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[scryinghope]

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BOOK EIGHT.

[Name]: Pur
[Age]: 26
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♦ DW: purple_drake
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[Name]: Descry Hopeless
[Canon]: Skulduggery Pleasant.
[Age]: Descry was born at the end of the fifteenth century—somewhere around 1470 or 80—which makes him approaching 450 when he dies. His date of death isn’t canonically known, though canon states he died before Mevolent was killed, and therefore some time before the end of the war proper. I place his time of death at some point just on the beginning of the 20th century.
[Gender]: Male
[Canon point]: Pre-canon! In canon Descry is but a mentioned name—the name of ‘Hopeless’. He died roughly a hundred years before the series begins. I’m taking him from just after his death.

[History]: We know a little of Hopeless’s history, mostly in terms of timeline. We know that he knew Ghastly and Skulduggery before the war with Mevolent began, and that the three of them worked as soldiers together. We know that they, along with Erskine Ravel, formed the initial core unit of what would later become known as the Dead Men, with the others joining in stages over the course of the war. We know that Hopeless was killed shortly before Mevolent was, and since the books place Mevolent’s death roughly a century before canon, but about a decade before the end of the war proper, we can put a general timeframe to Hopeless’s death. Everything in between is detail I have filled in myself. (Please note that the mun apping Skulduggery Pleasant helped me develop Hopeless’s headcanon, and therefore all non-canon details have been approved by her as my cast-mate.)

In the first book Skulduggery says to Valkyrie, “I knew a fellow, a few years ago, who could read minds.” Skulduggery doesn’t really ‘know people’ save a handful—mostly the Dead Men, with whom he was very close. His next line specifies that he “met this woman once who could change her shape”. So his use of words in the line before indicates that the mind-reader was someone whom he knew very well, and given his propensity for understatement ‘a few years ago’ could mean anything to a decade to a century or more.

Of the Dead Men, there’s only two confirmed whose field of magic we don’t know: Hopeless and Larrikin. We’ve gotten a measure of Larrikin’s personality from a story Ghastly and Dexter told Valkyrie in book six; he was apparently quite extroverted. In contrast, Hopeless is something of a mystery, which segues with the talent of mind-reading. Given that the magical society is secular and arrogant, anyone possessed of such a magic would have been regarded with suspicion at best and outright shunned at worst; any user’s lifestyle would reflect that risk. In addition, sorcerers choose a name to protect themselves from being controlled by the ones they’re given as children. The part of Hopeless’s Taken name which we do know is a mental state with which a mind-reader would be eminently aware. Since Taken names generally relate to personality or magic, it’s safe to assume Hopeless’s name relates to his field; a man who was either hopeless in mentality or hopeless in skill would never have survived in a war as a member of an elite unit.

Finally, we also know that some sorcerers are born with a specific magical talent and specialise in it their whole lives (as opposed to most, who are flexible during puberty and only settle on their majority). I headcanon Hopeless as being one of those, since Skulduggery’s referral is one of only two times mind-reading is mentioned in canon. (The second is with regards to a man who has discovered his true name, and is therefore extraordinarily powerful to the point of having abilities no one else does, including mind-reading; this situation is extraordinary in and of itself.) Other sorcerers have mental abilities (ie enforcing love, or seeing visions, or being able to ‘erase’ memories) which are mentioned frequently, and the latest book features several with ostensible psychic powers. However, these sorcerers require time and physical contact in order to enter a person’s mind, and can be deterred by mental shields. Most importantly, they are never referred to as mind-readers, either by others or by themselves. Combined with the exact circumstances in which we see mind-reading in the seventh book, this heavily implies true mind-reading is something different, particularly rare and therefore even more of a potential taboo. This fact lends credence to the sheer mystery of Hopeless’s character in canon thus far.

Taking all that into account, I’m assuming Hopeless was the mind-reader Skulduggery knew, and have based his history and personality around that talent.

Hopeless could hear the thoughts of others essentially from birth. As he was born in the 1400s, his parents took evidence of his ability to anticipate their actions as proof of his possession by a demon. When he was only a baby, he was left at a monastery.

