out of character.
GAME: Maimed.
DATE: April 2008 - November 2008.
JOURNAL: cryptographer.
PLAYED BY: Mehcad Brooks.
in character.
vital statistics.
NAME: Craig Lewis Anderson.
AFFILIATION: Rebel.
AGE / DOB: 27 / July 8th, 2049.
GENDER: Male.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual.
OCCUPATION: Former student of the New Institute of Science and Technology, currently working as a cook at Tom’s Diner. It's not bad, but it certainly isn't his dream job. He hopes to open his own restaurant one day, but that will have to wait. In the mean time, cooking up hamburgers and french fries will have to do.
THEME SONGS:
I've Gotta Be Me, Sammy Davis Jr.
Honor and Harmony, G. Love and Special Sauce
The Boy's Gone, Jason Mraz
Roll Over Beethoven, Chuck Berry.
RESIDENCE: He’s sharing a two-bedroom apartment in the Complex with fellow hacker Opus. There are only two rooms that could be considered clean in the entire apartment - his room and the kitchen, which he keeps spotless. Opus may keep the rest of the place covered in trash, clothes, and drug paraphernalia, but Crescendo will not allow those two rooms to be messy. His own room is incredibly organized. His bed is always made, his bookshelf is in alphabetical order, and he vacuums three times a week. The other side of his room is taken up by all of his computers and technological gadgetry.
appearance.
HEIGHT: 6'3".
WARDROBE: Crescendo had never been a fan of the standard wear for men. Three piece suits? They weren’t anything you could get comfortable in. And now that he’s not required to wear it, his wardrobe is one that is more comfortable than stylish. When he’s not in his work uniform, you can expect to see lots of t-shirts, denim, and jackets. If there’s one thing he has a lot of, it’s jackets—track jackets, denim jackets, blazers. Enough that he can loan some out to fellow Revo members during the winter and still have a lot. But his outfit isn’t complete without a pair of beat up converses (he has four pairs, all in an equal state of disarray) or tennis shoes (which are also beat up).
MISCELLANEOUS: He often jokes that he has the body of a clown - tall and skinny, with big hands and feet. He wears a size 16 in shoe and all of his shoes were special orders because most shoe stores don’t cater to people with clown feet. Crescendo also has a few pieces of jewelry that he’s always seen wearing - his father’s wedding ring on a band around his neck and his grandfather’s watch.
PLAYED BY: Mehcad Brooks.
personality.
There are two things people immediately notice about Crescendo. The first is his impressive height. The second is that he doesn’t seem to have that much to say. Guess what? They’re both true. The thing that people assume that isn’t true is that he’s shy. He’s hardly the timid and retiring sort. Like most normal people, he does enjoy some alone time every now and then - mostly to write songs or do Revo work. But most of the time, he loves nothing more than being surrounded by people. Large groups, small groups, it doesn’t matter to him. That said, he does get stage fright if he’s playing the guitar or singing in front of people. He hates being the center of attention and prefers to listen and observe. Because of this, he’s often very insightful. He’s very good at reading body language and is very intuitive about the emotions of others. Crescendo is the type of person you go to if you need someone to talk to. You don’t have to worry about him gossiping to everyone and he may even have some helpful advice.
His sense of humor often takes people by surprise because he’s actually really witty. Not the obnoxious class clown type of humor, but he’s capable of making some pretty funny quips. But being funny is not something he’d ever say he was good at. What are some things he’d list? Well, he’s a pretty decent guitar player and his writing isn’t that bad, but mathematics would definitely be at the top of the list. It was evident from the time he began attending school that he was going to be a math whiz like his father. Proofs, theories, algorithms; he loves them all. It was around the age of fourteen that he started applying his skill in mathematics to computers. Networking, graphics, audio, robotics - all of it was very interesting, but nothing interests him more than cryptography. Your codes, let him break them. Actually, he likes problem solving in general. While he prefers the problems that are math based, but he’ll try to solve anything. Word puzzles, rubik’s cubes, whatever. The more challenging, the better.
