Codename: Catman
Real Name: Thomas Blake Jr. (Thomas Sage)
Day Job: Socialite
Theme Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg3FQmWE8tw and because I'm a greedy little thing, here's another https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTwzPeQwcU8 and just for good measure, one more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI7KxEerCYo and one more to stay ahead of the pack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmre2SqwtcI

Gender: Male
Age: 23
Sexual Preference: Heterosexual (okay with all of the above)

Description in Costume:  The Catman suit is a work in progress.  The first suit was little more than a black bodysuit and mask with pointy ears.  It served its function well enough and with it Thomas ‘earned’ enough money to upgrade and explore his heritage.  The second added a yellow outer layer once worn by his father and supposedly imbued with mystical energy.  Mystical or not, it made things too cumbersome, let alone too bright.

The third incarnation of Catman returned to basic black, adding a different sort of mystical, a jaguar pelt cape found in the depths of Xiabalá which was utterly impractical and outright dangerous, easily snagging on things and nearly strangling him once when he tried to drop from a high ledge to an alley below.

The latest is an expensive, but practical number in black and a slightly darker black, made of a carbon fiber weave that breathes like a second skin, but is tough enough to turn a sharp blade or small caliber round.  It includes a set of gloves with retractable claws good for climbing as well as combat, especially when coupled with the delivery of poisons, toxins and mind altering chemicals.  In a similar fashion, he’s begun to upgrade the mask with optics that give him excellent night vision and microphones that allow him to scan radio channels and pick up distant sounds.  He has plans to upgrade the mask further, as well as other weapons, including a pair of connected rods that so far only serve as a halfway decent grappling hook, nunchaku or fighting sticks.

Description as Civilian:  A taste of the high life has given Thomas a taste for fashion.  Whether expensive t-shirts, cashmere sweaters or velvet coats, he’s always dresses well, in fabrics that are soft to the touch and whisper quiet.  He’s working on perfecting a disheveled look that doesn’t seem styled or purposeful, but is camera ready all the same.  He carries himself with a calm and poise, with a grace suitable for his Catman persona or a designer runway walk.  He has a nearly ever present smile, sometimes boyish and bright, sometimes playful and knowing, though on occasion it fades to hint at troubles hidden just beneath the surface.

The same can be said of his eyes, usually bright and curious, easily attracted to bright, shiny and exciting people, places and things.

Height: 5’11”
Weight: 175
Build: Lean and lithe
Hair Color and Style: Blondish brown and perpetually out of place
Eye Color: Hazel
Distinguishing Marks:  He has three pale scars on his chest.
Model: Douglas Booth

Personality Description: Thomas is still trying to find himself.  He’s conflicted between opposing forces and influences, living and dead.  On the surface he’s playful, a bit of a trickster and enjoys a good game, whether gambling, sporting or deceit.  Like his namesake, he can be fickle and finicky, taking an instant liking to one thing or one person, an instant disdain or dislike to another.  Like his father, he’s finding he has an increasingly hard to control set of animal urges, some of which he struggles to resist, others he indulges a little too easily.  He probably carries a bit of his mother as well, but as he doesn’t know who she is, he only guesses at what traits to attribute to her.  If he had to guess, he’d imagine his inability to do what he’s told and aversion to constraints, physical or emotional.

The influence of his adoptive parents is less and less noticeable as time progresses.  While they were good and decent people, nurture only goes so far, nature is in the blood.  Still, he does his best to be ‘good’, though he’s broken just about all of the Ten Commandments and other principles they raised him with.  He worships a different god, worships before graven images, doesn’t remember the Sabbath, steals and covets… oh how he covets.

But in his own defense, he technically hasn’t committed adultery, he’s only participated in it, and perhaps more importantly, he has yet to kill.  That said, his ‘false god’ and his animal urges certainly make him think about it every time he dons his mask and stalks the night.

Strengths:  Thomas has extraordinary proprioception, born of his parentage, as well as his exposure to the Cloak of L; assuming of course that isn’t just a figment of his imagination and over indulgence on mushrooms.  That enhanced sense of his own body has in turn provided him with preternatural reflexes, agility and exceptional grace.  Similarly, he is exceedingly stealthy and quiet, even when not trying to be, something coming from his blood, early training and perhaps mystical ties.

