with what they were doing. Alan met Tron, who had been ported over to the Grid by Flynn, and quickly took control over his program's code. Minor edits became greater over the years as Alan pared Tron's coding down to total, mindless obedience and pure killing machine.
Lora, now Alan's wife, was also introduced to the Grid, but preferred staying on the non-digital side of the equation. She tampered with Yori to ensure that she wouldn't ask questions, then left for Washington to keep an eye on the politics there and to deftly tamper with them if necessary.
Flynn, meanwhile, created an admin program to take care of the Grid while he was absent. This program was Clu, Flynn's doppelganger, and Flynn deliberately gave him the impossible direction of creating the perfect system. Flynn thought it would be interesting to watch Clu fail.
For a while, the Grid seemed to be their perfect playground. Then, one day, the ISOs emerged from the Sea, and everything changed. Flynn ignored the programs they'd installed in favour of the shiny newness and potential that were the ISOs, letting the system which had never been designed for unrestricted growth suffer. Eventually, when Alan pointed out that things were breaking down, the two decided to delete most of the programs so that the ISOs could have room to grow. The ISOs themselves, the majority of whom were racial supremacists due to listening to Flynn's biases, agreed with him. Flynn also promised to extract most of the ISOs and a few select programs to the User world, with the eventual intention of completely shutting down the Grid.
Clu, however, disagreed. He staged a coup, sealing Flynn inside the computer and locking Alan out. There was now no way that Alan could wipe the system without killing Flynn, and as ruthless as Alan was, he didn't want to do that to his best friend. Inside the system, Clu reclaimed the killing machine that was Tron and returned his voice and his ability to make decisions. Tron became Rinzler, choosing the new name because it had no past associations for him.
Alan took over raising Flynn's young son, Sam, whose mother had been locked up years ago in a dubious psychiatric hospital after she threatened to leave Flynn and take their son with her. Sam had been told that she'd died. Alan played the part of fatherly concern, subtly manipulating Sam into becoming a stable but resentful teenager and then adult, encouraging his hacking abilities and giving him targets that Alan privately wanted taken down, humiliated or otherwise discredited.
Meanwhile, at ENCOM, Alan still had an iron grip on the reins. He promoted a flunky into the chairman's position, allowing the man to take over the hassle while leaving Alan the power behind the throne.
Alan used his new free time in initiating the Keystone project, a larger and more controlled version of the Grid, and had the scientists create upgrades of the laser. Alan tested the laser on volunteers, wanting to be certain that it was safe before going into the Keystone supercomputer. Eventually, however, it was proved to be safe enough that he would risk himself again. Once Keystone was up and running, Alan used it as a testing ground. His coding skills grew exponentially as he practised, giving him near godlike abilities when digitized.
Then, over twenty years after the Grid had been closed to him, Flynn managed to get a message out to Alan. While Alan himself could never get back in, Sam would have no such problems. Having primed Sam to expect a treacherous Clu and a hostile system, he manipulated him into entering the Grid.
While Sam was inside the Grid, Alan went to his office and activated the laser, intending to teleport into Keystone.
[Beginning of Grid_Lined CR]
When Alan digitized, he did not go into Keystone, as he'd expected. Instead, he ended up in the familiar framework of the Grid . . . but not the one he'd built with Kevin Flynn. This was the Free Grid, home of second chances, and Alan saw that the world could be used.
Almost the first program that he encountered was, ironically, his own, who had also been pulled out of his own system and into the Free Grid. The mirror-verse Rinzler was trapped by Alan and drained of energy to the point where he fell over. To keep him occupied, Alan hit him with a coded burst of pain, and took Rinzler's disc with the intention of recoding him to be his loyal servant once again. Fortunately for Rinzler, a Tron from one of the non-mirrored universes was also on the scene, and he rescued Rinzler from Alan.
Alan, not one to be overly annoyed by a minor setback, set a tracker in Tron's lightcycle and chased them down. Along the way, he encountered three ordinary Tron-verse Sentries (lesser soldiers) and changed their programming so that they would obey him, not Clu. He also discovered Eden, a young, innocent ISO, and promptly persuaded her to come with him to the User world.
