BASICS

name
Berne (BEHR neh) Emmerich
(occasionally Nott, when beneficial)

alias
Will answer to Bear. Will not answer to Bernie.

division
Security

occupation
Security Guard, Retired Strongman

age & dob
35, September 23^rd, Libra

pronouns
he/him

family
Anja Emmerich | Mother
Kristján Birgisson | Father (deceased)
Oddur & Stella Emmerich | Siblings

Niamh Nott | Wife

CONCEPT

Dosage: one (1) strongman. Symptoms Include: hearing colors, temporary loss of vision.

POWERS

enhanced synesthesia
Berne has something of an advanced set of sensory overlapping. Some things are innate; certain foods taste bright, sounds chime in shapes, and changes in tone will have a clear sense of color shift to them. (It's not all lovely, other sounds make him want to crawl out of his skin. And the word 'sponge' tastes repulsive in every language he's tried it in so far.) He's capable of stretching this ability; a heartbeat will light up a few rooms away or a particular vibration can be tracked back to its source - but it's largely a passive sort of thing.

While most of this is a perfectly normal phenomenon that perfectly normal people experience as well, Berne's synesthesia does tend to spill over just a bit. It isn't constant or immediate but, with a bit of time and proximity, sensory overlap will occasionally and temporarily crop up in others in his company. (Niamh has assured him that it's mostly the colors. And that he sounds a soft, pastel yellow to her. He finds this very favorable.)

sense manipulation
Berne also has the ability to temporarily enhance, reduce, or remove the senses from himself and other people - largely the primary ones. There are other senses, and the potential to manipulate these as well, but they require a bit more thought and concentration. (And awareness.) He is pretty skilled at dulling pain, however. It's something you get a decent amount of practice at when injuries are a regular part of the workday. This ability can be used on one person/target at a time, but can be used them several times in a row.

Precision, in terms of both timing and degree, relies on proximity or skin-to-skin contact. If out of direct contact or further than arm's length away, the more blunt force and abrupt the effects, almost as though they're being shoved with might behind it. (And if the distance stretches too far beyond that, around where a clear view of the person tends to blur, the weaker and less effective all over again.) Fine tuning is something that requires delicacy. And delicacy is something Berne has to concentrate on.

PERSONALITY

At first glance, Berne comes off as intimidating. He doesn't much like to fight, but he's certainly built for it and he's very good at it in a pinch. At any closer of a look, however, the impression doesn't particularly hold up. No matter how well he pulls off arms crossed, chin tilted, scowl firmly set in place. And it's less of a 'somewhere in there is a soft and gooey center, I just know it' situation and more along the lines of 'the veneer is so thin, it's probably flaking off.'

Soft-hearted and sentimental, Berne likes romances, collects things he likes in little notebooks, and if he wasn't in the habit of traveling light, he'd have a much harder time throwing away bits of sentimental nonsense. He likes sentimental nonsense. He's a sucker for a good story - tells a decent one himself when pressed, but he's better as an enthusiastic audience for people's passions.

Berne is far more confident on a stage than he is in person. He performs large, but he exists far more quietly. Naturally introverted, it takes him a while to warm up to unfamiliar people without a social buffer. The position of social buffer is usually filled by Niamh. Is this a crutch? Yes. But he doesn't much mind admitting this. Once he settles into it, however, he's free with small acts of affection and he has a quick and biting - but rarely spiteful - sense of humor. (He also has an impressive poker face. And a great capacity for following along with elaborate improvisations. Just ask the United States Citizens and Immigration Services.)

APPEARANCE

Basics: 6'9", light hair/eyes, full beard, thickly built, heavily tattooed

It's pretty immediately apparent that Berne is big in all senses of the word. Tall and broad, wide around the shoulders and visibly well-muscled. While this was something he was uncomfortable with in his youth, he's no longer bothered by it - this was his livelihood, after all, and a good one - but he is still very mindful with it. He holds himself with great care for all the space he naturally takes up.

He has a quiet voice. Measured and soft and thickly accented. His English is imperfect around the edges, less in a manner that's incomprehensible and more stilted in a way that skews formally. (Certain words just taste bad. He doesn't use them.)

HISTORY

Berne Emmerich was born the youngest of three siblings. His mother was a seamstress who owned a small shop in Northern Germany and his father was a fisherman from the Westfjords. They never married. It wasn't something that his mother put very much stock in and, for most things, they were only stocked if his mother said they were to be. His father died when he was ten and, in the aftermath of becoming a single parent, his mother had a difficult time affording the housing, feeding, and etcetera of them. Particularly Berne. Berne took up space. Berne ate her out of house and home. Berne was not, after all, terribly good at delicate work and couldn't help at the shop overly much.

