John Smeaton

John Smeaton is a major character who appears in: Sordid Society.
A hero seeking adventure.
==Synopsis==
===History===
John Smeaton, also known by the nickname Smeato, was a baggage handler at the new experimentally commercial hot air balloon Glasgow airport. He became involved in thwarting the 1790 Glasgow Airport attack on the 30th of June. During his break he observed two men driving a burning jeep filled with highly flammable gas cylinders into the airport entrance. He heard three explosions and ran over to help. It was reported that Smeaton shouted "fuckin' mon, then" and kicked a terrorist in the testicles. The terrorist suffered burns over 90% of his body and died. During the incident Smeaton also helped drag someone else who also intervened in the event to safety. They'd had been left lying with a broken leg beside the burning jeep after also kicking the terrorist. The incident was described as inspiring to others to take personal initiative and act decisively in a crisis. In late July, Smeaton returned to his old job as a baggage handler at the airport, but quietly harboured a desire to live the life of a hero he’d briefly experienced during the incident.
===Sordid Society - Chapter 1: Festival===
On the 13th of March 1791, the annual Wodan festival was being held, celebrating the magic knight's last stand against an invading army. Many stalls were set up in rows with many different wares for sale. A gnome man, Danny DeVito, and a dragonborn woman, Toxiro, were purchasing some books, while a Genasi man, Flameo Hotman, and a Scottish guy, John Smeaton, were trying to guess the weight of a pig - to no avail; these four adventurers would soon cross paths after a child-sized rat walked through the food stalls and was shot at by a cheese vendor with a crossbow, frightening it into running into Flameo Hotman. The rat's anxiety began to build up, as a crowd surrounded them both, fortunately, Toxiro stepped through the crowd and lightly kicked the rat off the man and tried to calm the crowd down, due to a man with a pitchfork trying to get everyone to agree to lynch the creature. She succeeded after pointing out the rat was clearly intelligent since it was wearing clothes, resulting in everyone beginning to dissipate. The rattled Hotman got up and tried talking to the rat, but it just shyly gestured to things to answer his questions. Hotman eventually got the rat to take him and Toxiro to the vendor who shot at her after managing to discern what had happened. He asked why he attacked the rat and it seems like the cheese vendor had nightmares about child-sized rats, which urged him to kill a real one. Hotman told him it wasn't a valid reason to kill a rat and asked for him to compensate the sentient rat, so he took out a cheese stick and squashed it, provoking Hotman to draw his sword and hold it by the vendor's throat. He put his hands up, but smiled and mocked the boy for his insolence, as all the other food vendors held up their crossbows at him. Hotman tried to give a cool speech, but his body was visibly shaking in fear and his voice started cracking up, so he paid the cheese vendor for a cheese stick and walked away with the rat. After seeing the commotion, DeVito followed the three of them up some steps to a quiet area where a giant statue of the night Wodan was placed. DeVito asked the three of them, if they needed healing after the commotion, but they graciously declined; Smeaton came up and asked if they were alright too, before they all began telling each other their names, with the rat finally speaking and whispering, "Boots", to them. A group of children playing with swords realised that it was nearly 9 o'clock, which was when the night-time show started, so they raced down, while the five adventurers observed from the apex of the hill. An older gnome fellow with glasses walked to the centre of a platform stage and announced, “thank you all for attending this year’s annual Wodan festival, honouring the magic knight for protecting this great land so many years ago. Before we start the show I’d like to introduce Daron Marquess, the man leading the scientific advancement of this great country.” An obnoxiously smiley human man followed up onto the stage, while adjusting his ruffled jacket, while waving to the crowd before speaking, “hello everyone, it’s no secret Lerhyttan is at the forefront of this planet’s scientific advancement with a massive push on the profession by the new Queen and as one of its most well-known contributors, I want to present to you the latest development my team has has been working