He, Eden and the Sentries took transport for the Portal, the exit point of the Grid. Alan knew that what he had in his hand was more valuable than his rebellious program, and he didn't want to lose her. Unfortunately for him, he had picked exactly the wrong kidnap victim. Eden's main protector was the same Tron who'd rescued Rinzler, and he had roused all of Security and certain allies to help get her back and take down the 'rogue User'. They knew all too well what could happen if Alan was able to take Eden and get out . . . and worse, if he came back.
The allies stopped his transport and rescued Eden, but Alan wasn't giving up without a fight. A battle ensured, one that only ended when one of the Users (humans) in the fight against him melded with the Grid and blocked his access. After that, Rinzler struck him down, wounded near fatally but not yet dead, and Tron finished the job with a mercy kill. If Alan had been alive to know about it, he would have taken it as minor payback that both Rinzler and Tron suffered serious glitches (read instant trauma and PTSD) from daring to strike down the man who wrote Rinzler.
Personality: On the surface, Alan Bradley is a very charming man. A happily married and successful businessman, he's been guiding ENCOM from behind the scenes ever since Kevin Flynn vanished. It's the charm of a velvet glove over an iron hand, however; Alan is utterly ruthless in how he approaches things. If things work, they can be improved. If they don't, they are discarded. He wants to win, is stubborn enough not to back down, and does not take well to losing unless it's pre-planned and part of a deeper game.
On the Grid, those who give orders to programs are called 'Users', and Alan is a user in truth. People, like tools, are there to be used and thrown away when they wear out. Occasional moments of unprofessional sentimentality tend to be reserved for his wife Lora, his friend Kevin Flynn, Flynn's son Sam, and his program, Tron.
Alan takes pleasure in taking control, generally quite subtly but occasionally overtly. There is little that is sweeter to him than seeing people walk - unknowingly or not - down the path that he's set out for them. A supreme manipulator, perhaps socialized sociopath might best describe him – while on the surface he's a pleasant man, after a while the coldness and emptiness underneath start to become visible. As long as people are useful, he treats them well, within limits. While he has good (to him) and often logical reasons for doing what he does, his actions are rarely tempered by morality. When he taken into account someone's feelings, it's generally because he might need them to be friendly later.
His subordinates are semi-jokingly called 'minions'. Alan knows how the rest of the world would see him, and is one of those villains who has read the Evil Overlord list. He can come across as arrogant, and indeed he is, but it's based on a depth of self-knowledge that few people dare to try. He is terrifyingly sane, the kind of man who thinks Moriarty did it wrong, and has the patience to wait decades for a payoff. While he has moments with feeling anger, he keeps it under control. He can also keep secrets under control, especially if he considers them valuable enough to save for blackmail material.
Perhaps surprisingly, Alan is genuinely in love with Lora. She is as ruthless as he is, and as willing to disregard feelings. She is the person he trusts most in all the world, and about the only person he trusts enough to show his true face to. The rest of the world sees the mask, in one form or another. However, Alan does feel emotions for certain people. Even after twenty years, he hasn't given up on getting Flynn out of the Grid, something seemingly at odds with his usual philosophy. He cares about Sam, bringing him up to be a stable adult even as he uses Sam's rebellious nature to further his own purposes. He even, in a twisted way, cares about Tron – the program he still counts as his favorite, and the one that he met first. In his![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
grid_lined CR, he decided to bring Rinzler back under his control rather than kill him, which would have been the more logical option.
In short, he's the kind of man who would never voluntarily go to Tanelorn – the Watchers are too much of an unknown quantity, and the random nature of the city's travels would put a damper on regular business dealings. Given the option, Alan would prefer to remain where he is as the power behind the throne in his own kingdom. Once in Tanelorn, however, he will begin looking for ways to be on top of the game once more.
Abilities: At heart, Alan is a computer programmer. He was good enough when younger to write experimental AI security software (Tron) that was second to none, and has lost none of his skill. In fact, his skills have improved over the years, to the point where there's very little he can't get into and manipulate. Foreign systems and unfamiliar programming languages will take longer, as he'll need to get used to them, but he'll get in eventually.
Alan had also been dealing with ENCOM's corporate boardroom for nearly thirty years, and is very experienced with metaphorical sharks in the water. If anyone knows how to handle a business, it's Alan. Commensurate with that, he has a superb poker face and is, perhaps unsurprisingly, very good at the game.
