Character design by tanukibomb
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(All details are subject to revision.)
Full name: Emmet Underwood
Species: Common wombat
Country of origin: Classified
Age: 40-something with a margin of error
Gender: Male
Pronouns: He/him/his
Sexual orientation: Aromantic asexual
Occupation: "Freelance inventor"
Emmet was always a strange wombat.
Even in primary school he would vex his teachers with inconvenient questions. When he wasn't satisfied with their answers, he would vex them some more. More than once he landed in detention for it. Ironically, it rather endeared him to some of his less academically inclined classmates, though he never felt he had much in common with them.
Emmet didn't have much in common with anyone.
His mother was an overbearing disciplinarian, alternately clinging and demanding. His father was an emotionally distant breadwinner, as many wombat fathers are. In his case, he was a horologist who mainly repaired watches. Young Emmet spent many long hours after school in the shop, slowly leaning the trade through a sort of contact osmosis. He was rather less interested in following in his pa's footsteps than he was staying away from the house.
Shortly before he left school, the old man died, suddenly and tragically.
Emmet had, seemingly in spite of all his best efforts, graduated with high enough marks that he could attend medical school, or law school, or pursue any sort of education he desired. Instead of applying, however, he vanished from sight, spending many long nights in libraries or poring over the primitive internet that existed at the time, researching something he told no one about.
He would call up scientists and professors—distinguished experts in quantum mechanics and general relativity. Invariably they were confused as to how he got their home phone numbers. Their answers to his questions were evasive and curt, but Emmet seemed to get what he needed from them.
The suspicions they confirmed were not only scientific in nature, but reinforced a broader view that was solidifying in him:
The entire world was inside out.
Politicians didn't govern the people. They used them to protect their own power.
Teachers didn't impart lessons. They conditioned you not to ask questions.
Scientists didn't uncover truths. They promulgated the idea that nature hid her secrets.
It was this last notion that Emmet was most sure was false. He'd found something: the solution to a puzzle that no one thought needed to be solved, the answer to a question no one sought out because everyone assumed it was deep and perplexing.
Nature didn't hide her secrets. She proudly displayed them, like gold dust glittering in the dirt atop a buried vein. All you needed to do was keep your eyes open, and she would tell you where to dig.
And dig he must do.
If Emmet was to demonstrate to the world that he had unlocked the great secret—the secret that whispered itself to him on one of those after-school evenings when he was staring at his father's many clocks—he would need to do it himself, without help, away from thieving minds and prying eyes. He would need a burrow of his own.
Since he had evidently decided not to attend university, it was generally assumed he would take over the family business. He had inherited the shop after his pa's passing, after all. Instead, over his mother's shrieking protests, he sold it for the seed money he needed to purchase a large plot of land, tools and equipment. It promised far enough away from major cities (and, importantly, from home) that he wouldn't be disturbed, but near enough to civilization that he could get supplies he needed.
And so, everything set, he dug.
And dug.
And dug.
Years passed.
He made what he considered to be many minor breakthroughs. He built devices that generated exotic particle fields that shouldn't exist if the Anomaly was false. He could, if he wished, generate effects in his vicinity—15 minutes would pass on the clock on the wall, but more or less your watch—but none of this satisfied him. They could too easily be dismissed as magic tricks. There were too many ways to interpret them in a way that kept the conceptual door shut.
He had satisfied him own curiosity, but he would never truly be happy until he could justify himself, and he had to accept that the only way to do that was to bring something back.
This, however, was a lot more said than done, not to mention heaps more expensive.
Building little toys was one thing, but building a full prototype that would leave him alive to tell the tale was another. He had two choices, then. Either swallow his pride and present his preliminary finding to someone with the authority to fully fund him (an endeavor that was sure to fail), or avail himself of the public.
He had built up a lot of experience in building and fixing machines. His father had started a business, based on his own expertise. Maybe he would follow in his pa's footsteps after all...
