Player Information

Name/Alias: Sceadu
Personal Journal: amphibologies
Email: dracogriff (at) gmail.com
*I am 18+ years old*
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Character Information

Character Name: Irving Braxiatel
Canon: Doctor Who (Expanded Universe)
Canon Point: Gallifrey: Disassembled; just after he falls through the Axis portal
Character Journal: needsmust

Appearance: in his lone appearance in a visual medium
On the box art for "The Curse of Fenman" (middle figure)
Miles Richardson (Brax's VA) with a figurine of Brax

Like many of his kind, Braxiatel has a way of standing out. Unlike most of the other Time Lords we see off Gallifrey, his dress sense isn't the reason for this. Instead, it's largely in his height - while canon never states a number, he is mentioned to be tall, and I tend to assume him at roughly 6 feet - and the fact that he looks perfectly at ease no matter what situation he's in the middle of.

His dress sense, at least when he's not actually on Gallifrey, trends towards both the impeccable and the expensive - he's most commonly seen in suits, in shades of black or grey. Nor is it just his clothes that are are impeccably kept. His hair (dark, and starting to grey a little) is similarly well-kept, although the fact that he wears it short probably doesn't hurt. In short, he's very nearly the epitome of what one might think one when hears the phrase 'well-dressed man,' while out and about in the galaxy. When he's actually on his home planet he trades this out for the more traditional robes of Gallifrey, in the reddish-orange of the Prydonian Chapter.

He has also been known to wear a (somewhat ridiculous-looking) mustache; as of his arrival in Altered States, he's clean-shaven.
Age: Unknown. Most likely at least 1000, if not more - if he's actually still counting he's not mentioning it. He can, however, be assumed to be older than the Doctor; the Doctor current to his "now" - as of his canon point - is the Eighth (who mostly claims to be 900 or thereabouts).

By appearances, Braxiatel looks to be somewhere in his 40's.
History: On the wiki. Since his timeline is a twisty mess, and may actually involve multiple universes, only the first two subheadings are relevant; his timeline specifically follows the Gallifrey series. Additionally while he maintains (a version of) the Braxiatel Collection he has not met Bernice Summerfield or any of her associates and is additionally not the Braxiatel found in the Bernice Summerfield series (which I tend to headcanon takes place in a slightly alternate universe than the Gallifrey series, largely for the sake of making some sense of things).

Personality: Most people, on first meeting, Braxiatel probably come to the following conclusion: that he's smart, suave, and generally emotionally aloof. In short, everything that a gentleman should be. This is not entirely wrong. But neither is it entirely right, either. Brax is a politician. A schemer and a self-professed liar, with a sharp mind - and a clever tongue, to back it up. He knows the value in each word, in each implication - and every indication, not just the verbal ones. A gesture, an expression, even something as simple as neatly-kept appearance... all of these are tools in Brax’s arsenal, and carefully controlled to present exactly what he wants people to see. Or rather, exactly who he wants them to see; a facade as carefully controlled as everything else. Yet for all that, he's not directly malevolent. Ambitious, a little over-fond of the idea of power, and prone to playing the long game, yes, but there's still a part of him that prefers being a generally decent person - to the point that even his political opponents have noted him to be a fair man. It's simply that sometimes his definition of “decent” twists and curves. In his own words, "[he] like[s] to be independent on the right side." What that side should happen to be... well. That’s entirely dependent on what he should happen to want.

Unfortunately, the life of a politician is never easy. The life of politician in a political climate that encourages both backstabbing and long-term grudges, all the more so. In order to survive, he has thus developed two very important habits. The first of these is simple: Braxiatel is a man who keeps his secrets, who holds his cards so close to the chest that even what few friends he has rarely knew what he’s planning. The other is a matter of trust, quite literally. In fact, by some of the more common definitions of trust - especially that of trusting people with one’s secrets - Brax doesn’t trust people. So much so that he has a hard time fully trusting people, on a personal level - only rarely does he take people into his confidence and only when the situation absolutely calls for it. Instead, he seems to largely trust in not only his own reading of any given situation, as well as what his understanding of any given person. Even his few friends aren’t exempt from this; no more trusted with his innermost secrets than anyone else. He may - and certainly does seem to - both respect them and value their friendship, but that alone isn’t enough to win his trust. Why, then, are what few friends he has still friends with him, one might ask. Why remain, if there’s only a fledging sort of trust? Part of explanation is likely due to that fact that he is, generally, decently and fair-minded. Beyond that, however, is that Braxiatel is loyal. He might not trust his friends with his secrets, but he looks after them. Makes sure that things work out, for them, to the best of his ability to do so. He cares for them, in ways that he can’t always bring himself to admit, and if simply looking out for them is the best way he has of showing that so be it.

On top of this is layered one more fact. Through effort and a significant amount of control of his own emotions, Braxiatel has, essentially made himself into a person who is not so much indispensable as someone who can be relied on. A man who can be counted on to keep a clear head regardless of the crisis at hand. In short, he has made himself both useful and reasonably indispensable, and it suits him very well indeed.

