Inspector Henry Kulich

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IamLEAM1983
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Inspector Henry Kulich

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Name: Henry Kulich
Age: 54 years old
Gender: male
Species: Karthian

Strengths: Hope's chief Inspector for Superhuman Affairs, Kulich is one of an increasingly common subset of Karthian culture: he is what is referred to as an “acclimated” Karthian, someone who's lived in a spousal relationship with a human for so long as to develop an emotional registry that closely approaches that of a Terran native – without entering the excesses commonly displayed by sufferers of the Crimson Spirit. Unlike most other Grayskins in Hope, he tends to have a fairly easy time relating with non-Karthian groups.

As can be expected, he displays a moderate amount of telekinetic ability. Considering his line of work, he doesn't tend to do much with it other than use it as an extra set of arms and hands. In mundane circumstances, you might hear about how he once used his abilities to help a human friend move a fridge up a flight of stairs. He can lift a few hundred pounds without much effort, but really tends to specialize in fine telekinetic motor control. He also is a telepath and has blanketed parts of the Department in a willfully passive Dominion – largely in order to have an alternate means of communication with the outside world, if his cell phone ever dies out.
Weaknesses: while he can stop a few knives and the occasional bullet, he never experienced the classic Karthian hierarchy and was especially never given a chance to rise in power. Anastasius might have a few tales of past glories to recount, but Kulich was never able to lift more than that fridge or the occasional injured individual of decent height and build. He also hasn't developed the mental tricks required for self-sustained flight, and couldn't do much more with his field-projecting abilities than to try and supplant his car's air bags with more reservoirs of ablative force.

Otherwise being a healthy Grayskin, Henry has to wear a mask and latex gloves if and when he's forced to interact with carriers of the Crimson Spirit – from notably infected individuals like Anastasius to inert carriers, like the average human or anthro who might interact with the former Czar and find themselves carrying bits of infected dead skin cells, saliva samples, blood or sweat. Thankfully, anti-bacterial soap seems to work fairly well, and he tends to preface contacts with associates of the local artiste with a few rounds of hand sanitizer.

While he's also undergone gene therapy in order to be able to digest Earth's produced food, his gastric system remains finicky. He packs a few bog-standard food-related allergies, to the point where a suspect who might wish to see him gone would only have to expose him to sufficient traces of nuts, sulfites or lactose. It also goes without mentioning that a few rounds of hot lead would also suffice. Considering the shape of his head, he's slightly more prone to headshots than his human colleagues.

Appearance: at six feet five for barely more than a hundred and forty pounds, he displays the expected thinness of his species, with a decent proportion of his total weight resting on his naturally reinforced cervical spinal discs. With his enlarged forehead and skull and comparatively reduced eyes, nose and mouth, he packs the surface-level stern mein most Terrans tend to associate to Karthians. His eyes, however, aren't suffused in irritated veins, eschewing the blood-red tones of Crimson Spirit sufferers for a merely pinkish set of sclera. In the middle of each eye, you'll find purple irises that look just as healthy as your average human eye. He might pack more subtle expression wrinkles than Romanov, but they're still observably there – betraying that Henry is the kind of Earthborn alien who enjoys playing the part of the humorless sleuth if that'll move a case forward, but who still has ample reasons to smile on a daily basis.

As with most other male Karthians, his most personal markers are his facial tendrils. Luck had it that his would grow in a pattern resembling a human's closely-cropped beard, with a cleanly defined chin strap and a fortuitously sculpted goatee. Other Karthians have had a little less luck, to the point of accidentally biting onto a few tendrils while eating or talking...

Being associated to the HPD's Supernatural Affairs, he tends to pack a featureless dark purple suit on a white shirt, with an occasional raincoat and fedora thrown on. He keeps a few must-haves for dealing with belligerent vampires and Fae on hand, from a pistol-shaped “UV cannon” to handcuffs high in iron content, with his most important tool being his cell phone. He has a few technicians on hand to deal with other occurrences such as ghosts, and can count on his badge and his personal pride as a cop to serve as adequate faith vectors, if faced with demons of some persuasion.