His was given the name Máenach Thaddeus by the monks—the quiet one, follower of Saint Thaddeus. They treated him well, but accordingly to how they perceived his abilities. He was raised believing he was demon-touched and that a life of penitence might be enough to earn him God’s forgiveness. Most of his time was spent in prayer or solitude, or performing tasks for the monastery which meant he didn’t have to be around people—his primary duty was taking care of the monastery’s hives. With the aid of meditation Máenach was able to block out the thoughts of the other monks, but only to a certain degree; he could never keep himself from hearing them completely.

For the first sixty years of his life he lived there, never stepping outside its walls. As time went on and it became clear Máenach wasn’t getting any physically older, since sorcerers in this universe age slowly, the monks began to treat him with a good deal more fear. Before, he was a thing to be pitied, helped because that was their duty, but likely with no real hope. After, he became an object of whispers, unspoken fears that he wasn’t just demon-touched but a demon himself, put into their midst as a test.

Máenach heard every whisper, every unspoken accusation. Without any other context for his own powers he believed all of them. He drew in, tried hard to be as good and penitent as it was possible for a damned soul to be, and did his best not to infect the others with his presence. Many times he contemplated suicide, and shied away if only out of fear of worsening his standing in God’s eyes.

It was during the Eleven Years’ War that things finally changed. The monastery, a staunch supporter of the Catholic Confederation, was attacked and burned to the ground. Máenach tried to warn his brothers; none of them would listen, so he fled, alone, during the attack, for the first time setting foot outside the monastery’s walls.

From there Máenach had no idea where to go or what to do, except that he had to avoid inflicting himself on others and strive, at all costs, not to intrude upon their thoughts. Skirting the edges of suicide, he found himself in an inn belonging to a town in the middle of nowhere, and there overheard a conversation regarding the fall of his monastery which caused him to flee in terror. He was pursued and stopped by a man by the name of Eachan Meritorious.

Meritorious was a sorcerer who could influence the elements. He was born of non-magical parents, but his magical mentor had been an old man, heir to a clan with no heirs of his own, and from him Meritorious had inherited political standing within the magical clans of Ireland. He, one of very few, had a passion and drive for removing the wedge in-between the magical and non-magical (otherwise known as mortal) communities, and had been investigating the monastery’s attack on suspicion of magical influence.

He was an intelligent and compassionate man who, upon realising what Máenach could do, gave him permission to read his mind at will in the hope it would prove to Máenach that he was not evil, nor even demon-touched, and merely possessed an exceedingly rare form of magic. The fact that Meritorious even tendered the suggestion on his own was enough to show Máenach something he had never actually before experienced: true compassion. Reading Meritorious’s mind revealed to Máenach a world which he’d never imagined.

It was at once a blessing and a curse. Meritorious’s perception of sorcerers was that they were arrogant and secular to a fault. Máenach realised that their socially conditioned pride in their power as magical beings would never permit them to be anything other than suspicious, at best, of someone who could see into the heart of them—even more so than ‘mortals’, who only feared what they didn’t understand. He would still never be accepted, and worse, many sorcerers would try to kill him outright.

Meritorious made him an offer. As a man of standing, he had the right to a manservant, which would place Máenach firmly under Meritorious’s protection and give him a perfect excuse to never leave it. In exchange, Máenach would help Meritorious figure out how to best approach certain sorcerers in the hopes of strengthening the ties between the magical and mortal communities. Máenach accepted that offer and chose the Taken name Descry Hopeless.

For the next couple of centuries Hopeless rarely left Meritorious’s side. Where before Meritorious had been seen as an eccentric radical, Hopeless was able to give him vital information as to his peers’ driving motivations and how to approach them to further his political goals. Meritorious became a strong leader in the magical world, with Hopeless never more than his loyal shadow.

During this time, a young clan leader began a rise to prominence. His name was Mevolent and he was a worshipper of the Faceless Ones—dark gods from another dimension. Descry knew at once he planned to wage war on the magical world in their name, but Meritorious had begun to grow complacent in his security and dismissed Hopeless’s warnings. The more support Mevolent gathered in secret, the more alarmed Hopeless became. For the first time, Descry actively chose to disobey the authority in his life.

One of the clan leaders was a fighting specialist who had a son by the name of Ghastly Bespoke. Ghastly was best friends with a mortal-born magical genius, a detective, by the name of Skulduggery Pleasant. Hoping that Skulduggery would be able to find sufficient proof of Mevolent’s politics to convince Meritorious to take action, Descry went to them to ask for their help, for the first time willingly revealing his power to someone else.

