animus application

[tograspamiracle]

Player Information

Name: Plus
Personal Journal: plusone
Age: 20
Contact Info: [AIM] plusanagi
[PLURK] oleseiyah
Other Characters Played: [AU1] Jin Shirato, [AU1] Jade Strider, [OU] Fado

Character Information

Character Name: Daniel Dankovsky
Character Series: Pathologic
Character Age: Around 26
Character Gender: Male
Original Canon
Canon Point: End of Day 12, as he departs for the Capital.
Background Link: It's worth taking a moment to note that there are three playable protagonists of Pathologic: the Bachelor, the Haruspex, and the Impostress. Whomever you select for the game becomes the main character, and while the other two are still in the story, their roles are much more minor and ineffectual. Because of this, though major story events are common in all three scenarios (the Cathedral's infection, the Inquisitor's arrival, etc) and share roughly the same timeline, all three characters experience different events that may contradict with the events that another character sees when they are the main character (so, if you're playing as Artemiy, Daniel does not do nearly as much to investigate the town and stop the plague as he would do if you were playing as Daniel, and vice versa).

Daniel Dankovsky hails from the Capital city of Russia (likely Moscow, though they never care to actually name it for whatever reason). He attended a university in the Capital, and it is there that he met the twins Andrei and Peter Stamatin (the latter of which would later become an astounding architect, and much more relevant to the story than he is now), and they became friends ever since Daniel jumped on a man that tried to flip the table Andrei was standing on when he decided to juggle some knives.

At the university, Daniel began studying medicine at an early point in his career, and he was quite good at it; he became an expert of textbook knowledge of modern medicine, but he never finished pursuing his medical degree. Instead of pursuing his master's and PhD as per usual, Daniel graduated after receiving his Bachelor's of Medicine, and founded his own medical research laboratory in the Capital instead of attending med school. He dubbed the lab "Tanathica," and for a few years pursued his research as he saw fit (with the appropriate funding of course). His ultimate goal was to find a cure for death-- as in, the inevitable, mortal, old age kind. He sought to cure the symptoms of the mortal coil, effectively seeking immortality.

To anyone but Daniel and his colleagues, the idea was about as ridiculous as it sounds. Unable to produce any results, his reputation in the scientific community slowly started to become rather unsavory. Eventually, he faced persecution by the Authorities for his scientific extremism, and his lab and research were threatened to be shut down if he did not come up with results. It was around now that he was contacted by a man named Isidor Burakh, a traditional doctor from a nameless Russian Steppe and Daniel's friend and colleague, telling him of a man named Simon Kain, who seemed to be a living example of human immortality. Isidor implored Daniel come to the town for the sake of his research (as Isidor seemed to believe in his cause), and-- spurred on by the demands of Telman, Daniel's superior, that he investigate the very same town-- Daniel departed the Capital for the Ancient Steppe.

When he arrived, he was met with a woman named Eve Yahn, who offered him a place to stay during his time in town. When he went to the Kains' residence to meet with Simon Kain, Daniel's hopes were dashed when George-- Simon's brother-- informed him that Simon had been murdered the night before. With his one chance to save his work destroyed, Daniel agreed to help the Kains track down Simon's murderer and bring him to justice. Though Isidor was suspected (as he was the last one to see Simon Kain alive) Daniel quickly found that his old colleague had been murdered as well.

As Daniel tried to find an answer, he discovered that the town was not only facing some murder problems, but also an impending epidemic known as the Sand Plague. As a representative of the Capital, the Authorities left it to Daniel to find the cause of the Plague, stop the disease, and save the town before an Inquisitor from the Capital arrived-- in exchange, they would allow his research to continue. In order to root out the disease, he worked for a time with Alexander Saburov, the commandant of the town. In the very same town, he met Andrei and Peter once more, and soon learned after a failed escape attempt that the railroad to town (aka the only way out unless you wanted to walk through miles of obscure Russian countryside) had been closed down, and the town placed under quarantine. So whether he liked it or not (though Daniel DID want to help the town), he was stuck until the epidemic was solved.

By Daniel's third day in town, the epidemic was in full swing, and many areas broke out into chaos in reaction to the deadly disease, looters and muggers becoming much more commonplace than before. He spends the next few days running around town, working on containing the plague, testing medicines (on himself, despite the dangers), procuring supplies for the ill, fighting off muggers, assuring safe shelters for the uninfected, running errands for the townspeople, and tracking down Simon Kain's body so that he and Stakh Rubin-- Isidor Burakh's apprentice-- could study it in relation to the plague, with his quest to find Isidor and Simon's murderer all but forgotten in light of the plague. Because of his involvement, Daniel quickly contracts the Sand Plague himself, though because of its incubation period, he was able to keep it under control with a bevvy of medicine and painkillers. He's able to discover many useful things about the Sand Plague, including helping the development of a vaccine, but it is only with the help of the Haruspex, Artemiy Burakh, that any of them can come close to discovering a cure-- after breaking him out of jail, of course. The man had been suspected of Isidor's murderer, though Daniel didn't believe that very much.