This is not all he is. Behind the facade he maintains, is another man. A man who might be a liar and a schemer... but is still honestly the gentleman he seems to be. He’s not just the dusty politician one might expect either. Hidden just underneath the surface is not only a sense of humor, but a remarkably snarky one for a man who’s spent more than a few centuries involved in the inner workings of a society that could best be described as “dusty.” It’s here that we begin to get to the core of who Braxiatel is. Whoever and whatever he might make himself appear to be, he cares. He is, for lack of a better word, very much human. He makes terrible puns, is visibly displeased by even the idea of unnecessary loss of life, collects artwork from across time and space in an effort to preserve it from destruction (even though his fellow Time Lords may not approve of his methods), and has a theatrical streak that could well rival the Doctor’s. But he is not a man to be crossed. He knows how to play the game of politics ... and how to cover his tracks should he need to; plausible deniability is very much the way he works, and he's good at it. Barring that, he's not above heading up the committee that's looking into whether or not something he's (implied to have) caused is an accident; thus ensuring that history records as exactly that. An unfortunate accident.

Even this is not the core of who Brax is. At the very basic level, the single mantra to which he works is "needs must." His is the long view and everything moves to that. It may mean doing things that he might not like, that other people might not like him for, and it's never ever easy, but if it means keeping the things - and people - that matter safe it's worth it. No matter what might come of it and what he should have to do for it. Someone has to do the less than lovely things and it might as well be him; he's not only used to it but he's usually forewarned, thanks to his being in regular contact with both his past and future selves. In short, he has made himself into the kind of person that can handle such things. Who can do what Gallifrey needs to be done, and if that means he's hardly ever really living quite in the present, well. Needs must.

As one final point, there’s the matter of Braxiatel’s own personal shoulder demon: Pandora. While she lived, Pandora was one of Gallifrey's earliest presidents - a tyrant and despot, overthrown only great work. However, a copy of her mind lived on in the Matrix - a sort of living computer, comprised of the mind-prints of all former Time Lords. Needless to say, she eventually gets up to no good, and in a moment of what might have been self-sacrifice, Braxiatel used his own mind to imprison a portion of the entity she’d become; while the entity later escaped (and destroyed itself in the process), a fragment of it yet remains in his mind. However, with Pandora gone, what exists is less part of a person and more a sort of mindless darkness - a distilled package of evil and ambition. Currently, Braxiatel is keeping it at bay by essentially partitioning a part of his mind off in order to keep it trapped, but it's still there somewhere in the back of his mind.

Powers/Special Abilities: As a Time Lord, Braxiatel has more than a few things that set him apart from humanity. First and foremost is the fact that like all Time Lords, he has not one heart but two. This in turn gives him a double heartbeat - something that has been know to confuse medical professionals. In addition, while he is capable of surviving with only a single heart, this is neither particularly comfortable nor particularly feasible in the long run - his internal systems are such that it’s really best to have both fully functional. He's also generally more resilient than the average human, and can better tolerate extremes of both heat and cold, as well as being able to survive electrical shocks that would be fatal to humans. Likewise, all of his senses are distinctly better than human average.

Alongside the traditional five senses, he is also possessed of a nebulously defined “time sense” which allows him to sense the flow of time, disruptions and jumps in the time stream, and fixed points in time (points in time that cannot be altered) and is natively telepathic. While this predominantly primarily as touch-telepathy, Braxiatel, takes this a step further. Not only does he not need physical contact to go poking around in someone's mind, he's good at enough it to be mentioned to be a very powerful hypnotist - to the point that all he really needs to affect his hypnotism is his voice. Eye contact may help further, but this is never shown on way or another (possibly on account of the canon being audio-only). When actually using his hypnotism, he appears to (slightly) favor putting in mental blocks, but he's equally adept at altering and removing memories should there prove to be a need for same.

Potentially as a refinement of this hypnotism, turned inward, Braxiatel is able to not only create a partition within his mind by thinking and rethinking what amounts to computer code, but to keep it up for months, presumably even while sleeping. And that when he had a full-grown evil entity to keep at bay; it takes the pressure of outside forces for him to lose control when we see him do so. Away from those pressures and with Pandora's presence lessened as it is, who knows how long he'd be able to keep it up?

Finally, there's the matter of regeneration, which works for him in pretty much the same way it does for the Doctor - in case of mortal injury or other similarly dire straits, he can renew himself by undergoing a sort of complete cellular regeneration. While this does tend result in change both physically and mentally, the most basic parts of what makes someone uniquely themselves stay the same.

River Power: Awareness Distortion - not the ability to make people see things that aren't there, but to make them not see what is there, not in the sense of making things invisible but in the sense of making them unnoticed.

Reason for Character Choice: Plain and simple, because Brax is one of the most intriguing characters in an audio that is full of same. Brax is a noble politician, a man who breaks one of the greatest laws of his own society not out any desire to do wrong but to help stock his art museum, a giant dork (albeit somewhere deep down), and still manages to be surprisingly badass when he has to be even despite the fact that it doesn't seem like anyone should be able to juggle all that. He's also got a lovely voice, which certainly doesn't hurt.