Post by Dr. Walter Everett Burkhardt on Sept 21, 2011 20:49:07 GMT -5
ABOUT YOU
Player Name (or name you wish to be called on the board): Just Me. Again.
Do you solemnly swear that you are above the age of 13?Yep.
Other Characters you play on this board:...
ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER
Character Name:Dr. Walter Everett Burkhardt
Character Age: 42
Appearance:
- Brief Description:Walter is a man that can either appear comforting or intimidating, depending on his expression. He is not traditionally handsome, but he has an ability to draw a person in (or scare them away) thanks to a pair of piercing blue eyes that are almost impossible to look away from.
- Eye Color:blue
- Hair (color, length, style):light brown/blondish, usually worn short
- Skin Tone:white, pale
- Height:6"
- Body Type:fit, lightly muscular
Celebrity Claim (make sure you post in the Celebrity Claim list as well, and make sure your chosen celebrity is available): Mark Pellegrino
Profession:Psychiatrist
Strengths:
- Calm and unflappable
- Extremely intelligent
- Understands the way people think
- Can have a person almost completely figured out within a few moments of knowing them
- Can seem very sympathetic when he wants to
- Knows how to make a person do or say what he wants
- Has a very sly sense of humor
Weaknesses:
- Cold
- Arrogant
- Very secretive
- HATES when people try to ask him questions about himself
- Occasional, short bursts of anger that usually end in violence
- Sometimes can be surprised by people's actions (he tends to put people in a "box" and predict their actions according to type and ignores the fact that people are often more complicated than that)
- Tends to underestimate the goodness in people
- Doesn't believe in love
Personality: Walter can be either your best friend, or your worst nightmare... depending on what he wants you to think. And he can change from one to the other at the snap of a finger. He's cold as ice, but can give the illusion of warmth, if it suits him to treat you nicely. This is usually when he is trying to feel you out, to get information from you, or to subtly bend you to his will. He's a master manipulator, particularly against those he perceives to be weaker (less intelligent) than he is. Because he studied muggle psychology and received a degree in it, he knows how people think and how to use it against them.
However, there is a downside to his knowledge. It makes him arrogant and superior in nature, so that he often writes people off as being less intelligent than himself. He also tends to underestimate the innate goodness in most people and expects them to behave weakly. He doesn't believe that good is stronger than evil, or that things like love or hope or honor can save a person. He mocks such things, in fact, but, like Voldemort, his inability to believe in these things is one of his greatest weaknesses.
Getting to know the man himself, however, can be nearly impossible. As much as he knows about human nature and psychology, he has learned how to protect himself from prying eyes. He's intensely private, one might even say secretive, and never talks about himself. If you ask about him, he will deftly turn it back around on you. If you push too hard, he will push back. On very rare occasions, when he is pushed to his limits (which are considerable), he will burst out in a sudden, unexpected rage, which is often violent, and then snap back into his usual cool demeanor with such ease that you'd wonder if you had imagined it.
In general, however, his preferred weapon is psychological warfare, and when he does use violence, it is with swift, smooth, deadly accuracy. He doesn't like to act impulsively, he prefers to plot his moves carefully... and he plays to win.
Family
- Mother:Liza Burkhardt, deceased
- Father:Walter Everett Burkhardt, Sr, deceased
- Siblings (if any, list names and ages):none
- Other family members (if significant):none
History:Walter was born in Germany in 1931, to an English mother and German father. His parents were pureblood, and the marriage was arranged, so there was little love in the union. Walter was their only child, and each parent spoiled him in their own way. His father was an ambitious man, who worked for the German ministry and was actively campaigning to be the next Minister of Magic. His mother was an intelligent woman, very well read, who passed her love of knowledge on to her son.
When World War II broke out, things quickly began to fall apart. Walter Sr was arrested by the German Ministry for conspiring with the Nazis to take over the Ministry. Liza fell ill shortly afterward and died, leaving Walter alone. Unfortunately, the Nazis took him in, bringing him into a research facility to try and find ways to use his powers to help their cause. He was older than most of the other children taken in, as he was eight years old at the time.
At the facility, he was subjected to tests, research, and eventual "training" designed to control him and get him to use his powers to help their cause. In order to end the torture, Walter pretended to break, and pretended to join with them. But what he was really doing was observing them from the inside, learning their strengths and weaknesses. Along the way, he developed a powerful hatred for muggles which eventually became a general disdain for all humankind.
Because they were so convinced that Walter had "turned" and was on their side, they released him into the custody of one of the guards, so that he could attend Durmstrang upon turning 11. After all, he wasn't much use to them if he didn't know how to control his powers. Occasionally, they recruited him to take part in various "missions" where his skills were needed, and whenever possible, he tricked them with false information.
By the time the war ended, Walter was in his fourth year at Durmstrang. His "guardian" was arrested for war crimes not long after, which left him on his own. The school was able to find someone to take him in, but the truth was, Walter really would have been fine on his own. He was smarter than other children his age, and even most adults.
After finishing school, Walter left Germany for England where, with falsified credentials, he enrolled in a muggle university, studying psychology. This might have seemed an odd choice for anyone who knew of his hatred of muggles, but Walter always believed in keeping his enemies close and observing from within. Studying psychology was his way of doing that, although he had no clear goal in mind at first. But then he had a chance encounter with a man called Tom Riddle in Knockturn Alley.
Somehow, the two realized that they had a lot in common. Though Tom Riddle didn't exactly have "friends," he did gather like-minded people who he thought could be useful to him, and Walter had definite potential. Walter mentioned to him his interest in mind-control techniques, perfected from the somewhat amateur techniques used by the Nazis when he was a child. Soon, the young psychology student became one of the earliest "Death Eaters," and the first one that didn't attend Hogwarts with Tom Riddle. He helped develop a mind-control technique that could be used to control children and make them into a "sleeper" army that could be activated when the newly-christened Lord Voldemort was ready to begin his true reign of terror.
Even before he graduated from the muggle university, Walter had already begun training the first "recruits." Among them were Nikola Vlsek and Siobhan O'Hurley. When the project failed, however, some of the children were released... but not all. The decision was that not all of the candidates were right for the project, but a few were kept behind and exposed to more extreme techniques, then turned out around age 15.
At the encouragement of Lord Voldemort, Walter decided to test a few of the children who had been kept behind. The results were mixed, and more than a little disappointing. Nikola's disappearance was of particular concern... until he turned up in St. Mungo's, where Walter just happened to be working as the staff psychiatrist. He'd already been watching Siobhan, testing her for any memories of her past life. And although he knew it was dangerous to let Siobhan and Nikola meet again, he couldn't resist the chance to see what would happen....
Anything else?I had a lot of trouble with his history, because I wanted it to synch up with Rutger's as well as Siobhan's and Nikola's... and it also had to mesh with Voldie's. It's pretty tight there, but the ambiguity of Voldie's timeline hopefully makes it work (they had to meet before Tom Riddle vanished). There are several reasons I wanted his past to link with Rutger's... not only because of the similarity of the "training" of children, but also because of the deep-seeded hatred it instilled in Walter.
