bakerstreet | personal daemons

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personal daemons

THE DAEMON MEME

In the universe of the His Dark Materials trilogy (or the movie The Golden Compass), every person has a creature called a daemon that accompanies them all their lives, and is emotionally and metaphysically a part of them. Daemons are often described as sort of external souls (while the part of the personality in a human's body is the spirit).

Basic Daemon Facts:

- They take the shape of animals
- They can talk, no matter what their shape
- Children's daemons can change form at will; around puberty they 'settle' and become one animal permanently
- Neither the person or the daemon chooses the final settled form, but it always reflects their personality (although not necessarily in obvious or simple ways)
- They are almost always the opposite sex as their human
- If a daemon feels pain, so will their person, and vice versa
- Being physically apart from one's daemon causes horrible emotional and physical pain
- Daemons frequently talk to and touch each other, in ways that reflect or complement their persons' interactions, but daemons talking to humans other than their own is considered strange, and touching humans not their own is extremely taboo; it generally occurs only between long-time lovers. Touching someone else's daemon without permission is a terrible violation.

How it works:

- Design a daemon for your muse and put as little or as much information as you like about them (shape, name, link to a picture or species wiki if you are so inclined) in a comment, with your muse's name and series in the subject.
- Check out other people's daemons and let your daemons interact too.

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[Since Iseul is from another planet, his daemon doesn't look like an Earth animal, instead it is a winged and feathered cat named Aiko.]

Her daemon is a chipmunk named Irving, who is like any other chipmunk. Except for the fact that he sometimes changes colors.

Betty was pretty much exactly what one would expect of someone like Eliot. Especially once -if- one got to know them both better.

Techie's daemon was a copper-and-gold leopard moth, one that usually stayed hidden amid the detritus that was his workstation, but sometimes clung to his clothes or hair.

The particular sound of boots echoing down the hallway was one that was intimately familiar to any citizen of Mega-City One, who knew what that meant.

Judges.

Although by the sound of it, this particular Judge was alone on patrol, and for some reason, wanted to be heard before he was seen. And following right on those heels was a smaller, lighter set of footfalls that padded behind them, though hardly less intimidating once they'd entered in sight.

He turned his face and his badge said Dredd, though perhaps not the same one Techie could be familiar with. The smile on his face would be a dead giveaway, as would the daemon trotting at his heels. And upon spotting Techie, the hyena looked right at him, then tossed back her head and gave a painfully loud, baying shriek.

That was definitely not Anderson coming to check up on him as she sometimes did, when she could and that alone was enough to make him nervous. The fact that he wasn't actually doing anything illegal at the moment didn't help ease that anxiety at all, if anything it made it worse, which would in turn make him seem guilty of something even if he wasn't.

Sparks crawled out of the hard drive casing she'd been hiding under, picking her way up his arm and just clinging to his shirtfront at that howl, one that made Techie himself cringe, shrinking back into his chair as if he could will himself into being invisible.

"What's that?"

The Judge tilted his head sharply at the noise, addressing his daemon, his voice and what little of his face could be seen under his helmet an exact match for Dredd's. But the way he said it was not. Instead of being no-nonsense, to the point, it had an almost lilting, playful, gravel tone to it. Like he had all the time in the world, and if he didn't... Well. Others better make time for him.

Libertas peeled her muzzle back into something that almost looked like a grin, and bounded over to Techie, singling him out, snapping her powerful jaws at him playfully. The sound of her teeth clacking shut made an echoing impression in the room. Rico took his time getting there. Hands held by his sides, approaching with an unmistakable arrogance in his step.

"He's nervous," Libertas chattered. She paused, and cackled. "He's nervous!"

"Of course, of course I'm nervous!" He replied, having to remind himself that panicking wasn't going to help anything and yelling was going to help even less, "We just had an inspection a couple days ago, everything was fine." He had some steel to him, he'd have to have after surviving MaMa as long as he had, it sometimes just took him a few minutes to find it.

