PLAYER INFO

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• Player Name: Anna
• Player Contact: annalizabeth on Discord, layonmacduff
• Player Age: 35
• Permissions: Here


CHARACTER INFO

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• Character Name: Mohinder Suresh
• Character Age: 32
• Character Canon: Heroes
• Canon Point: Immediately before episode 3x01, "The Second Coming"

• Character History: Wiki link

• Character Personality:

Determined

Mohinder's father used to refer to him as "fragile," and to rebuff Mohinder's attempts to join in on his research by quoting Darwin at him: "A scientific man should have no wishes, no affections, a heart of stone. That's me, Mohinder. It's not you." The very last thing Chandra Suresh would have wanted, before he was murdered, was for his son to fly to America and take over both his life's work and the investigation into his death, but that's exactly what Mohinder did anyway.

Even as early as episode 1x02, when Mohinder was still just a professor with no combat training or experience, he was willing to physically tackle a man who had seconds earlier been holding him at gunpoint rather than let the man escape without giving him any answers. When he actually finds his father's murderer, Sylar, a man with an entire arsenal of superpowers at his disposal, he manages to keep his heart rate level enough to avoid letting the killer's superhuman hearing detect anything unusual--then drugs him with sedative tea, tortures a confession out of him, and shoots him.

Later, he agrees to fight a massive shadowy organization that's been pulling strings behind the scenes, and then its most dangerous ex-agent, because he's firmly convinced that it's the only way to stop a dangerous virus from becoming a pandemic. He ignores any and all attempts to dissuade him, because in his mind, if nobody else cares enough to stop the threat posed by the virus, he has to be the one to do it.

He figures out how to give himself superpowers, and even when the experimentation goes horribly awry, he refuses to give up and let someone take away the powers and the side effects and return him to normal. His insistence on pushing through and perfecting the formula crosses the line into villainy, but in the aftermath of it, his commitment to atoning for what he's done is even more wholehearted and obsessive.

No matter how many times over the course of the series Mohinder finds himself in over his head, his consistent response--save for once, at the end--is to swim deeper. It takes actual death, from which he has to be saved by a time traveler, for him to finally hang it all up and go back home to India like his father would have wanted.

Intelligent

Mohinder's intelligence and education are what initially enable him, as an ordinary human, to keep up with all the superheroes in his orbit--and later, he uses them to invent a way to give himself powers as well. (The formula is missing a key component, and he needs outside help to fix the resulting side effects, but he does still manage to accomplish the goal of giving himself superpowers after a sudden flash of inspiration and a single evening's work.) His Ph.D in genetics and his skill as a researcher put him in high demand among the lab divisions of shady corporations, two of which vie to recruit him and are reluctant to let him leave, and he's very good at putting his "Eureka" moments into practice and coming up with fast, concrete results.

Though he is not an MD, he's often expected (despite his protests) to provide medical treatment to other characters, and usually succeeds at it. "You're a doctor, right?" is almost a running joke throughout the series, as is Mohinder's exasperation ("I'm a geneticist! I wouldn't know the first thing about this!") and eventual resignation ("Yes. I'm a doctor.") Tasked with curing a little girl of the same virus that killed his sister Shanti before he was born, Mohinder succeeds in finishing his late father's work on the remedy with very little guidance, and is later able to find a cure for a mutated strain of the virus that doesn't respond to the treatment he's already discovered.

Even when other characters have conflicts with him or reasons to mistrust him, they'll often decide that the benefits of his scientific talent outweigh the drawbacks of working with him. Noah Bennet, a former partner in espionage, comes back to request Mohinder's help on another mission even after Mohinder has betrayed and shot him, saying "You have a unique perspective...and I need your brain."

Altruistic

Though he can sometimes succumb to self-serving pride and ambition, Mohinder's motive for carrying out his dangerous research is generally a sincere desire to help people. When he discovers that his father had created an algorithm to track down people with superhuman abilities, his first goal is to rescue them from the serial killer targeting them for their powers, and then, he hopes, to reassure them that they aren't alone and help them accept their gifts.