Thomas is naturally intelligent and more than a little fearless (maybe a little foolhardy).  He’s good at solving puzzles and thinking through problems, whether it’s how to get from point A to point B as quickly and quietly as possible or whether it’s how to disable a high tech security system.  His lack of fear gives him an edge, especially in costume, letting him take otherwise insane risks that might cause any normal person to hesitate.  So far, it’s paid off, whether just luck or that combined with his intelligence and proprioception.

He is also increasingly wealthy, wealth which is applied to the restoration of Blake Manor, the support of the most popular causes of the day and lucrative (though not always on the up and up) investments.

Weaknesses:  Thomas is prideful and a little overconfident.  That overconfidence leads to some reckless behavior, physically, legally and emotionally.  His pride is driving him to restore the Blake family home, something which is costly and driving most of his criminal pursuits, as well as much of his social behavior.  It’s also making him want to be noticed, both as Thomas Blake Jr. as well as Catman, something he knows will easily put his ‘secret’ identity at risk.  However, his overconfidence wants people to eventually know or at least suspect the truth, counting on the fact that they won’t be able to prove it.

Thomas is also easily distracted and while he might brush that off as ‘curiosity’, it has a tendency to lead him to pursue risks and travel paths just for the sake of the pursuit rather than any monetary or strategic gain.

Fears: Thomas has an intense fear of confinement and restraint.  As a child, he didn’t like to be held or touched, something his adoptive parents, incorrectly assumed implied a childhood of abuse.  While it could be argued his childhood was abusive, his dislike in being held wasn’t a result, it was something deeper and not entirely explainable in any rational way.  On occasion this fear presents itself as claustrophobia, though he’s usually ok in enclosed spaces so long as he has more than one means of escape.

He has a fear of disappointing his birth parents, something which lives itself out routinely as he never knew his father except through his letters, writings and news clips and only remembers his mother in the vaguest of memory.  As a result, he has an almost mythological view of them, one that it’s unlikely he’ll ever be able to actually impress.

He also has a nagging concern that he’s actually insane.  He’s begun to take advice from a statue, wears a jaguar pelt for protection and healing, believes he has seven lives and is relatively confident that some of the cats that live in his mansion can understand him and just aren’t talking back because they’re playing a joke.

Skills and Abilities: Thomas is a naturally gifted martial artist.  Though he doesn’t remember it consciously; his body remembers the hours upon hours of lessons given to him by his mother and a frightening and rough giant of a man in his earliest years living in the Himalayas.  He’s only just begun to train again formally, though hasn’t yet found an instructor of enough skill to take his abilities to the next level.

He has a fledgling skill in the creation, distillation, and application of chemical toxins and as he often experiments with their effects on himself, he has developed a high tolerance of intoxicants, whether alcohol, drugs, or his own blends.

He is a skillful pianist, one of the few skills and traits picked up in his adoptive home and one he continues to maintain.

His costume includes two pieces of significant equipment and one insignificant one:

   Claws – Retractable claws allow him to scale the sides of buildings and open with such force as to work like a piton when needed and are sharp enough to cut like a well-honed knife.  He’s also working on a first-generation design to release poisons and toxins along the blades so they might act as a delivery mechanism.  Right now the system only allows him to load one poison at a time but is his hope is to make it adjustable depending on his needs or perhaps allow for different chemicals along different claws.
   Mask – His mask includes low light optics which allow him to see in near-total darkness, directional microphones which allow him to pick up distant sounds, and a scanner that allows him to eavesdrop on communications.  He’s also added some simple dust filtration but plans to add further air filters so as not to be affected by tear gas or airborne weapons, though he usually likes to keep his mouth uncovered because he's vain enough to want people to see his smile.  He also plans to add additional optic modes and sound modes but has yet to do so.
   Clubs – He has a pair of clubs each with a coil of high tensile wire which connects to form nunchaku or extends to serve as a short-range grappling hook.  He’s still experimenting with the clubs and right now hasn’t used it for much more than a non-lethal weapon or swing from place to place.

He also possesses the Cloak of L, an ancient jaguar skin cloak said to have been worn by the Mayan God known only as L.  Supposedly if he wears it every day at dawn it will grant him seven (not nine) lives, much like the cloak his father once wore (and was most likely nothing more than ordinary cloth).  While he’s had past brushes with death, he hasn’t yet had the occasion to find out whether the magic of the cloak is real, and isn’t quite ready to force the issue.

He also has a statue of the self-same Mayan god and sometimes offers it tribute in the form of gold, smoke, chocolate, or blood.

