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application; apocalypse how
Name: Chase
Age: 20+
Contact: DM or discord (tortilla sunrise#8828)
Character(s) in game: N/A
Permissions: here
Character Name: Kugrash/Bruce Kugrich
Age: 50s/60s
Canon: Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City
Canon point: Time Squaremageddon Part 2. Just before he eats the Bagel of All Things
History: Kugrash | series
The tldr that isn't on the wiki: Kugrash used to be a wall street guy in New York city in the 80s named Bruce Kugrich, where his greed and selfishness in making money caused him to lose sight of his family and kids. In a fantastic display of pigheadedness and being a shitty person, in between abandoning his kids, cheating on his wife and doing God knows what else while he got rich and never looked back, he wound up embezzling from a charity he set up with his partner. His partner, who was witch, cursed him to look the same as what was inside his soul: this, Bruce was reborn as Kugrash the rat and became a part of the Unsleeping City in the worst way possible.
After a few solid years of feeling sorry for himself and spending most of his time in the subway tunnels, he noticed one of his sons working for the MTA. Inspired, he started to actively try to be a better person and became the de facto protector of the homeless and disenfranchised in NYC. A few years after that and meeting up with the rest of the Dream Team, Kugrash is as of his canon point in the middle of stopping the lich Robert Moses from bringing the American Dream into the waking world and destroying it entirely. In an act of true selflessness, Kugrash has decided to sacrifice himself in order to save the city and the future of millions.
Personality: Rude and brash - Kugrash has never, ever been described as passive-aggressive. His looks unfortunately,match a lot of his personality, especially at first pass. Whereas Kingston Brown as the Vox Populi is the voice of the people of NYC, but Kugrash is very much the voice of the disenfranchised, the overlooked, and the grimy, gross aspects of New York. This bleeds into his personality: Kugrash calling someone an asshole or a fuckhead comes as natural to him as breathing, even if it's in a positive light. He's blunt, rude, and while he is capable of empathy, even his kindness can come across as petty or pithy, especially if you don't know him and how he operates. He has little tolerance for the abuse of authority and in some cases authority altogether, most likely stemming from extreme guilt and projection. He's not everyone's cup of tea, and that doesn't bother him in the least.
Self-hatred and Loathing - Kugrash was not a good person, and now that he's a rat and has spent 20+ years scurrying around in the sewers with the kind of people he used to fuck over, he's fully aware of this fact. Kugrash absolutely hates himself and everything he is, and while he flippantly admits he's a piece of shit multiple times throughout the series, it's clearly something that haunts him. He spent the first few years of his transformation in the subways and not doing a single thing, wallowing in self pity and self hatred: it took his son Wally working for the MTA to jostle him out of it and try to start helping others, inspired by how kind his estranged son is. Kugrash staunchly believes that he's beyond redeeming, but he can at least use his powers to help people that are the types he would straight up ignore or actively shun back in the day.
Kind and empathetic - Kugrash really tries to do the right thing even if it's not for the right reasons. He spends much of the series thinking that if he helps as many people as he can he'll be a good person, but he isn't because it's not entirely altruistic and he avoids helping those he personally affected, like his wife and kids. He looks out for others, nonetheless: he's the first person to defend Pete when Pete was struggling with his unpredictable magic and sudden new powers and the group was deciding on how to approach it. Kugrash, citing that he had kids of his own, was vocal it didn't feel right to just straight up talk about potentially killing the kid for something he doesn't understand. He's very much about the little things when it comes to kindness: he hangs out with Sofia because he can tell she doesn't want to go home alone to her empty house, fished her out of a garbage can when she was passed out in an ally and made her plastic bag shoes, and has collaborated with Santa Claus every year to give the homeless population a warm meal and a few treats during the Christmas holidays.
Protector - As stated throughout the application, Kugrash has gone from being completely self-pitying to a champion of the downtrodden. He may be a piece of shit, but he'll be one in order to get what needs to be done. Fighting a literal Rat King in the sewers to free all of his fellow rats from the monarchy is a perfect example, but the biggest one is during the finale. While the American Dream tried to convince him to lay down his weapon and let it pass through to the waking world, Kugrash instead used himself as the ultimate sacrifice, dying in order to foil the lich Robert Moses. As of his canon point in this game, he'll have made this decision and be pulled just before any effect takes place.