A wombat's best offense is his defense, and this describes the core of Emmet.
Emmet is layers upon layers of security, deception, and deflection. He hides his face from a world which he views as hostile, but he himself is not hostile to it. He views most people, even those who are perpetrators of what he sees as the inside-outness of it all, as unfortunate victims of systems they are simply too close-minded to notice.
If this makes him seem arrogant, then he is fine with that. How you view him is your business. You're either useful or you're not. You're either a benefit or a threat.
On some level... he's aware this isn't healthy, that this suspiciousness, this paranoia and obsessiveness, is all a product of his own head, and the persecution he seeks to fend off is one he's never faced. However, it follows a vicious and tightly closed internal logic. If he is "right" about his theories, then their implications require this level of secrecy.
The lock and key is his stubborn pride, his greed to be right. He may be the only one who can do this. But if he is, then he could shelve the whole thing, step out into the sunlight, and lead a normal life. However, he is far too enmeshed in it to give up now. His social skills have decayed too much. He doesn't even know how to drive a car.
It took someone coming in from the sunlight to crack open the shell.
Well, crack him in half, at least. Emmet has two sides: the private one and the public one. Even here, however, he's hiding himself. Both personas are constructed to keep his secrets. Both are there to keep you from guessing...
In the OCEAN model of personality metrics, Emmet exhibits:
1. High Openness
2. Low Conscientiousness
3. Low Extraversion
4. Low Agreeableness
5. Moderate Neuroticism
He questionably exhibits signs of Paranoid Personality Disorder and possibly Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
There aren't many, by design. Emmet has never married, nor been in a substantial romantic relationship.
His mother is still alive, but he hasn't been in contact with her for many years. He rarely speaks of her, both out of personal avoidance and a general strategy of hiding his past. He doesn't want anyone to be able to get leverage over him through her.
The situation with Sully is more complicated, and is explored from the ferret's side of things in his character guide.
In short, many of Sully's perceptions about Emmet are accurate. He does care about Sully in a "paternal" way, viewing himself as responsible for his well being, but has mixed feelings about what Sully's appearance "means" and how close he came to ruining everything, and is well aware that the relationship began on somewhat poisonous grounds.
However, as time has gone on, Sully has advanced from being a burden, to a tool, to an employee, to a friend. The ferret's opposing traits and annoying quirks weigh on him from time to time, and Emmet is not QUITE ready to reveal to him what "The Device" actually does... but up to if not including that, Emmet would give the world for Sully, because what Sully doesn't know or appreciate is the lesson he's taught Emmet:
That there is time.
Emmet's burrow is roughly divided into four "areas":
1. His living quarters (i.e. his "house")
2. His laboratory beneath his house (not open to the public, or to Sully most of the time)
3. His repair workshop (seen here in early form)
4. A super-secret zone beneath even the laboratory, that Sully has never entered (but came close once)
All areas are underground, but the workshop is nearest the surface, as it needs to be easily accessible from the public (surface) storefront.
Originally, the workshop (and hence store) were dug out as a completely separate burrow, but as time went on they grew together and merged, both as a result of natural expansion and Emmet's desire to traverse between the two of them more easily. To this day Emmet still refers to his "residence" as Burrow Prime.
Emmet's residence doesn't betray much of his hi-tech leanings. He hasn't updated it much since it was originally furnished, and he already had old-fashioned tastes even then, so it appears rather dated. It was getting dusty and decrepit, but Sully cleans it now and then (he was originally a janitor).
Emmet's mainly all business, but he does have a number of personal pastimes.
He has a radio lab set up in his main burrow, where he searches for evidence of extraterrestrial life (one of his satellite dishes is visible here). Unlike his "life's work," this is based less on firm data than a very strong hunch.
(Speaking of that episode, years ago Emmet tried his own hand at farming. He wasn't any more successful at it then than he is in the present, which is why Sully has free rein.)
