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[iwasinpakistan]

PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Aspen
Current AGE: in my 20s
Personal JOURNAL: N/A
IM & SERVICE/PLURK: PM me if you need this information and aren't in Exsilium.
Current CHARACTERS: N/A

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Eliot Spencer
Canon & MEDIUM: Leverage | TV Series
Canon PULL-POINT: Season Two, directly after "The Future Job".
Character ABILITIES: Eliot is a baseline human, but he's extremely well-trained in multiple forms of armed and unarmed combat. Although he doesn't like using guns, he's well-versed in their operation, to the point he can distinguish the caliber and type of gun fired by listening to the sound of the shot. However, he prefers fighting using bats, knives, improvised weaponry or his bare hands. In addition to being a skilled martial artist, Eliot is also a talented chef, baseball player, and musician.

Character HISTORY: Eliot tends to be somewhat guarded about his past and personal life, so much of his history is unknown or implied. He was born and raised in Kentucky, and was the quarterback of his high school football team (although he also paid very close attention to Home Economics class, due largely to the attractive woman teaching it). He was deeply in love with a girl, Aimee Martin, to the point that he gave her a "promise ring" (which, given the culture he grew up in, suggests to me that he had at least a nominally religious upbringing). However, she wasn't the only one he made a promise to: he joined the U.S. Army right out of high school and left home. Because of this, he ultimately wasn't able to be there for Aimee as he'd promised, leading to the end of their long-distance relationship.

[Note: this part of Eliot's life is almost entirely glossed over in canon, and much of this is headcanon and guesswork]. The military agreed with Eliot, giving him a place to channel his inner reserves of anger and frustration. After his time in the Army, Eliot began working with a paramilitary contracting firm, essentially becoming a soldier for hire. Over the following years, he traveled the world, gradually amassing an intimate knowledge of multiple martial arts and a reputation as one of the best retrieval specialists and all-around one-on-one fighters in the world. Eventually, however, he grew seriously disillusioned with the jobs the organization was taking on and the orders he was being asked to follow. It was at this point that he struck out on his own as a mercenary and bodyguard, choosing to work alone. Although he had already delved into the questionably legal, his transition to freelance work resulted in even more lawbreaking, eventually causing him to be considered a criminal as well as a soldier of fortune. [/headcanon]

This reputation was what brought him to the attention of an aeronautics engineer looking to steal a set of blueprints from a competitor (although he couched the job as stealing his plans back). The man compiled a team including Eliot, master thief Parker, master hacker Alec Hardison, and disgraced former insurance investigator Nathan Ford (a master planner who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal movers and shakers of two continents and who at one time had pursued all the other members of the team). Although he had a reputation of only working alone, the pay was too good to turn down. Eliot saw the arrangement as no more than another job, and the people he was working with as nothing more than a temporary group of passing associates. However, their association was extended when their employer double-crossed them, and they banded together with con artist Sophie Devereaux to get payback for the betrayal.

By the end of the job, the group realized that they were more than merely a random collection of specialists -- they were an incredible and nearly unstoppable crew. Not only did working together have a lot of financial promise, Nate Ford saw their group as a force for good, an organization capable of striking back at the rich and powerful who abused their position to exploit ordinary people. Since then, the team has successfully used their combined skills to help numerous people who had no other options (including Eliot's old high school sweetheart and her father). Eliot has gradually found himself growing less guarded and more attached, and has aptly demonstrated that -- for all the questionable things he has done -- he's pretty damn good at being a "good guy".

Character PERSONALITY:

At first glance, Eliot appears to be just another tough guy. He tends to be terse, quiet, and guarded, and between that and his position as the team's "hitter" or muscle, people frequently assume that he lets his fists do his talking and other people do his thinking. This is a misconception, however, and under that quiet exterior, Eliot hides an clear intelligence and a highly-developed sense of intuition which serves him well in reading not only situations, but people. Those who get to know him quickly realize that he knows more than he lets on -- and uses people's misconceptions about his intelligence to his advantage.