History: Janet and Henry Sage did their best to give young Thomas a normal life, but how could they?  He’d been all but created out of grandfather’s demands, held as a prize, taken as a pawn, and finally, erased and redrawn in a Norman Rockwell painting, all before the age of 6.

Janet and Henry were good people, despite their willingness to take in the boy under such questionable circumstances and with such falsified papers.  Henry was one of three policemen in a small town, hours from Gotham, Metropolis, or any other city that had more than fast-food restaurants and chain stores, and taking Thomas was the only unethical thing he had ever done.  Janet was a music teacher at the local elementary and had always wanted a child.

Growing up he’d done his best to play along with the lie.  He pretended to believe them when they said his memories of living in a palace in some frozen kingdom were just a child’s dreams, but he still remembered.  He remembered his real mother, hazy remembrances of a woman with blood-red hair who even when she smiled at him, always seemed a little sad.

There was a man as well, though he didn’t think it was his father.  He was the biggest man Thomas could imagine, a hulking giant in his child’s mind, but a giant with bright and clever eyes.  His mother and the man would run Thomas through exercises, stances, movements, like training a dog to perform tricks.  He recalled the man would hit him with a stick whenever he faltered.  He recalled his mother would treat his welts with ointments that smelled of jasmine tea.

He clung to the memories, even the pain as he tried to fit into that small town, tried to be a good son to Henry and Janet.  He stayed out of trouble, tried to fit in, tried to have friends, date a nice girl, play sports, apply for college.  He played football and was pretty good, enjoying the bruises, those he took and those he gave out, but only kept with it a year.  He dated one of the most popular girls in school, but they didn’t last either.  “You’re just not here, you know?” she had said.

“You just need to apply yourself,” his mother would say, usually over lessons at the family piano.  He was good, but she said he could be great, could get a scholarship, go to one of the best music conservatories.  If he just applied himself.

His father said it too, about football, about everything.  It was something he heard a lot.

“I know, I know… if I just applied myself,” he would say.  It was his answer to everything that was wrong with his life and in a way it was true.

~O~

But he tried, which was why it was such a surprise when he sat them down the day before his 18th birthday and told them he was going away.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” he assured them, and it was true, but he needed to find himself, find who he really was, find out who and what he was meant to be.  He needed to apply himself.

~O~

It was five years before he resurfaced, quietly, without fanfare or much beyond a small column in the back pages of the Gotham Gazette.

Blake Manor purchased: The once-grand mansion situated between stately Wayne Manor and the more notorious Maroni Mansion has been purchased.  The long unoccupied property had been off the market for decades.  Plans for the location remain undisclosed.

~O~

It was with a mix of trepidation and excitement that he finally came to Gotham.

He’d spent years following in his father’s footsteps, searching for the man, both literally and metaphorically.  The first clue had come as a gift, a letter from a law firm in Gotham, the deed to Blake Manor.  The rest hadn’t been hard to learn from there.

Though Catman was never a well-known ‘villain’ or a particularly well-respected one, a simple internet search turned up a lot, from early run-ins with the Batman to later rumors overseas.  However, there was never a mention of a son, never a mention of a mother, though he apparently had a thing with or for Batwoman and the Huntress, at least one of them, it was hard to be sure whether all the women behind those masks were the same.

There were letters and journals which told him more, found in a desk in the only maintained room in the manor, a room still dusty, but one that had been visited from time to time over the intervening years.  The journals told a different story, a deeper story, of a man struggling with his own nature and origins.  It was a story that led Thomas Jr. around the world, seeking out places visited in the words he’d read.

Of course, all of that cost money, money he didn’t have, so he did what came naturally, he stole it.  In fact, he found out he was good at it, good at being a thief.  He traveled for years that way, honing his natural skills and learning new ones, sometimes through trial and error, sometimes from mentors and other of like mind.

By the time he got to Central America, he’d stopped literally following his father’s footsteps across the world, though he was still following them metaphorically, mostly stealing cat-related artifacts and antiquities.  It was that quest that brought him to the museum in Belize and the exhibit of Mayan art.  It was that which first brought him face to face with the Night God.

Even the scholars didn’t know his name, calling him only God ‘L’, they supposed he was one of the gods of the underworld, if not THE god.  It was a grand theft, a life-sized stone statue wrapped in a jaguar skin cloak.  The statue was said to speak when fed.  The cloak was supposed to turn the wearer into a jaguar and imbue them with the powers of the god.  Thomas just wanted it because he thought it would look cool in his living room.

