"I could tell the Dame was trouble from the moment I put my eyes on her."
"I've always been a meat and potatoes kind
of fella, but lately I've been straying from the meat and leaning toward the potatoes, if you get me."
- From the personal
journals of F.C. Julian, Private Eye
Tall, with dark hair worn in an antiquated style, Julian has a rough, care worn face and
haunting eyes. Much given to thought and consideration, FC Julian is quite a bit more intelligent than the average mug on the street
might give him credit for. Having spent the last four years in Shanghai as a Private Investigator, Julian is well acquainted
with the ins and outs of live in the International Settlement, and has become an accepted regular among the life-long residents.
Originally
born an American citizen somewhere in Turkey to a pair of US government employees, Julian eventually volunteered to serve with
the British Army during the First World War. He served extensively in the Middle East, and later, in Russia during the international
relief effort. He has spent the last few years as a private investigator with an unusual nose for trouble and the abnormal.
Highly
educated in the classics during his youth, Julian has the command of several languages and information your average private investigator
hasn't even hard of. He speaks, reads, and writes Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and now, Chinese, quite fluently. For some reason,
Julian never learned Russian, and refuses to speak Persian on principal, having had "a very unpleasant experience" with certain
Persian rebels during his time in the Middle East.
But most of all, FC Julian is a skilled private investigator on balance of
that notorious "nose for trouble." Frankly, calling it "a nose for trouble" is actually putting it lightly. As FC Julian himself
puts it,
"It's a bit like folks who live near the traintracks and those who don't. You live near enough to the train, and eventually
the sound fades into the background, it doesn't bother you. But if you're a guest at that same home, the sound of the train is blatant,
jarring. Most of the world lives next to the train. I'm the poor bastard who's trying to get a decent night's sleep."
Julian
has a healty business in a city that sees its fair share of mundane matters requiring a skilled private detective, and more than its
fair share of matters that might be considered "less than mundane." This has netted him a number of contacts in all levels of Shanghai
society. Nevertheless, FC Julian constantly feels alone in a world that he f eels, somehow, just isn't his own. It isn't Shanghai
- it's a fine enough city, and it isn't the people he works with on a day to day basis. Deep inside himself, Julian knows that he
isn't native Chinese, he isn't from the Settlement, and he can't even qualifty as having been born on American soil. He is literally
a man without a country. Sometimes, late at night, he has strange dreams - memories of battles and far off places that should be impossible.
Sometimes, late at night, those dreams cause him to question his parents, his life, his very place in the world where he now finds
himself.
FC Julian is only now beginning to touch on the terrible purpose he has been given... Perhaps, of all the inhabitants
of Shanghai, only a handful of people know the real truth about FC Julian. And they aren't talking...