Crescendo is the same way about women. It would be against the way of the warm-blooded American male to not have a fondness for tits and ass, but he has no interest in simple, easy women and their sexcapades. Crescendo, who is so organized and systematic, loves the unpredictable. He loves the challenge of girls who are out of control and do the opposite of what he expects. Of course, sometimes being paired up with the out of control and unexpected girl does a number of Crescendo’s sanity - one of his ex-girlfriends was the most unorganized and messiest people he’d ever met. He once said that she made Opus’s room look like Mary Poppins had cleaned it. Organization is very important to Crescendo, as is cleanliness. He’s stopped trying to pick up after his room mate though - as long as his room and the kitchen are clean, he can put up with the rest of it.
LIKES: mathematics, encryptions, puzzles, problem solving, listening to others, cooking, keeping the peace, organization, cleaning, gibson guitars, classic Motown, writing songs.
DISLIKES: disorder, confrontation, his father, fast food, arguments, contact highs, the complex not having power, not feeling comfortable about his monetary situation, Hip Hop, being the center of attention.
rebel information.
CODENAME:bold text Crescendo.
DIVISION: Hacker — although to be more specific, Crescendo is a cryptographer. His specialty is hacking financial information—ATM cards, electronic commerce, etc etc. He’s also your go to guy when it comes to encrypting files. If Crescendo encrypted it, it's unlikely that you're going to hack it. Although he jokes that that's the reason he's in charge of the department, it's more likely that it's because he's been around the longest.
ALIASES: Crescendo’s first alias of Johnny B. Goode did not go over so well, so he’s finally settled on the name of ‘Riley B. King’, the birth name of legendary guitarist B.B. King. As Riley B. King, Crescendo wears a wig with hair a little darker and longer. He also wears a pair of round glasses—not much of a disguise, but convincing enough. While he has a bank account under the name of Riley B. King for money he earns from work, he has two separate accounts for money he inherited from his parents and grandfather (Johnny Allen and Charles Edwards).
history.
NPCs / FAMILY MEMBERS:
Derek Anderson, father, deceased. Derek was a successful mathematician and the poster child of a Shusai success story. He came from a single parent, low income family. He was gifted with brilliance, overcame these struggles, and became one of the more well-respected professors at the Institute. Of course, Derek also shunned the man who raised him to achieve his dreams—a man who insisted that the Shusai way of life was wrong. When Crescendo was younger, his dad was the greatest. Of course, his opinion of him is completely different from when it was seven. Comparing him to his father is one of the easiest ways to get under his normal calm exterior.
Laura Anderson, mother, deceased. Laura was very beautiful, a wonderful cook, and was great for entertaining Derek’s colleagues. She also happened to be very intelligent, but that wasn’t why Derek married her. Although she never once complained or shed a tear (at least, she never shed one around Crescendo), it was very apparent that she was unhappy when it was just them two. As soon as Derek (or anyone else came around) she had an impeccable smile on her face and was ready to serve. Seeing how the Shusai wife of life made his mother so very sad was part of the reason that Crescendo accepted his grandfather’s teachings so easily.
Lewis Anderson, grandfather, deceased. Lewis Anderson was always something of a revolutionary, even if he was never involved in any particular cause. As a police officer, Lewis saw some of the dark side of Shusai and he didn’t like it one bit. He tried to teach his son to think for himself, but Derek only saw him as an embarrassment. His genius son wanted nothing to do with the person who raised him—that was just stupid. After Crescendo’s parents died, he was determined that Crescendo wouldn’t go down the same path. Fortunately for everyone, he got his wish.
HISTORY: Up until Craig Anderson was seven years old, he lived a perfectly normal life. Normal in the sense that it was very proper - the way kids should be brought up. He was the son of a well-respected mathematician and a professor of that New Academy of Technology and Science. Derek Anderson was one of the shining stars of his profession - he came from essentially nothing and managed to achieve so much. He was smart, he was handsome, he had a beautiful wife and a promising child. And Craig’s mother? Well, she was beautiful, polite, and she could certainly cook a delicious pot roast, right? That’s all that mattered. Little Craig would watch as his father worked his magic solving algorithms, writing proofs, entering data in his computer. Afterwards, he’d watch his mother work in the kitchen, which was almost as interesting as the math. Of course, when he expressed this interest in his cooking it was always shrugged off with a laugh. His father would tell him that cooking was for women and that he should focus on his school work. After all, Craig was a boy and boys were supposed to go to college, get a very high paying job, and marry some nice girl who could cook and knew when to keep her mouth shut. He shouldn’t be worrying about frivolous things like cooking!
