Mayor Wallace Doherty

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Name: Wallace Doherty
Age: 54 years old
Gender: male
Species: anthro walrus

Strengths: if anything can be said about Wallace, it's that he's passionate about his post and is utterly devoted to the city and its citizens. Hope has known all sorts of mayoral figures over the years; some strong and some weak, some drawn to the highest seat of power for the privileges it offers, some called to it to right wrongs and bring order and peace to troubled periods. Wallace is very much the fixer-upper in terms of City Management archetypes, and has the kind of dogged, stubborn and sanguine temper that makes it very clear he very much comes alive when shit hits the fan. In fact, it'd be fair to say he prefers the parlous times and ordinary corruption of the city's reconstruction to the placid twenty years that have passed as of late.

Acting a bit like an administrative take on the Hulk, Wallace has the odd sort of temper that makes him honestly appreciate a good tantrum. Looking at him, you realize he enjoys causing his eyes to bulge, making his upper lip quiver with repressed frustration or outright rage, or hollering at flagging City Council representatives who pussyfoot around development projects or suffer from the cloying influence of the Commission. The more folders pile up on his desk and the more his line buzz with incoming calls, the more angry he becomes. Unlike most of everyone else, the more angry he becomes, the more effective he becomes.

He's one of these rare cases where searing anger acts more like a precision scalpel than like a destructive force. Couple this with his girth, poise and vocal volume, and you're left with an example of a mundane who seems built from the ground up to engage in staring matches against superhumans and supernaturals without needing an exosuit of some kind.

Considering, Doherty's chief ability involves being able to take seemingly impossible situations by the proverbial horns and turn them right around – never to the benefit of his electoral platform. Dedicated and as selfless as the average Joe can be expected to be, Wallace generally has no problem denying promising deals or opportunities if they'd make him corrupt or unfit to lead.

Underneath the bluster also waits a fairly good dose of empathy, his Brian Blessed-worthy hollerings giving way to broad smiles on his equally broad face and the kind of rumbled words designed to put at ease or communicate a deeper, more congenial nature he tends not to get to show whilst in his office or in City Council meetings. In a more private sense, Wallace is quite the curious type but has been in enough political scrapes to learn not to pry. A very shrewd listener, he has no problem pulling out his inner goofball or teddy bear when the cameras aren't rolling. Few people tend to get to see just how gentle he can be, when most of what everyone sees of him involves tromping around in North Sheffield or blowing hot air in the general direction of contributors or collaborators he suspects to be working with the city's criminal elements.

Having made it to the rank of Captain in East Willowdale's Eighth Precinct before launching his electoral campaign, people also tend to forget he's a former cop. Listing the SuReCa or the Miranda rights is still something he could do in his sleep, his physique hides a lasting ability to sprint after fleeing suspects for a short while and corner them with particularly effective tackles, and his well-worn investigative mind simply switched gears, going from pulling tangled alibis apart to picking decent propositions apart from those obviously coming from sources pursuing mercenary interests.

Finally, like all walrus anthros, Wallace is endowed with extremely flexible jaw hinges and muscles, making him able to open his mouth to about twice the length of your average human jaw. These muscles recoil in a fairly solid manner, and his throat feels equally designed for the reception of fairly oversized mouthfuls. Casual circumstances will see him eat at a human's pace, but meals he particularly loves or quick lunch-time restaurant outings will have him gobble his plate's contents in one or two bites, tops.

Similarly, the kind of mass of fat that would be fairly troubling for a human is only healthy for a walrus. His body actually depends on a generous covering and on his having a fairly well-maintained belly to be able to produce insulin adequately and to manage temperature shifts correctly. His weighing two hundred and eighty pounds is actually considered desirable, as his heart and muscle mass are more or less designed to support this much weight.

If anything, this makes gunshots aimed at the center of his mass fairly unlikely to be lethal. His career as a cop has left him with several small scars from where bullets penetrated his thick hide, becoming encased in nothing but superficially vascularized fat.
Weaknesses: as can be expected, his ebullient temper comes with a propensity for stress. Some people react to stress with a loss of sleep, new tics, skin rashes and the like; but Wallace is subject to overeating.

