𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵

Ever since getting out of prison, Murphy's been tossed from one creepy cultish society to another, so it's natural that he lands in Solvunn next. For the last several weeks, he's been impersonating a reincarnating god on an alien planet, and he'll be happy to cast off that particular role, but there will be an awful lot of uncomfortable déjà vu as he gets settled in his new home.

Murphy is nothing if not adaptable, though. He'll adjust quickly, especially in such a relatively familiar situation, and do a good job of blending in while he figures out his next move. Magic isn't as foreign a concept to him as it used to be, but he'll be fascinated by it and eager to explore its power. He's never been physically intimidating and this is an opportunity for him to really learn how to defend himself.

But Murphy's real strength lies in deception and espionage. I'm eager to get him playing both sides in a conflict, trying to work out which one best suits his interests. He'll be trying to get close to the people in charge and make himself indispensable to them. After everything he just experienced in Sanctum, he's going to assume the blind sheep are meant for the slaughter, and he doesn't intend to be one of them.

As a Nightblood (that is, one whose blood appears black and has been genetically altered for immunity against extremely radioactive conditions), Murphy's body can metabolize enormous levels of radiation with little to no detrimental effects. Radioactivity that would instantly kill an ordinary human only exhausts and nauseates him for a couple hours before he recovers. Certain events, like a full nuclear meltdown or an atomic blast, are still capable of killing his body. However, Murphy is also a Prime, with a Mind Drive implanted at the base of his skull which serves to back up his consciousness so that it can be transferred to a new host when his body dies — provided that host is also a Nightblood.

Not too long ago, Murphy died. He had managed to survive torture, lynching, more than one apocalypse, and over a century in cryosleep before landing on an alien planet and being killed by his best friend. Granted, his best friend was under the influence of a toxin that sent him into temporary violent psychosis, but it was a brutal and terrifying end.

It wasn't the brutality of the attack that got to Murphy, though. It's what followed. After his heart stopped, he saw something. He got a glimpse of what awaited him in the afterlife, the punishment that he would meet after a lifetime of lies and betrayal and murder, and when he was revived, he woke screaming that he was going to go to Hell.

It was a strange claim, coming from Murphy. He'd never been the religious type. In fact, he'd always been skeptical of miracles and disdainful of faith. He'd rarely felt guilty about the things he'd done, because unlike so many of his companions, he'd made his choices with the full understanding that his motives were self-centered. But now he'd seen for himself the consequence of all that selfishness, what would seize him again the moment he died.

So he decided to never die.

This, of course, was the most selfish decision of all. Immortality was offered to him as a goal that could only be accomplished by stealing another's body when the body he occupied could no longer support his consciousness. He decided this was a reasonable price to pay, sacrificing someone else to turn himself into a god. And in the course of achieving this, he ended up on the most evil path he could have chosen.

Being willing to do whatever it takes to survive usually means throwing everyone else under the bus. Murphy doesn't hesitate. In fact, he thrives as an agent of chaos — subverting expectations, upending carefully-laid plans, sowing discord among allies, and especially stabbing people in the back when they're most vulnerable.

He plays all sides until he figures out which team will come out on top and then he makes sure he's with the winners. He understands that life does not, in fact, give a single shit about ideology. When given only a selection of bad choices, he doesn't just stand there wishing for a good choice. He picks the one that benefits him most.

It's easy to turn on people when you don't have faith in them. Historically, Murphy hasn't been given a reason to believe anyone's on his side. His adolescent years were spent in a prison cell with a death sentence hanging over his head, with the knowledge that everyone around him decided he was literally a waste of air and were counting down the days until they could get rid of him.

If they already thought the worst of him, why would he bother to do anything other than play into their expectations? How could he ever be a good person when all of them already decided he was bad? He knows everyone's out to get him, so he makes sure to get them first. And he would say he's no worse than anyone else in that regard. The people who judge him for it are just hypocrites.

On the other hand, despite his claims to the contrary, there are lines he won't cross. After the trauma of his own childhood, he will absolutely not allow harm to come to a child. He's also lost his taste for sadism, finding depravity an unattractive quality that he long ago learned is in fact detrimental to the end goal of survival. He doesn't like torture. He doesn't like games. He wants to get the ugly part over with and move on.

People have often accused Murphy of wishing he could be a hero. That isn't accurate. He doesn't covet heroism, having observed too often in others the kind of delusional self-justification that results from someone believing their acts are heroic.

What Murphy admires most are the qualities that make a person useful to others: wisdom, resourcefulness, practical skills — and, yes, bravery. Leaders and heroes often have these qualities, but that's not what he cares about. He just hates being useless. So often, everyone other than him has had something to contribute to society, while he's been the coward and the jester, cast aside and left for dead because he was the most disposable. He admires (and resents) the people who have managed to be the opposite of disposable. He wishes that for himself, while having no idea how to actually achieve it other than through deceit.

The reason Murphy's survival tactics rely on other people — even people who despise him — is because he knows he can't do it alone. He knows that he's weak, that he's unpleasant, that he has little to offer in the way of skills. What he's learned is that he has to find the strongest person around and hide behind them. So that strength is what he looks for in others.

Murphy dislikes everything about himself. He knows he's a bad person who makes bad choices. He would like for that to not be the case. He feels guilty about his duplicity, about choosing himself first and hurting others to protect himself, surviving at all costs. But as he would say, "Better a live coward than a dead hero."

As an outcast among outcasts, Murphy is clearly The Hanged Man. He was incarcerated and sentenced to death for arson at the tender age of thirteen, his execution to be carried out on his eighteenth birthday. Before that, his own mother despised him, blaming him for his father's death. Even after he was pardoned by authorities for his crimes, his peers still wished him dead and exiled him. Again and again, he was blamed even for sins he didn't commit, always the scapegoat. And yet, thanks to no one but himself, he's often the last man standing.