"And isn't this, isn't this, isn't..." He bit the tip of his tongue to stop the full-word stammering, "This is usually Judge Anderson's patrol, isn't it? Is she okay?" It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that if something were to happen to her, he wouldn't know except like this, a different Judge taking her patrol.

Rico came to a stop in front of him and stared him down, the blank visor reflecting Techie's own eyes back at him.

"Of course you're nervous," Rico repeated, curling the words around his mouth like he's tasting them. "You should be."

Leaving that hovering in the air between them, it almost seemed as if he'd decided to ignore his question. But then he relaxed, the strange tension in the air dissipating into something else. He leaned on the desk and gave Techie a friendly clap on the shoulder as Libertas prowled around him, sniffing the desk and the various detritus on top of it. She smelled faintly like blood, and so did the Judge.

"Now why do you care about Judge Anderson's patrol?" he asked, smiling. It was a perfectly friendly smile. "Friends, are you? That's certainly no concern of a citizen."

He had settled a little, not quite as on-edge as he'd been initially, but he did startle at that shoulder-clap, left eye whirring for a moment as it focused and refocused. He just had to remind himself that the worst the Judge's daemon was going to find was snack food packets that he hadn't cleaned up, and possibly scraps of his latest project, something that would eventually be a laurel crown made of wire-wrap leaves.

"She helped me out a while back." It was then that Sparks finally spoke up: "And freaks gotta stick together." He pressed his hand just a little more closely over her, as if to shield her, or perhaps an attempt to smother her, it was hard to say.

But she wasn't wrong, people hated Augments like him only slightly less than they hated mutants like Anderson. It didn't matter that the eyes hadn't been by choice, all that mattered was that he had them.

Rico twisted his head down sharply to look at the small leopard moth crawling on his front. Ah. That's where his daemon was. Not very impressive, he thought. Not like Libertas. It suited the little geek. He'd forgive the outburst, just this once.

"She helped you out, huh?" he murmured thoughtfully. Libertas snickered behind him, repeating "freak" under her breath. Little Joe's rookie. He'd heard things about her, wanted to have a curious poke around simply because she seemed to have a connection with his brother, but he steered clear of her. Telepath like her, there's no knowing what kind of dirty secrets she'd find in Rico's head. But then again, if other rumors were true, she was also a bit of a soft touch. But it was all rumors. Not enough information.

Which was why he was here.

He steered his thoughts back to reality, clamping his grip tighter, fingers digging into the meat of Techie's shoulder. "Citizens do not take note of patrol schedules," he said, mock severely. "Citizens also do not inquire after the status of Judges. That makes you suspicious. And you don't want to come across as suspicious, do you?"

He grit his teeth at that tighter hold, but didn't try to flinch away from it. Apparently he'd found that steel in his spine finally, it had just taken a few minutes, like it usually did, his voice was more level than it had been, if only barely, as he answered: "No, Judge, I don't."

Especially not now, when seeming suspicious was part of the reason they were even having this conversation.

It had, of course, occurred to him that this judge was one of the holdovers who'd been on MaMa's payroll, there were still a handful of them left, and while he didn't know their names, he was reasonably sure he'd recognize their voices.

Rico's voice was an exact match for Dredd's, though it was hard to tell for most people at first - the understated arrogance simmering under the surface that was never, ever present in Joseph's tone twisting it into something entirely different. Talkativeness went a long way. Same went for his face. Now that he dropped the smile, that is.

"Good. Just a friendly little reminder. Wouldn't want to get into trouble, would you?" His tone was all sunshine and perfect friendliness again, even though his grip stayed like iron, with the smile to match. He cocked his head to the side, Libertas doing the same behind him. "And if you don't want that, why don't you tell me just exactly how you know Judge Anderson?"

He might have noticed the similarities in the voice, but even if he had it didn't ping him as being something he should know, since he mostly relied on biometric scans and recognizable daemons for when it was someone he should, or might, know.