He has a habit of inventing things that take on the form of weird guns (references pending). Emmet prides himself on his marksmanship skills, and has another little room below his burrow containing a "firing range" (that of course Sully has never seen).
Emmet is short for a wombat. Surprisingly, he's shorter than his ferret colleague (who is however a rather tall boy).
He was on the slender side as a young man, but has gotten a bit heftier with age. Most of this is due to his rather indolent personal habits. The only real "exercise" he receives are his activities around the workshop, which have lessened in intensity as Sully has taken over more of them. He has a nascent addiction to sugary snacks and he literally "doesn't get out" much. None of this has helped him maintain his figure.
However, being a wombat, he's still much more muscle than flab, and even an out-of-shape wombat is a bruiser. True, he may groan a bit when getting off the couch, and he's not as fast as he used to be, but make no mistake: if he has to, he will crush you.
Two sides, two wombats.
But not really. All of Emmet's clothes are "work" clothes, including the t-shirts and jeans. Sometimes he'll wear the lab coat over the overalls. It all depends on what he's working on at the time. Whatever the case, they're all old, dirty, and in some cases don't fit anymore.
As in everything he does, there is (or was) an element of deception and deflection in his appearance. His "outward facing" look is partly "designed" to make you think he's a simple tinkerer, who definitely doesn't have an unlicensed particle accelerator in his basement. As time went on, though, it felt more natural to him.
Unlike Sully, the scarf he adopted for this look was nothing but a simple afterthought. Something to make him seem more personable. Sully attaches more meaning to it.
His goggles are similarly purposefully basic, with some UV shielding. He does have a more advanced eye pice that, like Sully's goggles, he designed himself—but has revealed little about. It seems to be able to detect and filter wavelengths from far outside the visual spectrum. Sully surreptitiously tried it on once, but it was password-protected.
As Emmet guards his origins, his accent is difficult to place. If it was originally foreign or regional, he has taken great pains to "neutralize" it, to the point where, unlike Sully, it probably rarely comes out.
There are hints of a stilted, overly formal speech pattern—like a kid who learned a lot of big words in school but never outgrew them. At the same time, he rarely speaks in complete sentences. He's curt and taciturn. If you don't like long, awkward silences, you probably won't get along with him (you likely won't get along with him anyway).
On the opposite end of the spectrum... he curses. A lot. But mainly under his breath when he's talking to himself. His strict mother taught him very early on that one must never swear around people. As a result, he has a strange habit where his speech grows less vulgar the angrier he gets. "Merciful heavens, boy! What have you done!"
He doesn't smoke (unlike Sully), and never has. He does drink, to excess on occasion. Happily, Sully has weaned him off some of the "homemade" stuff he used to brew. He still has a long way to go.
Emmet... is also obsessed with time. And we'll leave most of that unsaid.
For keeping his obsession so secret, he used to wear part of it on his sleeve. He was a collector of clocks at one point, and had inherited a whole lot of his father's. They used to be displayed all over Burrow Prime.
He's also somewhat sensitive about his age. It's not because he's vain, though. Since that early moment in his father's watch shop, he has had a keen sense of the clock ticking, of time running out. With every new gray hair, every crick in his back, he feels time mocking him, sneering at him that it was all for nothing.
He had a nightmare, once, where he was an invisible and inaudible ghost, flitting round his laboratory while an elderly Sully continued laboring on The Device. When he woke up from it, he resolved that he would never have a "successor." Not in that way. That particular burden was not Sully's to bear. It really shouldn't be anyone's.
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Emmet Character Guide
(All details are subject to revision.)
Full name: Emmet Underwood
Species: Common wombat
Country of origin: Classified
Age: 40-something with a margin of error
Gender: Male
Pronouns: He/him/his
Sexual orientation: Aromantic asexual
Occupation: "Freelance inventor"
Life History
Emmet was always a strange wombat.
