InsaneJournal

Character Info; Source work, author and character: Inception, Christopher Nolan, Eames Name: Silas Ellery Age: 38 Played By: Jude Law Apartment complex: Hamartia How long have they been in the human world?: Nine years Source of income: Forgery Personality: Silas lives in the now. He does not plan for the future, and he does not worry about tomorrow or the next day. His upbringing, crafted as it was by women condemned to 'life' sentences, as it were, wasn't forward looking. It was very much about finding pleasure in the moment, and Silas embodies this belief perfectly. He is well mannered, refined even, and unfailingly charming. He's accustomed to gallant little sayings and pleasing comments. He's equally accustomed to hiding in the shadows, evading capture, and living on his wits alone. His charming, harmless appearance is deceptive, because he is exceptionally capable. One way or another, he will win out, regardless of the situation. He has a plethora of ways of interacting with people, and each one depends on who he's interacting with. He can play the sweet boy, the hardened seducer, the expert pick-pocket, the experienced lover, the trusting fool, or the vicious criminal. With Silas, it's difficult to tell which version is true. He is a man completely comprised of mirror images. Reflections of things he wants others to see. And that’s because nothing is real with Silas. He’s a forger, a duplicator, a maker of realities. His criminal record says he’s a repeat offender, a career criminal. Silas likes the term artist better. He is opinionated, and he’s blunt. He likes expensive things and good living and being comfortable. He’d tell you he’s no hero, that he doesn’t sacrifice for anyone; he’d be lying. History: Silas was born to 18-year-old Silvia Ellery, a hooker in a London brothel. His mother died when he was born, and the women who worked beside her decided to hide the child in a show of solidarity. In a place like Musings, where hookers died on the street every day, no one spent too much time looking for the baby. He’d probably been sold on the black market, they assumed, and he was probably better off for it. By the time he was five, Silas had settled into a life in the brothel. It had grown since his birth, and by the time Silas began school the establishment featured a bar, gaming tables and women. He grew up in this world of makeup and soft things and the scent of sex on the air. The men in the brothel were equally impacting on the young boy, and he’d taken to standing beside them at the poker tables from the time he could see over the edge. His childhood memories all involved the smell of cigars and whiskey, and the soft fingers of a loving woman in his hair. This unconventional upbringing meant that Silas’s view of women (and men) was just south of normal. Sexuality was something that no one hid, and he ate his macaroni and cheese after school at the bar, while one of his adoptive mothers danced, naked on the stage. On the other hand, he was entirely loved. The only child in a house full of women with no children of their own, they coddled him and adored him. He, in turn, learned to respect them. By the time he was ten, he was the biggest defender of girls in his school, and he was the most likely to punch a boy in the face for insulting them. As he grew older, the brothel expanded even more to include young men for the clients to enjoy, and roulette for the johns to lose their money at. Silas, who had long since mastered all the games, turned to figuring out how to cheat them. His schoolwork was, by this point, abysmal. Math and science and words didn’t interest him, and he eventually just stopped attending classes. Instead, he spent his days learning about the life and world that was his own. He had his first woman when he was 13, and his first man when he was 15. Women, he decided, were soft and lusty, and men were rough and lusty, and both of those held their own appeal. Life in a world where sex was coin meant no one looked at anyone askance for their sexual proclivities, and he grew up entirely without restraint in his appetites. By this point, he was 16 and a deadly charmer. He could talk someone out of their wallet just as easily as he could lift it from them at the gaming table. He turned his considerable talents to forging just after his 16th birthday, thanks to a man who came through the brothel, one who considered himself an expert at the profession. Silas had noticed the fake chips in the man’s hand almost instantly. When the man told Silas of his expertise, Silas, who was lying in the man’s bed quite naked, had turned to him and said, "darling, that isn’t what you’re an expert at." Still, Silas had learned everything the man was willing to teach, and by the time he turned 18, he could make chips that fooled the dealer, make cash that fooled a clerk, and make papers that fooled your average bobby. He had also moved out of the brothel. Her name was Maud, and Silas had met her on her first night of work behind the bar. She had blonde hair and freckles, and Silas found himself in no hurry to kick her out of bed in the morning. She was sensual, demanding, and she had aspirations Silas did not. Dream bigger, she