His brow furrowed a little at the question, as he'd thought it was common knowledge, and now he wasn't sure if this was some kind of trap or not.

"She was there for the raid that took MaMa down. She found me and knew that I wasn't there by choice, so she let me go with a warning." It had been less a case of letting him go -warning or not- than it had been not letting her partner make a judgement that she knew was unfair. But as he didn't know for sure what -or even if- she'd told anyone, he went with the version that would get her in the least amount of trouble.

There was a flash of something on Rico's face when Techie had admitted that - a kind of disgust, or pure distaste. But it passed so quickly that it might have never even been there in the first place.

"So we've got a former gang member here, hm? Most Judges would say that coercion is no excuse for breaking the law. " Rico tilted his head to the side, examining Techie with a brisk, efficient look. "...But I'm sure you're a law-abiding citizen now," he said patronizingly, like Techie was a small child who'd presented a finger painting. He removed his hand from his shoulder, settling it casually over his daystick. "I'd like to know a little more about Judge Anderson herself. She sounds like a - special kind of person."

"Special." Libertas sniffed haughtily, ruining Rico's attempt at subtlety. She peered curiously at Sparks. "Freak, but better than you."

[sorry for the delay, was a bit busy!]

He wanted to argue that he'd been a prisoner and not an actual member of the gang, but he knew better than to correct a Judge. Though he did knuckle at the tattoo on his brow just briefly before rubbing at the corner of his eye in turn, as if trying to will away some of the irritation caused by the implants. He'd been little more than a glorified user interface for the building's surveillance and security systems, really.

The placement of the tattoo -prominently visible on his brow- marked him as clan property and not clan member, but he didn't really think anyone who hadn't interacted with the gangs on a regular basis would know something like that.

Sparks had crawled up Techie's shoulder and was in the process of climbing his hair to put herself at eye level, a subtle reminder not to do anything stupid.
There was a nervous little huff of a laugh at the daemon's statement, "I'll be the first to admit that most people are better than me, Judge Anderson's on that list." A half-nervous shrug followed, remembering his terror at having been found in what was usually a safe place to hide between the server banks, "But that's really all I know about her. Just because she checks up on me doesn't mean we're friends."

"Still..." Rico's mouth curves up in a grin, and he almost looks fascinated despite himself. "You're just a citizen. There are eight hundred million of you. You don't even know what it means for a Judge that she even bothers."

Meant a lot of things. It usually meant that something fishy was going on, but maybe it meant that she genuinely was a kind person. One was more likely than the other, but Rico was habituated to believe the former. He generally had a better finger on the pulse of the city's gangs than other Judges - not quite a specialty, but rather a... personal interest and project - but these weren't his stomping grounds. Not in this sector. And as big as MaMa's operations were, she still ruled only one block in a big, big city.

He leaned forward, the other hand on his hip. "I'd like to know why you think she checks up on you. I'm not seeing anything to care about in front of me. I'm not even sure if I would waste a bullet on you!" Rico paused, then took a moment to smile, like it was just a joke. "Just kidding. It's actually very economical."

Slightly bored by her human's meandering questioning, Libertas kept staring at Sparks, her tongue lolling out of her open mouth. "So small. One bite and anyone could eat you up. Do you know that?" It was said with a curious tone, rather than a threatening one.

"Well aware." The daemon replied, and then, far more quietly but not so quiet as not to be heard -because that would mean the comment had been wasted- she added: "Give you indigestion."

Techie had tensed again, just a little, not entirely sure he trusted the 'just kidding', though that was mostly because he was far too used to actual threats disguised as jokes, and comments that started out innocently enough but turned into threats after the fact.

His brow creased just a little, "She's keeping tabs on her investment." He replied, "If I end up turning to a life of crime, she'll know she made a bad call and not to make the same one again, but if I don't, she knows she was right."