He struggles at the outset with doubts about the usefulness of the project and his own suitability for it, but when he does ultimately decide to continue it against his mother's wishes, he tells her that the people on the algorithm's list need to be warned and protected from the dangers they face. She argues that there will be nobody to protect him from danger in turn, but he resumes the project anyway.

Several times over the course of the series, he attempts to wrap up his affairs and go home to India, but he's always convinced to stay by someone asking for his help. He unofficially adopts Molly, the little girl he has cured of the Shanti Virus, and remains in New York to look after her with a friend. Eventually, he sends her to live with his mother in the hopes that she will be safer there, and he plans to go home and join them, but is prevented from doing so by another superpowered person in need of assistance. Maya Herrera has traveled from the Dominican Republic because she believes he is the only person who can find a way to remove her dangerous powers, and when she begs him to stay and help her, he agrees. (The path this research leads him down becomes harmful to the point of villainy, but his original intention, at least, is pure.)

Later in the series, after he finally has returned home, he still finds himself unable to rest at the thought of people with dangerous abilities putting others in harm's way, and breaks up with his girlfriend to travel back to America and try to stop a potential supervillain from coming to power. Said supervillain kills him for his troubles, a fate which would have been permanent if not for the intervention of a time traveler, but even when Mohinder is told how his death came about, he remains determined to fight the villain--"I can't just go away while he consolidates his power; we need to stop him"--and has to be forced out of the way to keep him from doing so.

Reckless

The flip side of Mohinder's determination, or perhaps a necessary component of it, is his tendency to jump headlong into danger without asking questions or thinking of the consequences until it's too late. It's extremely fortunate for him that he has a real talent for thinking quickly in crisis situations, because his lack of talent for planning or forethought is what gets him into said crises to begin with.

The closest he really comes to formulating an advance plan is when he lays a trap for his father's killer by knocking him out and connecting him to an IV of curare to paralyze the part of his brain that controls his powers--but having done that, he pushes his luck too far by leaving Sylar there and running experiments on him that take long enough for the drugs to wear off. Only thanks to a friend's timely intervention does Mohinder escape the situation alive.

The entirety of his aforementioned villain arc could have been avoided, had Mohinder not thought it a good idea to inject himself with the superpower-granting prototype serum he'd only invented earlier that day--but for reasons even he can't adequately explain later, he hadn't been willing to take any further time to work out the kinks.

The only thing that gets through to him, eventually, at the end of the series, is his own murder at the hands of an unstable villain from whom he's been withholding information. Having thrown away his relationship and traveled around the world to investigate said villain, he winds up dead on the floor of a motel room in the middle of nowhere, until a time-traveling acquaintance, Hiro Nakamura, is considerate enough to rewind the clock and slap a Kevlar vest on him to save his life. Even then, his mouthing off to his savior is enough to convince Hiro that he needs to be gotten out of the way to stop him from throwing a wrench into existing plans, and Mohinder spends the next two months sedated in a psych ward under a false name. Chastened by the whole experience, he returns to India and puts all of it behind him.

Easily Manipulated

Mohinder doesn't think of himself as someone who trusts easily, or exposes his vulnerabilities to people with bad intentions. He is deeply wrong about this.

As his telepathic friend once told him, "I don't need to read your mind. You're an open book." And like an open book, Mohinder's ethics are susceptible to overwriting by those who can find the right rhetoric to convince him that their agendas are for the greater good. There is very little that Mohinder can't be talked into if he's persuaded that it's necessary in order to Save The World. Throughout the series, he becomes something of a magnet for unscrupulous people who know that they can use his scientific talent to whatever end they desire, as long as they dangle the threat of something he fears in front of him to make him believe he's doing something to avert it.

He begins Season Two in cahoots with Noah Bennet, a former agent of the shady company Primatech, to advance their mutual goal of taking the organization down. (This in and of itself is an example of Mohinder being used for someone else's purposes, as Noah knows perfectly well how inexperienced Mohinder is with undercover work and how dangerous the work actually is, but doesn't particularly care what happens to him as long as Noah's own family remains safe.)

