Mad Dog

Mad Dog
Author	/u/Dragoneisha
Civilian name	John Madley
Alignment	Villain
Affiliation	None (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Brute/Breaker (Striker)
Born	Madley Farm, South Carolina
Status	NPC

Mad Dog is a drifter who showed up in Devilfish on a long cross-country trip. He is afflicted with rabies, which hasn't killed him yet exclusively because of his parahuman powers, and he's likely on several government watch lists.

Character Sheet

Appearance

John Madley is a normal man with sandy-colored hair and a gaunt face. His eyes are dull and dark, almost black, and he usually has flecks of white foam at the corners of his lips, due to his illness. His nose is long and has clearly been broken several times, and his ears stick out. He's thin, much too thin, and his fingernails and teeth both are discolored and chipped. They both seem a little long. Taking him in as a whole, there is something feral about him, something animal.

As for being in costume, Mad Dog has assembled a ramshackle collection of spiked belts, football equipment, and gauze wrappings to make up his "costume", along with a wooden mask that resembles a snarling dog which he carved himself.

Equipment and Resources

• BAT: A baseball bat with nails and railroad spikes hammered through it
• TRUCK: Bentley, his pickup truck (it is red)
• ROOM: A hotel room bought with stolen money

Skills and Specializations

Mad Dog is skilled with heavy machinery, especially heavy-duty farm equipment. He is extremely knowledgeable about animals and plants, and he is able to play the banjo. He is decent enough with guns, and he has a lot of experience taking care of children.

Mentality

Fundamentally, Mad Dog searches for an authority to work under. He does not like to make his own decisions, preferring to take on whatever role he is assigned, and his moral compass is skewed, if it is ever there. Mad Dog is prone to adopting the morals of whoever is telling him to do something. He does not care about the lives of people he does not directly see. Once he knows or has met someone, they can become important to him, but everyone else in the world might as well not exist. He has a soft spot for young people and likes to take care of the people he is close to, in his own, tough love sort of way.

Mad Dog will not ever hurt dogs, and will only kill animals if necessary. He is a jumpy thing, prone to mood swings and quick to anger. He is fully aware of this, and attempts to keep it under control.

Because Mad Dog has rabies, he's far from stable, and he becomes fearful, crazed, and savage when his symptoms cloud his mind, such as after excessive power use.

Power

Mad Dog displays regeneration at a low level, usually not enough to help in an actual fight, but can keep him in a generally healthy state. This regeneration is the only thing that is keeping him alive, because he is rabid.

Along with his regeneration, he has a low level of brute strength and durability, enough to take a good hit or keep a dull knife from punching though, but all it will do is keep him alive long enough to go into his breaker state.

His breaker state is a much more durable form, mostly because it is almost formless. Human and dog anatomy mix into a churning, humanoid shape that is never the same. It is usually between seven and eight feet tall, and sometimes has a tail or digitigrade "legs", but it will always have claws and teeth. Being scratched or bitten inflicts a frenzy of fear and rage, and removes the ability to recognize friend and foe, which wears off over a few hours.

After extended power use, his regeneration suffers, causing seizures and "brain fog" that make it difficult to act coherently. Enough damage to his breaker form will do the same.

Backstory

John Madley worked the ranch in South Carolina from the time he was a kid. It was his family's home, and he was a good son. He thinks himself fairly dull, as he never really got the hang of reading or arithmetic, but he didn't have to know that stuff to run the tractor and shear the sheep. As a child, he spent a lot of time taking care of the younger kids, five little rascals, while his father and older brother worked and his mother kept the house in order (difficult, with seven children.) On his sixteenth birthday, he received a border collie puppy from the family's farm dog, who he named Bailey.

John and Bailey were inseparable, and he was given nearly full responsibility for the sheep once Bailey was trained up. His father died when he was 20, along with his older brother, in a fire that took much of their crop that year and the barn itself. Building it back took time, but he did. John wasn't the kind of boy to give up.

Once his mother fell ill a few years later, she went to the city to live near the doctors until she could get better, and the kids that hadn't left for greener pastures already went with her. John was left with a failing farm and a single sheepdog - his Bailey.

When Bailey came home a little scuffed up one day, he thought nothing of it, and just helped her wash her wounds and got back to work. When she started to ail, he put it up to age - she was nearly fifteen, after all. She was retired from her work, and John didn't hesitate to keep going. But when she lost her mind and bit him one fall night, he knew what was happening, and he told her sorry before he put her down.

A man like John can't afford a doctor, and so he just hoped for the best, or maybe he hoped to die. Either way, when the sickness came for him, it triggered him, and now he lives with it forever. Maybe it's the last thing Bailey left him. He likes to think of it that way, anyway - it's been over a year now, and since he sold everything and took off across the country, he hasn't known where to stop since. He ended up in Devilfish after an encounter with the police went awry.