Party Hard Killer

**Darius**, better known under media epithet "**The** **Party Hard Killer**" and known to some as "**The Beast**", is the main playable character and villain protagonist of *Party Hard*, its *High Crimes* DLC and *Party Hard 2*. He is the initially only available hero character in all the missions before they have been completed at least once, with the exception of Miami Party, in which Katie is playable only at first and the DLC content Dark Castle, which is exclusively playable as Edward One.

## Appearance

Darius is a tall, slender Caucasian man with black hair. During his killing spree, Darius wore a navy blue dress shirt, black trousers, black shoes and a white plastic mask, which he occasionally trades for a red version. His Spare Clothes outfit consists of a white shirt and pink pants.

## History

Not much is known about Darius' background. He lived in a small, dilapitated house in San Francisco, near North Beach, and is implied to have had a history of mental illness, considering the pills seen in the first cutscene, as well as the relatively minor trigger of a noise problem having been all it took for him to take up murder.

## *Party Hard*

In Darius first appearance, he is being interrogated by Inspector John West, the commanding officer of the police force that investigated his murders, known as the Party Hard Killings. Darius displays a very carefree personality, in contrast to John's accusatory, aggressive tone, and has little regard for the line of questioning, much to John's irritation.

Recalling the very night it all started, Darius had his sleep disturbed by a night-time party by two neighborhood bikers. At 3:00 AM, he got out of bed, put on a mask, took a knife and went down to his neighbors' yard to put a stop to the party himself, marking the beginning of a killing spree targeting partygoers, lasting from the end of April to mid-November, 2000.

After killing the bikers and their female friend, Darius proceeded to crash a nearby springbreak BBQ Party, killing all those present, including John's daughter Katie, who could not be identified due to her heavy mutilation. Right away, Darius became overwhelmed by shock at his own doing, before he was snapped out of it by some passing bikers heading for Bull's Eye, who invited him to join them for a Biker Party at their compound, where he again murdered everyone. Apparently making it his mission to take down every major party event in the United States, Darius left California for Las Vegas, Nevada, massacring a private Casino Party, then travelling to Arizona to do the same at the NeonTop Party, situated on the rooftop of a skyscraper.

Months passed until Darius resurfaced. As he was wandering on a highway through the Chihuahuan Desert, Darius is almost hit by a driver, who ends up giving him a lift to Galveston, where he gets on a cruise liner hosting a Boat Party. The ship sinks just off the coast of Miami, Florida, where Darius is greeted by Katie, who had faked her death, supposedly to escape her abusive father, and was trailing Darius' path of destruction, having become "a fan of his work". She proved her loyalty by wreaking havoc to a Miami Party by herself and drove to Kansas with him after hijacking a Party Bus. Weeks later, John found Darius on a secluded dirt path, holding the decapitated body of Katie, a sight which tempted the officer to put a bullet through his skull, but deciding that he couldn't let his feelings get the better of him, he took Darius in to face justice through a court. To his misfortune, a blinding light washed over the two in a deus-ex-machina, allowing Darius to escape the squad car, discovering an Open Air party at an old sawmill in the works. This time, he was able to disguise himself as a critically injured partygoer, being picked up by paramedics as a result, who inadvertendly cause him to have a psychedelic trip when they administer him with heavy dosages of medicinal drugs, stabbing them to death in his high before fleeing the ambulance. Following this, for a short period of time, the Party Hard Killer was said to have immersed himself into nature to go on a sort of spiritual journery, returning refreshed to strike again, this time in Colorado at a Pool Party. From this point onward, the time frame between killings shortened and in late October, Darius butchered a Halloween Party in Wyoming, shortly after moving on to a Campus Party in Utah.

By this point, the Party Hard Killer had entered popular culture and was a macabre icon amongst the party scene, with some even justifying his deeds as steps towards a better tomorrow. The majority of the public, however, had started banding together against this threat and in response, the feds were sent in to watch over the hottest event in Darius' hometown of San Francisco, a Party Hard Killer-themed subway station rave, dubbed "Underground Sick". Naturally, the party ended up being his ultimate trial, being a farce of his very person, as it associates the Party Hard Killer with his greatest hatred: parties.

