Abraxas Application.

[communish]

OOC INFORMATION

Player Name: Dorian
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact: doriangay
Other Characters in Game: None

IC INFORMATION

Character Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
Canon: Marvel Comics (616)
Canon Point: Circa Captain America and the Winter Soldier Annual (2022)
Age: 98 (physically 30)
Background: Wiki (more detailed, goes to 2016) | ComicVine (includes recent arcs)

Arrival Scenario: Free Cities.

Suitability: Bucky won’t have any problem engaging with the game’s plot. While he won't appreciate being brought here against his will, he has a bone-deep need to take control of his life, and to find a sense of purpose and usefulness. I’m excited to explore what that means for him outside of the relationships and commitments that usually bind him.

Once he gets a sense of which faction in this war is right, he’ll support it, regardless of whether it pulled him here. But he’s likely to do this on his own terms. Bucky is an ends-justify-the-means type of hero, and his way of supporting what he thinks is right could put him at odds with some of his fellow franchisees (like Sam and Steve), who usually don’t support Bucky’s more lethal methods.

With that in mind, Bucky’s involvement in this conflict will likely shake out in one of two ways: (1) if he believes that supporting the Free Cities is the right way to help people, he’ll get involved with the Free Cities military, and he’ll be a force to be reckoned with; or (2) if he’s convinced that the Free Cities faction is hurting more than it’s helping, he will make it his personal mission to fuck things up from the inside. He’s a former Soviet double agent. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to topple a regime.

Outside of the war effort, Bucky's bravery (bordering on recklessness) and physical durability would also make him a valuable asset when it comes to mapping out the Nether, or investigating any other strange and physically dangerous locations. He has a very laissez faire attitude about safety, and a natural curiosity, which is a stellar combination for this kind of thing.

Powers: I don’t think any of this really requires moderation (it doesn’t seem to exceed the abilities of other played characters), but I am happy to work with the mod team to figure out tweaks if that’s desirable. He's pretty strong (his arm especially), but remains vulnerable to magic, some weapons, and enhanced opponents.

• Enhanced Longevity: After being dosed with the Infinity Formula a few years ago, Bucky has enhanced longevity, meaning that he will live longer and age more slowly than a typical human. It’s not clear what the limits of the infinity formula are, but Bucky’s pretty sure old age was never going to be the thing that killed him, anyway.
  
  
• Enhanced Healing & Durability: The Infinity Formula also enhanced Bucky's healing factor to meta human levels. He recovers from injuries much more quickly than a typical human, and can survive (some) wounds that most humans would not. But his healing is not fully regenerative: he can’t regrow his missing arm, he won’t reproduce like a starfish if you split him in half, and a sufficiently serious injury will still leave lasting scars.
  
  
• Peak Human Physiology: Bucky's overall physical health, strength, speed and stamina are also at peak human levels, but do not broadly surpass what is possible for a genetically lucky and adequately motivated human to achieve.
  
  
• Cybernetic Arm: Bucky's vibranium arm gives him powers beyond that of the limitations of peak human classification. The cybernetic arm is extremely strong and durable, able to destroy a car and kill a man with a single blow or break steel chains with little effort. It also has slightly better throwing accuracy (because muscle control isn't an issue) than his human arm.
  
  
• Very Particular Set of Skills: Aside from that, Bucky doesn't have any magical or superhuman abilities. He’s just very good at what he does. He is an Olympic-class athlete, acrobat, and marksman, as well as a dangerously skilled martial artist and hand-to-hand combatant. He is an expert in the field of espionage, skilled in stealth, tracking, demolitions, survival, and several European languages. And although he’d probably disagree with this, he’s also very intelligent and perceptive.

PERSONALITY QUESTIONS

Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.

(1) The most significant moment in Bucky's life was his first brush with death.

In 1944, while pursuing a fleeing Red Skull, Steve and Bucky latched onto Red Skull's plane. But after launch, Red Skull ejected himself from the cockpit, planting a bomb on board and leaving Bucky and Steve to die in the explosion. Steve was prepared to jump clear, but Bucky had become tangled on the ladder. Knowing that Steve wouldn't leave him, Bucky kicked Steve in the face, knocking him off the plane into the waters below. His last moment was saluting Steve as he felt the plane burst apart, a final fireworks display to hail the passing of an American hero.