on.” The curtain behind him was unveiled and three wooden mannequins stood behind him, but after a moment of silence they lifted their heads up and stood up straight. He continued, “your eyes do not deceive you, my friends, these mannequins are moving on their own and I assure you, there’s no unreliable, scary magic moving them, it’s all fully controllable, directable engineering.” The mannequins robotically walked forward and bowed to the audience to some cheers, while Marquess smiled gleefully at them, “they’re an amazing display of our work and we’re hoping to make them able to do all the tedious work that…” His speech was interrupted by green flames shaped like arrows that shot down through the mannequins from afar - one-by-one. The audience gasped in shock, before a final arrow one pierced Marquess. Panic in the audience ensued, as Marquess yelled in agony, as he was dragged off by guard and medics, while the five adventurers looked back and noticed a suspicious hooded figure retreating further into the park. They pursued him by climbing up the hill, getting to a path, where they started running, but they got to an open path, where they were suddenly surrounded by eight people of varying heights wearing paper masks of the great knight Wodan that obscured their identities and races. Hotman tried interrogating them, but they stayed silent, while one of them jumped forward to attack him. Battle initiated and the five of them fought back their adversaries as a team. Hotman eventually cut the arm off of one of the terrorists, causing them to yell out in pain, but before their very eyes, green flames surrounded their feet, as they began spreading across and burning him alive. At one point John Smeaton was put in critical condition, but Danny DeVito was able to heal his injuries, while more of their attackers were being defeated, but as they beat each one they met the same fate as the first. One enemy took his mask off a little to breath his draconic fire breath, although the rest of his face was obscured. The final terrorist left was covered in acid by Toxiro, which prompted him to take off his mask in agony, which only caused the green flames to surround him prematurely. They couldn't find any leads as to wear their leader had gone or what their motive was, so they returned to see if they could ask the nobleman, Marquess, anything. They explained that they found the terrorist and defeated him, but the nobleman had no idea who they were, but acknowledged that many people were trying to get in the way of scientific progress. The five of them left the nobleman, commenting that he was useless and suspicious, but they went to the campsite and found an open campsite to set-up for the night. A group of university scholars were neighbouring them, so Hotman, Boots, and Smeaton went over and asked them about the attack, where they learned that terrorist attacks during scientific reveals had been on the rise, presumably from people from magic communities that had been quietly displaced, although these events didn't seem to be unified and were being done at random. They also revealed that their university had a natural philosophy department that might be worth looking at, if they were trying to investigate, so they agreed to follow them back there in the morning, since the capital city Marquess was based in was about a week away and they wouldn't get there as fast as he could on foot.
===Sordid Society - Chapter 2: Chameleon===
The scholars took Boots, Smeaton, DeVito, Toxiro, and Hotman to the art department in the Maetheg University, where they were told the science department was just beyond the doors at the end of the hallway, but they discovered it was locked after the students had left, so they searched around for assistance. The staff room was also locked, so they went into an art room that was holding a life drawing class. Inside was several student looks at a naked monkey in the centre of the room posing and flexing his magnificent muscles. The class finished up and the monkey noticed the party, so he went over and started making monkey noises. Fortunately, John Smeaton was fluent in Monkey and translated it into common for everyone. The monkey's name was Bublé and he was a part-time teacher at the university and was willing to give them a tour, since they looked lost. He took them to the goldsmith room, where they found a thief trying to steal the student's work. Furious, Bublé charged at them and tried to catch them, only for the nimble rogue to dodge away, trying to convince them that she was actually just reorganising. Unpersuaded, John