It was the beginning of a close friendship Hopeless would never have predicted. Ghastly and Skulduggery, fascinated and exasperated by Descry’s power and mentality in equal turns, refused to simply let things go at a business transaction. They drew him out of his self-created shell as Meritorious’s valet, teaching him to fight and showing him how to live. When war inevitably broke out, Skulduggery, with his cunning and intelligence, had gathered enough information about Mevolent’s intent that he became one of the rebellion’s leaders by default. So did Meritorious, who had finally begun to listen to Descry’s warnings once there was evidence on hand.

At first the war was waged on several fronts, with several prominent leaders resisting Mevolent’s attempts to control Ireland’s Cradle of Magic. Hopeless spent most of his time at Meritorious’s side; his presence at any meetings between the two sides was paramount, to read Mevolent’s plans. When Mevolent staged a coup to murder all the leaders of the resistance, it was thanks to Hopeless’s talent that Meritorious survived—the only one who did. Even Skulduggery, despite Ghastly and Descry’s efforts, died at the hand of Nefarian Serpine, one of Mevolent’s generals.

This left Meritorious the sole remaining leader of a failing resistance. No longer able to keep Hopeless with him, Meritorious sent Hopeless out onto the field with the intent that his mind-reading would help stave off defeat. It was during this time Hopeless first met Erskine Ravel, a talented Elemental. For a while they were partnered together, but were forced to separate by time and circumstance.

The war effort was revitalised when Skulduggery returned from the dead some years after his murder. The old group of three banded together as a team, trying to survive and prevent Mevolent from winning. As a small team of talented sorcerers, they waged guerrilla warfare on Mevolent’s forces, and when Descry and Erskine met again, Hopeless brought him properly into the fold.

The war dragged on. The group of four were so effective in the field that other sorcerers began to speak of them with awe—or fear. Dexter Vex, inspired by their heroism and the tales of Skulduggery’s return, sought them out and was let into the team. Soon after that Anton Shudder and Rover Larrikin, old friends and partners, did as well—though at this point Larrikin, an inveterate actor, had been practising a new disguise known only by the name of Saracen. Out of mischief, he joined the team under that name first, with the result that—in the eyes of the sorcerer population—Larrikin himself only served as a replacement for one of the others whenever they were injured. The ruse served well as a double, however; while the others were carefully watched by the enemy due to their reputations, Larrikin on his own was overlooked, and he was able to feed information back to the group at large.

In time, due to their power, skill and resourcefulness during suicide missions, the group became known as the Dead Men, feared and respected across the globe.

They weren’t without their own tragedies. In the middle of the war, Skulduggery vanished for five years, during which time the Dead Men believed he had been killed by the rising Necromancer Lord Vile. Then Lord Vile vanished and Skulduggery returned. The rebels at large rejoiced. Hopeless, alone of the Dead Men, suspected a connection, and over time, he was able to ferret out the truth: that Skulduggery himself had been Lord Vile. Knowing Skulduggery would leave again out of guilt if he knew anyone knew, and not wanting to lose one of his brothers a second time, Hopeless kept his secret.

It was near the end of the nineteenth century that things changed again. Hopeless was rocked with a personal revelation: that an accidental undercover liaison had given him a son. His son had inherited a form of his own power, the ability to ‘know things’, and had sought him out. The Dead Men kept Descry’s son close to train him, not intending for him to enter the war as a soldier. Then the situation shifted yet again.

Erskine was captured by Mevolent’s forces. Eager to keep this prize and knowing the Dead Men would stop at nothing to get him back if they knew he was alive, Mevolent formed a ruse to make the Dead Men believe Erskine had been killed in battle. It worked. For a year Erskine was believed killed in action. Needing a replacement and knowing that Larrikin couldn’t play both himself and Saracen Rue at once, Hopeless’s son took on the name and became their seventh. To the rest of the world, Larrikin simply joined the team permanently.

A year later Erskine returned, having been rescued from Mevolent by one of their allies, the Torment, and spent the year recovering from his torture with the Torment’s people, the Children of the Spider. He came back a broken man. He had told Mevolent everything, including the nature of Hopeless and Saracen’s magic. Worse, he felt betrayed by the fact the Dead Men hadn’t rescued him, by the fact that he had been so easily replaced, and his time with the Children of the Spider had left him embittered by the magical communities’ need to hide their nature from the mortal population.