Even in primary school he would vex his teachers with inconvenient questions. When he wasn't satisfied with their answers, he would vex them some more. More than once he landed in detention for it. Ironically, it rather endeared him to some of his less academically inclined classmates, though he never felt he had much in common with them.
Emmet didn't have much in common with anyone.
His mother was an overbearing disciplinarian, alternately clinging and demanding. His father was an emotionally distant breadwinner, as many wombat fathers are. In his case, he was a horologist who mainly repaired watches. Young Emmet spent many long hours after school in the shop, slowly leaning the trade through a sort of contact osmosis. He was rather less interested in following in his pa's footsteps than he was staying away from the house.
Shortly before he left school, the old man died, suddenly and tragically.
Emmet had, seemingly in spite of all his best efforts, graduated with high enough marks that he could attend medical school, or law school, or pursue any sort of education he desired. Instead of applying, however, he vanished from sight, spending many long nights in libraries or poring over the primitive internet that existed at the time, researching something he told no one about.
He would call up scientists and professors—distinguished experts in quantum mechanics and general relativity. Invariably they were confused as to how he got their home phone numbers. Their answers to his questions were evasive and curt, but Emmet seemed to get what he needed from them.
The suspicions they confirmed were not only scientific in nature, but reinforced a broader view that was solidifying in him:
The entire world was inside out.
Politicians didn't govern the people. They used them to protect their own power.
Teachers didn't impart lessons. They conditioned you not to ask questions.
Scientists didn't uncover truths. They promulgated the idea that nature hid her secrets.
It was this last notion that Emmet was most sure was false. He'd found something: the solution to a puzzle that no one thought needed to be solved, the answer to a question no one sought out because everyone assumed it was deep and perplexing.
Nature didn't hide her secrets. She proudly displayed them, like gold dust glittering in the dirt atop a buried vein. All you needed to do was keep your eyes open, and she would tell you where to dig.
And dig he must do.
If Emmet was to demonstrate to the world that he had unlocked the great secret—the secret that whispered itself to him on one of those after-school evenings when he was staring at his father's many clocks—he would need to do it himself, without help, away from thieving minds and prying eyes. He would need a burrow of his own.
Since he had evidently decided not to attend university, it was generally assumed he would take over the family business. He had inherited the shop after his pa's passing, after all. Instead, over his mother's shrieking protests, he sold it for the seed money he needed to purchase a large plot of land, tools and equipment. It promised far enough away from major cities (and, importantly, from home) that he wouldn't be disturbed, but near enough to civilization that he could get supplies he needed.
And so, everything set, he dug.
And dug.
And dug.
Years passed.
He made what he considered to be many minor breakthroughs. He built devices that generated exotic particle fields that shouldn't exist if the Anomaly was false. He could, if he wished, generate effects in his vicinity—15 minutes would pass on the clock on the wall, but more or less your watch—but none of this satisfied him. They could too easily be dismissed as magic tricks. There were too many ways to interpret them in a way that kept the conceptual door shut.
He had satisfied him own curiosity, but he would never truly be happy until he could justify himself, and he had to accept that the only way to do that was to bring something back.
This, however, was a lot more said than done, not to mention heaps more expensive.
Building little toys was one thing, but building a full prototype that would leave him alive to tell the tale was another. He had two choices, then. Either swallow his pride and present his preliminary finding to someone with the authority to fully fund him (an endeavor that was sure to fail), or avail himself of the public.
He had built up a lot of experience in building and fixing machines. His father had started a business, based on his own expertise. Maybe he would follow in his pa's footsteps after all...
Personality
A wombat's best offense is his defense, and this describes the core of Emmet.
Emmet is layers upon layers of security, deception, and deflection. He hides his face from a world which he views as hostile, but he himself is not hostile to it. He views most people, even those who are perpetrators of what he sees as the inside-outness of it all, as unfortunate victims of systems they are simply too close-minded to notice.
If this makes him seem arrogant, then he is fine with that. How you view him is your business. You're either useful or you're not. You're either a benefit or a threat.