The more angry he gets, the more focused he becomes on a problem needing to be solved, the more he'll erroneously feel he needs food to keep going. This goes to the point where some tantrums have seen him leave City Hall in a funk, drive to South Chinatown and gorge himself on Dim Sum for a few hours. He can't quite seem to handle the pressure he puts on himself without something to chew on or swallow, and his grocery bills can exist on a fairly surprising see-saw. One week sees him start a diet with the best intentions in the world, and the next sees him line two full grocery store carts with goods he will, appallingly enough, manage to eat through in a single five-day stretch.

In extreme cases, it can be fairly hard to pry him away from food. This is rather sad, as anyone bearing witness to one of his eating binges could plainly he doesn't like it. He appreciates being able to enjoy food, but stress reduces the value of enjoyment to nothing. Relief becomes the important factor, and relief only comes when he manages to stuff himself to the point of drowsiness. Being what he is, this can require fairly immense caloric intakes.

Fighting against it also doesn't help. Wallace generally manages to put up a good front during gala events taking place in the middle of stressful times, but his being able to sedately nosh on a few canapés only means he'll explosively let himself loose as soon as the evening is over. Considering, his second fiddle of a penguin tends to be as well acquainted with takeout joints around the city's hotspots as he is with city ordinances or petitions...

At least, if the source of the latest peal of stress is removed or dealt with, his illusory appetite shrinks away, either returning to normal proportions or plainly disappearing for the next several hours. Unfortunately, restrictive procedures would likely cause him to melt away – below the healthy margins expected of walruses. Stomach staples aren't for him, considering. An outside instance needs to intervene, but few people have been able to say no to one of Doherty's bloodshot glares.

Appearance: at two hundred and eighty pounds for five feet nine inches, Wallace is definitely a stout fellow; with very little of it being observable muscle. Instead, his lasting physical capability slumbers under the surface, generally waiting to surprise people who see him negotiate several flights of stairs or anger-fuelled speed-walks to the Hall of Records six miles down the street without breaking a sweat. Anthros might be common, but anthros for whom a round physique is considered healthy always surprise humans, with their respective need to maintain a fit and trim silhouette.

With a rich, slightly iridescent leathery brown hide, nutmeg eyes and a moustache that combines his species' bristly looks and the softer, fuller trim of human facial hair, Wallace is endowed with a remarkably expressive face – as with all other anthros. There's a kind of borderline cartoon-worthy clarity to the way his face animates. Amused smiles see a goofy-looking fang protrude from his upper lip, and grins or other good-natured expressions ply his face in all sorts of ways. The office and boardroom-level sly intellect he maintains sometimes gets to show in conspiratorial smirks or calculatingly lowered eyebrows and eyelids, the paperwork predator he is managing satisfied looks that are a far cry from Aldergard's seemingly palpable lust for corruption for him to stamp out – but still carry a kind of righteous, smug “job well done” look to them.

Considering, there's a reason he tends to act as the local Santa Claus in the city's yearly parades : he's got the bowlful of jelly and the garrulous laughter, which he can still tone down to kind chuckles – but this really isn't why he keeps his seat year after year. Nobody elects a mayor on the basis of how huggable or comforting he looks, after all.

In fact, if there's one emotion his body broadcasts frighteningly well, it's hunger. Not physical hunger; but the kind of deep-seated lust for a goal that can lead to pointed glances, shaking lips and hands curled into claws with sheer frustration, need or the desire to lash out at opponents. He's incredibly – kinetic for a man his size, pacing about his office, expressing his discontent with those curled fingers, pointing at absent perpetrators as if they were there to confront, snatching whatever burger or doughnut is waiting on the corner of his desk to bite into it with the kind of sanguine verve that makes you think he's projecting all of the city's ills into his takeout meal of the last four or five hours. His office generally feels like there's always a Shakespearian monologue in need of being rehearsed, and his appearance is definitely affected with his apparent lack of a standard “inside voice”.

