Jacques

Jacques Webster, or the Journalist, is one of the main protagonists in the Present Prison Planet storyline. Him and [Place holder names for two other people] spark the most important events in Prison Planet history.

Jacques Webster is a former journalist who worked for the [Placeholder name for company newspaper]. In order to uncover the "News story of the century", he ventured himself to Prison Planet to document how life was like there, and to figure out The Companies involvement with the planet's Drug Production. There he finds himself assisting Augustus in his goal of maintain control over his kingdom, and documenting the many different factions and groups that reside on the planet.

## Backstory

> *Childhood*
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Jacques was born in 2102 to Marc and Louise Webster. He was raised in New York City, which at the time was the biggest and most populated city in the world. Up until age 11, Marc lived a privileged and happy life in the Upper West Side, with his loving parents who doted on each other day in and day out providing him with every toy and gadget he wanted. When he was old enough to go to school, they promptly enrolled him in the best primary education the city could offer, the Bill Gates Preparatory Academy. Marc was a very bright kid, and excelled in school. However, Marc's path was diverted by an unfortunate event in his life.

At around the age of 12, his father, Marc, was framed for killing his co-worker, April, and was sent to the Prison Planet. Is is uncovered later in the story that Mark is actually Marcus the Liberator.

Jacques mother, Louise, was a loving and caring woman, and frankly obsessed with her husband. She ran a business in Bryant Park, selling artisanal hemp-based clothing. After Marc was sent to the Prison Planet, she fell into a deep depression. The family was able to survive on saved income and what was coming in from Louise's business, as well as donations from Marc's co-workers who did not believe he was justly sent to Prison Planet. However, Louise began to suffer from artistic block after losing passion in her work, forcing her to close her business, and eventually the donations stopped coming in. This was not helped when Louise and Marc's sister, Ella, turned to drugs, depleting the rest of the family's income apart from what was in saving accounts. Around Jacques fourteenth birthday, his mother was placed in the ICU after she was discovered undergoing a Bappy overdose. She did not survive, and Jacques and his sister were left parentless. The family court decided that they would be sent off to their grandparent's farm in Upstate New York as that was who Louise and Marc decided to appoint as their legal guardians in case of their deaths.

Life on the farm was very different for Jacques and Louise than life in the city. They were expected to "help out" with farm tasks, which meant nonstop manual labor for the teenagers who never had to deal with that growing up. The political orientation of their grandparents wildly differed from that of their parents, who were inner-city liberals. This was especially challenging for Louise, as she was not used to having to suppress her true identity as a lesbian. This led to Louise seeking out methods to escape her restrictive reality, such as new drugs that she hadn't tried yet. Jacques was enrolled in the local high school, which was unlike the private inner-city high school that he was prepared to enter throughout his primary education years.

Around this time, Jacques also began working for the town's local newspaper. He found that he had a passion for researching stories and interviewing locals, and the time he would spend at work was pretty much what he lived for. However, the grandparents would often prevent him from working by giving him more tasks to do around the farm. Jacques' boss took a liking to him, and realized the situation that Jacques was trapped in. He sought to get him out of the farm and into a prestigious university where he could make connections within the journalism industry. He helped Jacques apply to New York University. Jacques was accepted into New York University, but became distraught when he realized he would most likely be unable to attend due to financial reasons as the college was extremely expensive to attend. After explaining this to his boss, his boss asked him whether or not his parents had set up a college fund. Jacques looked into this and found that his father had begun to set up a college fund for him and his sister. Without telling his sister, as he knew that she would just use the money to buy drugs, Jacques used all the funds available in the account, the funds he had saved working for the paper, applied for financial aid, took out student loans, and applied for a scholarship which he eventually received from NYU to pay for his tuition. He did all this without telling his grandparents, and managed to sneak out on a bus to the city. He left a note with his sister that had a phone number he could be reached at and an explanation for why he had left so suddenly.

*Young Adulthood*

College was not an easy time for Jacques. He found himself unprepared for the level of rigor at NYU as his high school education was lacking, and was forced to constantly study in order to pass his classes. He had trouble readapting to city life after being While at NYU, Jacques became close friends with his roommate, Hugo. Hugo often encouraged Jacques to try drugs instead of studying, which Jacques refused for the most part. This was out of fear after what he saw drugs do to his sister. Jacques enrolled as a journalism major, and was heavily involved with the NYUT, the University's flagship newspaper. During a social event that was designed for those pursuing careers in media, Jacques met Michael Steinberg, a wealthy figure known throughout the city for running Post, a very influential news publishing company. Michael Steinberg offered Jacques a job after he graduated NYU to work as a writer for Post. The eager Jacques immediately accepted the position on the spot.