On some level... he's aware this isn't healthy, that this suspiciousness, this paranoia and obsessiveness, is all a product of his own head, and the persecution he seeks to fend off is one he's never faced. However, it follows a vicious and tightly closed internal logic. If he is "right" about his theories, then their implications require this level of secrecy.
The lock and key is his stubborn pride, his greed to be right. He may be the only one who can do this. But if he is, then he could shelve the whole thing, step out into the sunlight, and lead a normal life. However, he is far too enmeshed in it to give up now. His social skills have decayed too much. He doesn't even know how to drive a car.
It took someone coming in from the sunlight to crack open the shell.
Well, crack him in half, at least. Emmet has two sides: the private one and the public one. Even here, however, he's hiding himself. Both personas are constructed to keep his secrets. Both are there to keep you from guessing...
Psychological traits
In the OCEAN model of personality metrics, Emmet exhibits:
1. High Openness
2. Low Conscientiousness
3. Low Extraversion
4. Low Agreeableness
5. Moderate Neuroticism
He questionably exhibits signs of Paranoid Personality Disorder and possibly Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Relationships
There aren't many, by design. Emmet has never married, nor been in a substantial romantic relationship.
His mother is still alive, but he hasn't been in contact with her for many years. He rarely speaks of her, both out of personal avoidance and a general strategy of hiding his past. He doesn't want anyone to be able to get leverage over him through her.
The situation with Sully is more complicated, and is explored from the ferret's side of things in his character guide.
In short, many of Sully's perceptions about Emmet are accurate. He does care about Sully in a "paternal" way, viewing himself as responsible for his well being, but has mixed feelings about what Sully's appearance "means" and how close he came to ruining everything, and is well aware that the relationship began on somewhat poisonous grounds.
However, as time has gone on, Sully has advanced from being a burden, to a tool, to an employee, to a friend. The ferret's opposing traits and annoying quirks weigh on him from time to time, and Emmet is not QUITE ready to reveal to him what "The Device" actually does... but up to if not including that, Emmet would give the world for Sully, because what Sully doesn't know or appreciate is the lesson he's taught Emmet:
That there is time.
Home
Emmet's burrow is roughly divided into four "areas":
1. His living quarters (i.e. his "house")
2. His laboratory beneath his house (not open to the public, or to Sully most of the time)
3. His repair workshop (seen here in early form)
4. A super-secret zone beneath even the laboratory, that Sully has never entered (but came close once)
All areas are underground, but the workshop is nearest the surface, as it needs to be easily accessible from the public (surface) storefront.
Originally, the workshop (and hence store) were dug out as a completely separate burrow, but as time went on they grew together and merged, both as a result of natural expansion and Emmet's desire to traverse between the two of them more easily. To this day Emmet still refers to his "residence" as Burrow Prime.
Emmet's residence doesn't betray much of his hi-tech leanings. He hasn't updated it much since it was originally furnished, and he already had old-fashioned tastes even then, so it appears rather dated. It was getting dusty and decrepit, but Sully cleans it now and then (he was originally a janitor).
Hobbies
Emmet's mainly all business, but he does have a number of personal pastimes.
He has a radio lab set up in his main burrow, where he searches for evidence of extraterrestrial life (one of his satellite dishes is visible here). Unlike his "life's work," this is based less on firm data than a very strong hunch.
(Speaking of that episode, years ago Emmet tried his own hand at farming. He wasn't any more successful at it then than he is in the present, which is why Sully has free rein.)
He has a habit of inventing things that take on the form of weird guns (references pending). Emmet prides himself on his marksmanship skills, and has another little room below his burrow containing a "firing range" (that of course Sully has never seen).
Build
Emmet is short for a wombat. Surprisingly, he's shorter than his ferret colleague (who is however a rather tall boy).