So, after some deliberation, Berne was sent to live with his aunt and her new husband in Milwaukee. This was a very big change. Too large and too quiet and not quite settling in as quickly as he would have liked, he had a great deal of trouble with a great many things. Lessons were conducted in English and remedial services were not anything to write home about, so he stumbled through school rather poorly for a while. He stumbled rather poorly at home as well. His aunt was kind and sweet-worded, soft around the edges in a way that his mother never quite was, but she had not exactly asked for a child. And her marriage was new and her husband certainly hadn't asked for a child. So Berne kept quiet and Berne kept out of the way.

Berne continued to trudge his way through school for a while more until he ended up catching the eye of someone from a traveling show while on a summer break. Now this? This Berne could do. Berne was big and Berne was strong and it was very easy to carry heavy boxes and haul the rigging from one place to another. So Berne very decisively did this instead - this being running away from home and joining the circus. It was, he thought, a very romantic and adventurous life choice. (Which it quite possibly was, yes. But he was also fourteen - so it was maybe also very stupid.)

Circus life was good to Berne. It was good for him too. Berne grew. Grew older, grew more confident - just plain grew, when it came right down to it. Berne was big and Berne was strong. Berne took up space. And, in the circus, this was a very useful thing. They asked Berne if he could pick up this or that and Berne could. They asked Berne if he could pick up him or her or whomever they pleased and Berne could do that as well. So eventually he became part of the show - billed as The Mighty Colossus, as Atlas, as whatever fantastical thing they wished him to be - and, for once, Berne played at being someone even larger.

(Sometime in the center of this, Berne's powers crept into the corners of him. It is difficult to tell precisely then whens of this happening, because mostly they were very small. They slid under his skin in echoes of sensation and shot across his vision in sharp pops of color. They followed after footsteps and fingertips, softly and finely and delicately. And this suited Berne just fine. This suited Berne better than anything that took up too much space. It settled in him very nicely. One day things were ordinary and then another, they were more. This was not a bad thing.)

Circus life also meant that Berne got to travel, got to meet new people. He toured for several years, changed companies once or twice, before finally settling in at The Back Page. It was there that Berne met Niamh. Niamh who was pragmatic and self-possessed and quite happy to tell him what to do with himself. This included actually getting his GED and standing up a little straighter even when Berne wasn't in his costume and if he would not mind speaking to this or that disreputable customer about how one was to properly treat staff. Berne was big - and even bigger now. He was very good at this last one.

The rest of his powers, when they arrived, did so quietly as well. In the sense that a customer of the disreputable sort had spoken to one of the girls from the mermaid tank unkindly and, when Berne told him to quiet himself, he did. Very abruptly and for quite some time after the command. This was not the same sort of thing that Berne was used to - and the man was not very pleased with this turn of events either. Perhaps understandably, yes. But registration was paperwork. Paperwork that had been put off. And this paperwork meant that people would look at the other papers that Berne had not much maintained in the years between home and the road.

Now, Niamh and Berne worked quite well together. Niamh made a suggestion and Berne listened. So it was decided that they were to get married. This was, of course, not at all a way to avoid dealing with unwanted attention or being sent back to a home that no longer belonged to them. On either of their parts. Or perhaps it was, but it was still very true that they worked quite well together. They took care of each other. And this is what a marriage was, after all. Some signatures and a promise to take care of one another. (Berne may very well have been a romantic, may have put stock in places his mother would not have, but Berne also knew how to be sensible. And, anyway, it was a very good marriage. It was built sturdy. It lasted.)

And this was well and very good until traveling too close to a Riftland caught them up in a violent storm. There was great confusion, great panic, and great damage from which The Back Page never quite recovered. Soon after the incident, the circus closed up shop and those remaining went their separate ways - some off to new companies and others elsewhere entirely. Niamh and Berne decided that it might be about time to find a stable job and Enodia was offering just that. And also they had health care.

NOTES

🎪 Still very awful at sewing. He can't make his hands do it, despite a not insignificant amount of time spent trying. Decent enough at woodcarving, however. He likes to make little animals in his spare time. It helps his precision. And also it is cute.

🎪 Proficient in throwing knives at others. Excels in having knives thrown at himself.

🎪 Sends holiday cards to his immigration agent. Her name is Jeanine, she's able to tell if people are lying, and she still has no idea how the two of them pulled it off.

🎪

OOC

jackie . EST . hafþór björnsson . //CONTACT//