On most days, you'll find him wearing a charcoal grey suit and pants combo, paired with a white shirt and black necktie, his pants held up with both a belt and a pair of suspenders. Unsurprisingly, you'll occasionally find an errant ketchup or mustard stain on there, and his dedication shows in how particularly difficult stretches see him apparently sleep in the previous day's clothes. You'll rarely, if ever see old stains cross with new ones, or yesterday's rumpled tie being slipped back on, but it does happen.

When things turn dire, you'll find him pulling on his old holster under his jacket, with his old service revolver never being that far behind.

Considering his weight and stress levels, Wallace is both a light sleeper and a heavy snorer. He might give the impression of having passed out in bed after a long day's hard work and of sinking so deep he'll be nearly impossible to rouse, but he'll spring out of bed and answer the phone if it rings – sometimes a good five to ten seconds before his conscious mind is done booting itself up.
Behaviour: as said above, Wallace is an expert when it comes to turning on a dime, emotionally speaking. Entire days might go by during which he'll be cheerful, prone to smiling, a little facetious and generally interested in other people – and then shit hits the fan. As the pressure rises, you'll see Hope's friendly and tubby mayor shift. Tics start showing up, convulsive snarls will take him as he'll peer into problematic cases that need taking care of, and before long, he'll momentarily give up, jab at his Intercom button and ask of Walton that he order the first of many takeout meals...

Doherty then becomes irascible, ebullient and generally difficult to live with – but his passion also shows through. Breakthroughs trigger the sudden pounding of a victorious fist on his desk, a few choice expletives and the kind of smile better suited to apex predators spotting an easy catch. Further complications have him stand up and pace about, fingers curling as if he were itching for a physical representation of whatever is troubling Hope – for the express purpose of strangling it. If he removes his jacket, the problem has officially started to require all of his focus. Sleeves rolled? He's pedalling, more than likely leaning on food to keep his temper in some kind of check. Tie loosened?

When things reach this level, City Hall becomes Ground Zero, takeout boxes and bags will stack, the soundproofed walls of the mayor's office will let pseudo-conversations through, in which the side on one end of the video conference is trying to get a word in edgewise, while the penniped almost howls at whatever troublesome citizen, demanding immortal or avowed criminal known to brazenly escape the law's grasp is at the receiving end. When one of these difficult days end, he's usually utterly exhausted. Considering, there's been instances where he was far too tired to make it to bed, and simply passed out in the nearest chair, once at home, or slipped off while removing his shoes' rubber covers.

We're all told very early on in life that screaming or throwing a fit doesn't get you anywhere, that civil conversation is needed for things to progress. However, in a world where some beings can have superiority complexes thousands of years old or be impervious to the standard effects of aging, there might come a point where civil conversation fails to get the point across. Wallace is a natural in these specific circumstances, when mundane aggression needs to be understood as being just as effective as ploys put in place by superpowered types or former Covenant veterans.

Also as said above, Wallace essentially lives for these moments. You could definitely compare him to a more approachable, Softcore Aldergard of sorts, in that he very clearly has an ego. Humility and congeniality are things he manages quite well, of course, and he actually is quite the people person in normal circumstances, but he absolutely loves being able to combine his arguments and research, his goals and ideals with the fairly flooring strength of his voice to combine the sheer weight of Evidence and Fact that no endowed citizen of his city can escape.

When he, a simple mortal with nothing but the administrative machine and the Shield Act at his disposal, manages to defeat villainous powers in verbal jousts, he plainly and simply feels like a boss. That's his one and only drug, his one and only deeply personal goal. Very much a “pro-mundanes” militant, he doesn't exclude the contributions of undead or superhuman citizens to the islands' relative safety, but considers that there's nothing quite like trouncing the proverbial dragon with the spear of the Penal Code and a healthy amount of preparedness, without any kind of arcane whiz-bang or supernatural abilities interfering in his personal level of the operation. Conversely, any success of Shield's can be considered as a success on the administrative machine's part as well, so he definitely feels authorized to bask in a little pseudo-fatherly pride when the city's first organized band of superheroes and supernaturals nails one out of the ballpark. It also takes shape in his desire to connect with the Shieldies in such a way that they'll call him Wallace or Wally, some day, instead of “Mister Mayor”. However, his temper also explains why he's still single. He likes to joke, always with a very forced and clownish application of machismo, that there's “too much man” in him for any woman to tolerate. Considering, he more than likely looks at our team of twenty-to-thirtysomethings with some kind of unrequited paternal interest.