If he's digitized into a computer system, especially a familiar one, then his abilities are nothing short of godlike. As an example, he can heal or cause pain, throw up forcefields with just a thought, drain power and tear apart stone. However, these abilities are wielded by a mortal man, and he only has so many things that he can concentrate on at once. They also won't work in a non-digital environment like Tanelorn, so he's limited to what the body of a sixty-year-old man can do.
As mentioned in the personality section, Alan can also be extremely persuasive, to the point where it counts as an ability in itself. There is nothing supernatural about it, merely natural charisma backed up by decades of watching people and figuring out where the buttons are.
On a lesser note, Alan can also handle the physical hardware of a computer, and is able to repair them given available supplies. He's good with household DIY, and plays tennis on a twice-weekly basis to keep in shape. He can drive both manual and automatic cars, run a large company, and stay awake in business meetings. He can also ride horseback, and is a skilled rider both saddled and bareback.
Emotionally, he has very few weaknesses. There isn't much left of his heart for someone to try to get into, and about the only thing that might hurt him is someone threatening Lora, his wife. He might also feel some vague guilt if he gets Sam Flynn into serious trouble.
Physically, Alan is a standard issue human in his early sixties. He's reasonably fit and plays tennis at least once a week, but his abilities are more along the lines of skills rather than inherent powers. He can walk several miles, or run one or two, without a problem. He's not as fast as he used to be, however; max speed running would probably be about nine or ten miles an hour, up to eleven if he's scared or really pushes it. He runs out of energy faster than a younger person would as well, and will need a rest after about five or six miles walking or two miles running. One mile if he's running away from something.
Strength-wise, he's probably capable of lifting about 45lb in front of him or twice that over his shoulder. This would have to be short distance, however, as his joints aren't quite up to what they used to be able to do. If he carries something heavy for too long, his joints and muscles will start aching and damage could even occur. If that's the case, he'll have to heal before he does it again. Healing time is standard human rate.
While he does have an identity disc on the Grid, and is capable of throwing it with reasonable accuracy, he will be coming in dressed in a business suit and entirely human, and will therefore have no disc. Being an older man, Alan's physical weaknesses are exactly those. He's slowed down since his youth, and no longer has quite the spring in his joints that he used to. While his mind is as sharp as ever, and he's pretty healthy, he's aging and he knows it. It will be harder for him to run away from things, and he'll be more susceptible to illness than a younger person might be. He is, however, slightly nearsighted and tends to wear glasses to correct the problem. Without them, he'll be able to get around okay, but far-off things will be a bit blurry.
Also, he snores.
Network sample:
[There's a crackling noise, a couple of clicks, and then a deep voice speaks.]
Well, I hope this works. Greetings, Tanelorn. My name is Alan Bradley, and I'm looking for some . . . friends of mine. Specifically, anyone who says they're from the Grid or looks like a human wearing skintight black armor with LEDs on.
[There's a pause, and the voice comes back sounding worried and hopeful at the same time.]
I think I saw at least one in the distance, but they were gone before I could find them.
[It's a gamble, he knows, but even if that program was from the same Grid that had orchestrated his murder, he's fairly sure that they wouldn't know it's specifically him. They certainly wouldn't be expecting him to rise from the dead.]
Log sample:
The ache in his back was purely psychological, but Alan felt it nonetheless. Or perhaps it was tension; easily understandable, after having been knifed in the back by the program that he himself had created. There was no rip in the familiar suit that he'd woken up in; but for his memories, he'd have thought that the whole trip to the Free Grid had been a bad dream.
Leaning back against a comfortingly solid stone wall, Alan watched as the people went by. Even without the information pamphlet he'd discovered on waking, it was clear that Tanelorn was located nowhere on Earth. There were people here of shapes and sizes that he hadn't seen outside of television, and more that he might never have imagined. The sheer potential here was making his business instincts sit up and take notice.
The promise of visiting other worlds was especially tempting, but apparently forbidden at the moment thanks to somebody's lost ring. It didn't take too much to put together properties of the silvery ring he'd woken up with and the potential properties of the gold ring that the Wayfarer had lost and come up with some interesting theories. It appeared that there were master keys in this world as well, and ones jealously guarded by their owners.
