Post by Kermit Palantine on Feb 21, 2024 13:38:37 GMT -8
KERMIT FELIX PALANTINE
BASIC INFORMATION
Age and Birthday: 37; 11/21/1986
Year and House or Profession: Private Detective
Canon: No
Special Abilities: Woodcarving, lockpicking, shadow puppets
Known Aliases: Jack Ruby, Hermit Palpatine
FAMILY & HISTORY
Place of Birth: Cardiff, Wales
Notable Relatives: Parents Henry and Elisha Palantine, brother Leonard Smalls, sister Helena Palantine.
Character History: Kermit was born in Cardiff, Wales to two seemingly Muggley parents—Kermit’s mother Elisha had attended Hogwarts and even flirted with a career in the Ministry before her first husband, Patrick Smalls, was murdered. Escaping to the relative safety of the Muggle world, Elisha met Henry Palantine, whom she settled down with in Cardiff. Henry was an optometrist with no ties to the magical world. They would raise Kermit as a Muggle until the day he received his acceptance letter to Hogwarts.
The existence of Hogwarts confirmed to Kermit what he'd already known: magic exists and the world is full of it. He entered his magical education with wide-eyed optimism, still holding onto his lifelong dream of being an optometrist, except now for magic folks. In his fourth year, however, Kermit stumbled into his true calling.
“There is evil in this world, Hermit. People who would kill you, your parents, your entire family. And they’d do it without thought, without remorse. They're everywhere, and I'm the only person who gives a damn to stop it.”
These words, uttered by Theodore Platt during a chance encounter in the owlery, changed everything for Kermit. He had always believed in the things cartoons taught him like the power of friendship and the perils of falling anvils. But Theodore was wiser than Kermit, more experienced in the ways of the world. He knew Harry Potter personally as a former member of Dumbledore's Army. How could he not be an authority on the nature of man? There is evil in this world, and there was nothing Kermit could do to stop it.
And that was why Kermit decided to become a superhero.
Stay with me.
Kermit was fourteen years old when he slipped on the green tights of The Frogman. For a full year he stalked the halls of Hogwarts with allies Tadpole (alter ego Gus Kilgore) and Captain Magic (alter ego Ceilidh McBride), sniffing out crime and putting down baddies. The trio was not afraid to go where the prefects would not. They busted up parties and dispensed justice at the end of a club. It wasn't all violence of course: The Frogman tutored math and taught safe sex classes on the Hogwarts curriculum black market.
Officially, The Frogman was a menace. He was the hero Hogwarts deserved, but not the one it needed right now. So the prefects hunted him. He wasn’t their hero. He was a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A green frog.
In his fifth year, Kermit was made a prefect. The badge gave Kermit the opportunity to police the school not as a vigilante, but with absolute power. Teaming up with fellow prefect Beatrice Paris, Kermit applied his brand of justice to the new role. Kermit found someone in Bea who shared the same passion for solving mysteries that he had. She was unlike any girl Kermit had ever met. She was fun and exciting and she loved club justice! After graduation, Kermit and Beatrice entered the Hit Wizard training program together.
Kermit's extreme methods were privately praised by old hat trainers who were forced to frown upon them publicly. He graduated at the top of his class.
Kermit was a Hit Wizard for five years. He often clashing with his superiors while earning honors from their superiors, gradually moving up within in the department until a particularly method case of good cop/bad cop finally gave the department chief the ammunition he needed to sack Kermit.
Kermit started his own private investigation business in the fallout of his sacking. Though things had been rough with Bea, Kermit’s success in the private sector helped smooth things over, and the two eventually got engaged. But Kermit would once again land in trouble with The Department of Magical Law Enforcement, being arrested for impersonating a Hit Wizard. Bea had begged Kermit to return her cousin's badge before he got into any more trouble, but Kermit needed the leverage of an official Hit Wizard for this particularly difficult case he was working—he was following the money, and it was taking him up into some seriously high positions in the Ministry. The arrest was the final nail in the Bermit coffin. Bea called off the wedding.