He was on the slender side as a young man, but has gotten a bit heftier with age. Most of this is due to his rather indolent personal habits. The only real "exercise" he receives are his activities around the workshop, which have lessened in intensity as Sully has taken over more of them. He has a nascent addiction to sugary snacks and he literally "doesn't get out" much. None of this has helped him maintain his figure.
However, being a wombat, he's still much more muscle than flab, and even an out-of-shape wombat is a bruiser. True, he may groan a bit when getting off the couch, and he's not as fast as he used to be, but make no mistake: if he has to, he will crush you.
Clothing / Equipment
Two sides, two wombats.
But not really. All of Emmet's clothes are "work" clothes, including the t-shirts and jeans. Sometimes he'll wear the lab coat over the overalls. It all depends on what he's working on at the time. Whatever the case, they're all old, dirty, and in some cases don't fit anymore.
As in everything he does, there is (or was) an element of deception and deflection in his appearance. His "outward facing" look is partly "designed" to make you think he's a simple tinkerer, who definitely doesn't have an unlicensed particle accelerator in his basement. As time went on, though, it felt more natural to him.
Unlike Sully, the scarf he adopted for this look was nothing but a simple afterthought. Something to make him seem more personable. Sully attaches more meaning to it.
His goggles are similarly purposefully basic, with some UV shielding. He does have a more advanced eye pice that, like Sully's goggles, he designed himself—but has revealed little about. It seems to be able to detect and filter wavelengths from far outside the visual spectrum. Sully surreptitiously tried it on once, but it was password-protected.
Speech pattern (tentative)
As Emmet guards his origins, his accent is difficult to place. If it was originally foreign or regional, he has taken great pains to "neutralize" it, to the point where, unlike Sully, it probably rarely comes out.
There are hints of a stilted, overly formal speech pattern—like a kid who learned a lot of big words in school but never outgrew them. At the same time, he rarely speaks in complete sentences. He's curt and taciturn. If you don't like long, awkward silences, you probably won't get along with him (you likely won't get along with him anyway).
On the opposite end of the spectrum... he curses. A lot. But mainly under his breath when he's talking to himself. His strict mother taught him very early on that one must never swear around people. As a result, he has a strange habit where his speech grows less vulgar the angrier he gets. "Merciful heavens, boy! What have you done!"
Flaws & Foibles
He doesn't smoke (unlike Sully), and never has. He does drink, to excess on occasion. Happily, Sully has weaned him off some of the "homemade" stuff he used to brew. He still has a long way to go.
Emmet... is also obsessed with time. And we'll leave most of that unsaid.
For keeping his obsession so secret, he used to wear part of it on his sleeve. He was a collector of clocks at one point, and had inherited a whole lot of his father's. They used to be displayed all over Burrow Prime.
He's also somewhat sensitive about his age. It's not because he's vain, though. Since that early moment in his father's watch shop, he has had a keen sense of the clock ticking, of time running out. With every new gray hair, every crick in his back, he feels time mocking him, sneering at him that it was all for nothing.
He had a nightmare, once, where he was an invisible and inaudible ghost, flitting round his laboratory while an elderly Sully continued laboring on The Device. When he woke up from it, he resolved that he would never have a "successor." Not in that way. That particular burden was not Sully's to bear. It really shouldn't be anyone's.
Category Artwork (Digital) / All
Species Marsupial (Other)
Gender Male
Size 2552 x 1444px
He is totally an awesome Wombat :)
Cross is totally willing to pay him for his services and even his secret experiments 😜
Cross is totally willing to pay him for his services and even his secret experiments 😜
For levels: B2, 3 & 4; I'd recommend a 5' thick (Steel or Titanium, whichever he prefers) vault door w/ a keypad (8 digit code), retinal scan, verbal password & requires a blood sample!!! (Syringe is built into the door). & maybe rig the door ta blow if even 1 scan fails or all scans are not completed within a certain time limit.
Hey, this guy has Paranoid Personality Disorder. Might as well live up to it...
Hey, this guy has Paranoid Personality Disorder. Might as well live up to it...
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