As for all of his efforts to uphold mundane authority, he isn't exactly a bigot either. A definitely inclusive and tolerant type – as his undiscriminating love for any and all forms of fast food indicates – his more gentle moments let his curiosity show. He'd love nothing more than to just hover around Holden Hall, occasionally landing a few questions to Archie, Aislinn, Tam or the others and being generally left to wander around, a rumbled tune underneath his breath and his hands placidly tied behind his large back, as if the place were a museum to respectfully peruse. Those calmer instances allow him to showcase just how perceptive, politically crafty and fairly devious he can truly be. He might be no lizard, but slithering around borough or neighbourhood representatives who can't quite hide their long teeth and their mercenary designs is something he's surprisingly good at. Anger sees him dish out direct aggression, while he can backstab and pussyfoot with the best of them, when more composed. The former mayor of four years ago, Baverly Walton, would have quite the pathetic little yarn to spin on that regard...

Cartoonists like to portray Wallace like a cross between Roosevelt's spunk and Taft's proclivities, but the general public fails to realize the blubber serves as a fairly adequate cover for a true and seasoned metaphorical chess player.

Goals: he intends for Hope's rejuvenated self to never again face something like Elysium's forces and has vowed to make it painfully clear that these islands are a place where mundane rule is Law. Supernaturals and superhumans are obviously welcome, but all citizens should consider themselves equal to mundanes first and foremost – and in no way superior in any relevant way.

With the Centennial Tree awakening once again, he also intends to ensure that the Tree's attractive effects don't cost him the lives of innocent civilians and citizens. Anything and everything is to be considered in the quest to allow for safe and prosperous lives for everyone – and Wallace has never been shy about his always keeping a metaphorical “Ax policy” at the ready, and about his having paid mages to find ways to theoretically shut off the local Nexus permanently.

If this means the loss of all local practitioners, the closure of the Trismegistus Institute and a season's worth of small calamities as the Nexus' dying throes shake the city, he'd be willing to consider it. Wallace feels his duty is and should always be to those weakest of all civilians, particularly mundane children and senior citizens. Everything else, as regrettable as it may seem, is secondary. The superhumans would remain superhuman, the already-established mages would find founts of arcane power elsewhere, the local Guildmates would enter Torpor and potentially never awaken again – which would still put them well south of outright death.

However, this would stand as his personal last straw. As a penultimate solution, he's worked with some of the city's most dedicated former superheroes to draft the Shield Act, which would adapt the local registration procedures to serve as a means to screen potential candidates for a paralegal defense force. Before pulling the plug on entire population segments and taxpayer groups and weathering the utter rage and indignation that would follow – which would absolutely cost him his seat – he'd much rather dip his hand in Hope's offered toolset...

History: born in 1971, Wallace is very much what you'd call a byproduct of the Battle of Hope. He grew up in a city that was undergoing reconstruction following a calamitous event, and was exposed to the everyday, inescapable corruption of dig and build sites, as well as to the endless politicking that characterized the islands' resurrection. Social groups came forward with specific needs, some with criminal backgrounds and others without, and something had to be done with all of them. Mayor Gregory Horn was known to be a calculative sort, but his calculations were ultimately put to the task of lining his pockets with the cash windfalls of the suddenly booming and highly solicited construction and architecture industries. While never officially investigated – as this would have halted the badly needed work – Horn's integrity was brought into question several times over. Only now would anyone be willing to question him in a court of law. The results, some fear, wouldn't be reassuring. Who knows how many high-rise condo towers are actually attributed to firms controlled by Weasel Biggs and the rest of the Commission? This is the kind of legal wrangle Aldergard and Katherine would lick their proverbial chops over, but few people would be willing to suffer through the dezoning and rollbacks this would cause.