Except that Bucky didn't actually die.. Bucky (minus one arm) was found and revived by Russian General Vasily Karpov. His head trauma and resultant memory loss made him a blank slate -- which gave Karpov the opportunity to reprogram Bucky as a Soviet assassin under the codename "Winter Soldier." His brainwashing, along with his marksmanship, his experience as a military sniper, his years of combat training, his multilingual fluency, and his calculating battlefield efficacy, made him the perfect soldier.

Stripped of history and context, depersonalized and devoid of free will, Winter Soldier was a brutal assassin who eliminated his targets without fear or mercy. He didn't derive pleasure from the suffering of others, but he was ruthlessly efficient. There's really nothing more dangerous than someone who has nothing to lose.

Eventually, Steve used the Cosmic Cube to make Bucky remember who he was -- everything he was -- and everything he'd ever done. But the process nearly killed him. Steve wanted to give Bucky his life back, but what he got was 70 years worth of memories of torture and brainwashing at the hand of his Russian captors that stripped him of his humanity. What he got was a killer instinct, a constant sense of terror, a mind that could barely focus through the noise of disconnected thoughts, and more blood on his hands than he could ever wash off.

Now, Bucky carries each of these identities with him. But it's difficult to figure out what this duality means for him going forward. He recognizes that it wasn't his fault that he was kidnapped and brainwashed, but he still feels responsible for the lives that he took, and the satisfaction he derived from being good at it. And ultimately, he remains, in many ways, the weapon that the U.S. army and the KGB both wanted him to be.

Which brings me to the greatest source of tension within Bucky. After years of being a pawn in other people's games, Bucky wants to take control of his own life.

From childhood, Bucky was molded by others to be what he is. Identified for his talents, trained to improve them, and indoctrinated with a system of beliefs. First by the Americans, and then by the Soviets. He hasn't made a meaningful choice about his life's direction since he was a punk kid who sold stolen cigarettes. He's always been treated as tool, a thing people use to fulfill their own needs, and he's tired of it.

(2) With that in mind, I’ll add a significant recent event that I touched on before: shooting Steve.

In Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, Bucky learned that a secret illuminati-style cabal known as the Outer Circle had used five assassins (including Bucky) to orchestrate a series of key political assassinations with huge effects on world history. After tracking down one of the members (known as "the Revolution"), Bucky was offered the chance to kill him and take his place in the Outer Circle. Sick of being a pawn, Bucky accepted the deal. And when Steve refused to get out of the way, Bucky shot through Cap to kill the Revolution.

He swears it's to take them down from within. Maybe it is. (Cap isn't convinced.) But regardless of his ultimate intentions, this moment is a significant character beat for Bucky substantially because it's the first time that Bucky has asserted himself to Steve in such an active way, and one of his most aggressive moves to wrestle control of his life into his own hands.

Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?

Yes, and no. For most of Bucky’s life, he’s let the morals and ethics of other people guide him. Whether that was Steve Rogers, or the KGB, Bucky hasn’t historically trusted his own judgment, instead relying on the moral compass of others.

But after living his life by orders and losing himself in the process, Bucky is now trying to follow his own instincts and be his own person. His highest guiding principles are loyalty, determination, protecting the innocent, and putting others above himself. He is generous with his time (and what little material goods he has). His commitment to a cause is completely unwavering. He has both died and killed for things that he considered worthy, and he would do almost anything to save the people he loves. But it’s that “almost anything” that you need to watch out for.

Bucky’s DND alignment is definitely "chaotic good." While Bucky has strong convictions, they don't manifest in a clear set of standards. There are some lines he won't cross -- even as the Winter Soldier, he wasn't willing to harm children -- but otherwise, his values guide his conduct in a very utilitarian way. This pragmatism is evident in combat, where he is prepared to disrespect the standard rules of engagement in the interests of justice — be it shooting first and asking questions later, playing dead and unloading a full clip in someone's face, or killing a dangerous enemy who isn’t posing an imminent threat. But this is part of a larger trend. Bucky Barnes is wiling to do what has to be done, even when it hurts him. (And more recently, even when it hurts Steve.)
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What quality or qualities do they admire most?

