Introduction
Randall Kinkaid
An Spirit [
I would die for you, darling, if you want me to.
Appearance
Notable Features
Corporeal
Randy wears a well-groomed beard with a particularly full mustache. He retains few markings in his death that he had in life, the spirit retaining only that which shaped his development and identity, such as a partial shape of his father's cattle branding iron, and the healed scar of a bullet wound in his shoulder.The five gunshot wounds that killed him emit smoke when exposed. They go clean through his torso, just missing any vital organs. On the anniversary of his death, the smoke turns thick, red, and "wet".
Incorporeal
He appears to others as a wisp of smoke that smells of gunpowder and cigars. Randy perceives his form no differently than he was when alive.Anything the wounded spots on his body would touch when passing through him in this form incur damage (burns, holes, splintering) in accordance with the sound of a gunshot, as if struck by a bullet.
Personal Style
Randy takes pride in his appearance, and appreciates fine styles when he can get them. He dresses in smart and casual modern fashions, understated, nothing flashy or particularly unique— just bold, simple quality, although he does have his shabby work clothes for when he knows he’ll have to camp outside overnight.Circumstances
Currently
Randy spends his days, yes, days, earning his keep among the ranches around Never. Able to keep watch over animals and influence (or spook) them with his presence even as a wisp of smoke, he's returned to his cowboy roots. Mostly, he works as a ranch hand for Roy Taylor, but he's available per diem to just about anyone who needs the services of an experienced cowboy and gunman. While he prefers to enjoy his part-time body for himself, he'll happily do whatever is asked of him for a fair price.Can't promise he won't fuck around just a little bit, though.
Health & Capabilities
In his nightly corporeal form, Randy retains the highly capable physical ability and strength he possessed in life, with a certain subtle grace of might.During the day, however, he struggles to grip or hold onto anything, unless emotionally provoked to interact with an object. He tries to keep himself busy, elsewise Randy seems to lose some of his autonomy, and will begin to enact routines that express some latent or lingering emotional state, like a kind of dissociation for spirits.
He wouldn't still be here if he was resting in peace.
Beneath his easygoing and playful exterior, Randy is melancholy, deep in grief over him.
Socioeconomics
Randy Kinkaid was once well-off, and might have been properly rich by his 50s, had anything worked out the way it was supposed to. He got used to having access (by a variety of means) to anything he wanted as a reward for his efforts, even if some things took a bit to earn.Now, he works an honest job for honest wages. Because a whole lot of emotions he never thought about before get to be expensive than he realized, Randy sometimes struggles with saving money.
But he doesn’t exactly think about the future anymore.
Skills & Talents
✘ Gunfighting✘ Trick shooting
✘ Animal husbandry
✘ Intuition
✘ Song and dance, though he'll never acknowledge it
Identity
Hobbies
✘ Carousing at the various establishments in town. He doesn't have any preference as to which yet, really, his choices influenced only by the depth of his pockets that night.✘ Table games, parlor games, trivia. He's a beast at darts.
✘ Singing, alone; his crooning can sometimes be faintly overheard on his bad days.
✘ Dancing, but only under the pretense of being drunk and sociable, so of course a man's gotta drink.
Personality
The line between carefree and mature can be a tricky one to walk, but Randy’s always been a bit of a showman.He likes to dazzle quietly with unassuming, even artfully obscured talent, until it finds its place of appreciation, just so. There’s a particular flavor of attention he likes best, and it tastes a little like gunsmoke, when they don’t know what hit ‘em. He’ll never say so, but he loves a mental challenge. Likes games, problem solving— and once upon a time, he’d have given anything for the real big thrill of a bit of dangerous guerilla performance art.
Clever when it suits him to flare the cards in his hand, keen without being seen looking too long at a target, he plays to play— winning and losing are just details a man works out on the back end of it. One or the other is always easier, but it depends what you want out of the game. For a good long time, he played it as vigilante sharpshooter, rival of the black hat Darlington, Riviera King.
Inwardly, quite passionate. Most will only see that he can get intense when he’s really having fun. Might laugh too loud, push a limit or two, stand at the edge of a boundary.