Erskine couldn’t find it in himself to hate Saracen, his true replacement, but due to the general opinion that Larrikin was the newest of the group Erskine’s feelings were unintentionally redirected at him instead. In an effort to give Erskine room to heal, Larrikin left the team entirely, and they were once more seven.

In that time, nearly a decade, Hopeless worked most closely with Erskine to try and help him deal with his trauma, his guilt and his anger—even studying the new field of psychology on the side. Unlike Skulduggery, who needed solitude, Erskine needed companionship, and yet in his shame refused to let Hopeless tell the others the details of his capture and recovery. Even still, over the course of that time they were able to make progress in helping Erskine heal, and Hopeless found a new and genuine interest in the illnesses of the mind.

At the same time, Mevolent had started hunting Hopeless like never before. Eventually, he caught up. Knowing the nature of Descry’s power meant that he could be easily subverted if kept in the presence of Mevolent’s forces for long enough, Mevolent sought to capture, not kill. Equally so, Hopeless knew that was Mevolent’s intent, and knew that if he succeeded in turning Descry—and he would—Mevolent’s victory would be assured.

Hopeless fought, and hard. If he couldn’t escape then he would force Mevolent to kill him rather than be captured.

And so he was.

It’s soon after his death that he wakes up in the town square.

[Personality]: Given that Hopeless is literally just a name in canon, most of my extrapolation comes from the fact I’ve made him a mind-reader, for the reasons stated above. The nearest other talent in canon is always referred to as simply psychic power or being Sensitive. As described above in the history section, it relies on physical contact and concentration, and seems to depend on patiently sorting through memories rather than thoughts. Otherwise, a similar talent is found in Finbar and Cassandra, both of whom could see the future. For Cassandra, it seems to be a case of little magic used extremely well; if she wants a vision, she has to go out and make it happen. Finbar, however, is recognised as one of the most powerful known Sensitives around. Visions come on him like a freight-train, without his being able to turn them off. He’s naturally talented in a way he can’t restrain, and it’s affected his identity in a very obvious fashion.

Hopeless is like Finbar. It’s difficult to define a base personality just because he has never quite had a solid sense of self, as well as his lack of canon information, so I’m going to run through how he got to the place he has before overviewing who he is now.

The first and most defining characteristics he absorbed were fear and restraint. After leaving the monastery, when at one of his most vulnerable moments, he was then exposed to compassion and purpose in Meritorious’s mind. Over time the power he had as Meritorious’s valet shaped in him an objective awareness of events and emotions. Ghastly and Skulduggery showed him the right to his own initiative, and later the Dead Men gave him the chance to hone his own sense of being in terms of security and love.

Descry has been a mind-reader since he was born, which means that even as an infant he could hear his parents’ thoughts—though not understand most of them. Equally so, after he was left at the monastery the only thoughts around him belonged to the monks, who could not fail to notice his oddities. Given the manner in which his magic works, wherein everyone else’s thoughts feed into his, this means that his oldest memories and perceptions of himself were through their eyes. Those perceptions were far from flattering.

Descry’s very first memories are of being different and dangerous, of seeing himself as something to be feared. He knew things—the innermost thoughts of men. Worse, he knew the most sinful, shameful thoughts of men meant to be righteous. At first he would have been open and curious about these things he heard, and being so made him an easy scapegoat for men who wanted to deny those thoughts were theirs at all. He learned, early on, to blame himself for the thoughts of others, as if just by hearing them he was bringing them into existence—simply because that was what the monks told him was true, in voice and in mind.

But the monks also gave him a way out. If he was indeed possessed, then so long as he toed the line, did everything he was meant to do, he might be salvageable in God’s eyes. This restraint was even more deeply ingrained than the fear; it’s the reason Descry has managed to remain sane for so long. He learned his prayers and rites and meditations, and in doing so learned to reduce the thoughts of others to a background hum. The fear taught him he had no right to encroach on the minds of others, but even after he left the monastery his restraint means he lacks a desire to do so except under special circumstances. It means he thinks before he acts, that he keeps the secrets of others even when he could use them for his own gain. At the monastery, he learned his work ethic, his impulse to place others ahead of himself, and the humility to withhold knowledge even when it would have made him powerful to use it.