Kermit pleaded not guilty with the defense, ‘the badge doesn’t make the hero.’ Shockingly, it didn’t hold up in the face of the Wizengamot. He was sentenced to two years probation and forced to do six months of community service. His private investigation license was revoked and his business shuttered. Alone for the first time since he was fifteen, Kermit found himself at his lowest point ever: serving community service like the dozens of hardened criminals he'd put away.
Unable to face the shame, Kermit fled the country. He settled down in a small farm town called Azkaban, Oklahoma. There, with the help of some forged credentials, he landed a job as a sheriff's deputy while moonlighting as a private detective out of the Paraiso Motel. That was where Kermit lived for the next nine years until a certain case found its way back to him: the same one that Kermit had been working on when he was arrested. Now he's returned to England to rebuild his business, clear his name, win back the affection of his lady love, and finally solve his unsolvable case. In no particular order.
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name or Alias: Travis
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Experience: 22 years
Other Characters: Lawrence Gable , Theodore Platt , Fox Bishop , Dr. Bryant Tannen , Martin Abbott , Sam Spade , Dane Caspar
Role Playing Sample: 9:30 AM
Most days during the school year, Lawrence got an early start at the club. No kids, no wife, only a man and his business. He arrived before any of his employees, double checking every detail of the floor: tapping kegs, polishing tables, even taking a magnifying case to the upholstered booths to search for any cracks from the night before. Every night at Club Brielle was as fresh as its grand opening, which itself was one of the happiest nights of Lawrence's life. Of course this routine was all part of Lawrence's desire to please, but there was something deeper to it too. Lawrence had an obligation to the name.
When he was finished, he set the music in the club and retired to his office upstairs.
12:00 PM
Office time usually involved catching up on the news in the dailies and taking the occasional call in the fireplace from the various small businessmen he associated with from around the magical world. The Prophet never failed to have something entertaining and sometimes even turn up a potentially profitable opportunity, whether it was a story about the new stadium breaking ground in Ballycastle, or a suspiciously worded advertisement in the classifieds. Today's top story was about a midnight heist on a Quinn Brooms warehouse in Bristol. Lawrence shook his head as he read the news.
2:00 PM
In the late afternoon, Lawrence had a meeting on the east end of London. While many businessmen of his kind preferred to transact business at night, Lawrence found that, as counterintuitive as it might sound, it was easier to avoid snooping eyes in the daylight. He met with a trio of associates on a quiet side street in the shadow of a bridge. They were led by Rudy, a young thief who was eager to impress Lawrence. He presented Lawrence with three crates full of brooms.
Lawrence shook his head, pointing at the gold "Q" painted on the wood paneling. "Do you know what that means?"
"Quality!" Rudy smiled.
"Yeah," Lawrence said. "That's because they're Quinn brooms. You rip off the Bristol warehouse last night?"
"Almost definitely!" Rudy bounced on his heels as he admitted to the theft.
Lawrence glanced at Rudy's two associates standing by the crates, then motioned for Rudy to walk with him. When their backs were turned toward the two thugs Lawrence said quietly, "I need you to take these back."
"What for?" Rudy asked, looking back at his buddies. "These are the latest model, I got it all worked out. They're staggering production and demand's through the roof. You could flip 'em for three times market price, easy."
"Yeah," Lawrence nodded slowly. "Only it's the name, Rudy."
"Shit," Rudy breathed.
"That's right," Lawrence continued nodding. "And I'm already in dutch with Mrs. Gable as it is. Stealing from the Quinns is like stealing from myself. Take them back and apologize."
"You want me to apologize? They'll throw me in Azkaban!"
"Michael won't do anything," Lawrence said. "I'll take care of it. Just take it back, apologize. You have to mean it, though. Michael's nothing if not sincere. After that he goes to the media and explains how he recovered his merchandise and worked out the matter privately. He won't want to dox the thieves because they're young kids and he thinks everyone has the capacity to change. From there, you go on doing what you do, Michael gets his merchandise back and some good press. Everybody wins."
