Adam Driscoll

Name: Adam Driscoll
Alias: He hasn't come up with a 'name' yet but will probably get stuck with something terrible like Mister Metropolis or worse, Kid Metropolis
Age: 24

Personality: Adam’s personality is as varied as the city he calls home.  He can be suave and sophisticated, he can be rough and crude, he can be indifferent and distant, he can be optimistic and supportive.  Most people would know his public face as an irresponsible trust-fund kid who ran with the other trust-fund kids in the city, bouncing from girlfriend to girlfriend, getting drunk, wrecking cars.  He hasn’t been like that for a few years, though he occasionally shows up to some event appearing drunk or at least drinking, so the reputation has continued to stick (perhaps intentionally).  Those in the local financial and real estate circles would begin to recognize the shift in Driscoll Limited’s business model as they’ve begun to convert several of their under-performing properties into affordable housing, office and retail space (or community space).  They’ve been doing this quietly while maintaining some of their more exclusive, money making properties (while also moving some of their more questionable properties in The Fens to other holding companies).

When alone he can tend towards being somber or prone to violent outbursts (usually against walls or heavy bags).  He also has a tendency to drink heavily (in private), which if ever pressed, he’d claim helps him sleep.

Physical Description: At 5’11”, 175 pounds, Adam isn’t the largest person you’ve ever met but has a lean muscular physique.  He has light brown hair that tends to do whatever it wants and dark green eyes though they were originally blue before he was chosen by Metropolis to serve as its agent.  He wears colored contacts to turn them back to blue to avoid any unwanted questions.

As Adam Driscoll, he dresses well.  He hasn’t adopted a ‘persona’ yet, nor developed a costume and just uses a basic mask, dark gear and some wrappings around his fists.  Once he does develop a ‘costume’, it will probably be green, like Metropolis’ was.

Powers/Abilities: Works in Freedom City Only

• One with the City: Danger Sense, Detect City Details (layout and surroundings), Enhance Hearing (hear through walls and at an extended distance), Postcognition (Limited  to sounds, shadows, and reflections, requires concentration, imperfect), Tracking (over Concrete/Asphalt only)
  
• Protected by the City: Concealment (Sight/Sound), Regeneration (requires concrete, glass or steel, leaves an altered appearance for a time)

Skills/Advantages: Acrobatics, Athletics, Close Combat, Hide in Plain Sight, Insight, Kung Fu (Defensive Attack, Improved Disarm, Improved Trip, Instant Up, Uncanny Dodge), Perception, Redirect, Stealth

Complications: Enemy (X-Isle, The Living City), Fame, Motivation (Responsibility), Power Loss (away from Freedom City), Voices in his Head, Emotional Instability



Background:

Sins of the Father

By Carol Court in The Daily Word

What do you think of when you hear the name Driscoll?  Do you think of the Henry Driscoll Sr, notorious slum lord?  Do you think of Henry Jr. whose name is written in giant letters on half the buildings in Freedom City?  Do you think of Adam who graced the gossip columns on a regular basis including the infamous photo of being taken away in handcuffs after drunkenly driving his Maserati through the plate glass window of Il Fornai (which it should be noted, the Driscoll family owns)?

What about the Freedom City Community Health Center?  No?

A quiet groundbreaking ceremony took place in Southside yesterday for a new Community Center.  Expected to open in a year, the center will house a free clinic as well as a youth athletics club and other community support programs.  A welcome addition to the often under-served neighborhood, the story doesn’t begin there.

“This city has been good to my family.”

Adam Driscoll is the first to admit the reverse hasn’t been true.  His grandfather, began the Driscoll empire in The Fens, snapping up properties in the low rent district and raising the prices (if not the standards).  Rumors abounded about his ties to organized crime which might have been true given many of his buildings housed the theaters and parlors The Fens is still known for.  The empire extended from there into Southside, Bayview and Port Regal where the family home lies, on West Point on the Narrows overlooking  Centery Bridge and the downtown skyline.

It was here Henry Jr. would first gaze out and imagine his name on buildings, not just in The Fens or Southside but Riverside, Midtown, Parkside, the City Center and Wading Way.

There are some who suggested he either knew about the Terminus Invasion or took advantage of the chaos as dozens of rundown buildings he owned were leveled in the assault and subsequently rebuilt better by Doctor Metropolis as part of Freedom City’s recovery.  Sadly, those buildings, now new and built in effect by ‘magic’, were too expensive for the original inhabitants to reoccupy and became highly sought out by Freedom City’s more affluent tech workers, financiers and others.  The Driscoll family name was no longer associated with just slums, they were now associated with wealth.

