DAMIEN LANG | CYBORG

DAMIEN LANG,

this is gospel for the fallen ones

Damien is an angry person. At nineteen, he had his dreams taken from him and a new life forced in its place. He has never gotten over it and still grieves for the life that could have been. Unable to race motorcycles, he feels that there's nothing else that he is good at. He feels hopeless, lost, depressed. When he's not working, he's sleeping, smoking, or drinking. Anything to get out of his head.

Damien is a fiercely independent, strong willed person. Aside from his sister and mother, he has never had anyone there to help him. He's learned to roll with the punches and adapt to survive. He's developed a stubborn streak a mile wide - a trait that has helped him survive in the slums, but can make him a bit of a hand full in personal relationships. He doesn't tolerate softness or concern. He views accepting help as a sign of weakness. In turn, he tends to view people that accept help, or who have not seemed to earn their lot in life, to be inherently weak.

The same stubbornness that drives him also manifests in his loyalty to his code of honor and his loved ones. Damien has a determined kind of passion for the people in his life that can cause him to overlook major flaws. Once his loyalty is earned, Damien can be easily manipulated as he refuses to think that someone he cares about would not care about him in turn.

He's prickly. He doesn't really do small talk or pleasantries. He tries, but politeness doesn't seem to be a think he's built to entirely understand. Part of it might be in his own head - he feels like he's street trash, so clearly he can only ever act like street trash. People often find him blunt or rude. It's less maliciousness than it is ignorance.

He suffers from anxiety attacks brought on by high stress, specific triggers, and intense violence. It's a subject of great shame for him, making him feel weak and useless. His prosthetics make him feel like something broken and he's deeply ashamed of them and his body. 


He finds comfort in quiet, gentle tasks. His sister got him a houseplant on a whim and he's taken to hoarding them. He finds the act of caring for something, even something as small as a little potted plant, to be soothing.

Parents
Mother: Natalia Lang [deceased]
Father: Cyrus Tanaka [estranged, location unknown]

Siblings
Sister: Aya Lang [Living in Dagos]


Damien Lang was born in the slums of Dagos to a single mother. Natalia Lang was from Pentos originally, but had followed the supposed man of her dreams to Ethea. When he left, abandoning their two year old daughter and unborn son, Natalia was left to take of things herself in a land that wasn't her own. Too ashamed to return home to her family - a family that had never approved of her choices in the first place - Natalia took any low skill job that she could find in order to make ends meet.

While Natalia worked, Damien's older sister Aya was left in charge. A responsible, clearheaded little girl, she adapted to the role of mother very easily given her age. When their mother died when Damien was nine, it was a natural transition for Aya to slip into the role of caregiver. She cooked and cleaned, but Damien was not an easy child. Frequently in fights and more out of school than in, he ran with other slum kids, committing petty crimes and generally being local hellions.

Once he hit his teens, he started messing around with cars. A friend's father ran a junkyard and Damien started picking apart the remains of a motorbike. It was old, but it worked. He and his friends began riding it around and racing each other. Damien took to the hobby the best of the group and when they heard of a local - more illegal and gang affiliated than not - competition, they couldn't pass up on the opportunity to win some money. 

Damien did not win. He came in fifth. Still, fifth was enough to get him trying again. And again. And again. And by the time he was seventeen, he was winning more races than he was losing. Meanwhile, his sister was doing her best to get him into school, to get him to aspire to something greater than racing shitty bikes in the slums. All Damien wanted to do was win, so when the leader of a local gang offered him a sort of sponsorship - payment for bike costs in exchange for some of the winnings - Damien agreed.

Things were going well until they weren't. A rival gang didn't like the way that Damien was winning so frequently and blew his tires out. The crash took his legs, crushed his right side including a lung, a kidney, and four of his ribs. His best case scenario was a life of disability, but his sister made a case to Damien's gang "sponsor." Damien's life in exchange for service. Fix Damien and he would race for them - for free - until the cost of the cybernetics were repaid. The deal was made without Damien's consent and he went under the knife, emerging a cyborg.

He hated his sister for what she had agreed to on his behalf, hated being - in his opinion - half a person, hated being committed to slavery in all, but name. But he didn't know what else to do, so he tried to race. The problem was, Damien may have had the skills necessary to win, but his mind and body couldn't forget what happened. Anxiety attacks plagued him any time he got on a bike, leaving him a gasping mess on the ground.

His boss had invested too much into Damien just to cut him loose or kill him, so he put him to work elsewhere. Damien became a dealer, selling uppers and downers in the slums until his debt was paid. 

Recharge Upgrade: The amount of time needed to recharge does not have to be the rough estimate of time needed for humans to sleep (≈ 8 hours per 24 hours). A three to four hours will suffice.

Unarmed Combat I: You know the basics and can hold your own in a street fight. The type of martial art or fighting style is up to you.

Melee I: Can accomplish fundamental and basic feats with melee weapons




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[b]voltron, keith kogane[/b] as [i]damien lang[/i]