Coward - Physically, Kugrash has no problems confronting people, despite his stature--he can handle himself in battle with ease, commanding the magic of the Waking World and his abilities to talk to and command all of the filthy creatures of New York. It's the emotional aspect he's lacking. For someone as blunt and crass as Kugrash, it takes him a long while to actually confront the people he's wronged in some way shape or form. He stayed in the sewers for over a decade, and it's only until very, very recently he's made contact with Wally and showed his true self beyond making sure he's alright from the shadows. Even if he's started to fully and truly become a better person and care about other people, the mental road block when it comes to personal growth and emotional maturing brought on due to guilt and self loathing is definitely a hurdle he will continue to deal with, probably for most of his life.
Suitability: It wouldn't be the first time Kugrash joined a group or organization in an attempt to save something. Back in his world, while he and the Dream Tean weren't all officially aligned with the Gramercy Occult Society or the Order of the Concerete Fist, he still joins up with them and helps-- hell, he's apparently an imptomptu lawyer for a Shit Elemental. He'll completely be okay with dealing with the ADI and willing to offer his help, though he will be pretty ticked off he's been summoned now when he had incredibly important stuff to do back home. It's easy for Kugrash to see this as a chance to do some good.
Powers/Abilities: Kugrash is from a Dungeons and Dragons game set in modern times and is a druid that focuses on animals. Instead of forests and tranquil glades, Kugrash draws his powers from the dirt and grime of New York. This gives him a bunch of unique and helpful abilities that I am totally fine with nerfing if need be. For the sake of my own sanity, I'm only going to list what he's used canonically in the show, since he has no public character sheet.
Animals - Kugrash is able to freely talk to any type of animal, be it a cockroach, a pigeon, or something bigger. Not only can he talk to them, but his biggest power--and the one he uses most often in the series--is to summon animals to help him and do his bidding. His preference is swarms of rats, all of which view him as his king (and he refers to them as his babies), but he's been known to summon sewer alligators (his beefy boys), an insane amount of pigeons (one wants to date him), and spiders. Everything he summons is gross and grimy--you won't see any majestic wolves or fancy dragons anywhere. While they tend to be a little stronger than the natural animals in the wild and hurt a little more when attacking, they're still just animals and can usually be killed pretty quickly.
Wildshape - Kugrash is able to turn himself into an animal twice a day. Unsurprisingly, these are also New York/American themed and ugly as hell: his flying form is a bald (and balding) eagle, his swimming one a great white shark (incredibly sickly), his monkey form is a miniature King Kong, his dog form looks like a mangy mutt, etc.
Magic - Kugrash can use magic, and tends to rely on a choice few. The main one he uses is flaming sphere, where he summons a smoking ball of terrible smelling garbage that's on fire to help incinerate his enemies. He can control it, though it moves very slowly. He can also summon a lightning bolt using the electricity from a city's power grid or the third rail of the subway. Defensively, Kugrash has been known to be able to teleport roughly 30 feet away from something, and also create illusions of himself as he's standing to make himself harder to hit. All of these are extremely limited in terms of how much he can use them, however. He tends to use one or two and concentrate instead on swarms and animals. While Kugrash is capable of healing someone, he doesn't do it that often and not very well. He's absolutely not a healing type of guy.
Totems - Something else Kugrash uses frequently are his spirit totems. Instead of bear, hawk, and unicorn like normal druids, Kugrash has the Juicy Cockroach, Spicy Pigeon, and Unicorn ones--though the unicorn is the Inwood Unicorn. Kugrash can summon the spirit of one of these three to give him and whoever's on his team help and inspiration with certain things, so long as they remain in their small aura. The Juicy Cockroach helps bolster strength, the Spicy Pigeon helps with perceiving things, and the Unicorn aids healing magic. It's important to note that while in these auras, you're not superhuman strong or perceptive: they just help. (in dnd terms, you get advantage on rolls!)
Immunity: Kugrash is a dirty little rat man, and is immune to poison, although I imagine there can be exceptions to this.
Entity Affinity: The Corruption, all the way. Not only was past/human Kug attracted and ultimately corrupted by his greed and obsession with money, Kugrash now and his swarms and infestations of rats and creatures lurking underneath the city are absolutely fitting with what he'd be feeding on. It's a match made in really gross heaven.
Inventory: Kugrash has come in mostly just with the clothes on his back and a fanny pack. He does, however, have a staff that's just a piece of pipe from the subway.
The only really important and worthy thing of note is that he has the Bagel of All Things. Given to him by La Grand Gata of the Bodega, the Bagel of All Things is an everything bagel with an incredible, inexplicable amount of power. Once a day he can ask a simple question and get what's essentially a yes/no answer from the universe by scraping off the bagel toppings onto a paper plate and divining with them. If one were to eat this bagel, one would be absorbed into the universe itself, dying, becoming part of the cosmos and dispersing consciousness into the universe. Obviously, this is another one where if it needs to be nerfed it absolutely can be.
Samples: TDM top level