Something to ponder for a later date, perhaps. For now, there were more urgent necessities; food, extra clothing, information, and allies. Once again, he would have to start from the ground up, and to do that he would need all of the above. He could smell the savory scent of cooking food from where he was standing by the wall, and surely somewhere in this city there had to be a decent tailor.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same . . .
He'd always liked Kipling.
Name: Crystal
OOC Journal:
crystalshard. Are you over 18?: Very definitely yes.
Preferred Contact Method(s): IM to player account; Plurk: crystalshard
Other characters currently played at Tanelorn: N/A
♔ Character Information;
Name: Alan Bradley
Canon: Tron universe, specifically Tron: Legacy.
OU, AU, OC?: AU, mirrorverse version (i.e. evil). Mirrorverse is fan-created, not a canonical AU. Also CR AU.
Canon point: 2012, just after his death on the Free Grid.
Setting: The Tron universe is very much like our own. Alan is from Los Angeles, Earth, in 2012, and everything is pretty much the same as the world we live in . . . save for once vital difference. In the Tronverse, a man called Kevin Flynn was digitized into a computer when he attempted to destroy a computer program called the MCP. In there, he found that programs walk and talk like humans, and after escaping he created a computer system of his own, called the Grid. The Grid is a digital, sunless version of our own world, if somewhat pared down – there's only so much room on a hard drive, after all. There are no known plants on the Grid, nor any 'animal' programs save for the Gridbugs, pests which occur whenever major changes occur on the Grid.
The heart of the Grid is Tron City, home of the Disc Wars arena and the lightcycle stadium. The Games – gladiatorial matches which began as non-fatal contests – are the main entertainment of the masses of ordinary programs who inhabit the city. Outside of Tron City, the ISOs, or isomorphic algorithms, have two named colonies, Arjia and Bostrum. The ISOs are a type of program that spontaneously generated on the Grid, having no writer and needing no commands to exist.
The world that this particular version of Alan Bradley comes from is the Star Trek-like mirror of the normal Tron universe. Characters who were good in the original are primarily evil in this - including Alan. This is a full-universe alignment-swap AU, with events progressing along a similar overall pattern.
History: In 1982 in this mirror universe, a genius programmer called Kevin Flynn decided that he had been unfairly fired from his job at a major software company, ENCOM, and set about getting revenge. He recruited his ex-girlfriend, Lora Baines, and her boyfriend Alan Bradley, both of whom worked at ENCOM. Alan's pet project, a security monitoring program called Tron, had recently been blocked from his access, so Alan was more than willing to cooperate in bringing down the vice-president of the company, one Edward Dillinger. The three decided that destroying Dillinger's Master Control Program, the admin program that oversaw the ENCOM servers, would be the best way of going about it. They sneaked in late one night, Alan going to his desk and Flynn taking over Lora's station in the tech lab.
Not all of what ENCOM did was software. In the basement, there was a laser lab set up with the express intention of being able to 'digitize' objects into a computer and bring them back out unharmed. Due to a successful test on an orange earlier that day, the laser was pointing at Lora's workbench, and hence right at Flynn's back. In self-defense against Flynn's tampering, the MCP digitized Flynn into the ENCOM servers. After rescuing Tron and another program, called Ram, from the MCP's holding cells, Flynn went on to help destroy the MCP along with Tron and Tron's partner Yori. Yori was Lora's program, part of the digitizing software that brought things in and out of the Grid. Ram, alas, died during their adventures.
Alan knew none of this, for a while. All he knew was that their plan had worked; the MCP was gone, Dillinger had been framed and discredited, and ENCOM was theirs. There was a certain amount of celebration that night.
After a month or so, Flynn came to Alan with a 'surprise'. The surprise was the Grid, a private digital world all their own to play with. It was hidden in the basement under the games arcade that Flynn owned, which meant that no-one else could ever interfere with what they were doing. Alan met Tron, who had been ported over to the Grid by Flynn, and quickly took control over his program's code. Minor edits became greater over the years as Alan pared Tron's coding down to total, mindless obedience and pure killing machine.
Lora, now Alan's wife, was also introduced to the Grid, but preferred staying on the non-digital side of the equation. She tampered with Yori to ensure that she wouldn't ask questions, then left for Washington to keep an eye on the politics there and to deftly tamper with them if necessary.