Though things were looking up after Daniel got the Haruspex's help, after a week of dealing with the plague, the Cathedral-- which Daniel had suggested using as an isolation shelter for the uninfected-- had been breached, and nearly everyone inside was found dead the next morning, just a day before the Inquisitor was due to arrive in town. So not only did a lot more people die (and he had been ordered to keep casualties to a minimum), but he still had no cure to show for the week. It's around now that Daniel meets the Impostress, Klara; a girl accused of being both a demon and a savoir, with miracle hands that could cure the plague with a touch-- but more importantly to Daniel, a suspect accused of infecting the Cathedral. Though he is able to clear all of the suspects' names with his blood testing, it means he's no closer to saving the town at all and preventing the plague from spreading.

As if it couldn't get any worse, the next day Inquisitor Aglaja Lilich arrived, and though she was friendly with Daniel at first, it's quickly made clear that she disdains him for throwing his lot in with the Kain Family, with whom she has a personal vendetta against-- and it doesn't take much for Daniel to draw her ire later. It is with her arrival and the reveal of some secret agents from the Capital that Daniel learns that the Authorities expected both of them to go to the town and die, getting them out of their hair. And finally, to top it all off, Eve Yahn, one of the few people who was kind to Daniel and didn't try to manipulate or screw him over or run him ragged, committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the Cathedral. Needless to say, Daniel was not happy with any of these developments, but there is little he could do with the plague still killing people besides deal with it.

It is much to his relief that the Haruspex tells him that he can finally develop an absolute cure, while Daniel is to go to the Abattoir under the Inquisitor's orders to investigate. He doesn't get very far though, as he is assaulted by members of the Order, only saved by the arrival of General Alexander Block and the army, sent due to the worsening conditions of the town. The Haruspex managed to develop a Panacea to cure the plague, but because of the necessary ingredients leaving it in short supply, they still needed to stop it at is source if the town is to be saved.

It is because of this search for the source that Daniel finally turns his focus to the Polyhedron, an impossible creation the sprouts out of the earth of the town. Not only is it architecturally and geometrically impossible, it defies almost every law of physics the way it stands and is constructed, and-- even more interestingly-- those within are protected from the Sand Plague's infection(though the gangs of children have hidden away inside, locking access from outsiders). It is for these very reasons that the Kains, and eventually Daniel, become invested in the tower's continued existence, and Daniel personally enamored with it as a miracle of modern science. It is also now that Daniel learns of the Kains' pseudo-mystical roots, with Maria seeming to have some sorts of precognitive abilities and the family claiming that Simon Kain lives on despite his dead body being found.

It is at the end of the week that all three of the protagonists come to a clash; it's become clear that the Polyhedron is a large part of causing the plague to afflict the town, though it is equally the earth itself that is helping the problem. The Kains claim that the earth rejected the Polyhedron because of its impossible traits and shape, and that the plague was meant to wipe away the town as punishment. The Haruspex and the Inquisitor seek to destroy the Polyhedron so that the plague will desist and the town can remain, but Daniel and the Kain family want to preserve it for the very same reasons. The Impostress offers a compromise, but both Daniel and Artemiy reject her solution for its simplicity: it is to be either the town, or the tower. The Council elects to leave the decision of what course of action to take to the Bachelor, as it was his efforts that saw that all of the Adherents of not only the Kains' Utopian ideals, but those who would rather support the Haruspex and the Impostress, were kept alive and healthy to the last day (fairly so, as he used up most of his medicine, both modern and traditional, in order to keep them all alive).

However, before he has a chance to deliver his decision, he receives another letter claiming to be from the Authorities (though it sounded as if it were written by a child) calling him to the Polyhedron. He complies, but instead of finding them in the impossible tower, the Polyhedron teleports him to a garden, where he finds two children playing in a sandbox. The children profess that the town had been their play pen, inhabited by dolls and puppets, and the Sand Plague was their game. Rather than be worried about the state of his own existence as a child's toy, instead Daniel scolds the children for thinking of such an awful game, and for mocking the people that died in the plague with their claims. He refutes their ridiculous allegations of a "game," and returns to the town after telling them to go home, still adamant to save the people that the children would mock.