As can be expected, he also packs one of the allowed Karthian-make service weapons, a high-power stun gun he refers to as an Arc Thrower.
Behavior: Inspector Kulich had some impressive shoes to fill once Wallace Doherty vacated his spot, but his approach as the main representative of mundane law before the city's supernatural communities is a bit unique – considering how he technically can be considered to be one of them.

To be clear, Alien Affairs belongs to someone else and therefore, Kulich is under one of his own colleagues' jurisdiction. However, being a Karthian, he tends to present a natural barrier to the city's few depersonalized supernaturals, those who think of themselves as superior to mundanes and standing above the law's boundaries. Not being a human or an anthro, he still is perceived as Something Else by those he has to keep an eye on, which makes his authority a calmly asserted one. He operates in stark opposition with his predecessor's blustery approach, as he doesn't need to convince the occasional arrogant vampire of his latent ability to break their wrist-holding hand with nary a thought and no gestures whatsoever. The mind being the fastest “organ” on record, Kulich potentially can think of catching up on centuries-old hoodlums with a few mental twitches.

Even so, he's worked especially hard in order to establish his authority on the basis of respect, as opposed to fear. Being married to a human and living in a fairly multiethnic neighbourhood, he's long since had to embrace differences and cultural divergences, instead of attempting to smother them underneath some sort of mental yoke. The human half of his upbringing makes him frown on outright Dominions and consider that imposing a dopamine threshold on a species that has never required one is unethical. Instead, he tends to blanket family, coworkers and friends in a purely communication-based web-work, preferring the idea of being just an urgent thought away from contact with those he cares for. If you somehow hacked that web, you wouldn't be chastized for momentarily thinking you've tapped into a telepathic human's personal network of friends and family, as Henry feels unequivocally human to others. He laughs at the right jokes, gets pissed off at the right things and expresses joy, pain, arousal or polite interest exactly like a human would. He also stands in opposition with Crimson Spirit carriers, who are traditionally driven mad by the emotional input. Doctor Cerebro would be the best available counterpoint, as Anastasius' own pathogen was custom-made by British chemists with the express purpose of bringing an empathetic personality forth.

Like all other Karthian Americans, Henry has ancestral ties in the former UKDR – specifically Ukraine. His grandparents having emigrated to the United States, however, Kulich only has a Ukranian surname to show, and tends to be consistently annoyed by ignorant humans and anthros who assume that just because you're a Grayskin, you have to sound like Star Trek's Pavel Chekov. On the other hand, he never feels quite sufficiently Karthian for purebreed families. Having been raised by a Karthian male and a human mother, he spent most of his childhood growing acclimated to human neural pathways and thought patterns, to the point where what started as racially displayed Mentalist abilities became his own set of emotions. He can switch gears and go from “dispassionate and rational” to “pleasantly insightful” pretty much as required, but also finds himself annoyed by the puzzled glances other Grayskins give him, when they see him smirk at a funny text message or grin on the phone as a colleague of his sends him an in-office joke.

He never consistently fits in either group, but fits in just enough to be happy and professionally satisfied.

Goals: to investigate any and all disturbances in the city's supernatural community and coordinate the data-mining operations of all investigation task groups assigned to everything from the rare cases of criminalized dragons, the occasional belligerent vampires and all Theriomorph groups. Considering Holden Hall's fairly disparate case load and the way in which their investigations tend to veer wildly between the mundane and supernatural spheres, he tends to process the occasional Shield case once Archie sends the requisite information upwards. He can be expected to work with the local superteam on occasion, as he is the one man in all of the HPD who has the most consistent access to past perpetrators and current informants. If Archie, Arthur, Preston and Travis can't comb someone forth and out of the proverbial mothballs, chances are Inspector Kulich has some idea of where their required person of interest might have gone into hiding...

As you can expect, Kulich also knows Bill Spector by name and is often called to grudgingly pass his case files along to the FBI.