Flynn, meanwhile, created an admin program to take care of the Grid while he was absent. This program was Clu, Flynn's doppelganger, and Flynn deliberately gave him the impossible direction of creating the perfect system. Flynn thought it would be interesting to watch Clu fail.
For a while, the Grid seemed to be their perfect playground. Then, one day, the ISOs emerged from the Sea, and everything changed. Flynn ignored the programs they'd installed in favour of the shiny newness and potential that were the ISOs, letting the system which had never been designed for unrestricted growth suffer. Eventually, when Alan pointed out that things were breaking down, the two decided to delete most of the programs so that the ISOs could have room to grow. The ISOs themselves, the majority of whom were racial supremacists due to listening to Flynn's biases, agreed with him. Flynn also promised to extract most of the ISOs and a few select programs to the User world, with the eventual intention of completely shutting down the Grid.
Clu, however, disagreed. He staged a coup, sealing Flynn inside the computer and locking Alan out. There was now no way that Alan could wipe the system without killing Flynn, and as ruthless as Alan was, he didn't want to do that to his best friend. Inside the system, Clu reclaimed the killing machine that was Tron and returned his voice and his ability to make decisions. Tron became Rinzler, choosing the new name because it had no past associations for him.
Alan took over raising Flynn's young son, Sam, whose mother had been locked up years ago in a dubious psychiatric hospital after she threatened to leave Flynn and take their son with her. Sam had been told that she'd died. Alan played the part of fatherly concern, subtly manipulating Sam into becoming a stable but resentful teenager and then adult, encouraging his hacking abilities and giving him targets that Alan privately wanted taken down, humiliated or otherwise discredited.
Meanwhile, at ENCOM, Alan still had an iron grip on the reins. He promoted a flunky into the chairman's position, allowing the man to take over the hassle while leaving Alan the power behind the throne.
Alan used his new free time in initiating the Keystone project, a larger and more controlled version of the Grid, and had the scientists create upgrades of the laser. Alan tested the laser on volunteers, wanting to be certain that it was safe before going into the Keystone supercomputer. Eventually, however, it was proved to be safe enough that he would risk himself again. Once Keystone was up and running, Alan used it as a testing ground. His coding skills grew exponentially as he practised, giving him near godlike abilities when digitized.
Then, over twenty years after the Grid had been closed to him, Flynn managed to get a message out to Alan. While Alan himself could never get back in, Sam would have no such problems. Having primed Sam to expect a treacherous Clu and a hostile system, he manipulated him into entering the Grid.
While Sam was inside the Grid, Alan went to his office and activated the laser, intending to teleport into Keystone.
[Beginning of Grid_Lined CR]
When Alan digitized, he did not go into Keystone, as he'd expected. Instead, he ended up in the familiar framework of the Grid . . . but not the one he'd built with Kevin Flynn. This was the Free Grid, home of second chances, and Alan saw that the world could be used.
Almost the first program that he encountered was, ironically, his own, who had also been pulled out of his own system and into the Free Grid. The mirror-verse Rinzler was trapped by Alan and drained of energy to the point where he fell over. To keep him occupied, Alan hit him with a coded burst of pain, and took Rinzler's disc with the intention of recoding him to be his loyal servant once again. Fortunately for Rinzler, a Tron from one of the non-mirrored universes was also on the scene, and he rescued Rinzler from Alan.
Alan, not one to be overly annoyed by a minor setback, set a tracker in Tron's lightcycle and chased them down. Along the way, he encountered three ordinary Tron-verse Sentries (lesser soldiers) and changed their programming so that they would obey him, not Clu. He also discovered Eden, a young, innocent ISO, and promptly persuaded her to come with him to the User world.
He, Eden and the Sentries took transport for the Portal, the exit point of the Grid. Alan knew that what he had in his hand was more valuable than his rebellious program, and he didn't want to lose her. Unfortunately for him, he had picked exactly the wrong kidnap victim. Eden's main protector was the same Tron who'd rescued Rinzler, and he had roused all of Security and certain allies to help get her back and take down the 'rogue User'. They knew all too well what could happen if Alan was able to take Eden and get out . . . and worse, if he came back.