Unperturbed by his meeting with the children, Daniel returns to the Council and tells the army to destroy the town; to him, the town and the earth it stood on was unsalvageable, and that the Polyhedron was a triumph of humanity that must be preserved. They evacuate the living townspeople, and General Block orders the soldiers to raze the town with their cannons.

Content that he has beaten the Authorities (whoever that may be classified as now), Daniel leaves to return to the Capital with the army, his future thoroughly abolished-- his work has still been destroyed, and he still lacks anything to support his claim-- his body still contaminated by the Sand Plague for the last two weeks, his organs badly damaged from the medicine, and a dependency on various painkillers bordering on addiction if he keeps it up.

Personality: Daniel says himself that he is a man of logic, science, and truth. Where the others rely on intuition, Daniel relies on a process of logic and facts to draw his conclusions, and as such always reserves judgments until he has the proper evidence. His unfailing prescription to this method makes him come off as very cold on the outside, as he uses the most practical methods and is always looking through the lense of a scientist, leaving little room for him to convey emotions or consider peoples' feelings. He is very short with people, and rarely has the patience to listen to anyone's sob stories. Klara says herself that he is a smartass-- or a know-it-all, depending on your translation, but both are accurate descriptions. Daniel's speech comes off as quite standoffish, and he often has disdain and scornful quips for people, automatically defaulting to doubt rather than belief (as again, he reserves judgment until he has enough evidence). Though he did not pursue his master's degree, it's impossible doubt that he is highly educated, as well as viewing himself as highly cultured compared to the Steppe people. He has moments where he seems condescending, and though he is not inherently so he will always believe his own deductions and opinion before anyone else's, though in others he values intelligence above all else, no questions asked. His penchant for Latin phrases, eloquent speech, and waxing philosophy just reinforces his distant and callous demeanor. To others his motivations seem unclear, and it comes off as though he is only concerned with furthering his own goals-- though that is far from the truth.

While he certainly doesn't wear his heart on his sleeves (quite the opposite, actually), it's wrong to say he has no heart at all. He has one, though you wouldn't be able to guess it from the way he presents himself. Truth be told though, Daniel is actually a man who is very heartfelt, easily invested, and painfully idealistic. He runs around town and actively voices his dissatisfaction and annoyance with the townspeople, but that doesn't stop him from helping them with everything he's got. It's true that his work is riding on the town, but after the initial few days, Daniel acts much more concerned with saving a town of people that he thinks are petty and horrible than saving his life's work. Though he doesn't have the degree, Daniel is truly a doctor through and through, and he goes to whatever lengths he can to protect these strangers; he agrees to test experimental medicines on himself because he is worried for the health of the subjects, he works tirelessly to assure everyone in town has a healthy water supply, and he works hard to exonerate the women that were accused of killing people he was trying to protect instead of finding one of them to blame. He insists he is a man of hard logic, but just past the surface, Daniel actually cares a lot--perhaps even too much, to the point where he overexerts himself for no foreseeable personal benefit; logic is his method, but sympathy is his motivation. He will always be looking out for the well-being of others even if he says nothing about it, to the point that when faced with an existential crisis, he chides those who may as well be his gods for being so rude about the deaths of complete strangers.

Confusingly enough, Daniel is actually the most straight forward of the three protagonists, despite his outward harshness. A player will soon learn that most, if not all of the townspeople in the Steppe are liars or tricksters, who seek to manipulate the protagonist for whatever their hidden ulterior motives are. Daniel, though he may have his suspicions, will usually assist the people around town without a second thought (even Griff, the local blackmarket dealer and scourge of the earth, or the Kains when he thought they were just crazy), making him easily manipulated, and doesn't think about them lying to him until it becomes obvious. On opinions and beliefs he defaults to doubt, but with people he defaults to faith and is easily trusting unless something is blatantly off, as seen in his faith in Isidor, the Stamatins, Artemiy (whom he trusts to make the Panacea), and Klara (whom he offers to sneak away should she be up for execution even when evidence points to her guilt). When it comes to matters of retribution and justice, he refuses to seen an innocent person get in trouble, and will often assume innocent until proven guilty.