told him, and together they began running scams on local, high-stakes poker games. Three months later, they’d conned the wrong person, and Maud had gone missing one morning before the sun rose. By that afternoon, Silas had been arrested. That first incarceration was six months. The next was a year. The next three. Silas became a regular fixture in the prisons around London, and he made a name for himself as the man to contact if you needed false documents on the outside. He was never ‘out’ for more than a year before finding himself behind bars again, but he didn’t mind it. He had very little on the outside, and he’d had nightmares since Maud had gone, nightmares where he imagined her dead, dying, tortured. Forgers, you see, weren’t numerous. Everyone knew everyone’s name. The fact that she was completely off the radar? It was foreboding torment. By the time he was 27, he’d left England altogether. By then, he was too recognizable by the authorities and the marks alike, and he wasn’t getting any work that wasn’t too dangerous to pursue. When the portal to Musings in Mombasa opened, he was there with a set of fake papers in hand. He had not yet reached his definitive age at that point, so aging in the mortal world wasn’t anything that he noticed. What he did notice was the dreaming and the shifting. The shifting he liked. The dreaming? That he could do without. He had, throughout the years, become an insomniac. The nightmares about Maud kept him awake late into the night and early morning. He seldom slept, and now, in the mortal world, his dreams were different. They were conscious things he could change, things he could mold, things he did not want, things he could not wake from for days at a time. They were chaotic, uncontrolled (without an architect). He hated them. But the shifting, the shifting was amazing. He could, basically, become the literal manifestation of anyone. If he knew their mannerisms enough, he could pass for them without question. It was, he thought, the ultimate forgery. It was also dangerous, especially in a world where abilities ran rampant. He was as likely to profit from the ability as he was to pay for it, by falling into the hands of someone who would force his hand with it. Still, he enjoyed the occasional con (small, of course), the occasional luxurious bath in the body of a millionaire, the occasional mind-blowing sex in a woman’s body, the occasional yacht outing that didn’t belong to him. He used his ability sparingly, not wanting to draw attention, and he used it selfishly. He avoided the Creations he knew from Musings, and he laid low, and when people came knocking who wanted to run group-dream cons, he claimed he had no idea what the bloody hell they were going on about. He hadn’t been arrested in the human world yet, and he wanted to keep it that way. Three years in, he found Maud - dead in his Hamartia apartment, His initials were carved on her chest, one of his telltale forged chips over one of her lifeless eyes. The expression on her face was one of blank, raw terror. Silas had fallen to his knees and been sick, and then he’d wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and he’d weighted the body and thrown her into Puget Sound. By the time her body had surfaced, it had been too bloated to identify, and the poker chip was safely in the pocket of his jacket. The next four years progressed as the ones before had. Silas kept his head down, kept from getting too close to anyone, kept from doing jobs that were too risky. He lived a visceral life, and he had no complaints and no wish to become a hero or a villain in the insanity of post-Creations Seattle. Ability/Powers: Silas can shift into anyone he has seen. He has to see a person to take over their form, and he can only exactly replicate what he sees (if you have a scar and he doesn't know it, he can't reproduce it). He doesn’t automatically pick up mannerisms or speech inflections either - that’s something he has to learn himself, and it explains why he doesn’t use his ability often - it’s dangerous, and it’s easy to get caught. Also, he needs a mirror to enact the change. His weaknesses are that he cannot sleep, and he cannot spell or read. The lack of sleep makes him sloppy, slower to react, more prone to mistakes, and, eventually, it makes him pass out from sheer exhaustion for hours at a time. When he does sleep, he can’t wake himself. How they came to be in the human world: Portal from Mombasa seven years ago. Purpose: Chaotic neutral. Silas just wants to survive. He doesn’t want to be anyone’s hero, and he doesn’t want to be a villain with a cause. Silas doesn’t do causes. Future Plans: Anything and everything with the rest of the Inception cast. Source conflict: Like anyone with dream abilities, Silas sometimes doubts reality. He keeps the poker chip from Maud’s mutilated body on him at all times for this reason, using it as a totem (it’s notched from the attack on her, causing it to be weighted strangely). He hates sleep, and since he cannot generally wake from it, he isn’t ever sure he has woken from it. Getting Silas to involve himself in any group dreaming scheme is going to be a lot harder than just asking or putting money on the table.