The allies stopped his transport and rescued Eden, but Alan wasn't giving up without a fight. A battle ensured, one that only ended when one of the Users (humans) in the fight against him melded with the Grid and blocked his access. After that, Rinzler struck him down, wounded near fatally but not yet dead, and Tron finished the job with a mercy kill. If Alan had been alive to know about it, he would have taken it as minor payback that both Rinzler and Tron suffered serious glitches (read instant trauma and PTSD) from daring to strike down the man who wrote Rinzler.
Personality: On the surface, Alan Bradley is a very charming man. A happily married and successful businessman, he's been guiding ENCOM from behind the scenes ever since Kevin Flynn vanished. It's the charm of a velvet glove over an iron hand, however; Alan is utterly ruthless in how he approaches things. If things work, they can be improved. If they don't, they are discarded. He wants to win, is stubborn enough not to back down, and does not take well to losing unless it's pre-planned and part of a deeper game.
On the Grid, those who give orders to programs are called 'Users', and Alan is a user in truth. People, like tools, are there to be used and thrown away when they wear out. Occasional moments of unprofessional sentimentality tend to be reserved for his wife Lora, his friend Kevin Flynn, Flynn's son Sam, and his program, Tron.
Alan takes pleasure in taking control, generally quite subtly but occasionally overtly. There is little that is sweeter to him than seeing people walk - unknowingly or not - down the path that he's set out for them. A supreme manipulator, perhaps socialized sociopath might best describe him – while on the surface he's a pleasant man, after a while the coldness and emptiness underneath start to become visible. As long as people are useful, he treats them well, within limits. While he has good (to him) and often logical reasons for doing what he does, his actions are rarely tempered by morality. When he taken into account someone's feelings, it's generally because he might need them to be friendly later.
His subordinates are semi-jokingly called 'minions'. Alan knows how the rest of the world would see him, and is one of those villains who has read the Evil Overlord list. He can come across as arrogant, and indeed he is, but it's based on a depth of self-knowledge that few people dare to try. He is terrifyingly sane, the kind of man who thinks Moriarty did it wrong, and has the patience to wait decades for a payoff. While he has moments with feeling anger, he keeps it under control. He can also keep secrets under control, especially if he considers them valuable enough to save for blackmail material.
Perhaps surprisingly, Alan is genuinely in love with Lora. She is as ruthless as he is, and as willing to disregard feelings. She is the person he trusts most in all the world, and about the only person he trusts enough to show his true face to. The rest of the world sees the mask, in one form or another. However, Alan does feel emotions for certain people. Even after twenty years, he hasn't given up on getting Flynn out of the Grid, something seemingly at odds with his usual philosophy. He cares about Sam, bringing him up to be a stable adult even as he uses Sam's rebellious nature to further his own purposes. He even, in a twisted way, cares about Tron – the program he still counts as his favorite, and the one that he met first. In his
grid_lined CR, he decided to bring Rinzler back under his control rather than kill him, which would have been the more logical option. In short, he's the kind of man who would never voluntarily go to Tanelorn – the Watchers are too much of an unknown quantity, and the random nature of the city's travels would put a damper on regular business dealings. Given the option, Alan would prefer to remain where he is as the power behind the throne in his own kingdom. Once in Tanelorn, however, he will begin looking for ways to be on top of the game once more.
Abilities: At heart, Alan is a computer programmer. He was good enough when younger to write experimental AI security software (Tron) that was second to none, and has lost none of his skill. In fact, his skills have improved over the years, to the point where there's very little he can't get into and manipulate. Foreign systems and unfamiliar programming languages will take longer, as he'll need to get used to them, but he'll get in eventually.
Alan had also been dealing with ENCOM's corporate boardroom for nearly thirty years, and is very experienced with metaphorical sharks in the water. If anyone knows how to handle a business, it's Alan. Commensurate with that, he has a superb poker face and is, perhaps unsurprisingly, very good at the game.
If he's digitized into a computer system, especially a familiar one, then his abilities are nothing short of godlike. As an example, he can heal or cause pain, throw up forcefields with just a thought, drain power and tear apart stone. However, these abilities are wielded by a mortal man, and he only has so many things that he can concentrate on at once. They also won't work in a non-digital environment like Tanelorn, so he's limited to what the body of a sixty-year-old man can do.
