Davin's Backstory's page

About Davin's Backstory

Write 5 background and concept elements that you feel are important to your image of the character.

1) As befitting somebody whose nickname is ‘Lucky’, Davin has been such for most of his life. When he was in high school, he would often ‘toss the dice’ racing to catch the bus. Invariably, more often than not, he would just make it. Even if he left ‘too late’. There were many other such moments as he grew up, little moments of luck that made life a lil easier, a little less awful, a lil better. However, he never won any giveaways, or games of chance or the lotto.

Then, while attending a White-Wolf gaming and LARP convention in Las Vegas of all places, he experienced one of the coolest moments in his life: During the course of the big Werewolf game, he was blessed by the NPC, Lady Luck. Astonishingly, after that moment, his luck seemed to grow in real life!! He went on to win a ton of giveaways on Twitch, including several in a row from one of his artist friends, and six times in one night from one of his gamer friends! There were many other similar examples of his crazy luck, but those two always stuck out. Maybe he was actually blessed by a real Lady Luck in a city known for the lucky!

2) Davin’s motto in life is “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and I know everybody!”. This harkens back to his days in high school, as while his main group of friends were his fellow gamers & goths, he had friends in all the various cliques: the jocks & cheerleaders, the stoners & skaters, the hip hop kids, and more. He wasn’t what one would traditionally call ‘popular’ but his easy going nature, good sense of humor, and ability to almost effortlessly adapt to social situations meant he made friends without much difficulty. Still, it took him being comfortable to really fit in, so he was often socially awkward at first. However, once he got to that level of comfort, he almost never shut up.

In college, he once again made friends quickly, and even turned ‘enemies’ into some of his closest friends. At first in direct opposition to his Resident Assistant(cuz heck authority!), they soon both discovered the other’s love for the New York Yankees, and George Carlin. It was not long after that Davin sort of became the Assistant Resident Assistant, aiding his RA as much as he could in a non official capacity. His two best friends both started out disliking him, but they bonded over comics, anime, and badass music. In his second year there, two twin sisters initially did not like Davin nor did he like them. In fact, in one of their early encounters, he told one of them “keep staring, and I might do a trick.” The two of them ended up basically dating, though never officially. Both sisters also continuously confided in Davin, often telling him things they would promise each other not to tell him for whatever reason. His trustworthiness, and his ability to just listen without telling them what to do, made them open up even when they didn’t always want to.

After getting unceremoniously kicked out of college(for helping defend the twins against their abuser), Davin got a job at a local grocery store. It was there(along with the store he was transferred to a couple years later) that his natural charisma truly came to the fore. He easily flirted with all the pretty girls, making friendships with many of them that lasted long after they moved on from the store. He also made friends with a lot of the guys too, bonding over sports, comics, wrestling, and more. At the second store he worked at, he became work friends with pretty much every department manager, which came in handy when he was made the ‘supply boss’. Again, his trustworthiness was rewarded when the pharmacist entrusted him with getting HIPPA certified so he could shred sensitive documents. She knew he would keep anything he might have seen or read to himself.

However, it wasn’t until 2011 that he began to truly embody the above motto. Thanks to his aforementioned luck, Davin scored a VIP Antediluvian pass to the 20th anniversary Grand Masquerade celebration of Vampire the Masquerade for his 30th birthday in Sept. Over the course of the five days in New Orleans, he met and became friends with some of the most important people in White-Wolf(the company that originally made VtM), along with many of the models used for the iconic members of the thirteen clans. Chief among them were the main developer for Vampire, the creative director for all of White-Wolf, and the models for clan Ravnos and Tremere. About a month later, Davin volunteered for the artist alley at New York Comic Con, where he helped manage lines for some truly well known artists in all of comics. Having attended many conventions since 2003, he knew many of them(and was even friends with a few), and they knew him. The crowning moment for him was when one of the most legendary of the legends told Davin that he managed one of the best lines the artist had ever had at a convention!

Since that year, Davin’s been hired to work at NYCC(and a handful of other conventions in the general north east area) by one of the more famous artists who currently does covers for both Marvel and DC. This has afforded him the opportunity to meet, and in some cases befriend, many more artists, and even some celebrities. In fact, in 2019, Davin arranged a more or less private meet and greet for himself and the artist he works for with one of the most famous voice actresses in the world.

He’s also become friends with countless small-time artists and cosplayers, both from attending conventions, and his time spent on Twitch. He’s befriended a bunch of writers and publishers in the third party publishing scene, including the owners of Rogue Genius Games, Legendary Games, and Lost Spheres Publishing. He has connections to and is friends with chefs, techs, writers, artists, and creatives of all sorts. Truly, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and Davin knows everybody.”