When Hopeless first met Meritorious, he was a terrified thing barely avoiding suicide only out of the fear of damning himself further. Meritorious was Descry’s first evidence that he wasn’t inherently evil, simply uniquely skilled. The fact that Meritorious was unafraid to let Descry read his mind was world-shattering; it introduced into Hopeless’s mentality true compassion. Here Meritorious was faced with a man who could have ruined every budding dream he had, and Meritorious’s first instinct was to prove to him that he wasn’t evil. For the first time, Descry was able to see a potential life beyond the condemnation of the church, and he seized it. Moreover, he witnessed personally how mercy could change a man.

Meritorious was also proof of something Descry had already known—that his talent was a thing to be hidden. While Meritorious himself was progressive, the general nature of sorcerers to hide meant that anyone who could discover their secrets so easily was necessarily regarded as a threat. However, it was one of Meritorious’s dreams to change that, to remove some of the fear-created barriers between magical and mortal. He had a purpose, and that purpose was to change the world. Descry, with his need to oblige, thought nothing of agreeing to help him in that cause, and in doing so he gave himself a purpose on Earth beyond ‘try not to be damned’—even though that purpose was borrowed.

As Meritorious’s valet and spy, Hopeless was exposed to a vastness of mentality which opened his whole world. The monks were all much of the same thought, and in the short period of time he had spent alone before Meritorious he had simply tried hard not to read anyone else. With Meritorious he opened himself to the minds of others in a way he never had before, and therefore the sheer wealth of opinion available in the world. Initially he had to cling to Meritorious’s mindset, just so he wouldn’t get lost, but over time Hopeless was more able to cope with this breadth of thought. For the first time he was consciously aware of issues and interests outside of those impressed on him by the monastery. Although for the most part he clung to those things he knew best, the more he read from others the better he was able to judge and predict their actions. Because he could know the motives of others firsthand, and because he now knew what compassion felt like, Hopeless became a man more inclined to listening and understanding than action.

Of course, even then the only purpose Hopeless knew was the one Meritorious had given him. It was in pursuit of this purpose, even without Meritorious’s knowledge, which led Descry into seeking out Skulduggery. Skulduggery, like Meritorious, saw the value in Descry’s talent; but Ghastly offered Hopeless understanding. Ghastly, cursed with ugliness, knew what it felt like to be shunned. In Skulduggery Descry found the power to form one’s own opinion; in Ghastly he found the resolve to take that right and act on it, regardless of what others believed. It was in this time that Hopeless began to pursue his own interests for the sake of them being his own, simply because he could and wanted to, and actually began to try to tell the difference between his own desires and those he took on from others.

What Ghastly and Skulduggery began, the Dead Men continued. With them, Hopeless was placed in a close-knit team, the mental bonds of which had a profound effect on him. Before, he had been an outsider on others’ thoughts. Now he was included, respected for being himself. He had people on whom he could depend, instead of being the one obliged to always help others. For the first time he was seen and could see himself as an equal with others. With the Dead Men, he gained a true place in the world. With the Dead Men, he could be himself. Combined with Skulduggery’s earlier influence, Hopeless began to develop a new confidence in himself and his magic which wasn’t only based on the condition of his usefulness to others.

And he had love. The Dead Men were so close as to call each other brothers. For the rest, that was shown in their words and actions. For Descry, it was an ever-present facet of being in their presence. It gave him purpose—to keep them alive, to fight the war. In spite of the horror each of them witnessed, to which Descry was also witness, these men gave Hopeless a fierce desire to hold on and to help in any way he could. When Erskine was tortured and returned broken, Hopeless dedicated everything he had to helping him. When Hopeless found out Skulduggery was Lord Vile, Hopeless kept that secret in the hope Skulduggery would return to them truly. The whole of Descry’s being revolved around the Dead Men.

All of the above are those things Descry has learned from the minds of others, either directly or due to influence. They’ve made him into the man he is today. Today, he retains the restraint not to abuse the power his magic gives him, and so he seeks to understand people instead of rule them. The compassion he learned from Meritorious means that he chooses to forgive people for their faults—to listen to their reasons and, in understanding them, grant them mercy. This makes him extremely gentle and understanding, and between that and his early years has given him a strict honour code. Unfortunately, all this does mean that on occasion he chooses not to act when he perhaps should. He respects others’ rights to their choices because he refuses to make those choices for them, even while he nudges them in the right direction. He relies too much on his own ability to help others, rather than expanding someone’s circle of people to rely upon. And while he doesn’t exactly bottle up his emotions, he does perhaps keep his own problems to himself more than he should so as not to burden others.