On a more personal level, Kulich is a determined family man. If you've ever wanted to know what an honestly pissed-off Karthian feels like, just try and intimidate his wife Lisa and his kids...

History: Henry Vladimir Kulich was born in 1971, in Queens, New York. His grandparents had emigrated to America as part of the last big Karthian exodus outside of the former United Karthian Dominions, forced to work as dockworkers and living in the Big Apple's slowly transforming Irish Quarter. His father, John Kulich, was born into the Irish-American community's dedication towards law enforcement, and was pressured into marrying Irene Fedorov, another second-generation Grayskin. At the time, however, maintaining work as an alien in the midst of a strongly bigoted climate was difficult. New York might have been growing, its village mentality hadn't quite faded away. In the meantime, Hope's reputation as an inclusive basin for several communities was expanding. It was there that John chose to be transferred, becoming the first decorated Karthian American officer in the aftermath of the Battle of Hope.

Henry grew up in an average and fairly content household. Grandpa Evgeny thought that his grandson wasn't rational enough in his playtime, but John didn't care to bicker with his own father. His wife, Cecilia Donnelly, was also associated with the police circle, being the daughter of a precinct captain. What truly mattered to the both of them was the values and education they'd impart to their son. As they lived on Earth, teaching him how to responsibly feel and how to express what he felt in a precise manner seemed important, and doubled as a badge of stability. The end-result was a sensitive, if balanced young man. Far from Anastasius' poetry-spouting flights of fancy, he was a Grayskin kid who simply happened to find dolphins cute, who was afraid of clowns and who laughed at Quick-Draw McGraw and El Kabong.

Surrounded by cops from a young age, there was little doubt as to what he'd end up preferring as his chosen career. Being a Karthian, he benefited of a race-standard course for the physical portion of Police Academy training, not necessarily being able to meet the feats of stamina or strength that his fellow human and anthro candidates could manage. Instead, he was trained in order to push his natural telekinetics into a fairly versatile force, able to manage detail work as much as the reproduction of blunt strength.

Over the years, he'd steadily climb the rungs of the city's police hierarchy, all the while courting and later marrying Lisa Snow, a human he first met during a domestic dispute case. One child was had, a pure human girl was adopted, the house grew and physical maturity enabled him to receive standard gene therapy for Karthians desiring to have some chance of digesting Earth's produced foodstuffs. While he'd never manage to retain enough Karthian cred to smooth out his interactions with his own brethren, his being a decidedly human guy in terms of behavior made things easier as far as his career and family were concerned.

He worked under Doherty's orders during the walrus' last few years as the city's Supernatural Affairs inspector, holding an office as Major in the HPD's central precinct. Once Wallace left the city's police force to start his political career, however, he threw his name in as one of a few potential candidates for the vacated spot. Having sometimes worked as a sobering instance for Doherty's mercurial orders, his candidacy was more than welcomed, to the point where his being made Inspector was generally considered a shoo-in. As he'd expected, this fairly elevated posting involved a much-needed return to the beat – this time, on his own. Making his own schedules and reports, it soon felt as though he'd actually thrown his hat off and opened some sort of private investigation bureau, with the main difference being that his cases didn't come from particulars. Seamus, Feargus and Crystal were the ones who sent case files down towards him, and he was tasked with pushing some of them further downwards, if they didn't require his specific jurisdiction. As explained earlier, he also received cases ripe for Federal involvement, and would come to receive most of Shield's closed books and documents. He'd soon act as their direct link to the HPD, able to request whatever expert analysis or case review they'd require.

As of the last ten years, Kulich has earned a few interesting sobriquets, from “alien wretch” (don't those self-absorbed vampires just always find the right words?) to “Space Sam Spade” (which he kind of likes) to “Mister Grumpy” (as he is anatomically unable to manage hugely expressive grins). In any case, he now stands as the face some people in Hope love to hate or hate to love, depending on which side of the classic supernatural criminal abilities you happen to stand.
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