Smeaton caught the thief and took her to the staff room, which Bublé, only to find a key and pink fluffy handcuffs, which they attached to the thief, whose name was Blanc. They grabbed the key and used it on the science department door, finding a very dark hallway. Realising it was a weekend, they nearly gave up hope on getting any information that day, until they saw a light at the end of the hallway in one room. They approached the room and inside was a thin, pale human guy who looked to be in his early 20s and a tiefling girl who seemed to be a similar age. The human guy got up from his seat and reached into a drawer by the door and pulled out a box of flies, then suddenly noticed the party peering in. He was shocked seeing the strange group of people at their door and meekly asked what they wanted. They had him explain what research they were doing, so he explained that they were trying to create an alternative to the enlargement spell that didn't use magic by analysing its properties and effects. Toxiro asked why and what reason they had to experiment on lizard (uncomfortably taken aback by the strange collection around the room), but they had apparently not thought of a reason why and were doing it for the sake of being able to. They grew untrusting of the pair's morality, but John Smeaton inquired about a picture frame on their desktop that had a picture of them with another person who'd apparently been studying artificial intelligence and had been recruited by the Queen in the capital city for it. Boots took out her vial of chemicals and gave it to the human man who studied it and asked what it was and she shrugged; he asked if it was what turned her into a massive rat and she nodded, so asked if they wanted them to analyse it contents by filtering the different materials out, but as they were offering, a chameleon's tongue spat out to the box of flies he was holding and caused the chemicals to fall out its tongue, causing the chameleon to burst out its cage as it began growing in size. It ran down the hallway, so Bublé gave chase and manage to tackle it and get it into a headlock, but it kept on expanding and burst through the walls of the building and ran into the campus. The rumble from the building created a slide down into the campus, so they followed Bublé down and prepared to apprehend the beast. They reluctantly started attacking it, as they had no other way to stop it, but as a result, it got more aggressive and grabbed Flameo Hotman with its tongue and threw him beyond the campus. Boots decided to free Blanc believing she would maybe help them out, since she couldn't really run anywhere; seeing this random display of trust, she decided to comply and tried to help fight the chameleon. They managed to get some great attacks in, until the chameleon camouflaged and silently moved somewhere without any of them noticing it had gone onto the roof behind them and prepared to spit its tongue out. Everyone managed to dodge it, except Blanc who got trapped in its mouth, so Bublé and Boots rushed up to help, while Toxiro used her poison breath to make the chameleon yell and open its mouth, which worked successfully, freeing Blanc, who immediately used a minor illusion to distract it with a loud boom noise, while Danny DeVito produced a flame towards it that burst and caused the giant reptile to stagger back and fall onto the street behind the campus. John Smeaton leaped over the roof and used a flurry of blows on the chameleon, killing it. The rest of the party came over and Bublé used his incredible strength to bury it under the concrete it was laid upon and section of the roof slid down and landed above it like a gravestone, so they engraved the message, "My favourite lizard, he will be missed hoo hoo ha ha". To cool off, Toxiro suggested they go to a bar, where they got drinks and ate food, while Blanc washed her face in the ineffective bathroom sink. John Smeaton challenged Bublé to a game of pool, but he did so well that he potted 5 stripes after breaking, only for the monkey to pot the white, while Smeaty potted the rest of his balls consecutively, then potted the eight ball with such incredible skill that he managed to pot all of the spots directly afterwards. Bublé grumbled and shook John's hand for a "good game", despite being utterly obliterated. They left the bar and noticed a crater in the ground, so Blanc investigated it and discovered that a man had apparently fallen from the sky, bounced off the ground and was sent hurdling through the forest. They assumed it was Flameo Hotman, so they followed the trail.