Adam was ten at the time and grew up at prep school upstate as the Driscoll empire continued to grow.  He returned to the city five years ago to attend Freedom City University though school records show he very rarely attended class and didn’t graduate.

“My father fell ill.”

Like most things about the Driscoll family, public records beyond their real estate holdings remain scarce and they are known for valuing their privacy.  What can be confirmed is that roughly four years ago Henry Jr. became a recluse and turned over day to day operations of his business to his company CFO.  Shortly thereafter Adam began showing up in the gossip columns and rehab more often than class.  It remained that way until now.  So the question is, what changed?

“There comes a time when you have to look in the mirror and ask yourself, what mark am I leaving on this world, on this city.  My father looked into that mirror and wanted to see something other than his own name.”

~O~

It was a good story and mostly true.  Adam’s grandfather was a slumlord, his father was a narcissistic opportunist and he was an over-privileged trust fund baby.  What wasn’t true was whose idea it was for the community center and in fact, his father hadn’t spoken a coherent sentence in years.  In fact, the idea had come from a dream, or rather a nightmare of a darkness falling over the city, seeping from the alleys, spreading like a fog, dragging people into it with coils like steel cables made of ink.  It was a dream of a city that was filled with a ravenous hunger.  It was like Freedom City and it wasn’t.  It wasn’t Freedom City but it could be.

He’d woken in a cold sweat, chalking the dreams to being back in the old house.  He slept better in one of the high-rises, like the one in Parkside that looked across the dark expanse of the park and the city lights surrounding it.  The old house was old and it felt sick, like the city felt sick but his father wouldn’t leave the house and neither would the Doctor.

~O~

He didn’t like to dream anymore.  He’d used to enjoy it.  He’d always had vivid dreams, fun dreams.  Now he only had nightmares, ones that haunted him into his waking hours and could only be forgotten once his hands bled against the heavy bag or eyes blurred from drink.  He’d only actually gone through rehab three times, once at fifteen, once again at seventeen and once after the incident with the Maserati, though that was not a normal rehab center but instead a special place far overseas.  It was the start of his training.

He’d gone to Master Lee after that first trip to continue his training, then back to ‘rehab’ several more times, including last month for what he hoped to be the final time.

'Are you ready?'

The City was becoming impatient.

~O~

Freedom City had been good to the Driscoll family though the same couldn’t be said of the Driscolls in return.  If anything, the Driscoll family had exploited the city since they arrived generations prior, most notably the last few.  Perhaps that’s why they were marked by Doctor Metropolis to be his proxy.  Whether a response to the Moore Act (Doctor Metropolis did, after all, follow the will of The City, or the result of an ongoing conflict with X-Isle, The Living City), Doctor Metropolis is gone, at least in a manner of speaking.

How Henry Jr. came to be in possession of the statue (for that was how Adam first looked at) remains a mystery, one his a father is unable to share and The Voice of the City refuses to share.  Regardless of the how, the Driscolls have what Adam assumes to be the remains or a conduit from which Doctor Metropolis speaks; that or he’s just gone insane.  At first, it was just a pile of scrap metal and concrete bits but has begun to reform.  Currently, it's in the shape of a pair of feet surrounded by more scraps and bits.  Routinely, despite round the clock nurses, Henry Jr. can be found in the sitting room trying to reassemble the statue though to no effect.

Adam in return has discovered listening to The Voice and doing what it says seems to have an impact on both the statue and his father, though it’s done little to make his father more coherent, just simply calmer.

The Voice is mercurial.  It is angry.  It is despondent at times.  It is optimistic.  It is fickle.  Sometimes Adam wonders if it’s all in his head since that describes him pretty well too.

'Focus yourself.'

That advice had come from both The Voice and his father, though in his father’s case it was more “focus, focus, focus, focus, focus” in rapid succession but he took their agreement to heart and has been trying.  He began by trying to focus his anger by taking up training in the martial arts, which eventually led him to Master Lee, which in turn led him to ‘rehab’ at a temple in the Song Mountains of Central China.

In between, he made sure Driscoll Limited began work on several construction projects; a halfway house in The Fens, an animal shelter in Bayview and the aforementioned community center in Southside.  The halfway house had been open for a couple of years, the animal shelter one and the community center was almost done.  It was slow progress but it was progress.

“You could just pull yourself together and do all of this youself, you know,” he told the pair of feet wasting space in his father’s (now his) sitting room, but the feet rarely answered, not having a mouth after all.  He looked at himself in the mirror and doubting the wisdom of this next part of the plan.  At the very least, he really was going to need a better costume; and a name.