In the final cutscene, it is revealed that Darius and Inspector John West are one and the same, "Darius" being John's split personality, taunting John as he attempts to gripple back control and convince himself, i.e. Darius, that he had no right to resort to murder, an accusation which falls on deaf ears. In the end, Darius leans into a weak compromise by telling John that he should see the killings as having been done for the greater good, which, in a manner of speaking, is the justice John had wanted all along. As the Party Hard Killer sits on the subway station's bench, where he had been since he ended the Underground Sick party, and having spent the last half hour debating with himself, he puts on both Darius' mask and John's police cap and decides to head home.

### High Crimes

10 years after the events of Party Hard, John has moved to an unnamed city on the Texas-New Mexico border and become a recluse. He has started to accept Darius as a part of his being and while he still goes through psychotic episodes, John and Darius are directing their murderous impulses at an arguably more noble cause, that being wiping out the drug pushing scene corrupting the country, who hold a large degree of responsibility for the excesses of the increasingly more erratic parties.

Darius first act in his vigilante campaign is the murder of a drug dealer, for which he is arrested, but leads to the discovery that the local police department is corrupt, with their chief secretly being the leader of the syndicate heading production and distribution of narcotics. Following an interrogation, Darius breaks free, sneaks through the station and takes his knife to the police chief's throat from behind while he's preoccupied with some hookers, leaving the station in a squad car with him as a hostage. Darius forces the chief at gunpoint to drive him to the drug manufacture and has him assist in killing everyone in the building with the intent of saving the police chief for last. Before Darius can follow up on this, the chief double-crosses him with the remainder of his cohorts, locking him away in the ground floor of his luxurious skyscraper. Once again, he is able to escape, rides a high-rise scaffolding platform to the top floor and kills the chief's partying crew before taking the elevator to the rooftop. In a final face-off, Darius fights the chief, who has armed himself with a shotgun and grenades, but defeats him after stabbing him multiple times. Although he's succeeded in destroying the city's drug syndicate, Darius feels that in order to stop the vicious cycle of murder and destruction, he needed to break with his personal role in it. Stepping to the edge of the rooftop, Darius takes off his mask one last time and drops it to the streets, bringing an end to the Party Hard Killer.

## *Party Hard 2*

Darius makes a return, this time in the American Midwest. After *High Crimes*, the Party Hard Killer disappeared once more, but appears to have returned only a few years later to punish the reckless party scene. As the game progresses, Darius focus shifts from burtalizing partygoers to finding out what caused his sudden loss in reasoning.

Throughout the game, a flash-forward retells the events of the game through a talk show named *High Crimes*, featuring star guest Dr. Deloise McBride, Darius' former therapist, who claims that her patient is acutely insane and is in need of professional help. It is revealed that Darius was an ex-employee of Apione Inc., a major pharmaceutical company and that he had previously signed up as a voluntary test subject for a powerful new drug, known by the street name Rhino, which lead him to experience a violent shift in temper due to its near-instantaneous addiction. The game's climax reveals that "Darius" is the persona all users of Rhino adopt after prolonged usage. The player character is really an unwitting copy cat killer named Evan and had been prescribed the drug under the orders of Dr. McBride, who ran one of the country's largest drug manufacturing rings through her connections with Evan's employer, The Foreman. Three weeks ago, Evan experienced a psychotic break, coincidentally triggered by a loud Night Club party near his home, which lead him to start his rampage. Desperate to stop a potential data leak, McBride and the Foreman hired a band of bikers to track down and kill Evan, failing when his botched execution at Fireland led to their own demise. At some point during his search for answers, Evan meets Marena, who ultimately becomes his girlfriend and helps him find the ones responsible for the hit. She is the one to find out that John West's spree killings were similarly caused by a prescription through Dr. McBride, after tracking John down, now a homeless vagrant, who confirmed her initial suspicions. Evan is able to destroy McBride's drug lab and finds her at the TV studio to enact his revenge for ruining him. McBride uses psychological warfare to disorient Evan during the ensuing fight, but in the end, police break up the commotion, leading to the arrest of both Evan and Dr. McBride. Though freed of Darius' influence, Evan is to face trial for the murders he committed, with McBride being investigated for engaging in criminal enterprise, as well as the manufacture, trafficking and distribution of Rhino.

## Trivia

* The Party Hard Killer appears heavily inspired by slasher villains, most notably *Halloween*'s Michael Myers.