===Sordid Society - Chapter 3: Coal Mine===
Boots, Smeaton, DeVito, Toxiro, Bublé, and Blanc headed into the forest to find Flameo Hotman. To their surprise the forest suddenly got blocked off by a wired fence and on the other side was Hotman, face down in a crater. Bublé tried to climb the fence, but his big fat stupid gorilla body just tore it down, regardless they got through and Boots woke him up by stabbing him with a stick. They looked around their surroundings and realised the entire area was a mine, although it seemed to have been previously been some sort of town. They noticed a young gnome person tirelessly climb up the hill with a wheelbarrow, so they went over, noticing their exhaustion. The gnome explained that a massive mining corporation took over the town overnight and enslaved the everyone to work for them. They'd taken over the town hall as a base of operations, so they tried to sneak over and infiltrate it to free the gnomes, however, Bublé, and DeVito were caught, but the guard was a fan of DeVito, so he got an autograph and left them be. They got to the side entrance, where Toxiro and Blanc stayed on lookout, while the rest of them picked the lock and entered a hallway. They knock-a-door-ran the closest room, seeing a scrawny human man with a massive greatsword appear, beckoning the intruder to face him, so Boots stepped forward, freaking him out and causing him to drop the weapon on her. He ran into the room, where he was pursued by Boots and Bublé, who made him piss his pants. Flameo Hotman questioned the man, discerning that the Kriger Foundation had enslaved the town and turned it into a coal mine for free labour. They were also told the manager of this branch was in the mayor's office on the first floor, so they searched around for the stairs and any potential keys that they may need. They found the security office, where they beat up three guards and got a key, but before they could use it on what they would assume to be a stair door key, they found an empty conference room with a glass wall that looked into the main entrance. Counting only four guards, they formed a plan and decided to burst in and kill them all. Boots ran in with bloodlust in her heart, followed by Danny DeVito (wanting vengeance for his gnome people), then Flameo, Bublé, and John followed through. They killed the guards and somehow went past the receptionist undetected to the next floor (without the need for a key), where Bublé, Boots, and Danny DeVito instantly found the mayor's office and stormed past the receptionist to his room, but the steel door and the hardened lock were tough to budge. Bublé, Flameo, Boots, and John Smeaton combined their strength to barge in, where they found Oswald Cobblepot. They were about to interrogate him for more answers and to free the gnomes, but he knocked on the back wall twice, resulting in a weirdly lanky guard to come crawling out from behind a painting that opened up. Bublé, DeVito, Flameo, Boots, and John threw a bunch of attacks at the guard, but he was unrelenting. DeVito summoned an ice knife, but the guard caught it and used it to smash out the light and do a sneak attack on Bublé, but before it could connect, Blanc appeared and stabbed the guard, killing him. With Flameo's help the room was lit again by burning the guard's body, but they realised that Cobblepot managed to slink away from them. They left the town hall and announced that the gnomes were free, so they all cheered and began eating the guards; one of the little gnome boys thanked them personally and offered them the limb of one of the guards, but they declined. Flameo wanted to recruit the child into their group, but Blanc called him a paedophile, so he stopped.
===Sordid Society - Chapter 4: Assassination===
The party made their way to the capital city again and along the way their shared stories about their pasts, getting to know one another better, since they'd practically been thrust into a group together up until this point. Eventually, the privates, as they were calling themselves, made it to the city, Tensei, where they got to the riverbed and saw the landscape of the location as wide and as clearly as they could. Two great bridges stretched across a river on the East and West sides, with the nicer of the two bridges having the Queen's castle on one end and a large building made of brown bricks; The party decided to investigate the latter building, so they walked up to it, but were refused entry by a guard who thought they were a suspicious group. John Smeaton tried to persuade the guard into thinking they were agents scouting the location for Danny DeVito's next performance, but he wasn't convinced. They were promptly kicked out, so they investigated another way in. Flameo Hotman found a manhole nearby, so Bublé tried yanking it open with his monkey strength, but it required a little more finesse that he lacked, so Hotman had to do it for him. Toxiro and Blanc didn't want to go in the sewers, so they stayed above ground while the rest went inside. The Privates wandered through the sewers for a while until they saw an abrupt left turn, so Hotman sneakily poked his head around the corner to have a look, where his giant