Before long, Primatech's recruiters have begun to wear him down, telling him that the threat posed by the virus they're trying to cure (a virus they weaponized and unleashed in the first place, unbeknownst to Mohinder) far outweighs the harm done by their ethical violations. Mohinder quickly comes to believe that they're the only people who can help his adopted daughter when she becomes ill, and they're all too happy to let him keep believing it. He comes clean about his spying, switches sides, and shoots his former partner for Primatech's benefit. "You have nobody to blame but yourself," he tells Noah, after the fact. "What this company does--we save lives."

Later, under the influence of the unstable power-granting serum he tested on himself before it was ready, he finds himself working for yet another evil corporation called Pinehearst. Forced to use their resources to find a cure for the terrible side effects he's inflicted on himself--a cure which will advance their goal of mass-producing the serum--and convinced that he can only save himself by experimenting on the unwilling human subjects they bring him, Mohinder still deflects accusations of helping the villain with "I'd like to think he's the one helping me." (Two episodes later, they're holding him captive in his lab under threat of torture.)

While his judgment of character is terrible, and every new organization he falls in with pushes him further and further over lines he never intended to cross, Mohinder can always be trusted to recognize the error of his ways eventually. Once he does, he blames himself completely, marinates in terrible guilt and shame, and does everything he can to make amends for what he's done--but the damage always remains, and there's always a next time.

Short-Tempered

Though Mohinder is desperate to think of himself as a good person, this is not the same thing as being a nice person, and he is often not a particularly nice or pleasant person. Even when he tries to be polite and friendly, he finds it difficult to sustain--many of his conversations will degenerate before long into prickly cynicism or outright anger. It's a pattern he learned from the way his father treated him, and it rears up especially when he feels insecure or threatened.

Sometimes his flares of temper take the form of sneering condescension, as with Peter Petrelli, who approaches Mohinder about his father's research in the midst of his doubt about it. Mohinder answers Peter's excitement and enthusiasm for the project with rudeness that borders on cruelty. His initial, relatively innocuous (but still uncalled-for) sarcasm gives way to talking down to Peter in the tone of a kindergarten teacher when Peter talks about being special. Several episodes later, having been convinced to hear Peter out about his powers, Mohinder's skepticism takes the form of smirking and derisive laughter when Peter can't access them on command. "Of course he is," he sneers, when Peter says that his brother is out of town and can't give him the proof he needs.

At other times, when Mohinder is under more stress, his relationships can be characterized by constant argumentative snippiness and refusal to give the benefit of the doubt. His most trusted friend throughout the series is Matt Parkman, his partner in raising Molly, but while they both verbally acknowledge their closeness and friendship, nearly every conversation they have is a fight and Mohinder is usually the one provoking or escalating it. When Matt expresses concern to Mohinder about Molly's night terrors, expecting an earnest discussion about how they can help their mutual ward, Mohinder merely snaps that he's not an expert on nightmares, implies that Matt doesn't know what he's doing and hasn't been helping enough, and walks away.

Rarely does his temper escalate to physical violence, except in self-defense or revenge against Sylar, but he does have a habit of throwing things when at his wits' end about work, heedless of the feelings of anyone else who might be present. He flings his father's laptop across a room when frustrated by its encryption, shocking his visiting neighbor, and sweeps the paper contents of a desk onto the floor in despair when racing against the clock to cure Molly's illness--she rushes into the room in alarm, and despairs in turn when she thinks his frustration means she's going to die. In these instances, he's immediately apologetic to the people he's distressed, but it doesn't prevent future outbursts.

As with most of Mohinder's negative traits, he's perfectly well aware of his tendency to lash out like this at others and he really dislikes it about himself, but it's much deeper-ingrained in him, and it doesn't change or improve noticeably over the course of the series.