The Doherty family isn't one of the eldest clans in Hope, Wallace's parents having moved in in 1962. With a walrus father and a human mother, he was brought up to be not only boisterous and noisy, but thankfully, also considerate and prone to self-moderation. His Elementary years saw him weather his fair share of jeers and taunts, as no serious effort to lose weight or to match his friends' sleeker physiques seemed to work. Initially, this would develop into a bit of a self-image problem that would have to wait until his forties to be fixed, and give way to the kind of proudly assumed paunch healthy walruses are expected to show. Considering, his teenage years saw him experiment with Anorexia Nervosa and with fairly gruelling training regimens. As could be expected, his muscle mass developed underneath his blubber, never quite slimming his figure down. His seven years spent starving himself to try and match the slimmer anthros and humans would more than likely come back to haunt him in the form of his later – and current – spikes of bulimia.

On the other hand, his excessive training paid off to a degree. Noticing his raw torque, the 1982 coach for the Hope Wizards slotted him for football tryouts. Four years later, the Criminology student and recipient of a football scholarship tore one of his right leg's ligaments in a way that would leave him with a slightly taxing waddle for the rest of his life. His first career option as a quarterback being dashed, Wallace refocused on his degree, using it to earn initial credits in his later training in Lincoln.

He graduated as a patrolman in 1989 and was assigned to East Willowdale's third largest precinct. Back then, he and Peter Smirnov were partners. They spent several years walking the beat together, without much in the way of troublesome events, and bonded fairly well. Peter acted as the voice, eyes and head of the two, while Wallace's job largely involved using his girth for population control on the edges of crime scenes, or channelling his football years into fairly effective barrel charges that ensured that few purse-lifters could ever get past him. All the same, he and the dog shared the same knack for investigative pursuits – people simply had more ease believing the dog could bend down to finger blood stains with gloves on than the fairly large penniped who needed to sharply exhale to be able to bend past the fairly constrictive barrier of his uniform's utility belt. Considering, Wallace initially thought he'd remain as such, a coffee-slurping beat cop, until his retirement.

In 1995, however, he was promoted to Lieutenant. Apart from the plainclothes and the new badge, nothing much had changed, apart for the fact that he now worked solo. However, '95 also marked Joey Magi's attempt to wrest Chairman position from Weasel with fairly explosive attempts. A few assassinations marked the year, with Wallace sleuthing along at a fairly dogged pace. He finally cornered Magi in a warehouse in Coburn, the mafioso triggering a firefight. Despite his demands for backup and his Kevlar vest, Wallace took several rounds in the chest. Adrenaline and fat would keep him from feeling much pain or suffering much blood loss, to the point where it'd be a few years before subcutaneous infections would reveal some bullets that had been forgotten. Observations showed that if he hadn't been a walrus, his heart could have been nicked or directly hit.

Leaving the hospital a few weeks later, Wallace's previously bashful relationship with his own body began to change. His body language was altered and his levels of self-confidence improved drastically. Going through a brush with death and being saved by his own nature made his adolescent peals of anorexia feel rather foolish. No longer feeling ashamed about eating, his merely generous figure began to expand, leaving the more conservative, human estimates of “overweight” to reach what pennipeds of his nature would consider healthy. His previously customary array of pills vanished. Where humans would be entering a fairly critical stage, his heart became sturdier and his kidneys worked easier. He started needing less layers of clothing in the colder months of the year, up to the point where he became able to tap into one of the rare unusual perks of non-selkie pennipeds : being able to weather wintertime temperatures with less clothing than an average human. Where his human partners needed anoraks, gloves and extra sweaters to weather the islands' slightly colder winters than the mainland's average, he limits himself to a felt overcoat and a fairly light black scarf – both of them largely worn out of consideration for the long-suffering humans... In fact, seeing him shovel his front yard after a snowstorm with his suit and tie on and nothing else would become fairly common. Thankfully, anthros of this type benefit from an adaptive metabolism that conspires to make summers as equally bearable. Gaining weight allowed him to discover how average folks feel in mid-June and to stop feeling smothered around late April.

In 2015, Wallace found himself promoted as Captain of his precinct, while Peter was transferred to Sandhill. To this day, Wallace suspects that his friend being shoved off to one of the seedier precincts is the result of executive meddling form the ever-present Commission. A single straight arrow in a building filled with crooked cops posed less of a risk than that same idealist being allowed to motivate upstanding officers into the same general zeal. In 2020, he was off to the offices of the Inspector and Commander for both of Willowdale's boroughs.