"Okay," Rudy nodded. "Are you mad at me?"
"Of course not," Lawrence laughed. "You're a smart kid, and what's important is that you took initiative. Not a lot of people can pull off something like this under Michael Quinn's nose, and a lot of smart thieves have tried. I think we can build from this."
Rudy smiled with a little shrug as Lawrence patted him on the shoulder.
2:45 PM
Lawrence's pep talk with Rudy was interrupted by his cellphone. It was common for a certain class of magic citizen to do business with a cell, being a rare form of communication that the Ministry of Magic hadn't started tracking.
"Don't do anything else," Lawrence said into the receiver. "Just stay put."
Lawrence apparated to an abandoned warehouse on the other side of London where he met another associate, Peanut. Peanut was pacing outside of the warehouse.
"He's inside with Devlin," Peanut said when Lawrence approached.
"Inside that scary warehouse?" Lawrence asked, studying the building's boarded up windows. The faint sound of a wailing from inside mixed with the soft rainfall. "Why? I said take care of him."
"Right," Peanut nodded. "I thought you meant like," Peanut used air quotes here. "'Take care of him,' y'know, like euphemistically?"
"No. God no," Lawrence shook his head.
The large double doors of the warehouse swing open as Devlin stepped outside. For a moment the wailing was so loud that it touch Lawrence's soul, but was quieted once again as the heavy door swung closed. Lawrence's eyes were wide as he studied Devlin, standing there in the wet gravel, his knuckles scabbed over and leather jacket splattered with blood.
"What are you doing in there?" Lawrence asked. "Are you pulling teeth? Where did you get those?" he pointed to the two incisors resting in Devlin's outstretched hand. "Did you bring plyers with you?"
"I thought I would try accio—" Devlin started.
"He said 'accio teeth' and they popped right out," Peanut finished.
Lawrence blinked. "Okay, this is fine," he said. "We can work with this. You gave him the stick, he'll be more receptive to the carrot now."
"You want me to give him a carrot, sir?" Peanut asked.
"Get him out of the country," Lawrence said. "Buy him a condo in Daytona or Orlando, Brits love Florida. Set him up with some real estate, some passive income to live on. Just make him happy, okay? Get him a horse. Dudes like horses."
Peanut looked through Lawrence like he was speaking a dead language.
Lawrence shook his head and said, "Look, it's my fault, Peanut. I should have been more specific. I know things were different in your old crew but Gable boys don't hurt people. We make dreams come true, okay? Take the money I gave you and send him to Orlando. Actual Orlando, It's not a code for like, a shallow grave on the moors. And please, put his teeth back in."
3:30 PM
When Lawrence was finished with his afternoon meetings, he returned home to call his children who had just finished classes for the day. This was Lawrence's favorite ritual of the day, catching up on events at Hogwarts and progress of his children's studies. It was hard to believe that Claire was already studying for her NEWTs, and the OWLs weren't fat off for little Rufio. He tried to avoid the topic of mom with them, though Claire did manage to slip her in a couple of times which Lawrence tactfully deflected.
6:00 PM
Lawrence enjoyed a microwave dinner as he rewatched Michigan's National Title game.
9:00 PM
Andi greeted Lawrence when he returned to the club. He made an appearance most nights, floating around the VIP booth to get some exposure with whichever Quidditch player, musician, writer, or even the occasional celebrity Auror was visiting that night. Tonight, however nodded toward the bar and Lawrence knew immediately what the gesture meant. As manager of Club Brielle, Andi's duties involved not just running the day to day operations of the club, but also keeping track of Lawrence's varied associates. One, of course, was more important than any of the others.
Lawrence settled in next to Brielle saying, "Too nice of a night to be alone." He put his hand around her waist, for a moment feigning some normalcy in their marriage. "What are you drinking, Ms. Quinn?"