Templar, Arizona

Development

Characters

• Templar is a large city in northeastern Arizona, on the banks of a dried-up river.
• Benjamin Kowalski is a recent transplant to Templar, previously hailing from Yakima. He is short, highly intelligent, and quiet. He recently started a new job writing for the city newspaper, the Templar Crusade. An adoptee from South Korea, Ben came to Arizona to escape yet-undefined conflicts in his home life.
• Reagan Mancuso lives in the same apartment building as Ben. She is large, highly intelligent, and pushy, and seemingly takes pride in her obnoxiousness. Ray works for a highly suspect retail store named Kingdom Come, and dresses like a drag queen.
• Eugene Carmichael lives in the apartment above Ben's. He is tattooed, possibly slightly mentally retarded due to near-suffocation during birth, and mercifully free from the pressures of grace. Gene is also the only member of his considerably large family with hair - the rest shave their heads as part of their Jakeskin philosophy and speak in a cryptic philosophical manner, especially Gene's mother, who waxes poetic about Gene's youth and her choices in raising him. He was named for the French romantic painter Eugène Delacroix and plays in the popular local band Borndown.
• Zoradysis Carmichael is Gene's daughter. She is six years old, smarter than her dad, and uncontrolled. She just went to school for the first time. Zora has recently shaved her head in keeping with her family's Jake traditions.
• Scipio Spencer is a friend of Reagan. He is unusually tall, well-read, and easily frustrated. Scip is heavily influenced by eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism. He works as a "close-protection officer", wears a kilt, and has a pet chicken named Flora.
• Thutmose Shen, who goes simply by "Moze", is a musician in the band Borndown with Gene. He's overweight, hirsute, perpetually smiling, and extremely libidinous. He owns an ugly pug dog named Goblin. He is a Nile Revivalist, but as with all things he seems not to take it too seriously.
• Ra Shen, who violently enforces his preferred moniker of "Sunny", is the drummer and manager of Borndown. A former Diesel player, he entered the music business after sustaining a severe injury. Profane, opinionated, and intense, he is an interesting counterpoint to Gene and Moze. Like his cousin Moze, he, too, is a Nile Revivalist, albeit nonpracticing.
• Epiphany de la Cruz, a.k.a. "Pippi", is a troubled, standoffish high-school student and Scip's roommate. She has an impressive rap sheet and closely follows Templar's TV personalities.
• Doctor Eli Bash lives in a basement apartment in Ben's building. He is an extremely eccentric man with an unspecified doctorate. He is new to the building, and his room is full of unpacked boxes which contain antique medical sculptures which he has collected over the years. Doctor Bash is in the process of separating from his wife, an affluent woman from The Sorrows, a rich area of town. The pair have at least two children together, a son named Ransom and a daughter named Cascade, who Bash calls "Cassie." It was Cassie who sent the antiques to Doctor Bash, possibly in an attempt to keep her mother from selling them.
• Heather Anne Morgan, a.k.a. "Morgan", is a freckled, red-haired woman from Nebraska. Works for the magazine Pandorea, and has a fascination with space.
• The Elliots: Elliot "Biggs" Bigelow and Elliot James "EJ" Adair. An addict and his dependent, angry companion. Have recently run into trouble with Eugene's family, the Jakeskin.
• Tuesday Pryor: One of the television personalities in the city of Templar. Lives on King Street, an upper-crust section of Templar. Has a frienemy relationship with Curio, another girl on King Street. Her mother works at Pandorea.
• Curio Pepper: Real name: Prabhjot Kaur. Another girl who lives on King Street, and a "friend" of Tuesday's.
• Jakeskin: A survivalist religious group, and Eugene's family. Most are shaved bald, and tend to wield butcher knives.

  Recognition