flaming head was instantly noticed by two guards. Panicked, Hotman tried to convince them that he was just a figment of their imaginations, but they drew their swords at him, so he instantly threw his javelin at one of them. The guards attacked him and Bublé who had come to help, but the two of them quickly swung back with their weapons and killed their adversaries. Boots helped recover some of their health, while the others searched the space, finding a steel door. Cautiously, they opened the door to find an incongruously well lit white room with a receptionist looking at them. She was about to call for help, but Boots climbed on Bublé's back and the he ran directly towards her, striking immense fear into her heart, so she ran into a room behind the receptionist desk and started blocking it up with chairs and wardrobes within the room. Outside, the party investigated the receptionist room, finding a door to their left that had the sign "security" next to it, so Hotman and Bublé pushed the desk towards it to block it, then they tried to open the strange door opposite the entrance, but, despite their best efforts, they couldn't jam it open. They noticed a grey box on the wall next to it, so Bublé lodged him member into it, but they immediately heard a loud buzz noise, but nothing happened. They ruminated around solutions for a while and decided to just go out the third door on the right, which was just a normal door. Immediately, they found a long window stretching along a corridor into a cafeteria, so they all crawled passed it, but John Smeaton and Boots attempted to just walk along it inconspicuously, where they were instantly noticed, but Boots scary rate face terrified the scientists, so they blocked the door with a steel pipe and panicked, while they continued onwards through a set of double doors. At the end was some sort of fire exit and a door to the kitchen of the cafeteria, so they went into the exit and walked up one set of stairs, only to find a concrete wall with a push bar on it. Flameo Hotman pushed it forward and found that they'd just come out of some sort of secret underground facility, since the door was disguised as a wall. From the room they were in they saw the entrance to the laboratory they tried to get into earlier and stairs going up another level, so they headed up again. The Privates started questioning the morality of breaking into the laboratory and decided to go into one of the research rooms to find out what they do there. John Smeaton pretended to be Danny DeVito's agent again and asked one of the scientists what they were doing, as DeVito was looking to invest. The scientist gladly explained, since he was a fan of his work, that they were building mannequin robots for menial tasks like washing and stuff, as well as more major activities like bomb disposals. They asked more questions about the facility, but couldn't find anything extremely useful, until they asked who was funding it already - it was the queen. Furthermore, they also discovered that the head of operations was Daron Marquess, a man they had helped once before. They decided to try speak with him, so the scientist escorted them to his office behind mahogony doors, but on their way there, the windows outside were sealed with thick steel sheets and the room was shrouded in complete darkness, except for a low red light along the floors. Suddenly, footsteps rapidly approached, until they saw an amazing, strange being before them. It was clad in total black with red designs sprawled across its body, with a fishing hat and vest on. Bublé got a traumatic flashback to the slaughter of his friends, as this was the very monster that killed them. The being shot lasers out of its eyes at the party, hitting all of them except Boots, who managed to narrowly dodge it. The Privates were all fatally wounded, but Boots was able to bring them all back to health, allowing them all to fight back. Hotman shot a blast of fire at the being, allowing Smeato to follow up with a devastating flurry of blows that knocked it back into the emergency exit, prompting Bublé to finish it off by slicing it in half with his great sword. After killing the Amazing Strange Rope Police, they found that the scientist had been sliced in half by the lasers, so they had to press on without him towards the mahogany doors. They burst in and found that Daron Marquess had been killed with an arrowing flaming green, and after observing the evidence of the room, they found that an intruder had burst in from outside, then ripped out of the steel plates from the inside. Unfortunately, a large group of knights came charging from beyond the corridor, so Bublé and Hotman chucked Marquess' desk at them, blocking the door in the process, while the party jumped out the window into the river below, where they drifted off. Toxiro and Blanc saw the commotion and promptly followed them alongside the river to wherever they were headed.
==Gallery==
JohnSmeaton.jpg|John Smeaton (2nd edition render)
1Drawing.Smeato.jpg|John Smeaton (1st edition render)
FlameoLeadingTheSewers.jpg|The Privates in the sewers
Category:The Wavis D&D Legend
Category:Sordid Society
Category:Playable Characters
Category:Characters