As mentioned in the personality section, Alan can also be extremely persuasive, to the point where it counts as an ability in itself. There is nothing supernatural about it, merely natural charisma backed up by decades of watching people and figuring out where the buttons are.
On a lesser note, Alan can also handle the physical hardware of a computer, and is able to repair them given available supplies. He's good with household DIY, and plays tennis on a twice-weekly basis to keep in shape. He can drive both manual and automatic cars, run a large company, and stay awake in business meetings. He can also ride horseback, and is a skilled rider both saddled and bareback.
Emotionally, he has very few weaknesses. There isn't much left of his heart for someone to try to get into, and about the only thing that might hurt him is someone threatening Lora, his wife. He might also feel some vague guilt if he gets Sam Flynn into serious trouble.
Physically, Alan is a standard issue human in his early sixties. He's reasonably fit and plays tennis at least once a week, but his abilities are more along the lines of skills rather than inherent powers. He can walk several miles, or run one or two, without a problem. He's not as fast as he used to be, however; max speed running would probably be about nine or ten miles an hour, up to eleven if he's scared or really pushes it. He runs out of energy faster than a younger person would as well, and will need a rest after about five or six miles walking or two miles running. One mile if he's running away from something.
Strength-wise, he's probably capable of lifting about 45lb in front of him or twice that over his shoulder. This would have to be short distance, however, as his joints aren't quite up to what they used to be able to do. If he carries something heavy for too long, his joints and muscles will start aching and damage could even occur. If that's the case, he'll have to heal before he does it again. Healing time is standard human rate.
While he does have an identity disc on the Grid, and is capable of throwing it with reasonable accuracy, he will be coming in dressed in a business suit and entirely human, and will therefore have no disc. Being an older man, Alan's physical weaknesses are exactly those. He's slowed down since his youth, and no longer has quite the spring in his joints that he used to. While his mind is as sharp as ever, and he's pretty healthy, he's aging and he knows it. It will be harder for him to run away from things, and he'll be more susceptible to illness than a younger person might be. He is, however, slightly nearsighted and tends to wear glasses to correct the problem. Without them, he'll be able to get around okay, but far-off things will be a bit blurry.
Also, he snores.
Network sample:
[There's a crackling noise, a couple of clicks, and then a deep voice speaks.]
Well, I hope this works. Greetings, Tanelorn. My name is Alan Bradley, and I'm looking for some . . . friends of mine. Specifically, anyone who says they're from the Grid or looks like a human wearing skintight black armor with LEDs on.
[There's a pause, and the voice comes back sounding worried and hopeful at the same time.]
I think I saw at least one in the distance, but they were gone before I could find them.
[It's a gamble, he knows, but even if that program was from the same Grid that had orchestrated his murder, he's fairly sure that they wouldn't know it's specifically him. They certainly wouldn't be expecting him to rise from the dead.]
Log sample:
The ache in his back was purely psychological, but Alan felt it nonetheless. Or perhaps it was tension; easily understandable, after having been knifed in the back by the program that he himself had created. There was no rip in the familiar suit that he'd woken up in; but for his memories, he'd have thought that the whole trip to the Free Grid had been a bad dream.
Leaning back against a comfortingly solid stone wall, Alan watched as the people went by. Even without the information pamphlet he'd discovered on waking, it was clear that Tanelorn was located nowhere on Earth. There were people here of shapes and sizes that he hadn't seen outside of television, and more that he might never have imagined. The sheer potential here was making his business instincts sit up and take notice.
The promise of visiting other worlds was especially tempting, but apparently forbidden at the moment thanks to somebody's lost ring. It didn't take too much to put together properties of the silvery ring he'd woken up with and the potential properties of the gold ring that the Wayfarer had lost and come up with some interesting theories. It appeared that there were master keys in this world as well, and ones jealously guarded by their owners.
Something to ponder for a later date, perhaps. For now, there were more urgent necessities; food, extra clothing, information, and allies. Once again, he would have to start from the ground up, and to do that he would need all of the above. He could smell the savory scent of cooking food from where he was standing by the wall, and surely somewhere in this city there had to be a decent tailor.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same . . .
He'd always liked Kipling.