It can be said that scientists are romantics, and indeed Daniel is a scientist in every sense of the word. Even in the face of deadly disease, he still has an obvious scientific curiosity (wishing that he had the time to study Klara's blood at his laboratory), and is incredibly idealistic. Another character clearly states that he won't even consider losses; he desires the best possible outcome for everyone, without considering necessary sacrifices. Though first impressions present him as a cold researcher, Daniel is actually a quintessential dreamer. His life's work is curing mortality, and achieving immortality, which to him, is not a ridiculous idea at all. He even has his own logic path to back this up, but anyone can tell you that it's still utterly ridiculous. Despite that, he believes this is possible with all his heart, and as the game progresses, this is found to be a belief in the impossible and the possibilities of human potential. There's a reason all of his Adherents are both intellectuals and creative types; they are people that would seek to defy the natural order for the sake of progress, something Daniel vehemently believes in. This is the very reason he saves the Polyhedron; he believes in the potential for humanity to transcend beyond what they are now, even the squabbling, petty folk of the steppe. Getting to know him, it almost makes him sound a bit insane-- but then, what kind of scientist isn't? His thoughts are a bit out of touch with the harshness and sensible reality before him. Rather than stay in college to become a proper doctor, he wanted to do something greater than sit in a classroom for who-knows-how-long, and wanted to do it immediately; and what's more, he ultimately wanted to help people, a desire that translates to his drive to protect the town.

Daniel is an incredibly determined and persevering individual, to the extent that he has somewhat of an obsessive personality. When faced with the overwhelming chance of failure with the plague growing worse and worse, he did not give up. Even at the point where he was completely exhausted and tired-- mentally, physically and emotionally-- he refused to quit until the plague had been vanquished and the town was saved, even if the odds seemed completely impossible; "impossible" didn't matter to him anyway, because he would make it possible himself. Even when his future was completely ripped away from him, rather than give in to despair, he still continued as per usual. He spent his life pursuing one end-- through all his research, even in the face of being an academic laughing stock, Daniel continued to pursue his mortal cure, and he became so enamored with the Polyhedron as supporting his own hopes and dreams, that he would rather raze a town than see it destroyed. So invested he was in all of this, that the thought that his existence could be nothing more than a doll hardly penetrated his thoughts. Though he speaks like a cynic, Daniel always retains hope through even the bleakest moments, perhaps because his thoughts and ideals are not entirely down-to-earth, and his ridiculous dedication to his dreams is backed up by his ridiculous wealth of knowledge and the fact that he owns his own research laboratory at such a young age.

It's important to remember that not all of Daniel's callous exterior is for show. He genuinely has a pretty low opinion of a lot of people in town even though he keeps helping them, though he's willing to act as a middle man and a messenger, he thinks it's all ridiculously petty and pointless. He's derides trickery, but is still less than frank with everyone he meets, and is perfectly OK with fooling someone if he (and only he) believes that everyone will benefit in the end-- hell, he's even willing to do some pretty damn illegal things if he deems it appropriate. For this reason, he doesn't consider many people's opinions in his decision, as long as they and everyone else turn out alright in the end. His decision to save the Polyhedron is the most pointed example; Daniel is one of the few characters not concerned with tradition or heritage at all (indeed, he's the one protagonist who doesn't even have any mention of family), and almost doesn't understand the towns' obsession with traditional methods (to the point of growing extremely impatient with having to jump through hoops for to accommodate). He is a completely modernized man, and doesn't put stock in sentimentality whatsoever, so destroying the settlement didn't seem like a loss to him at all as long as everyone was still alive and the Polyhedron stands. He doesn't even consider the fact that he's destroying the hometown of many people.

His disregard for the past is one of the main reasons he can't get along with Artemiy Burakh, despite their common goals. Daniel is able to put aside his own feelings and preferences aside if it's for the greater good, and indeed he and Artemiy worked together quite well at the beginning of the outbreak. Though he dislikes a lot of people, he still acts cordial and polite (in between the quips, of course) for the sake of progress, though he makes it no secret that he's unhappy. The only thing he cannot seem to compromise on are his own beliefs and ideologies, but even then he's willing to work with people he hates until it's down to the wire.

Abilities: As evident by his title, Daniel is a Bachelor of Medicine. He has received basic medical education and instruction, but because he did not pursue his PhD, he lacks practical knowledge of a proper doctor; he can administer certain cures and do first aid no problem, but more elaborate procedures elude him. Instead, his expertise lies in scientific research and experimentation. The scientific procedure is something he's very well versed in, and with the proper tools (or, even with makeshift tools), he can discover an astounding amount in terms of biology from a single sample. As he is a Thanatologist, he knows the most about the progression of biological processes, though he's not too bad a Pathologist either when he needs to be.

He has a plethora of a knowledge as a result, despite his comparably middle-tier education. And though he lacks procedural medical knowledge, he knows how to handle delicate equipment, making him pretty handy with tinkering with things to aid his efforts, such as the creation of his eye glass to see the plague. Though physically speaking he doesn't amount to much, he's learned to use a gun and wield a scalpel to defend himself, training himself to kill most of his adversaries in one shot by necessity.

Sample Entry: A musebox thread that's technically AU but retains their original personalities in full, and another tiny musebox thread over here.