• Character Skills:

• First aid, with experience treating serious injury and illness when a doctor is not available
--Knows how to perform blood transfusions in the field and frequently does it with his own blood, implying that he is a universal donor
• Cooking, if given ingredients to work with
• Good aim with a pistol, though he has no experience with other kinds of guns
• Study and experience with weird power-negating celestial phenomena

• Character Inventory:

— ITEM ONE: A nice shearling jacket, the warmest item of clothing he owns
— ITEM TWO: A Primatech-issue semi-automatic pistol
— ITEM THREE: Large leather satchel, empty

• Important Notes: None

• Writing Samples:

— SAMPLE ONE: Here
— SAMPLE TWO: Here

Name: Anna
Age: 35
Contact: annalizabeth#7549 on Discord, layonmacduff on Plurk
Other Characters: None currently; formerly Simon Ashlock / Vandelin Elris / Assorted Others

Interests: Back when I was playing native characters, I always had this "okay, but what if Rifter Mohinder" idea in the back of my mind. I thought that a rifter who would be new to the setting as it is now would be kind of an ideal way to ease back into the game, because there will be a built-in IC reason for him not to know what's going on and need to learn the ropes.

His interests will be research-focused--he'll want to come up with scientific explanations for magic, etc, typical scientist rifter stuff, but he'll easily be directed towards more useful ways of applying his academic background because he's generally big on trying to be helpful. For my part, I'd like to send him on combat missions and embroil him against his will in whatever political stuff a rifter can find himself embroiled in, because it will be fun for me. I promise I will not allow him to be game-breakingly stupid about it.


Name: Mohinder Suresh
Canon/OC: Canon (Heroes)
Canon Point: Shortly before episode 3x14, "A Clear and Present Danger"
Journal: strongnarrativevoice
Age: 33

Canon World

Essentially our world as it was in 2007, except that a small percentage of the population is genetically possessed of superpowers like flight, telekinesis, regeneration, time manipulation, etc. These are not common knowledge, and the suggestion that they might exist is treated in much the same way it would be treated in our world, but there are still individuals and secretive organizations who know better and study them.

History

» Born in Chennai, India, having been conceived for the purpose of providing healthy blood transfusions to his dying superpowered sister Shanti. He arrived two months too late for this, and his parents didn't even tell him about Shanti until he was 32.

» Followed in his father Chandra's footsteps as a geneticist, much to Chandra's chagrin, and they taught together at Chennai University until Chandra was fired for incorporating his theories about superpowers into the curriculum.

» Attempted, unsuccessfully, to convince his father not to move to America in search of superpowered individuals to study, because people with telekinesis and shit? What? Ridiculous. Chandra headed to New York, where he was promptly murdered by a serial killer with telekinesis and shit.

» Flew to America to take over his father's work and also the investigation into his death, aided by various spies from the shady superhero-tracking organization Primatech (known more often as just "The Company.")

» Stumbled across his father's murderer, Sylar, partly by accident, then duct-taped the guy to a chair, tortured a confession out of him, tried to shoot him, and got telekinetically stapled to a ceiling for his trouble while Sylar escaped.

» Used the antibodies still in his bloodstream to cure a little girl named Molly of the same virus that had killed Shanti, and then unofficially adopted her, since her parents had also been murdered by Sylar.

» Attempted, along with a former Primatech agent, to go undercover and take the Company down from the inside, but defected to them and shot his former partner after coming to believe that using Primatech's resources was the only way to keep the Shanti Virus from mutating and becoming a worldwide pandemic.

» After being held hostage by Sylar and forced to cure him of the virus as well, abruptly decided that maybe people would stop flinging him around and holding him at gunpoint and pinning him to ceilings all the time if he had superpowers too.

» Developed a superpower-granting serum, immediately tested it on himself while tuning out the cries of "what the fuck this is the worst idea ever" from everyone aware of the matter, gained super strength (good) while also growing scales and beginning to mutate into a goo-secreting bug creature (less good.)

» Resorted to unethical human experimentation, in the employ of another evil company called Pinehearst, in the hopes of halting the bug transformation and returning to normal.

» Eventually succeeded, retaining the super strength without the accompanying scales or goo or madness.

» Descended into a hopeless pit of terrible guilt and shame and self-flagellation for his mad science crimes, and swore to atone for them by any means necessary. Arrived in Thedas in the midst of one of his usual nightmares about the subject.

Personality

It's a wonder that Mohinder's father thought he could talk him out of becoming a scientist by saying that he wasn't cut out for it, for two reasons: firstly, that Mohinder is so obsessively dedicated to sating his scientific curiosity that it functions almost as an addiction, and secondly, that poking at Mohinder's overactive "fuck you, don't tell me what to do" reflex is the best way to ensure that he ignores the doubts he might otherwise have given in to of his own accord.