3) For as long as he can remember(which is pretty heckin long! More on that later), Davin has been absolutely fascinated by mysticism, the occult, and mythology. All the way back in first grade, he read a book about astrology/the constellations that also included their myths and legends. From that point on, he was hooked!! He read countless books and articles/wiki pages on mythology, mostly Greek but also a lot of Nordic, Native American, Egyptian, and some Eastern as well, including several encyclopedias, who’s who sort of books. Which, thanks to his impressive memory, he’s memorized a ton of. He’s also easily read a dozen or two of books on the occult, witchcraft, and mysticism. He isn’t an actual practitioner, though he hopes to maybe be one someday, but he does consider himself pagan more than anything else. If he were a PC in a Mage the Ascension game, he would probably be a decently powerful Sorcerer with the Struggling Awake merit, on his way to Awakening. His patron deity is Hermes the Greek god associated with Mercury and the planetary ruler of his Zodiac sign, Virgo. However, he also feels a close connection to other, similar trickster deities, like Loki, Coyote, Anansi, and Sun Wukong the Monkey King.

Aside from the various trickster deities, Davin has a strong connection to the moon itself, and the goddesses associated with it. Mainly Artemis, but also Luna, Selene, Selune, Sokhta, and Diana. Perhaps tied with his love of the moon, and it’s ladies, he also has a deep love of the night, darkness and shadows along with the god and goddesses that represent them, most notably Nyx.

Davin has also had several dreams that sort of foretold the future. Most have been semi vague, like the time he had a dream that somebody he knew as going to have a baby boy and two of his friends were pregnant. However, he has had one very specific dream that 20+ years later, still spooks him a little in its accuracy: He dreamt that the next time he went to a certain comic book store, with a specific person, that the store would be closed. Lo and behold, the next time he did that in the waking world, with the very person from his dream, the store was closed.

Other dreams he’s had over the years that are possibly of a mystical nature, include him being shot and or stabbed, which feel like how they’ve been described as feeling. When he’s brought this up to fellow occult minded friends, they’ve said that they could be dreams of a past life. Weirdly, he’s always managed to somehow heal or ‘soak’(the White-Wolf term for basically absorbing damage and not being hurt by an attack) any wounds he’s suffered in his dreams. A lot of his dreams have also been about him creating and controlling the elements(mostly fire, ice, and lightning), or having Magneto-like powers of magnetic control.

4) Davin’s memory is basically a super power, with his mom always saying he has the ‘memory of an elephant.’ His earliest verifiable memory was when he was about 3 or 4 years old, and his parents took him to Hershey Park. He vividly remembers the old, wooden rickety building the skyline ride was in. Since then, he’s developed an almost photographic memory, able to recall events in detail as well as the ability to often remember most of what he’s read for long periods of time. In fact, in his freshman year in high school, he aced every test, exam and homework assignment solely based on having more or less memorized all the info from the books/lessons. He even got on the honor roll the first quarter of his first semester. Some other examples of his extraordinary memory include: Attending a steampunk convention with one of his best friends, and walking into a vendor stall, turning to his friend, and saying that he remembered the woman selling stuff from a prior con they had attended like 3 or 4 years earlier. His friend, and the vendor did not recall that meeting at first, but as he explained it in more detail, both eventually realized he was right. Another memory from his childhood was when there was a hurricane on its way, and he and his father had to run to the local department store the town over. He distinctly remembers how bad the storm was, even though the hurricane hadn’t officially hit yet. There was also the time when he was about seven years old, and had just gotten a brand new puppy. He and Squeaky must have been playing a bit rough, and Squeaky bit his earlobe off, or at least bit enough to bleed.

Not all of his memories are good ones however. He can easily remember where he was, and what he was doing the night his mom told him his dad had passed away. He was 17 at the time,and remembers going upstairs, to comfort his dad’s parents. He remembers going to school the very next day, because it was Monday, and that meant he could attend his gaming club’s meeting after school. He remembers the wake, and comforting his dad’s first wife, and the funeral service where the band his dad was in played his father’s favorite song that they performed. Interestingly, he doesn’t really remember going to the cemetery afterwards.

He can recall with great clarity getting hurt at work in 2014, when a broken rack that he was trying to strongarm move fell over, crushing his big left toe. He remembers the assistant grocery manager being the one who called the store manager, while his good friend Maria sat with and comforted him till they arrived with a wheelchair to take him to hospital. On the way, he called his mom, because she worked as a nurse at the local high school, and would be more likely to answer the phone, and come meet him at the hospital. While he lived with his sister, she worked at the town hall, and could have been in a meeting, out on the roads working, or otherwise unable to get away from work. He remembers waiting around for surgery, waking up in the recovery room and eating applesauce, his good friend Melissa bringing him his laptop so he had something to do as he spent the night in the hospital, having a stabilizer on his foot and waking up often throughout the night. He recalls leaving the next day with his mom, and stopping by the store he worked at to let everybody know how he was doing.

His friends often refer to him as their RAM, as his ability to remember things often extends to recalling things for others as well. This is especially true for his bestest bestie, who has always had a bad memory due to various traumas(both physical and psychological) which then got worse when she too got hurt at work by falling off the back of a truck and hitting her head.