At the same time, while Descry no longer actively fears discovery, he recognises the slim chance that his magic would be accepted at large, and so has resigned himself to remaining secretive. He is very aware of how much he knows from others, and though he chooses in favour of restraint he also acknowledges how much of himself is borrowed. In this, he has returned to his monastery roots, and so there are some things which he actively denies himself, purely because he cannot be sure the feelings belong to him. The most obvious example of this is romance. Descry is celibate because he can never be sure if his feelings for someone are legitimately his, and he considers this unfair on whomever the recipient might be. (Saracen can’t exactly be called the result of a ‘relationship’; his mother was a prostitute who saw a drunken Descry as a perfect target. Descry, on waking up the next morning in a fit of guilt, left her all the money he had on him—enough for her to buy a house.) Conversely, when Descry does feel an emotion he can be absolutely sure is his, he has a bad habit of clinging to it far beyond its usefulness—no matter how damaging it might be.

Simultaneously the acceptance of the Dead Men has given Descry the security that he can be useful, in his own way and on his own merit. While he does still harbour a kernel of the belief that he is only useful because of his mind-reading, he isn’t afraid to assert himself based on what he knows—even if the other person doesn’t know he’s a mind-reader. He’s learned to bluff, to act, to hide in plain sight and be unafraid. His power is one of two things on which he can rely absolutely, regardless of its drawbacks, and he has learned to use it to its fullest extent without compromising his own morals. Of course, this also has a drawback, in that he is something of a know-it-all even to people who don’t know his power. He may be restrained about the innermost secrets of others, but he has a wealth of other knowledge and does enjoy using it to tease. Internally, he has grown used to knowing things, to being nearly infallible, without it actively going to his head. When he makes mistakes, as rare as it is, he takes them hard.

Previously Descry sought purpose in those which others gave him. Now he’s found it simply out of a love for others, because of things he can do and more importantly wants to do. In helping Skulduggery—even unrecognised—and Erskine, Hopeless has just started to discover a field in which he can indeed be useful and which has nothing to do with spying or war. He fights because he can help the people he loves, but he will do whatever he can to help them on an emotional level as well—to keep them together as people and as family. For Hopeless, being in a family, feeling their bonds on a direct level, is more than enough motive for nearly anything, and he would do anything he can without betraying what makes those bonds real in order to protect them.

It’s for these reasons that Descry has found some measure of faith again. As a youth, he believed in God out of fear and because he knew no other life. As he came into his magic, while he didn’t exactly stop believing in a higher power he was too hurt and embittered to want much to do with gods. The fact that most of his experience came from politicians and daily tragedies didn’t help either. Yet even then he was uniquely suited to witnesses small triumphs, small joys and pleasures, and then he found his own friends and was able to feel the love of a family for himself. On the strength of the hope and joys of the people around him, Descry has been able to rediscover a hope and faith in life for himself.

[Abilities / Strengths & Weaknesses]:
Magic:
Hopeless only has one power, but it’s one that he can’t turn off. He can read people’s minds. Of course, that’s put simply. In a nutshell, Descry is a repository for all the thoughts and feelings of the people around him, with just enough self-awareness to have feelings about them himself. Or, put another way, every mind around him is a radio set permanently to ‘transmit’, while Descry’s is set permanently to ‘receive’.

Over the years he’s developed enough control that he can pick and choose what to ‘hear’, and leave the rest as a kind of background noise which displays the general state of a person’s being as opposed to any specific thoughts. The thoughts he can’t block are those on the forefront of a person’s mind, the ones relating to those topics most important to them at any given time. Basically he reads a person’s ‘present mind’—that is, their present physical state, location and position. This comes in particularly handy in the middle of a fight, because it means he can anticipate reactions, but in general it means he is nearly impossible to sneak up on or surprise.

To him minds are like reports with headings; he leaps from heading to heading, and only reads more deeply if something catches his interest for whatever reason. Things that he recognises, or directly relates to himself or to people he knows, tend to leap out at him—they’re ‘highlighted’, as it were. Strong emotions also highlight specific thoughts. While he can read all that a person is just by looking at them, it’s dangerous for his own mental health and rude besides, and so he refrains from doing so. Even so, this does mean he gets to know people better than they know themselves over time, since the quixotic nature of the human mind means he can hear thoughts on any number of different subjects in a short period of time.

