Silas Redd

Chesterfield Act Registry of the Expressive Database

File #08 Jun 2019 01:59

Summary

Name Silas Mackenzie Aliases Silas Redd Status Unregistered Expressive Ability Perceptual Obfuscation Gender Male Birthdate December 24, 1972 Age 45 Height 6'2" Build Wiry Eyes Gray Hair Reddish-brown Residence Unknown Employment Hitman for Gideon d'Sarthe Parents Deceased Siblings Deceased Marital Status Lyndsay MacKenzie (wife; deceased) Children Antonia MacKenzie (daughter; estranged) First Scene A Sea of Redd Last Scene Profile Silas Redd was once an honest man, but a lifetime of poor choices and lost opportunities have turned him into a hardened criminal and a vicious murderer. Once a triggerman for Daniel Linderman, he now throws his stock in with the infamous Gideon d'Sarthe.

portrayed by Willem Dafoe

Background

Silas MacKenzie was born in Alabama in 1971. At the age of 19 he became an associate of Lawrence Pickering, a drug dealer and fence. Silas worked as a mule for Pickering until Pickering’s arrest one year later. Silas was also arrested and spent six months in the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Upon release in 1992, Silas chose to stay in Las Vegas and began a job as a dishwasher at the Corinthian Hotel. In 1993 Silas married Lyndsay Foster, a dancer at the Corinthian. Later that year she would give birth to their daughter Antonia. In 1994 Silas began working as a card dealer at the Corinthian Hotel’s casino and in 1996 he was promoted to the role of Pit Boss of the Corinthian Casino.

By 2001 Silas had accrued significant financial debts from poor business ventures. He would be approached by Special Agent Harry Filmore of the DEA and given an opportunity to inform on the owner of the Corinthian Hotel, entrepreneur Daniel Linderman. Silas was offered a stipend of $1,000,000.00 USD spread out over 5 years for his role as an informant to the DEA.

At the end of 2006 Silas’ contract with the DEA was concluded and the agency was prepared to make a case against Daniel Linderman involving drug deals done through the Corinthian Hotel. Silas should have been swept into protective services, but the November 8th 2006 explosion in Midtown Manhattan stalled the investigation indefinitely and left Silas and his family swinging in the wind.

Daniel Linderman discovered Silas’ betrayal in 2008 which forced Silas into a desperate role of needing to earn back Linderman’s trust, leveraging his guilt and the safety of his family as a bludgeon. Silas became a hitman for Daniel Linderman, evidence of which was collected for the Albany Trials but never made public. From 2008 to 2010 it is believed that Silas murdered nearly 177 people for the Linderman Group.

In 2010 Daniel Linderman was arrested and later died of cancer in a federal prison awaiting trial. In November 2010 Silas’ wife died in the November 8 riots in New York City. Silas disappeared shortly after that and has not been seen or heard from since. His daughter, Antonia, was estranged from her father in 2008 after learning of his primary occupation. She now lives with her husband and one son in Virginia.

Psych Profile

Evolved Ability

Silas's power allows him to impose mental blocks on those around him; while he cannot truly affect the perceptions of others, he can stop them from recognizing the meaning of what they perceive - the details on his ID that mark it as falsified, for instance. Or something that someone is saying. Or that he's holding something in his hand. Or even that he's there at all. Even after the fact, even in memory, something obscured by Silas's ability is difficult to pick out; the perceptual data simply isn't filed properly. This ability essentially creates a mental 'blind spot', isolating perceptual data from any connection or context and making it all but impossible to recognize what is perceived. The effect is similar to some forms of agnosia… and like an actual physical blind spot, it can be difficult to pick up on if one isn't consciously looking for it.

Generally speaking, Silas can obfuscate his own presence and up to two other objects or people, against up to ten casual observers without appreciable effort. Against a greater number of observers, or against more alert observers (e.g., people who are actively searching for a known intruder), or when trying to conceal something with a larger perceptual footprint (e.g., a group of more than three people, a largescreen TV blaring at full volume), the effort required increases noticeably, requiring at least some degree of concentration; the more noticeable the objects or people being obfuscated are, the more difficult it is for Silas to keep observers from recognizing them.

Silas can maintain his obfuscation for about fifteen minutes straight before he begins to suffer side effects from overexertion of his ability, though a rest of two to five minutes can serve to refresh this duration.

The maximum range of Silas's obfuscation is about 60 feet; he cannot affect targets beyond that range with his power. The absolute maximum number of targets he's been able to block at once is nineteen, though when trying to act on fifteen or more observers Silas must devote ABSOLUTE concentration to it, rendering him all but incapable of any task more demanding than shuffling along in a (more-or-less) straight line.

Overuse of his ability takes a heavy toll on Silas, producing a steadily worsening litany of unpleasant side effects. These effects will abate if Silas refrains from using his ability for a time, but the longer he uses his power, the more side effects he will suffer, the more severe they become, and the longer it will take him to recover. In order of onset and severity, the symptoms of overuse include: unusual sensory artifacts (including some or all of: ringing in the ears, distortions in the field of vision, unpleasant phantom smells, and/or unusual tactile sensitivity); headache; nausea; bleeding from eyes and nose; severe dizziness; motor impairment; cognitive and memory impairment; unconsciousness. Depending on how far he gets on this litany of unpleasant symptoms, it can take Silas anywhere from an hour (if he stops using his power before the sensory artifacts get too bad) to days of bedrest (if he lets his symptoms get up to the motor impairment phase).

How does it feel?

That moment you thought you were alone, and someone speaks from right behind you.

That feeling when you're staring at something right in front of you, but can't quite put the pieces together. Can't quite figure out what it means.

That moment when you're driving fullspeed towards an intersection and only realize that oh shit the light is red a second before you hit the car in front of you.

It's not invisibility; nothing so overt. It's unnoticability. It's an SEP field.

Appendices