At his core, Randy Kinkaid is just a mischievous sweetheart. He loves an intimate chat in cozy spaces, a good long cuddle, but it’s never really complete unless he can surprise someone, make them laugh when they don’t expect, or the like. It doesn’t always show, but for anyone wise enough to see past the carefree personage he wears up front, it still shines:
Man's a big ol' teddybear.
Background
History
✘ Born May 28th, 1812. Grew up on a struggling cattle ranch in New Spain (near what would become Austin, Texas), with his father, uncle, older brother, younger brother, and little sister. His mother died of illness within a year of his sister's birth. He bonded with his uncle, who made sure the boys got an education until they were old enough to be of help on the ranch. Only Randy was interested in books, and made double sure to keep up with the others to avoid it defining him. Already intuitive and clever, and now backed by reason, he got double good at his duties, instead.✘ Met a girl in town as a young teen, and visited her as often as he could get away. Her family was wealthy for the area, and she'd read those books, too. She could actually hold a conversation about something other than cows and fences and the weather, and he about anything beyond shipping and finance. Randy married Sylvia Robinson at age 20. They were the best each other had. And this was what people were supposed to do.
But then, there was Darlington.
✘ They started as rivals, the very day Darlington came into town. A bit sharper, a bit quicker, and far better with a gun, the other young man could find a way to humble Randall Kinkaid at just about everything, whether either of them knew what they were doing or not. This was all a game, of course, to get his attention— and that is what Darlington did, over and over and over again. Only once Randy finally lost his cool on him, did anything really start making sense. It was Darlington who taught Randy how to really shoot.
When it finally seemed like the ranch was starting to improve in the ‘40s, Randy took off west with Darlington and some big idea. Their adventures together took them to a series of frontier towns further and further toward the coast, where the two hatched a surprisingly successful moneymaking scheme to keep themselves afloat. It was a show of their skills: gunmanship, antagonism, wit, control. White hat versus black hat, billed again as the rivals some already knew them to be. It was an advertisement for their services as mercenaries. People laid bets on their ongoing feuds, and would pay top dollar for the work of the man who showed the greatest skill, and won every single shootout. Riviera King was paid very well for how good his villain made him look out there.
And then Randy chased his Darling out of town, and they’d do it all over again in the next.
✘ By 1850, they'd looted the hopeful 49ers all up California, preying on the fools in mining towns. After a time, they even had a regular little audience for their public disputes. But this notoriety came at a price. Word got to Texas, and to Sylvia, who Randy had hardly bothered to write since he left.
In a regular room above their favorite saloon, Sylvia found them together, after catching Randy sneaking in through the window. To defend them both from the shameful implications, Darlington's improvisational genius took up Randy's revolver and pulled it on him, like it was all part of the show. But Sylvia brought a shotgun and a crowd.
Five artfully placed bullets pierced his body before he could finish his lover's name. Randy said once, when the scheme was born, I trust you, Darlin', just shoot. I'd die for you, any day.
And on October 24th, 1850, he did.
Sylvia, horrified, enraged, raised the gun she'd only brought to intimidate, and shot Darlington between the eyes.
It took a minute for Randy to bleed out. Bearing witness to his lover's instant death was the worst moment of his life.
✘ Randy's spirit is tied to an object significant to himself and Darlington's scheme. He does not yet know what it is, or where the object could be found.
Powers & Magic
Powers Use
Randy uses his spectral presence, making noises, pushing objects, calling out, in order to guide the animals he works with. He has to exercise extreme caution, however, to avoid the possibility of “physical contact” with his invisible body, lest the animals, persons, or objects making contact be “shot.”Strong emotional stimuli may cause glass bottles containing liquor to burst around him. Very rare, extreme emotional flares can make a gun go off— literally, triggered.
Plotting
Romance
Whole point of love is being alive, and vice versa. What good’s a man with a heart stopped beating?He's open to encounters, possibly a bit selective, but is largely emotionally unavailable until or unless the right one comes along. Mostly, he's just heartbroken.