When unrestrained, Hopeless basically drowns in others’ thoughts. The more deeply he consciously focuses on a person in order to read their innermost, the less he can control his power and the more likely he is to be overwhelmed by who they are. When he is overwhelmed, he gets an overview of their person, catching glimpses of details but ultimately only being able to take in the vastness of the forest, so to speak. Over time he has even managed to develop the ability to use the personality of others as a cover to the degree that he forgets who he is, thereby avoiding being read himself, but that act is so traumatising and requires him to go so deeply into another’s consciousness that he just doesn’t do it because of the risk to himself.

Which is one of the main drawbacks to Hopeless’s power. In canon, it’s possible for Sensitives to be overwhelmed by their magic. Finbar Wrong, for instance, has canonically been possessed by various ghosts and is somewhat scatterbrained due to never quite living in the present. Correspondingly, Hopeless’s power has left him viewing bits and pieces of everyone he meets for nearly five hundred years. There are times, when meeting a sufficiently strong mind or when he’s dreaming, that he temporarily forgets who he is without having to try for it. In such times he can use the minds of people he knows well as a kind of anchor in order to achieve focus and remind him of his own identity.

Mundane abilities:
Descry is a non-combative sorcerer, so he has a number of mundane skills. He was a monk from the fifteenth century, so he’s fluent in Gaelic and Latin, English, and French—all those being the most important languages of his nation and five-hundred-year lifespan. He was also a spy for Meritorious and a mind-reader to boot, so he’s also fluent in all the major languages of Eurasia (Russian, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, etc), with enough understanding to get by on more localised languages and dialects, and a number of those across the ocean. He’d find learning languages easy anyway, since he just needs to read the visual meaning from a person’s mind long enough to get a grasp of its mechanics. Similarly, he’s extremely well versed in the mechanics of a great many miscellaneous skills, although that doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s talented or capable in them.

Since Hopeless was born in an era and society where everything had to be made by hand, and had only just entered the technological age upon his death, he still has an ingrained skill at making things from scratch. At the monastery he was often given duties in which he couldn’t be ‘tempted’; he used to look after the monastery’s bee-hives and make or scribe their books, and as Meritorious’s valet would have known little tasks such as cooking shoe-polish, tailored repairwork, and so forth. Although not something he’s especially talented in, he’s got a more than passing knowledge of herbs and gardening.

However, Hopeless is also a soldier. Ghastly and Skulduggery, and later the others too, made certain he would be able to defend himself. Even though it’s not one of his talents he’s been in combat for at least two centuries, so he’s no slouch. His favoured weapon is potentially non-lethal; a baton, given to him by Skulduggery, which magically expands into a fighting staff. Over time Descry improved on it using sigils, turning it into a stun-baton while the staff is collapsed. After the advent of the more reliable revolvers, he also began carrying a derringer, though he rarely uses it. He’s trained to use his mind-reading in battle so he can anticipate his opponent’s movements, but only fights in defence. Thanks to his mind-reading, Descry will experience the death of anyone he kills—or is killed around him—and so refrains from dealing as much damage as is possible and still survive.

Strengths and weaknesses:
Descry’s biggest strength and biggest weakness are different sides of the same coin. After lifetimes of reading the minds around him without a choice, he has exceptional control, compassion and understanding. He’s had to endure the pain and deaths of thousands of people almost firsthand, and has managed to not only remain sane but forge his own identity even heavily influenced by the people around him as he is.

But that’s just it: his identity is heavily influenced by those around him. For the last century or so it’s been the Dead Men, who have done wonders for his own sense of self and self-esteem, but Descry will never be able to escape the inner thoughts of everyone else. When he dreams, he dreams others’ nightmares. When an evil mind is nearby, he risks losing himself in it, and will never be able to shake the memories he reads from it. Hopeless is a man constantly on the line between sanity and insanity, and given enough duress—enough minds at once, or a strong mind in emotional turmoil—it’s very easy for him to be hurt or lose his sense of self entirely. This is exactly the weakness Mevolent sought to exploit, and the reason Descry preferred to be killed in action than taken alive.