That year was marked with the election of Baverley Marion Walton of the Harmony Party, an electoral formation several observers in the HPD suspected to be strongly dependent on the Commission for its electoral mandate. Walton, a spineless and easily frightened bigot with badly repressed hatred towards superhumans and supernaturals, had obviously jumped for the first chance at claiming power in the city, regardless of what Faustian deals he'd have to sign. Wallace ordered the assembly of an investigation team – only to find that the City Council was just as equally compromised. With no-one safe for his former colleagues and Ethan Alderan for him to consider clean, Wallace was incensed. Something had to be done for the honest, hard-working and mundane folk to remain a force to consider, as the Commission was pushing for a fairly worrying form of cherry-picking of city officials. Not only was Weasel drawing from vampires he could trust, he was drawing from vampires who'd report back to him, Sarvin and Jimmy. As for Shen Long, the dragon remained unrelated to most of these power plays, placidly presenting the same and unchanging evidence of his being an upstanding citizen who was maybe guilty of drinking too much green tea – if of anything in particular. Watatsumi, on the other hand...

While Operation Killswitch worked toward the termination of Walton's party and waited for evidence from Hong Kong authorities concerning the head of the Five Hundred Dragons' involvement, Wallace opted to increase the pressure on the local miscreants. He announced his resignation from his post as Inspector in 2021, making it very clear he was gearing up for the next mayoral elections. His party, Project Hope, would release its manifesto and electoral platform in the following months.

Months passed, with Killswitch's pressure pushing Walton over the edge. A few clumsy and inflammatory declarations towards superhumans and supernaturals – along with humans – were launched in the heat of the moment, triggered by debates in which Wallace slyly goaded his opponent into betraying his deep-seated xenophobia. In the meantime, Doherty multiplied his efforts at presenting himself as a viable and, most importantly, irreproachable alternative to the Harmony Party. Being publicly backed by Aldergard Kuhn and Cody Tanner seemed to count for something, as Wallace won by a landslide in 2022. If this was and still is considered as a definitive victory for the city as a whole, it would also mark the beginning of the walrus' new and fairly stressful life. His already sanguine nature would become universally feared in the City Council, and his lost scruples about food would spin out of control over the first few months – to the point where the seriousness of the current issues can be determined by looking at the mayor's shirt or for ketchup stains on internal memos...

As for Walton's apparently destroyed credibility? Wallace chose to appear magnanimous and kept the penguin around for his own cabinet. Officially Project Hope's PR goon, Baverly is now “condemned” to serve as a typist, secretary, gopher boy and takeout supervisor for his imposing former rival, taking typo-riddled and sauce-stained semi-wordless vitriolic discharges at this or that business or project leader and turning them into polite, clean and neutered messages – while suffering the indignity of seeing that mustachioed behemoth allowing himself a few seconds of preening or gussying-up in a tuxedo, before the latest event...

Still, the only thing his opponents seem to have gained is an easy target for fat jokes. Under Wallace's control, the Commission has lost a considerable amount of influence, and several lifelong politicians have seen their names and careers stained with fairly incriminating revelations. If anything, Walton's antithesis intrigues those Karthians who are still trying to dig around the human genome to understand the keys behind the emergence of superhumans. Conservative estimates suggest Wallace should have suffered three or four strokes by now. His weight is less a problem than his utterly selfless approach to municipal administration, his chronic lack of sleep and his awful nutrition. Other anthro walruses have been wheelchaired across the E.R. for less – and yet there is, clearly aging and clearly mortal, but holding onto the kind of solid genes and rock-hard heart and mind that seem to run on stress, rather than show deterioration from it.

Of course, not all superhumans have overt gifts... What if he were more than a simple walrus? When queried about this, the mayor responds that he'll leave his career in the citizens' hands. Heightened resistance to negative stress doesn't necessarily qualify as a terribly unusual ability, but if he ever so slightly belongs with other “supes”, then his ideological platform and his personal right to keep leading Hope no longer have any bearing or place in any debate. In order to feel at peace with himself, he would have to resign and return to the police force, or retire.