When Jacques began working at Post, he was initially ecstatic. This was an opportunity to cover the hottest stories and inform the public of the truth behind these stories, while at the same time being able to live comfortably in the city due to the fairly large salary he would receive. However, he found that the position he was assigned did not allow this liberty. Instead, he was constantly assigned think pieces to write. He was discouraged from doing his own research into the topics he was writing about and was instead given data from another department that he was to base the piece on. Jacques resented this, but he stayed in his position due to the security it provided and the belief that one day he would receive a promotion that would allow him to do his own investigation into stories.

About three months after Jacques began working at Post, he received a message on his voicemail from Ella. This was the first time she had called him since Jacques left the house in the countryside. He had been wondering about Ella's whereabouts throughout college, believing that she might have lost the number or chose to completely cut off ties with him after he abandoned her to go to college. He called Ella back and she immediately picked up. By the end of a long, awkward conversation, Jacques learned that after he had left, Ella had found a boyfriend from a wealthy part of the town where they lived. Ella did not state this outright, but he had essentially been Ella's "sugar daddy" who provided for her needs as well as constantly kept her high. From the sound of things, they had had an abusive relationship and Ella had wanted to break up for a long time. After he had drunkenly hit Ella one night, she decided to break up with him. This meant that she would be homeless unless she went to live with their grandparents. Jacques knew that this was a bad idea, so he reluctantly decided to let Ella stay at his apartment in NYC for the time being. Ella moved in and Jacques used the money from work to provide for her. Ella took advantage of this arrangement and would steal from Jacques in order to buy drugs. A few months later, Jacques began dating a desk writer who worked at Post named Sharissa. He desired to move in with her, and he allowed her to also move into the apartment. Tensions began to rise between Ella and Sharissa as the two disproved of each other, and it became increasingly difficult for the three to live together in such a small space. Jacques had to make the decision between who would be allowed to stay at the apartment. In the end, Jacques chose his girlfriend and kicked out Ella from the apartment, telling her that she needed to find a way to support herself and that he couldn't support her forever. A furious Ella left and Jacques became unsure of her whereabouts once again.

Jacques was comfortable at his job writing think pieces, but every day at his job he realized how he was just being assigned busywork that was meant to garner as many clicks as possible. One day, Jacques was assigned the job to write a piece that was supposed to critique the present day lack of women on Prison Planet. At first, Jacques began to write the piece as he normally would, drawing from the factoids provided to him by the Post research department. However, he realized that there was some information missing. In order to continue writing, he needed to find out what was the population of women on the first shipment of prisoners to prison planet. Jacques found out that while women were currently kept on earth prisons due to the belief that it would be dangerous to send them to prison planet, initially, some were brought to prison planet. As Jacques began looking into this, he increasingly became interested in Prison Planet itself. Initially, he began searching on Wikipedia to find more information to include in the topic, but as he became more involved, he began searching through other sources as well. One day at the office, Jacques sat down to begin his research, but was interrupted when he was called in by his boss. His boss told him that while it was definitely an interesting topic to look into, he should just stick to writing the facts that he was given, as there was a risk of him producing "misinformation" if he was to keep doing his independent research. During this conversation, the idea struck Jacques that his manager must have been able to see that he had been conducting the research, as he had told no one about it. Upon leaving the office, Jacques began to realize, to his dismay, that he might be risking his job if he continued to research Prison Planet. However, he believed that the information he had found needed to be known on Earth, as he had found evidence of atrocities and human rights violations that were allowed to persist on Prison Planet, away from the public eye. The next day, Jacques went to his manager and informed him that because of this, he would be continuing his research.

Continuing his research, Jacques managed to find out that the media conglomerate that owned Post had several ties to the development of Prison Planet. Jacques was shocked by this, as although the conglomerate was widely known due to its vast media acquisitions, its ties to Prison Planet did not make much sense. He found that the company paid for most of the trained private security forces that were initially responsible for keeping the prisoners under control. These security forces were permitted to "do what was necessary" in order to have the initial shipment be a success. Because they were not a regular police force, they could act on the prisoners as they saw fit. Jacques realized that attempting to get this published with Post would be foolish, as they were owned by the media conglomerate. Instead, he reached out to the Advocates for the Abolishment of Prison Planet. This organization was initially been designed to legally abolish prisons but now was dedicated to abolishing prison planet itself via legal means. After Jacques sent them a draft of his article, they offered to publish it on his behalf. Soon enough, the organization had begun a massive social media campaign that teased they would have information that would lead to "the end of prison planet".