[Limited Powers]: Because the whole of Descry’s identity revolves around being able to read minds, I’d rather not have to say he ‘simply can’t’ read a mind he otherwise would be able to unless I absolutely have to. There are some circumstances in which Descry would try to read deeply, but that’s primarily as a result of threats—especially during battle situations.

However, as explained above with his personality and the drawbacks of the power itself, his powers are self-limiting. Descry’s default stance is to keep the secrets of others, so even if he knows them, no one else will and the chance he will act on that knowledge is slight. Most of the time he will only read things stated in the tag to which he’s responding, thoughts regarding the immediate topic at hand, or something immediately relevant to him and his people.

He’s potentially susceptible to mental barriers, though in canon his type of mind-reading isn’t blocked by them. Mental barriers from other canons, however, could repel him, though not necessarily prevent him from reading the person’s ‘present mind’. He would see such a barrier as a fence and choose not to try and break it (rendering moot the question of whether or not he could).

His range is about long shouting distance, though he’s unaffected by walls or magic. He will not be able to read peoples’ minds over long-range communication like the journals. He also can’t read the minds of beings who don’t have biological brains; Skulduggery, as a skeleton, is established in the seventh book as being immune to mind-reading.

I do intend to have a permissions post, though, particularly for those characters who do have mental barriers.

[Other Important Facts]: Hopeless has no canon appearance, but he’s human, so he’s got all the usual: head, arms, legs, face. I’ve made him a redhead, tall and lanky without being bony. He’s got a kind of passive watchfulness and a habit of standing back, fading into the background, quite deliberately.

He’s spent so long as a shadow that he doesn’t draw attention to himself at all, but at the same time he’s got a kind of peacefulness. It’s not like he doesn’t care—it’s more than he’s accepted his lot in life. He’s also exceptionally good at controlling his physical reactions and expressions, due to the necessity of not letting on when he’s overheard something no one said out loud. It’s left him with a kind of stillness, not like an inanimate object but like someone halfway in another world.

He does have a tendency to stare at things that puzzle him, though.

Since Hopeless has come in just after his death in the field, he is wearing his battle-gear. This consists of a black leather outfit which is enchanted to be weather-proof and bullet-proof (and blunt-force-trauma-proof, basically) and a fabric mask-hood. It includes a long gauntlet, worn on the off-hand and extending to the shoulder, which is enchanted to resist damage for use as a duel weapon and shield. He’s also got his weapons with him. One of them is a derringer pistol, modern for the early 1900s. The other is a baton, enchanted with sigils. It both extends into a staff and has with a stun feature, similar to a taser, for when the staff is collapsed. It charges with Descry’s body-heat.

Miscellaneous items consist of a leatherbound journal enchanted to resist the effects of the weather—not the one he gets when he enters the game—a fountain pen and a diamond flask of ink.

[Samples]:
♦ Thread: [Important note: some these threads were played before the release of the eighth book and therefore have some inaccuracies regarding minor canon details, particularly the one with Skulduggery. Descry’s personality remains the same and the app at large has been updated with the new information, but the differences follow:

-The test-runs say that Larrikin died before Hopeless. The eighth book reveals that this is reversed; Hopeless died before Larrikin.

-The test-runs say that Hopeless survived to see Mevolent fall. This was revealed to be untrue in the eighth book, and in fact he was killed not long beforehand.

-The test-runs establish that Hopeless died in a pub after being poisoned. This is no longer viable given the newly released canon; even though canon never states where or how he died, the change in timeline and circumstances immediately preceding his death still make my original scenario untenable. Instead I’m saying he was killed on a battlefield.]

Test-runs with Skulduggery, Danielle, Nico, The Doctor (this thread is a particularly good example of how Descry would likely react to someone with mental barriers) and Sefton.

Also this part of this thread is a good example of how Descry’s magic works in battle.

♦ Post:

[The following is written in a flowing cursive hand, the sort one might see in old handwritten journals of the fifteenth century.]

Request for trade or information

I need, either directly or coordinates to an island with:
—timber. Cedar preferred, cypress second alternative, spruce acceptable.
—seedlings. Rosemary or lavender.
—islands with wild beehives.

I can offer—mostly just honey, really, if anyone can direct me to islands with hives. Alternatively, an exchange of basic services. Sewing, leatherwork, cobbling.

With regards.

[Signed: Descry Hopeless.]