~O~

And it did.  It looked very cool in the living room of Blake Manor and Tom sat in front of it, wrapped in the jaguar cloak for warmth, staring at it in the dark of the night, wondering what he should do next.

Family/Friends/Rivals/Enemies: Janet and Henry Sage – Thomas’ adoptive parents.  Though he hasn’t done much other than send them the occasional postcard, he still thinks about them from time to time.  He knows they wouldn’t approve of who he’s becoming, but feels he owes them something and wants to repay his debt, once he figures out how.

Thomas Blake Sr. – Thomas’s birth father, also known as Catman.  Thomas Jr. has never met his father.  All of what he knows comes from journal entries and unsent letters found in Blake Manor.  Thomas Sr. has become something of a mythical figure in Thomas Jr’s mind, a man that was shallow and silly on the surface, but complex in truth and never truly understood.  It’s unclear if Thomas Sr. is still alive and Thomas Jr. wonders if perhaps he will resurface once he reestablishes the Blake family name.

Mother & Grandfather – Thomas doesn’t know the identity of his mother or grandfather, whether either or both of them are still alive or what plans they had for him or might still.

Sebastian Carter – A high-priced lawyer who serves many of Gotham’s less reputable clients.  Sebastian Carter is one of the few people who know Thomas’ full story, having known his father as well.  However, Sebastian hasn’t shared that bit of information with Thomas Jr. and only serves as an executor of the Blake estate.

Margaret Pye aka Magpie – Margaret was a kleptomaniac and master burglar who taught Thomas a few tricks after her escape from Arkham six years ago.  Meeting the older woman as a young man, Thomas and Maggie formed a complicated relationship built on mutual interests, weaknesses, and fetishes.  She became one of Thomas' mentors in more ways than one, at least until she left him to take the fall for a heist gone bad.  Thomas got away, but that led to a falling out, after which Thomas took his revenge by stealing a heist out from under her nose and turning it into a trophy of his own.   Margaret is known to be impervious to pain, a skilled gymnast, and routinely leaves booby traps for the unwary.

Time Zone: Pacific, with posts coming usually in the morning or evenings (not a lot on the weekends though).

Writing Sample:

The suit was new, an upgrade, but not yet familiar.  It still felt like a costume, like a shell, not a second skin.  The old bodysuit was like skin.  Still, he could feel the cold night air, reminding him of his childhood.  He could hear other things too, a security guard checking in over a radio.  South door checked.  He would be heading to the west now, giving Thomas fifteen minutes on the south side.

He only needed five, the claws working better than expected in getting him up the side of the building and into a third-floor window.  He was even able to use them to cut the glass enough for him to slip inside.  It was a good upgrade and he was smiling inside the mask, adrenalin pumping through his veins.

He had to resist the urge to laugh though he did do a little shuffle of a dance as he moved across the floor, shifting back to a cat-like stance when he got near the wall.

Opening the safe wasn’t tricky, mostly because he knew the combination.  He had gotten that from one of Maggie's old books.  It was one of a thousand notes about a thousand crimes left unfulfilled.  He punched in the codes and pulled the handle, only to wrench his shoulder.  He was about to try again but was interrupted by a piercing wail.

Dammit, he thought.  Had it been changed?  Were they warned?  Was it a trap?

The answer came in a trio of guards that burst into the room.  He hadn’t heard them coming and knew, they were waiting.

Gunshots rang out, one scratching along the side of his helmet like an angry wasp.

“Careful boys,” he warned as he ducked behind a desk, “I just bought that.”

They didn’t respond, moving silently to flank him, one left, one right, one training their gun in his direction.

“Can’t be helped,” he said, mostly to himself, looking at the window grimly.

“Geronimo?” he asked uncertainly, leaping for the window.

It’s only three stories, he told himself.  People had survived worse and they didn’t have the Cloak of Xiabala on their wall.

~O~

“It was only three stories,” he explained, speaking to the cats that lounged about the living room with him, the statue of the Mayan God, or both while he rubbed his bruises.

It was only three stories, but the grappling tool didn’t work particularly well and it not only wrenched his shoulder more, but he also hit the ground hard and his knee hurt.

He’d dropped the mask near the door, the chest piece not far after, and finally, the pants near the fireplace which provided the only light and the only other warmth beyond the jaguar pelt draped across his back.

“You could have warned me,” he complained, this time clearly speaking to the statue, sounding a little annoyed and expecting some sort of answer, an answer that might come once the herbs kicked in, a bitter taste still in his mouth as he waited for the warm, fuzzy glow to wash over him.