While he's not a particularly friendly or polite person--he'll try to be, at first, but rudeness and cynicism usually win the day--he longs to be a good person. He wants very much to be helpful to others, though his desire for recognition and respect (the kind he never got from his father, yes) is partly what underlies his altruism. He's desperate to think of himself as a person with a strong, true moral compass, and this desperation is ironically what leads him into circumstances that compromise his ethics--he's terrible at knowing who to trust or why, and his flailing tendency to course-correct if he thinks he's made the wrong choice about that gets him labeled, not undeservedly, as a treacherous backstabber.

However hard people might be on Mohinder for his poor judgment or shaky loyalties, nobody is ever going to be harder on him than he is on himself. He never had much in the way of self-worth to begin with, but the more he loses his way in his pursuit of noble scientific advancement, the more convinced he becomes that he's an irredeemable wreck of a person. "Weak, corruptible and selfish" is how he describes himself, and he's at the point where he'll assume pretty much anything bad that happens to him is some richly deserved punishment that he needs to accept as penance for his mistakes. He will get over this. Eventually.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

» Top-notch education and scientific credentials
» Determination and courage
» Resourcefulness in moments of crisis
» Good at performing and convincingly lying, when necessary
» Literal superhuman strength, with some accompanying enhancement to agility and endurance
»» Strength-wise, he can probably lift about a thousand pounds; agility-wise, he's good at parkour and can pull off some gymnastic moves without training; endurance-wise, he can keep up a sprint for about twice as long as a fit normal person before tiring

Weaknesses

» Distinct lack of common sense
» Poor judgment of character, making him susceptible to manipulation
» Reckless disregard for his own safety
» Crippling daddy issues which have done a number on his social skills
» Melodramatic fits of self-loathing, sometimes at inopportune moments

Suggested Nerfs

His super strength is already kind of mediocre as it is, so I don't know if it needs nerfing.

Arrival Inventory

» Lab coat, crisp and white and Pinehearst-branded
» Basic business-casual outfit, a button-down shirt and khakis
» Silver thumb ring, intricately tooled
» Very long, appropriately nightmarish syringe that could probably be used as a dagger in a pinch

'Human'ization

He's already human, just a human who could lift a cow over his head.

Fit

As mentioned above, I thought that playing a rifter would be the best way to refamiliarize myself with the game after a long absence, and I've always thought that Mohinder's modern scientific outlook would be a fun contrast with a high-fantasy setting like Thedas (though because there are other rifter scientists in the game, he'd be in good company and wouldn't feel alone.)

I also like, however, the fact that the things explained as "science" in his canon are not really appreciably different from magic except for the framing of them, which leads to some interesting parallels between the mage-templar conflict and the eventual fear and persecution of "evolved humans" in Heroes.



Sample One
Sample Two

L: Log
N: Network
I: Inbox

JANUARY

🌣 Mohinder arrives in Duplicity and immediately consumes something dangerous and untested, resulting in embarrassing unwanted side effects. You know, as he does. (TDM)
» Isaac sketches him, and then they fight the law and win. By banging.
» Nie Huaisang teaches him about all the ins and outs of the city.
» Mohinder rambles at Peter about timeline discrepancies while they travel on a train. Now they're even.

FEBRUARY

🌣 Peter visits Mohinder at his swanky dom apartment, and they talk employment. (L)
🌣 Adrienne and Mohinder try to figure things out in the marketplace. (L)
🌣 Mohinder gets stuck at the top of a ferris wheel with Klaus. (L)
🌣 Mohinder acquits himself tolerably on the Hot or Not meme, with only moderate humiliation. (N)

MARCH

🌣 Mohinder is arrested on not-actually-false charges, and displayed in tiny snakeprint undies in the People Zoo. (Event)
» Isaac gets marched in, and Mohinder finally gets around to learning his last name.
» Peter learns more about the reason for Mohinder's "why did it have to be snakes" trauma.
» Kim Secretan joins Mohinder for a very posh, very involuntary Snake Dance.
» Kate Sharma does her best to rescue Mohinder from the frozen hellscape of the animal pen.