Bucky most admires goodness, decency, and a strong moral foundation. So, the qualities Bucky thinks he least possess, and the ones he saw in Steve Rogers when they met. Bucky sees "good" as a thing you are, not a thing you do. And because he's done a lot of bad things, he thinks that’s unattainable for him. But Steve is good in a way that most people don't know how to be, or even understand. Which is why Bucky (though only a teenager when they met) felt compelled to look out for him.

Steve didn't need protection, but as a symbol of what America could be, Captain America needed preserving. By contrast, Bucky saw himself (and his principals) as fundamentally expendable. So with the encouragement of the U.S. Military, Bucky got his hands dirty so Cap could keep his hands clean. He was sent on covert missions that Steve wasn't part of. He took out the snipers in the front before the Invaders came through the back. And Bucky's final act before his apparent death in 1945 was to sacrifice himself for Steve with the words, "the world needs Captain America more than it needs Bucky Barnes."

Of course, if you think about it for more than five seconds, the whole thing was fucked. Bucky was a sixteen year old child with no family, no money, and no prospects. Everything he knew existed within that army base. He was living through a war that nearly bled the world dry. And someone he trusted told him that he could find a sense of purpose by using his grief and anger to protect the only person who gave a shit about him. And Bucky understands that now. Resents it, even. But he also can't let go of the old narrative completely. Bucky died for it, after all. He can't gut the emotional infrastructure that's holding him together.

Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?

There have always been things Bucky didn’t like about himself. (Probably more things than Bucky likes.) But chief among them is the darkness that he thinks has always been part of him. Something that didn't shy away from violence, that could pull the trigger where others wouldn't, that felt a private thrill at the flash of a knife or the sound of gun shots. And while he’ll tell you that moral superiority isn't a luxury everyone can afford -- he still blames himself.

Ultimately, Bucky feels so guilty about the things he did as the Winter Soldier because he doesn't see Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier as entirely separate. He thinks there's a reason it was possible for the USSR to turn him into a weapon, and it's that he was already most of the way there. Bucky Barnes had killed before, tortured before. He had once liked to believe that he'd never killed an innocent, that every death he caused was furthering the cause of freedom, but he also believed that when he was working for the KGB.

Even now, Bucky still does the same kind of work he did as the Winter Soldier. He's still violent, still dangerous, still fiercely protective, still itching for a fight. He's tried to leave that life behind several times, but he can't seem to do it. He believes he'll never get away from the worst parts of himself, something he explained in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2020), #3: "You’re walking through blood right now, kid. It’s splashing with every step. You don’t want to be wading through it. You start wading…it’s hard not to slip backwards, even when you think you’re out."

The reality is, since Bucky has been wading through blood since he was a child. It's not something he was born into, but it also wasn't a choice he made. It's something he was groomed to do because he was a child with no connections who was easy to manipulate. He has never been an adult living on his own terms, under his own name, and he still doesn't know how to do it. In the end, it's easy for him to backslide simply because he doesn't really know who he is outside of that.

What is their sign, and why?

The Hanged Man. Though he’s very loyal and does have some strong connections, Bucky has always felt like an outsider and defaults to being alone. Orphaned at 10, Bucky's best memories are from the war, which is the last time he felt a real sense of belonging. He was an outsider in the KGB as a brainwashed American soldier conscripted into serving as an assassin. He was an outsider in the Avengers, where he was the only Captain America who'd tried to assassinate the previous title holder. And now, he’s an outsider as a floating “free agent” who occasionally helps SHIELD, the Avengers, or some other tag team.

Bucky is kind of the Logan of his friend group: a survivor, a loose canon, and a grumpy old man who usually keeps to himself. At times, Bucky has tried to be a normal member of society. But he can't do it. He never has. And he sees his outsider status as a source of his value: if he's not bound up in the same ethical rules that fence the other Avengers in, he can help in ways they can't. (Even though this isn't something he likes about himself.)

SAMPLES

Sample Logs: TDM | In Process Thread

Sample NetPosts/Comments: Netpost 1 | Comments 2 | Netpost 3 [ from a plot where Bucky “adopted” Kobik, who Red Skull manipulated into making Steve a Hydra operative ]