NOTE: Jace was created for a horror-themed, OC-only (for now) game I'm helping mod on DW, so it's pretty entwined in his backstory and whatnot. But I won't be releasing the name/URL of the game UNTIL IT'S FINISHED. If you're interested please let me know and I'll make sure to contact you when reserves and apps open!

Name: Jace Billings
Age: 27
PB: Rider Strong
Stats: HUMAN, male, tentatively bisexual (he's not really sure guys. I mean, it's not like he hates your penises or anything)
Quirks: major introversion, *achluophobia, stutter, *chiroptophobia, *gephyrophobia, insomnia, *glossophobia, *nosocomephobia, *somniphobia

*fear of darkness; fear of bats; fear of bridges; fear of speaking in public; fear of hospitals; fear of sleep

Personality: Imagine the most awkward person you possibly can. Then multiply it by one thousand. Jace is a very awkward, shy sort of person, so introverted that it's almost painful to watch in the same way a train wreck is. He can actually talk to people fairly well and he is very eloquent, but he'll be all blushy and uncomfortable the whole time and wring his hands, not look the person in the eye, and the like. Despite all this he is very friendly and will usually go out of his way to make sure people around him are happy and comfortable, though of course, he's visibly awkward through all of it.He has a lot of little nervous gestures he does when he's uncomfortable, which is most of the time. He can frequently be seen cracking his knuckles and biting his lip. He has the self-confidence of someone without lips and though he does not have low self-esteem or anything of the like, his lack of confidence can still be off-putting. In appearance one could mistake him for a a very intense person, though upon talking to him it becomes obvious that this is not the case at all.

Jace is riddled with bizarre phobias and quirks that make him seem, for lack of a better word, like a weirdo. He has constantly insomnia as well as an aversion to/fear of sleep and will stay up for days on end. For most of his life his dreams have been plagued by dreams of the creatures and places he eventually encounters in Blackhaven, so he developed a natural tendency to try to stay awake as long as he could.

Due to his strange personality and his tendency to not relate very well to other people because of it, Jace became a wedding photographer in his early twenties because photography was something he felt passionate about, because he felt he was much more anchored and attached to the world through the lens than he was in the actual world. He feels that the camera shows a side of the world that the eye cannot and he trusts its view much more than he trusts his own eyes.

Despite all of his obvious deficiencies and weirdness, Jace is a very kind person. He will step out of his awkward little bubble to come to the aid of others and he cares deeply about those around him, even if they are people he has only just met. Because he was raised to be caring, Jace instinctively helps others without even thinking about it, selflessness coming as second nature to him. Possibly due to his lack of self-confidence, he will sometimes act almost suicidally when coming to the aid of others, often overlooking the fact that he is putting himself in danger as well. He also makes up for all of his weirdness by being almost eerily graceful.

Skills, Powers, and Abilities: natural grace. And that's about it. Occasionally his dreams predict the future but they only show flashes of terrible, indiscernible things happening, and only to him. One could actually argue that they're really just stress dreams and there's nothing supernatural about them.

Background: Jace was born Jason Billings on February 18th to Majorie (a trauma surgeon) and Tyler (a registered nurse) Billings, though Tyler was previously a college professor. Jace was delivered in a home birth and from the day he was born he was taught to be kind to others and to value the lives and opinions of those he met. Majorie and Tyler were doting parents and while they disciplined and taught their son the lessons of life, he was a very coddled child. He was close to his parents and therefore grew up mostly relying on them for companionship. He was an only child and neither of his parents had any close relatives left, so unintentionally he grew up rather isolated, homeschooled from the time he was old enough for preschool by Tyler, who took the time off from his nursing job, and really didn't have much contact with other children other than the neighbor kids. By the time he reached his teen years, he was awkward and distant with people in general, though not at all with his parents.

His freshman year of high school, Jace's parents sent him to public school, realizing that it would be healthy for him to be able to spend more time with people his own age. However, it was apparent soon that his awkward, introverted behavior and shyness was not a learned trait but a natural one, and he retained it through four years of high school and his four years of college earning a degree in Political Sciences. In college, however, Jace took a photography class for an elective credit and found that he had a strong passion for the visual arts. He took up photography full-force, using money from his part time job to buy equipment. It wasn't long before his passion and drive gained him a high reputation among couples for his work in wedding photography, and he began to get solid bookings. He couldn't have been happier.

That is, of course, until the dreams resumed...

Jace began basic training programs to be a volunteer EMT the month after he graduated from college, doing his best to ignore the nightmares that constantly plagued his sleep. He is currently at the level of EMT-B, and rides in the back of the ambulance and carries out non-invasive procedures on patients, such as splinting, stopping bleeding of wounds, and CPR. As he isn't very good with people, he prefers this less social job to being an actual nurse or doctor like his parents. He always wanted to help and protect people, but was too painfully shy to get a job where he would be dealing more directly with people. He is happy in his relatively small role, making sure that patients are given what they need and transported to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Eventually, the nightmares got to bad that he began to actually develop a genuine fear of sleep, which led to insomnia and eventually to bizarre and nightmarish hallucinations that he could not understand. All he knew was that they were terrifying and violent, and he wanted them to stop. Prescribed sleeping pills, the nightmares returned full force, and it seemed to be that Jace would be forced to choose between nightmares and hallucinations. It was during this time that the suicide rate went up drastically in the city, and dead birds began to show up everywhere. Naturally observant by nature, Jace noticed all of this and began to record the sightings and reports in a journal. His findings startled him; within a week he saw more than a thousand dead birds, and suicide rates had gone up by 15%, a startling amount for 7 days.

As he began to delve deeper into the mystery he found himself enfolded in, mysterious red envelopes began to appear around town that no one else seemed to notice, carrying bizarre and cryptic messages inside. Also around this time, Jace began to glimpse horrifying creatures through his camera and in the photos he took, the first clue that he could no longer even pretend to ignore the horrors that were taking place around him. The creatures seemed to bring death; Jace recorded the people he saw them attached to, and nearly always they committed suicide within a few weeks.

As things began to spiral out of control, the city began to go dark, and then the world. Unable to continue living his normal life, Jace joined thousands of other refugees on a pilgrimage toward the light, and ended up in Blackhaven, the last known city of light. Canon point... set!