Still, Eliot's greatest strength lies in his abilities as a fighter. This is true for more than one reason; in addition to just being good at what he does, Eliot uses fighting as an outlet for his tendencies towards anger and frustration. He is frequently angry, and he's easily riled up or frustrated; the world and most of the things and people in it just tend to piss him off on a fundamental level. But rather than simply losing his cool, Eliot's method of dealing with those emotions is usually to blow off a little verbal steam, then to channel the rest of the energy into doing his job (usually with the accompanying physical violence). Eliot has learned to make that constant slow burn of anger work for him rather than against him, and he tends to channel and/or internalize most of his emotions, both negative and positive.

He is overall a guarded person, rarely speaking about his past or his emotional state and then only when prompted. However, he's not afraid to speak his mind or express his opinions, particularly when he thinks that a plan or situation has the potential to get him, the client, or someone he cares about hurt. Though he's slow to trust people and it takes time for him to let them in, he has the potential to care very deeply for those who do get past his shell. He's fiercely protective of those he cares about, especially his team, although he tends to express the fact that he cares for people more through teasing, friendly rivalry, and dry humor than through directly admitting his feelings.

Eliot also has a strong moral code, despite his violent method of making a living. He hates violence against children and deals harshly (and often physically) with those he perceives as injuring or exploiting the weak. He's a man of principle if not an especially law-abiding or peaceful one, and he'll speak out or act out if he sees something wrong being done. With women especially he is polite, charming, and flirtatious in an aw-shucks-ma'am way. His sense of humor may be subtle, but it's there, and he's not above making jokes or laughing at them. In the same way, his enthusiasm for things that interest him -- baseball, horses, music, hockey -- may seem to come out of left field, given the stoic initial impression most people have of him, but it's no less genuine for that.

» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: A Ka-Bar tactical/utility knife.
Chosen SKILLSET: Eliot is primarily a combat-oriented hand-to-hand fighter.

» SAMPLES
First PERSON: [Voice Post]
Alright, here's my questions. Number one: how do we know these people are who they say they are? Number two: who the hell takes prisoners and then arms them? Number three: has anyone explored getting the hell out of here?

[There's a long pause.]

Number four: do the names Parker, Hardison, Ford or Devereaux mean anything to any of you people?

Anyone thinks they have answers to any of those, hit me up.

Third PERSON:

Eliot Spencer was pissed.

His team was somewhere else (and, if the people around here could be believed, somewhen else) entirely. He'd been taken captive against his will. The world he knew was apparently out of his reach. Nobody he knew or loved had made it here with him; he was on his own, surrounded by strangers, in an environment of questionable hostility, woefully under-armed, dangerously under-informed.

He'd been there before. He knew how to deal with it.

Which was why one of his very first moves (after sweeping the apartment he'd been provided for anything that looked like it could eavesdrop on him, blow him up, or otherwise make his life difficult) had been to prowl around until he found what could only be a gym. Where there was a gym, there would be equipment. And where there was gym equipment, there had to be a heavy bag.

Sure enough, he'd found one, and now -- hands wrapped, hair loose and disheveled, shirt soaked with sweat -- he was systematically taking out all his fury, all his frustration, all his vast uncertainty on it. Every impact shook the surface of the bag, jarred his hand and wrist and arm up through his shoulder. These were no warmup taps, no simple rote exercises. This was all the rage and destructive force one very well-trained soldier of fortune could muster being channeled into pure violence. It wasn't unrestrained, for all its brutality; there was technique there, even artistry, as he visualized a line of opponents standing in place of the bag and systematically demolished their weak spots, one after another after another.

Eventually he'd have to put together a plan. Try and find a way back home, or at least a way to get word to Nate and the others. But that could wait until he'd calmed down. For now, he thought -- as he drove his elbow into an henchman's throat, delivered a ruthless kick that shattered the kneecap, knocked him unconscious with a haymaker and then moved on to the next opponent in line -- for now, he could afford a little time to indulge in his coping strategy.

» ADDITIONAL NOTES
None at this time.