There was very little chance of his turning crime-ward, something that was helped by the fact that he had an actual job, and more than that, the residents of Peach Trees -both those who had survived MaMa's reign and ultimate takedown and those who had moved in afterward- were very vocal and proactive about not letting gangs run the block again. A few others had tried coming in to fill the space MaMa had left with her quite literal fall, but none had managed to get a foothold, and even a few businesses had been frozen out for having gang ties.

Ben has Breha (what he would have been named if he'd been a girl) and she is a very surly ball of puff

Poe has Raza, a sugar glider, she's more shy than he is, and usually stays curled up in his breast pocket, so there have been speculations made that BB-8 is actually his Daemon.

No one ever expected a droid to have a daemon, and so most figured that the steelpecker often seen in K-2's presence was just waiting for the droid to keel over so it could get at the good parts.

Tiao had been Chirrut's eyes for as long as anyone could remember, the long-legged, long-tailed desert cat often found just out of sight around a corner or on a rooftop nearby. She was also a bit of an instigator of fights herself, but that was to be expected.

Bodhi's daemon -and sometime navigator- was a tarsier named Little Bit, and usually just called Bit, and sometimes Bitey.

(Same as the above, only older, greyer and more apt to speak her mind)

Hux's daemon is not, in fact, Millicent as has often been speculated, but instead a crystal snake named Adessa who is usually more or less invisible curled around his wrist or draped across the back of his neck, often under the collar of his coat.

(Either canon events caused him to no longer have a daemon or he has a coyote named Sliver.)

[Shuichi has a young basset hound with big sad puppy eyes named Adler.]

[ At the risk of being a little too literal, Sara’s daemon is Jascuro, a black canary with the talons and beak of a bird of prey. ]

[Wade's daemon is a common vampire bat named Ripley. More often than not she's clinging to his shoulders or back, and rarely flies if there's people around.]

[So the reserved, shy guy has a big ass black panther as daemon, nothing strange about that, right?

Credence's Daemon is named Ada and she's a very protective and curious kitty.]

[Wellard's daemon is a slightly small springer spaniel called Muirgen.]

[Both Niccolò and Mac's daemon is a leopard. Niccolò's is named Valencia and Mac's is named Morrigan.

Specify history or modern. o/]

[Nimue's daemon is a wolverine named Brân, but most of the time she plays it off that she's been ripped from her daemon and he's just her normal-animal familiar.]

[Sarabi is a little small for a coeurl, but still as elegant and deadly in battle as her human. She's far more likely to show parental traits, especially around young adults that Cor feels protective or like a mentor to. However, that sometimes translates into her dragging a dead animal over to them in order to feed them early in the morning - a habit that's about 30 years old and far too late to break.]

Edited 2018-04-18 03:17 (UTC)

[ Derek's daemon is a Fossa named Aria. She is quite protective of him but isn't afraid to speak her mind. She's usually spotted draped over his shoulders or is talking to his latest patient. ]

[Ben's daemon is a nexus named Yana. She might be large and look fierce but she's surprisingly gentle most of the time.]

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personal daemons

Prince Iseul / OC / OTA

Queenie Goldstein | Fantastic Beasts etc. | OTA

Eliot Spencer | Leverage | OTA

Techie | Dredd | OTA

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Ben Solo | Star Wars (AU) | OTA

Poe Dameron | Star Wars | OTA

K-2SO | Rogue One | OTA

Chirrut Imwe | Rogue One | OTA

Bodhi Rook | Rogue One | OTA

Bodhi Rook | Rogue One (AU) | OTA

Hux (Force-sensitive AU) | Star Wars | OTA

Jason Bourne l The Bourne Series l OTA

Shuichi Saihara | Danganronpa v3 | OTA

Sara Lance | DCTV

Wade Watts | Ready Player One (movie)

Credence Barebone | Fbawtft

Henry Wellard | Hornblower

N. 'Mac' Macintyre / Niccolò Machiavelli | Project Rewrite OC | ota

Nimue ] Arthuriana

Cor Leonis - Final Fantasy XV - Open to Anyone

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Ben Solo (AU) | Star Wars