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Character info

Character name: Daniel Tabor Arlington V (also known as Darlington)
Canon: the Alex Stern book series
Canon point & release date: the end of Hell Bent, the second book in the series (released January 2023; the first book, Ninth House, was released October 2019).

There is also a short wiki summary of Darlington’s history available here, but if something more substantive is needed, I’m happy to provide a longer accounting (especially of events in Hell Bent) as an addendum to this app.

Powers:

The creation and maintenance of wards
The ability to mix magical elixirs--most specifically, Hiram’s Bullet, which grants the temporary ability to see ghosts.
Various methods of banishing ghosts using graveyard dirt, bone dust, and death words (poems, quotes and songs about death, the afterlife, or mourning).
The use of various magical artifacts. As none of them will be in Well, this is unlikely to be relevant unless the opportunity (and accompanying memory) arises during a specific plot.
The ability to shift into his demon form at will or when under threat; demon Darlington is taller, stronger, and possesses golden horns, claws, and eyes, along with binding marks at his wrists, ankles, and neck.
The power of compulsion
When in demon form, he is more sensitive to salt used as a weapon or barrier and can sense the presence of death. He also has a demon’s fascination with puzzles and riddles.

Personality

What is your character most afraid of? How are they defined by this fear?
Darlington’s fear is not, as he himself might choose to believe, that some mystery of the arcane will pass him by unnoticed. Rather, his fear is of his utter lack of consequence in his life and the lives of those he cares for. It’s not unfounded: his parents gladly turned him over to his grandfather to raise for the price of a luxury apartment in Manhattan, while his grandfather in turn regarded him as a vessel, a second chance to mold the kind of son he always wanted--and then, once Daniel Tabor Arlington III died, his parents again abandoned him, at fifteen, as punishment for their own greed and anger over Darlington’s refusal to let them sell the house he loved. It’s no wonder he became obsessed with the idea that there was more in the world, a mystical side to the city he loves, a puzzle buried in its history. If there’s something else, something he can find and master, then his lost, lonely childhood will have been worth it.

Joining Lethe gave him that purpose, but it also served to emphasize again how inconsequential he could be. Betrayed by his mentor and swallowed by a hellbeast, he realizes in the last moment that none of the things he’s loved--not Black Elm, not Lethe, not the magic and the books and the history--is enough to save him. Even when his friends later descend into hell to get him back, there’s a moment where he realizes that they’d been fine without him, grown stronger from experiences he hadn’t been there to share, and maybe hadn’t missed him as much as he’d expected.

Danny is a boy looking for meaning, for himself and for the world, and fears that--at least in the former case--he’ll never find it.

What is your character's greatest desire? How are they defined by this desire?
The best summation of Darlington’s greatest desire is this line from his canon, after he’s drunk a homebrewed elixir he hopes might make him see ghosts, only to wake up a day later in a hospital bed with an offer to join a magical secret society at Yale: Magic had almost killed him, but in the end it had saved him. Just like in stories.

Darlington is eager for something to believe in, and after a strange, solitary childhood and an even more isolated adolescence, full of books and fantasy amid the genteel decay of the Arlington family estate, that thing is magic. He wants more of it, always, wants to know that there’s something beyond the mundane existence of everyone else--and he wants to be the special, chosen person to see what that something is. Throughout the series, he’s pursued it with equal parts careful exploration and recklessness: he spends hours reading and researching the history of Yale’s ancient magical societies and their chosen teachings, or delving into the mystery of the magical nexuses that run beneath New Haven in an attempt to draw a new map of the arcane, while at the same time willingly consuming an elixir where each dose runs the risk of giving him liver failure--but it hasn’t yet. Even after his rescue from hell, he’s less repulsed by his new half-demon status than he perhaps ought to be; it’s dangerous and strange, but it’s also a new gift, a step closer to finally knowing a little more about the things that lie beyond a normal existence.

He’ll chase it until he dies. He already has, in a way, and if he goes there again, he has to believe magic will again be there to save him.

How will not having memories change your character? What core personality traits, if any, will change? How?
This has been a really interesting thing to discover throughout the various threads I’ve had and have going currently! One of the biggest is, of course, that this Darlington currently knows nothing of magic or Lethe; I’m having him retain a sort of vibes-based instinctual acceptance that strange things happen, but I look forward to seeing his reaction to some of the truly weird stuff Well throws at its residents--as well as the equally strange things some of those residents can do. Similarly, he has no knowledge of his demon half, which will be fascinating to play out (and play with) whenever that side of him reveals itself.

Darlington without his memories is also surprisingly more open, willing to ask for help in a way his canonical version can’t, or won’t. Darlington in Well won’t know about his history of abandonment, the way his grandfather shaped him through discipline and grit and the strategic hiring of tutors until he was his grandfather’s ideal of a citizen in the world, the kind of man who’s self sufficient and educated enough to do things on his own. His drive to learn and grow, to know things, is still present--but he won’t hold himself back from admitting ignorance when there’s something he hasn’t learned (or doesn’t remember that he knows).

One thing that’s unlikely to change is his commitment to other people and the responsibility he feels to protect them. As another character says about him in canon, “He took me seriously. Even when I didn’t.” Darlington believes in people, in their capacity to improve--but even if they don’t, when the danger is at the door and the things in the dark come calling, he’ll be there to stand and fight for their sake as much as for his own.

Memories

You have 10 memory points. How will you use them?

Relationship core (partial): 2 points
- A line from a Hart Crane poem: And if they take away your sleep sometimes they give it back again, and the sense of grieving someone--two someones--you tried for years to cease loving but will also never fully forgive.
Relationship trappings: 2 points
- Galaxy Stern: skinny and dark-haired, surly and out of place. They worked together, but neither of them were pleased with the experience.
Major memory: 2 points
- A younger Darlington standing over a bubbling Dutch oven, looking down at a thick, foul-smelling substance. A sense of weariness. A sense of being on the threshold of something unknown.
Major memory: 2 points
- Hauling rocks amongst the rubble of a once-grand house, a faint smell of sulfur in the air. Setting one stone atop another, wishing to rebuild. A voice behind him, doubled and strange: Danny, come home.
Minor memory: 1 point
- Sitting at the desk in his bedroom reading, a white cat sleeping on the desktop just beside him.
Skill: 1 point
- Basic knowledge of Latin