Of course, after those seven years were over, Craig‘s picture perfect Shusai approved childhood was shattered. The brilliant Derek Anderson and his lovely wife were tragically killed in an automobile accident. Craig was sent to live with his grandfather, who he’d only seen twice in his life. If Derek Anderson was the shining pillar of Shusai success, then his father was the exact opposite was the exact opposite. Lewis Anderson, a former police officer, was an opinionated man who never bought into Shusai ideals. He had raised his only son by himself and had tried to teach him a different set of values than the ones Shusai tried to drill into everyone’s brains. Of course, Derek was ‘gifted’. Derek wanted to fit in and succeed - something he didn’t think possible if he listened to his father. And so Derek had distanced himself from his father and immersed himself in the Shusai way of life. Now that Lewis had custody of his grandson, he was determined to not let Craig go down the same path.
Craig was told to forget everything his father had taught him about society. Everyone was equal - women, homosexuals, foreigners, people who were a little bit ‘different’ than everyone else. Women were meant to be put up on a pedestal, not put down and made to serve. Everyone could enjoy the art of cooking, not just ladies. It was at that point that Craig finally started to accept what his grandfather was telling him—he was going to get to cook! So Lewis taught him everything he knew about the culinary arts (which wasn’t that much, but it was more than Craig knew). After that source of knowledge was exhausted, Lewis began buying Craig cookbooks. Cooking wasn’t the only thing Lewis got Craig into. Rock music and the guitar was another - B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, he loved all of it. And of course, there was always math and eventually computers. Although Craig wasn’t disliked through high school, he certainly wasn’t Mr. Popular. He was quiet and although his opinions were radically different from those around him, he kept them to himself. Had he been as outspoken as his grandfather, he probably would have been expelled. Instead, he kept his displays of discontent with the way things worked to frowning at some of the comments guys around him made and agreeing with one of his frustrated female classmates about how the system was, in other words, fucked.
While hardly the top of his class, his grades and connections to the school (considering his father was one of the most respected professors they had) managed to get him a full ride to the Institute. Anyone else would have seen this as a wonderful opportunity, but Craig wasn’t interested at all. He was prepared to turn down the offer until his grandfather told him not to. Lewis told him that it would be stupid to turn down an opportunity like that. It was only because his grandfather so adamantly insisted that he accepted the offer. Craig had only been going for seven weeks before he realized that he absolutely hated it. The classes were interesting enough, but he couldn’t stand the entire atmosphere of the school. There were very few “chill” people around. Only men concerned about the being the best, getting a nice trophy wife, and coming up with the best plans to climb the corporate ladder. It was during this time that started looking into the group of Revolutionaries that news reported on every now and then. They were painted as vile criminals, a bunch of juvenile runaways who were bent on the destruction of orderly society. And that’s what the news said, the rumors he heard around school were far worse. With such a reputation, it was only natural for Craig to be interested.
He spent more time researching the Revolution than doing his schoolwork and still didn’t come up with much. It wasn’t until he mentioned that he was looking into the Revolution to his grandfather that he actually got some results. As a police officer, he had had access to a number of files concerning the Revolution. Craig finally got a few names and a few locations—enough to seek a few members out about joining. Of course, his grandfather wasn’t having that. While the Revolutionaries weren’t terrorists, there was enough violence going on that Lewis wasn’t in their fan club. He was pretty adamant that Craig not join, or that he at least wait until he finished college. So another semester passed - with Craig hating every minute of it - until tragedy struck again. It was just at the end of his sophomore year that Lewis Anderson, at the age of 65, suffered a heart attack and died before he could reach the phone. Craig immediately dropped out and returned to his grandfather’s house for a few months to plan what to do. He had inherited a reasonable amount of money from his parents and now another sum of money from his grandfather. Craig immediately make two different accounts and split the money between them - he was going to disappear. He kept his account open and informed some of his distant relatives that he was going to move to Japan. After falsifying enough information that made it look as if he was living in Japan, he set out in search of the Revolution. It took a few weeks but finally someone put him in contact with a recruiter. Impressed with his computer and mathematical skills, he was immediately offered a job as a hacker.
Since he joined seven years ago, he has set up an impenetrable mainframe for the Revolution, become sort of an unofficial cook, and managed to score the position as leader of the team. Other than that, not much has changed - he’s a pretty constant person. The main exception is that he’s moved up from frowning and shaking his head to hacking into databases.