Jacques was told that if he stopped publicizing his findings and made a public statement that apologized for "diverting attention away from important issues" and affirmed the the journalistic integrity of Post, he would be given a position as the head of Post's investigative journalist team. This was unexpected news to Jacques, who had desperately wanted such a position ever since he began working at Post. However, Jacques realized that this offer was too good to be true, and was an attempt to prevent him from uncovering something huge. This time, instead of going to his manager, Jacques demanded a meeting with the editor-in-chief of Post. After an angry outburst in the office of the editor-in-chief, Jacques left work early. The following day, Jacques was arrested at his home by Federal agents. According to police, they had found evidence that he had "conspired with the Freedom Federation, a terroristic Abolitionist organization", helping them organize a plot to blow up Times Square 42nd Street station. Following the arrest, Jacques was placed on a Prison Planet transport ship and sent to Prison Planet.

At around the age of 18, he found a job working for a local news company. There he would work as a journalist, documenting the growing drug problem happening in his neighborhood. When investigating the local drug dens and halfway houses, he discovered that the majority of people there are using this new startup drug, Bappy, which is a modified hallucinogenic drug of [Placeholder name for company that owns the neighborhood Jacques is investigating]. It is said that this drug is 100x stronger than the mainstream drug used, Kerion, and induces a hallucinating state that allows users to talk to the deceased. When venturing into one of the Bappy drug dens, he finds his mother there, who overdosed and died from its use.

With just him and his sister left, he slowly works his way up the corporate ladder until he is the lead editor of his news company. He is able to save up enough money to live in the safe-high income neighborhood he lived in his childhood. With his sister all grown up, she finds a job working as a receptionist for a [placeholder name for movie company]. At Jacques work, he sends his employees to investigate where Kerion is coming from, and every time a journalist finds any clue to its origin, the evidence disappears. Intrigued by this mystery, Jacques himself investigates the story, and finds out that one of his companies private contractors is in charge of the main ingredient found in the drug. He uncovered that this ingredient is actually exported from Prison Planet, but is held under-wraps as it is illegal for any company at all to profit from Prison Planet. Soon after Jacques finds out about this illegal exportation, he is abducted from his home and sent to one of the Prison Planet transport ships.

## Stay at Prison Transport

After Jacques was abducted, he awoke in a NuCorp prison transport ship, the same company which his news company worked for. There he discovered that the ship housed close to 100 prisoners, all of them being Maximum Security level inmates. He met one prisoner, Hugo, who was a thrill-seeker looking to travel to Prison Planet as the last place to visit on his bucket list. Jacques also met Logan, who was being sent into the prison because of a manslaughter conviction involving his 10 year old daughter. The last person Jacques met was Anton, who was supposedly being sent to Prison planet on a minor robbery charge.

The three of them grew closer together, and formed a group in order to protect themselves from the other prisoners. After an altercation between Jacques and another prisoner, the group were able to see Logan's exceptional fighting abilities, as he was able to easily knock out and subdue the hostile prisoner. Worried that more altercations would occur after the attack on that prisoner, who was one of the members of the infamous Coyote gang, the group decided to ask the Roman Mafia for protection. The leader of the group, who they called Tiberian, offered them protection in exchange for their help with intimating a smaller, weaker gang who had special medicinal drug that Tiberian wanted. Jacques initially refused, since the smaller gang were using the drugs in order to help their sick member who was dying from the dirty conditions on the ship. But after seeing the only way to get protection from the Coyote gang, him and the rest of his group agreed. They visited the small gang, which only consisted of 4 people, and told them that if they didn't hand them the drug peacefully, they bigger Roman gang would come and take it by force. Without much persuasion, the smaller group agreed, but hoped to save a little bit so that their member can pass away peacefully. However Anton disagreed, stating that the job was to take ALL of the drugs. The leader of the smaller gang refused, but after a small fight between Anton and himself, Anton grabbed the last remaining drug, and left the sick member to die a slow, painful death. Jacques, feeling guilty about the ordeal, stole the small amount that the leader wanted, and gave it back to him.

After going back to Tiberian, he question the group about the small amount of drugs missing, and Jacques confessed that he gave the small amount back to the smaller gang. Disappointed, Tiberian told them that the job was actually a test to see if they would actually be able to lose their morals and guilt towards others in order to protect themselves. Even though Jacques failed, Tiberian still allowed them to stay in the Roman quarters where the mafia stayed at. Tiberian also applauded Anton for his callous manner in the intimidation.